Microsoft Operations Management Suite: Remove workspace
This blog post is part of the Microsoft Operations management Suite Quick start guide which can be found here: http://scug.be/dieter/2015/05/08/microsoft-operations-management-suite-quickstart-guide/
One of the things I’ve noticed right away when I fist opened the Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) was the fact that I had different workspaces. They were all created in opinsights because the fact I added 3 different management groups in their respective SCOM console.
No sweat of course. I now build 1 management group in my lab environment where I configured everything so I wanted to get rid of the other workspaces.
Turns out there are 2 ways you can delete a workspace and in fact this was not clear in the beginning.
How to get to the “close workspace” option
The remove option is well hidden in the menu’s to probably avoid deletion by accident which is actually a good thing but it’s a little bit too hidden in my humble opinion.
To get to the remove option follow the steps below:
Log on with your account. You will actually get all the different workspaces which are configured and hold data:
In this case I would like to remove the DWIT workspace as this is my ancient lab environment.
Select DWIT and open the workspace.
Select DWIT in the right upper corner and select the DWIT EUS | administrator wheel:
At this point you will have the settings of your workspace and right at the bottom there’s an option to close the workspace.
NOTE: Make no mistake your workspace will be removed and your data will be erased!
Now here is where things can go either way. There are 2 different options here:
- Workspace connected to a MS account
- Workspace connected to a Azure subscription
Close a workspace connected to a MS account
This one is actually very simple.
If you see the printscreen of the post above just click close workspace…
OMS will present you with a nice message box with what’s going to happen and kindly asks you why you want to close.
Note: It’s not required to select an option but please do so to help Microsoft further develop the product to whatever direction you want it to go.
Close a workspace linked to an azure subscription
When your workspace was created with the azure management portal you will not be able to close your workspace from the OMS interface but you will need to delete the workspace in azure itself. You will get the message “This account can only be deleted from the Azure Management Portal”
Open your Azure management portal and navigate in the bar in the left to Operation Insights (note this name can be changed when you read this article as MS is aligning all the naming toward the OMS brand):
Select the account you want to delete and press the delete button at the bottom of the page
Are you really sure?
At this point the account is deleted and within a couple of minutes it should disappear from the available workspaces.
Note: The accounts that are created outside of the Azure portal will have a GUID like name. This name is generated when you link a workspace to your Azure account.
Microsoft Operations Management Suite: Configure Workspaces
This blog post is part of the Microsoft Operations management Suite Quick start guide which can be found here: http://scug.be/dieter/2015/05/08/microsoft-operations-management-suite-quickstart-guide/
A wokspace is basically the same as your management group in SCOM. It contains all the differernt Solutions, connected datasource and azure account to start working. You can have several workspaces based with one account but interaction between different workspaces is not possible.
Create a workspace
In this scenario we are going to build a new workspace. Just choose the name / email and the region and click create
Next up we need to link the Azure subscription we have associated to our Microsoft or corporate account. Note that having an Azure subscription is not a prerequisite for this step (you can just click not now) but it is highly recommended.
To make sure you are the proper owner of the email (note that it doesn’t have to be an email that is by default the email address associated to your account) Microsoft is sending you a confirmation mail which you need to follow.
Click confirm now and continue.
At this point your workspace will be ready and you will have all the standard tiles but no data is poring in just yet.
Configure a Workspace
Head over to the Settings tile where you will be guided to connect your sources to the OMS service. In the past this involved setting up proxy servers and complicated settings as since the integration with SCOM this has become peanuts. OMS is also using the same entry point that Opinsights was using to get connected.
First step is in fact to add solutions. Formerly known as Integration packs (IPs) these solutions each will have their own purpose to tailor the way you want to use OMS. There are by default already some Solutions installed so you can click “connect a data source” to continue.
Now that you have your workspace configured it’s time to connect your datasources to get your data in!
Microsoft Operations Management Suite: Quickstart guide
So Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) was launched during Ignite 2015 and is awaiting your data to show its power to give you the insights in your environment and actually manage your environment not limited to the boundaries of your own environment or your azure environment. But before we can play with the goodies we need to configure everything correctly.
