With IT Analytics, not only is it easy for analysts and users to get the System Center data they want on demand, but using the subscription capabilities in SQL 2008 Reporting Services makes sharing System Center data even easier!

In this post, I will walk you thought the process for subscribing to IT Analytics reports.

Prerequisites

To make sure the subscription process works smoothly, I want to check the following prerequisites.

Enable SQL Server Agent

Reporting Services uses SQL Server Agent to kick off a subscription and this service must be enabled.  I can check the SQL Server Agent settings in the Services window.  My SQL Server Agent should be set up up to run automatically as a startup service.

SQL Server Reporting Services E-mail Settings

To send reports via email, I need to have the SQL Server Reporting Services E-mail Settings configured, specifically: Sender Address and SMTP server.

Data Source Access

For Reporting Services subscriptions and scheduled reports to work, this service must know what account to run as.  To do that, you must specify this account within the Data Source definition.  This can be configured within the "Reporting" tab that is part of the IT Analytics Configuration Manager.

User Access

Next, I need to check my access to the Reporting Services instance.  If I, or any other users, are to subscribe to any IT Analytics reports, we must have the “Browser” assigned.

Subscriptions

Now that I have all the prerequisites in place, Subscriptions can be accessed from SQL Server Reporting Services Report Manager.  The Report Manager URL may be in the following format:

http://<<reportserver>>/reports

Here is a listing IT Analytics reports on my Report server.  Now that I found a report that I am interested in subscribing to, I click on the dropdown arrow next to the report name and select "Subscribe..."  This will bring up available subscription options.

Emailing a Report

Now, I have two delivery options to choose from: “E-mail” and “Windows File Share.”  Both options are listed in the "Delivered By" dropdown.  For this first example, I want this report sent via email.

I pick “E-Mail” in the “Delivered By” dropdown and a number of new options are listed.  In the screenshot below, I typed in my email address in the "To" field and added a comment.  If I click the "Schedule" button, I can specify how often this report should be sent to me.

If there is a subset of data I am interested, then I can use the "Report Parameter Values" to refine the data that is included in my report.

Now that I have my subscription set the way I want it, I click "OK" to save the subscription.

When I visit the “My Subscriptions” page, I can review when all my subscribed reports were sent and status of that send.

Below is an example of a report that was emailed to me:

Windows File Share

Another requirement I have is to have a monthly snapshot of this reports.  I can use the "Windows File Share" subscription option to make this happen.

When I select "Windows File Share," I am presented with a number of options, including where to save the file, credentials to be used and the schedule.  Just like the email settings, I can edit the parameters to filter the data that will be saved to the file.

I click "OK" to save the subscription and go to the specified drive to view the saved file.

With a few clicks, my users and I can get the latest Microsoft System Center data when I need it, further empowering me and enabling me to make informed decisions about my environment.

For any additional help, please contact us at ITAnalytics@baydynamics.com

This post is the next in my series on using IT Analytics to analyze the performance of our Private Cloud at Bay Dynamics. In previous posts I've focused on analysis of my VMware infrastructure, but now I'll turn my attention to investigating the performance of our Hyper-V hosts.

We start with opening our SCOM Performance Cube and refine the metrics to data coming from System Center Virtual Machine Manager by choosing the MP named "System Center Virtualization Reports 2008". Adding the Entity Count and Sample Count to the pivot table gives me a high level picture of how much data I'm collecting from different objects within that MP. We have lots to choose from, including information on virtualization candidate servers, Hyper-V hosts, VM guests, and VMware ESX servers. See below:



In this case, I only want to look at my Hyper-V hosts, so I'll multi-select those five objects, right click, and filter my results to that selection.



Next I add the actual host name to the mix, and I can see the six Hyper-V hosts I'm collecting performance metrics for with this MP.



Now that I have a good set of metrics and hosts, I want to change my measures to show the actual minimum, average, and maximum values of each.



Now I've got some real numbers to chew on. To make the analysis easier, I'd like to see this as a chart. Choosing the Chart option at the top and adjusting the options to split that into three charts by Counter, I now have a much more visually informative perspective.



I see that one of the hosts, svsfhypv002, has the most available memory as well as good free space, but also has the highest variance in CPU % total run time. I'd like to drill into that further and see that data over time to help me determine if this host is a good candidate for a new set of VMs I need to provision.



Hmm, looks like things were stable in April with high available space and low CPU utilization, but there was a big change in May. My next thought is to see that % free space broken down by specific day to see the recent trend. Dragging in the date, I see:



Clearly there was additional load added to this server in early May. Fortunately I still have over 75% of the disk free and this is still a good candidate to host new Hyper-V VMs.

Once again, by leveraging my IT Analytics SCOM Performance cube, I was able to analyze trends in a fluid way, asking and answering my own questions on the fly in a matter of minutes. No guessing and no waiting, I have the information I need to make good decisions about loading and capacity of my virtual infrastructure!