Microsoft® System Center 2012 - Operations Manager

Infrastructure Planning and Design

Published: November 2012

What Is IPD?Guidance that clarifies and streamlines the planning and design process for Microsoft infrastructure technologies

IPD:• Defines decision flow

• Describes decisions to be made

• Relates decisions and options for the business

• Frames additional questions for business understanding

IPD guides are available at www.microsoft.com/ipd

Getting Started

Microsoft System Center 2012 - Operations Manager

Purpose and Overview

Purpose• To provide design guidance for Microsoft System Center 2012 -

Operations Manager (Operations Manager)

Overview• Operations Manager overview

• Operations Manager architecture design process

What Is Microsoft System Center 2012 - Operations Manager?

Operations Manager provides:• Infrastructure monitoring that is flexible and cost-effective

• Predictable performance and availability of vital applications

• Comprehensive monitoring for your data center and cloud, both private and public

• Ability to scale to thousands of servers, clients, and applications

• Reduced complexity and improved time-to-value

What’s New in Microsoft System Center 2012 - Operations Manager

New enhancements that may affect the infrastructure choices and design include:• RMS removal and the new RMS emulator

• Data warehouse

• Resource pools

Operations Manager Decision Flow

SCM ITAMAP

w/ CAL Tracker

Operations Manager Architecture Example

SCM ITA

Step 1: Define the Project Scope and Requirements

• Task 1: Determine Business Requirements• Identify business services in scope for monitoring • Are they dependent on any subservices, applications, devices, or

servers?• If so, what are they?

• Is long-term data collection a requirement?

• What are the availability requirements for the monitoring infrastructure?

• Are there regulatory compliance or internal audit requirements?

Step 1: Define the Project Scope and Requirements (Continued)

• Task 2: Determine Technical Requirements• Will Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager be used

in this environment, with reporting enabled?

• What management packs and integration packs will this infrastructure require?• Microsoft management packs• Third-party management packs• Custom management packs• Orchestrator runbooks

Step 1: Define the Project Scope and Requirements (Continued)

• Capacity Requirements• What is the approximate number of each of the following, and

where are they located?• Agent-monitored computers• Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) computers• Agentless-managed computers

A computer can be monitored without an agent by using either agentless monitoring, AEM, or both. Use agentless-monitoring of computers when it is not possible or desirable to install an agent on a computer.

• UNIX or Linux computers• Network devices• .NET applications monitored via Application Performance

Monitoring (APM)

Step 2: Determine the Number of Management Groups

• Task 1: Determine the Number of Management Groups• Begin with one management group, then use additional

management groups as needed for the following:• Scaling• Agents across WAN-speed network links• Political, administrative, or security requirements • To view topology across multiple AD DS forests• Dedicated management group for auditing purposes• Disaster recovery • Consolidated views of connected management groups • Operations Manager integration with the VMM console

Step 3: Design the Operations Manager Management Server Infrastructure

• Task 1: Determine the Number of Management Servers Required for Scaling• Begin with a single management server, then use additional

servers as needed for:• Scaling limits• Agentless Exception Monitoring • Audit Collection Services• Network monitoring

• Task 2: Determine Placement of Web Console Role• Will web console feature be used?

• If so, on a dedicated server or existing management server?

Step 3: Design the Operations Manager Management Server Infrastructure (Continued)• Task 3: Determine the Need for Gateway Servers• Implement to:• Reduce administrative overhead• Minimize security concerns• Reduce network bandwidth use

• If gateway servers are required, which management servers will they connect to?

• Task 4: Determine Resource Requirements for the AEM File Share• If AEM file share is needed, determine storage requirements

Step 3: Design the Operations Manager Management Server Infrastructure (Continued)

• Task 5: Apply the Fault-Tolerance Requirements• Regular management servers: Add servers to the All

Management Servers resource pool

• Other resource pools for network monitoring or other specific purposes: Add additional servers to those pools

• Specialized gateway servers: Add second server and configure agents to use second as a failover gateway

• Web console server role: Use Network Load Balancing or hardware load balancers

• AEM file share: Use a file server that is in a failover cluster

Step 3: Design the Operations Manager Management Server Infrastructure (Continued)

• Task 6: Determine the Hardware Configuration• The servers can be virtual or physical

• Use Operations Manager Sizing Helper tool to determine hardware requirements

• The minimum configuration in the Sizing Helper has: • 2 management servers managing up to 500 agents• A second server for fault tolerance• 4 disks in RAID 10, 8 GB RAM, 4 processor cores

Step 4: Design the Operational Database

• Task 1: Determine Resource Requirements for Operational Database Server• Database size and load based on: • Rate of data collection. Varies by the number of monitored devices

and the management packs deployed• Rate of instance space change. The rate of change for the data

maintained to describe all the monitored computers, services, and applications in the management group

• The Sizing Helper tool can estimate the size of the database based on: • Number of days for data retention • Number of server computers • Number of network devices • Number of APM-enabled computers

Step 4: Design the Operational Database (Continued)

• Task 2: Apply the Fault-Tolerance Requirements• Clustering

• SQL Server log shipping

• Task 3: Determine the Hardware Configuration• Minimum configuration in the Sizing Helper has the operational

database, data warehouse, web console server, and SSRS server co-located, with: • 8 disks in RAID 10 (Data) (300 GB) • 2 disks in RAID 1 (Log) • 16 GB RAM • 4 processor cores

Step 5: Design the Data Warehouse and Reporting Server

• Task 1: Determine the Data Consolidation Strategy Across Management Groups• Is reporting is required across management groups?