This guide will grow in time to be your one stop to get you going, configuring and using Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) . Bookmark this post to get regular updates on my journey through OMS to help you save some time while exploring the possibilities of OMS.
Below is a list of topics that can be used to already start your journey:
Microsoft Operations Management Suite: A first glance
This blog post is part of the “Microsoft Operations Management Suite: Quickstart guide” which can be found here: http://scug.be/dieter/2015/05/08/microsoft-operations-management-suite-quickstart-guide/
It has been a while since i was been blown away by news about SCOM and monitoring in general. During the recent keynote of Ignite in Chicago however Microsoft delivered… I personally was surprised by the vast number of announcements regarding System Center in general and monitoring and management tools in particular. One of the coolest things for me personally was the announcement of Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS).
A little bit of history is in its place to show you this is not a product which was born overnight. The first sign that Microsoft was working on a service to monitor and aggregate data in the cloud emerged when System Center Advisor was launched. System Center Advisor was a small tool which gave you a quick overview of your compliance level of your environment and check to see how you are doing in installing and configuring System Center. With an update of once a day and not a lot of adoption this tool was not widely spread. Although it wasn’t this heavily used it actually paved the road for Opinsights preview. The Opinsights preview was leveraging the power of Azure to give you even more control on finding out how your data center was doing by using serveral free apps to make assessments based on data you’ve sent to the Azure cloud services. The integration was created in SCOM making it a usable tool and easier to configure. The service was free so I personally encouraged a lot of customers to start exploring it. The fact you could also connect machines directly without having SCOM added to the level of adoption.
So what brings OMS more than the previous versions?
Well in OMS will give even more integration to different services you will need to do to manage your datacenter, it will integrate even more into your Azure environment to become your one tool to deal with different aspects of exploring your datacenter.
The following 4 groups of tools are at this point integrated into OMS:
Log Analytics
Log Analytics was already present in Opinsights but has been fine-tuned. You can now gather all logs of different tools and servers and see what events are actually the most common in your environment and take corrective actions accordingly. This is in my personal opinion a very valuable addition if you would like to find out what the most common problems on your servers are. In fact in SCOM you actually need to configure what to monitor. Log Analytics however uses the power of the Azure storage to collect and keep all the events for you to easily query them and find out patterns and such.
Automation
This feature is new and will actually integrate Automation across the different components you have in your datacenter. The Automation module will integrate with Websites, Virtual Machines, Storage, SQL Server, and other popular Azure services. The automation runbooks will be easily created through a drag and drop interface giving you basically the opportunity to create automation in seconds. Tying in to all the different components you can automate repetitive tasks across your on-prem and cloud services. This will decrease the margin for human error and like all the different automations if it’s done correctly you will actually lower downtime and increase your view on your environment.
Availability
Availability is not only keeping your applications and data online but also making sure that they stay online or can be restored after a breach in service. The availability tools will give you the power to actually synchronize data between different locations to facilitate the different dataflows between the different locations to ensure that your data will be safe. In this automation tap the different tools will be place to make sure you have all you need to keep your environment up and running and restore as quick as possible. The automation apps will actually tie in to your Azure backup services such as: azure backup, azure site recovery,…
Security
Besides getting everything online and keeping it online a lot of companies are also concerned about keeping everything safe. In the modern world it is a challenge to find a right balance between a workable system and a secure system. The security apps will give you the insights you need to actually Identify malware and missing system updates, collect security related events, perform forensic, audit and breach analysis.
So how does it work?
If you were already using the opinsights preview feature your account is automatically transferred to a free account in OMS. This frree account will give you a 7 day retention and a maximum amount of data uploaded of 500Mb. This is solely for testing purposes to get you going. The integration remains in the SCOM management group and will actually upload all the data in CAB files to the OMS cloud service. Your tools will still be there in your dashboard with the possibility to actually connect more data sources to the OMS service. For more detailed instructions make sure to check out my series on OMS found here on my blog.
Check out the following links for more info: