System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2012 beta is here!  The goal of this post is to demonstrate how to configure .Net Application Performance Monitoring in SCOM 2012, and then analyze that data with IT Analytics.

AVIcode Configuration

After SCOM 2012 has been installed and SCOM agents deployed, we then configure Application Performance Monitoring (APM).  All of the necessary agent functionality is now integrated within the SCOM 2012 agent.  All we need to do is configure a monitor to get up and running!

First, APM is .NET exclusive in 2012, so we need to identify and create a monitor for a specific .Net Application.  We click on "Add Monitoring Wizard", as shown on the following screen:

On the first page, we select the type of monitor:

Next, we name the monitor, give a brief description and select and existing Management Pack (MP) or create a new MP. In our example we created a new MP named AVIcode. Please note that the Monitor name cannot be changed once created.

On the next page, we specify what sites we are going to monitor.  The SCOM 2012 agent is able to scan and return .NET compatible applications.  This discovered data populates the component list, making it easier to select which applications to monitor.

In SCOM 2012, AVIcode monitors are specific to the application, regardless of what server it is located on.  To track performance of an application on a specific server, you specify these servers by clicking on the "Search" button in the Monitored Servers section and select any default group or user created groups.

For Server Side Monitoring, we leave the default options and performance event threshold.  We click on the checkbox so we can gather data on the end user experience as well.

Here, we have enabled client side monitoring for the site we are interested in.  We have not excluded any pages at this time.

This next page allows us to refine the monitor even more.

Last page is a summary of the settings.

Now that our monitor is created the final sep is to restart IIS on any servers the monitor applies to in order to enable monitoring.

Out of the box Reporting

The SE Viewer has been brought back in SCOM 2012, see:

The raw performance data about the site can bee seen at the URL http://localhost/AppDiagnostics/ on the SCOM server.

Management Pack reporting is consistent as well:

AVIcode Data Analysis with IT Analytics

To view all the available AVIcode/APM performance data, we create a pivot view where we filter on the "Operations Manager APM Library" and break this down by the available counters.

We filter on the "Avg. Request Time" counter and add "Entity - Name" to see each site we are tracking.

Next, we will convert this in to a chart.

To investigate that API further, I switch back to a table, filter on that App and look at the daily trending.

The 11th of August has an unusual spike.  I'll filter on that date and add "Performance Evaluation Time - Hour" to my table to get more detail.

Looks like this spike was an anomaly.  To see the trending for the remainder of the day, I exclude the "0" hour, and change this table to a chart.

Summary

The tighter integration of .Net Performance Monitoring in to SCOM 2012 will prove very beneficial, and the setup is fairly straight forward.  Once that data has been collected, the OpsMgr cubes in IT Analytics enable you to analyze that APM/AVIcode data in a fast and flexible manner, giving you the insight you need when you need it! 

Bay Dynamics is interested in GreenIT and finding more effective ways to manage and track the power consumption of the Dell servers in our data center.  Using IT Analytics to analyze the power performance data collected by the Dell Management Pack, we can review power usage and find ways to reduce usage over time.

I downloaded the Dell Management Pack from here: http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/d/solutions/dcsm-openmanage-microsoft-scom-sce.aspx

We installed the Dell Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager to get additional insight in to our Dell infrastructure.  Once this data was reported to Operations Manager, we processed the SCOM data to our IT Analytics cubes to view the available data.

We can see that the the management pack has some great performance data around power consumption, which is the exact data I want to focus on. 

I am interested on how much energy the servers in my data center are using, so I've added the server name to my pivot table, along with the minimum, average and maximum values.  By slicing and dicing the data, I can get deep insight as to how many Watts each server is using. 

Let's visualize this data in a chart and compare these servers.

I can see that my averages are close to the bottom end of power consumption, which is a good thing.  However, I am curious about the spike on my one of my SQL servers.  When did that occur, and could it be a trend?

Rather than following up with my DBAs to build out a complex report that may take several hours to build, I modified my chart so I can filter on the SQL server I am interested in, along with adding dates to see what the daily power consumption. 

More good news!  The two spikes look to be an exception and only occurred across two specific dates.  Filtering on those two dates and adding the hour to the pivot table, I can see this server's hourly power consumption.

With our GreenIT initiative in place, my management was concerned about quantifying our efforts.  We had developed and implemented a plan that we felt was sound, but really needed to understand how these changes effected our data center environment.  The Dell Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager gave us invaluable power consumption data.  By using IT Analytics, I was able to easily navigate this power consumption data and quickly create a number of reports for my management team.  Also, since the report is as dynamic as the data, my management team can review the latest information, when they need it, without having to wait for a new report or additional processing time.

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!