• If so, across which groups?

• Task 2: Determine Data-Retention Requirements• How far into the past is data of interest to business units and to

IT?

• Are there regulatory requirements that dictate how long data must be stored?

Step 5: Design the Data Warehouse and Reporting Server (Continued)

• Task 3: Determine Resource Requirements• Sizing Helper tool can estimate database size based on: • Number of days for data retention • Number of server computers • Number of network devices • Number of APM-enabled computers

• Task 4: Apply the Fault-Tolerance Requirements• The options are:• The data warehouse database must be clustered• SSRS must be in a network load-balanced configuration

Step 5: Design the Data Warehouse and Reporting Server (Continued)

• Task 5: Determine Hardware Configuration• Determine the following:• How many reporting users will be on the system concurrently• Whether reports will be run on demand during peak hours or

automatically published during off-peak hours

• Can be physical or virtual machines

Step 6: Design the ACS Database Server

• Task 1: Determine Scaling• Scaling is based on:• Number of events that the audit policy generates• Role of the computers that the ACS forwarders monitor (such as

domain controller versus member server)• Level of activities on the computer• Hardware on which the ACS collector and ACS database run

Step 6: Design the ACS Database Server (Continued)

• Task 2: Determine Resource Requirements for ACS Database• Based on the number of events per second generated on the

computers on which ACS is enabled

• And the number of days data will be retained

• Task 3: Apply the Fault-Tolerance Requirements for ACS Database• Clustering

• SQL Server log shipping

Step 6: Design the ACS Database Server (Continued)

• Task 4: Determine the Hardware Configuration for the ACS Database Servers• ACS collector:

• ACS database:

Step 6: Design the ACS Database Server (Continued)

• Task 5: Determine the SSRS Location• ACS reporting can be installed in:• An SSRS instance with Operations Manager Reporting already

installed• An SSRS instance without Operations Manager Reporting installed

• If installed in same SSRS instance :• The same role-based security applies to all reports• ACS reporting users must be assigned to the Operations Manager

Report Operator Role to access ACS reports• ACS reporting users must be assigned a db_datareader role on the

ACS database to run ACS reports

• If installed independently from Operations Manager Reporting:• SSRS security can be used to secure the reports

Step 7: Design the Notification System

• Task 1: Determine the Required Notification Channels• Email

• Instant message

• Short Message Service (SMS)

• Command prompt (such as to run scripts)

Step 7: Design the Notification System (Continued)

• Task 2: Determine the Fault-Tolerance Strategy in Notifications• Provide redundancy in the link from the management servers

to the notification channel

• Provide redundancy within the notification channel

• Use multiple notification channels

Step 8: Design the Network Connections

• Task 1: Determine Where Additional Bandwidth Is Required• Compare the required bandwidth against the available

bandwidth

• Task 2: Determine Network Port Requirements• May need firewall exceptions

Summary and Conclusion

• Carefully consider infrastructure requirements and server placement for Microsoft System Center 2012 - Operations Manager

• Planning is key

• Provide feedback to ipdfdbk@microsoft.com

Find More Information

• Download the full document and other IPD guides:www.microsoft.com/ipd

• Contact the IPD team:ipdfdbk@microsoft.com

• Access the Microsoft Solution Accelerators website:www.microsoft.com/technet/SolutionAccelerators

Questions?

Addenda

• Benefits of Using the Microsoft System Center 2012 - Operations Manager Guide

• IPD in Microsoft Operations Framework 4.0

• System Center 2012 - Operations Manager in Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization

Benefits of Using the Microsoft System Center 2012 - Operations Manager Guide

• Benefits for Business Stakeholders/Decision Makers• Most cost-effective design solution for implementation

• Alignment between the business and IT from the beginning of the design process to the end

• Benefits for Infrastructure Stakeholders/Decision Makers• Authoritative guidance

• Business validation questions ensuring solution meets requirements of business and infrastructure stakeholders

• High-integrity design criteria that includes product limitations

• Fault-tolerant infrastructure

• Infrastructure that’s sized appropriately for business requirements

Benefits of Using the Microsoft System Center 2012 - Operations Manager Guide (Continued)

• Benefits for Consultants or Partners• Rapid readiness for consulting engagements

• Planning and design template to standardize design and peer reviews

• A “leave-behind” for pre- and post-sales visits to customer sites

• General classroom instruction/preparation

• Benefits for the Entire Organization• Using the guide should result in a design that will be sized, configured, and

appropriately placed to deliver a solution for achieving stated business requirements

IPD in Microsoft Operations Framework 4.0

Use MOF with IPD guides to ensure that people and process considerations are addressed when changes to an organization’s IT services are being planned

System Center 2012 - Operations Manager in Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization