Microsoft Operations Management Suite with Office 365

Microsoft a while back released Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) as an extension of the System Center components you use On-premises.
That means any instance in any cloud, including your datacenter, Azure, AWS, Windows Server, Linux, VMware, and OpenStack, at a lower cost than competitive solutions. OMS leverage’s a cloud-first approach to managing your enterprise for a fast and cost-effective way to meet new business challenges and accommodate new workloads, applications and cloud environments.

Out of the box you can connect data sources such as On-premises collection of event logs. To access the suite, you will need to have a valid Azure subscription which you can link to the OMS suite. Once connected you can browse to the following URL to gain access.

https://{workspace-name}.portal.mms.microsoft.com/?returnUrl=%2F#Workspace/overview/index

To connect to specific services, click the solution gallery icon on the left navigation.

Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS)

Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS)

From here you can click any of the solution connectors. Currently Office 365 Analytics is in Preview. To use one of the solution simply click on it. We will click on the “Activity Log Analytics” option. You are then shown the details for this solution along with an “Add” button. Click the “Add” button.

Activity Log Analytics

Activity Log Analytics

If the solution requires extra steps such as a login you will then be taken through the process. Once this is completed the tile on the dashboard will now read “Performing Assessment“.

Performing Assessment

Performing Assessment

For this one specifically you need to go into the Azure portal, and connect your subscription to the Activity log component. From within the Azure portal, search for “Activity” and select the “Activity log” option.

Activity log

Activity log

Next from the dropdown select a valid subscription and press “Apply“, this will then kickoff the jobs needed.

Valid subscription

Valid subscription

Now you play the waiting game, as this can take some time to resolve as it trawls all the logs and connects OMS together with the required solution. The Office 365 one stated it can take up to 24 hours to start working. In fact, for me it took overnight and now the data is presented.

When it has completed the dashboard, tile should look similar to this:

Dashboard

Dashboard

Clicking on the tile, will then take you into the custom designer that will break down the statistics for you.

Overview tile

Overview tile

Clicking on each component will let you drill down further to see the actual data that made up the graph. Clicking the bar char in the top left takes you to a list of the values for that. Once it loads you can filter by date ranges, the type of activity as well as see the current search history performed.

The key here is that once you have data connected whether it is from On-premises or the Cloud, you can then create custom reports using the “View Designer“. Using this you can drag and drop different tiles to the page to create what you need.

View Designer

View Designer

Dragging the different controls will output different looking charts based on the data.

Of course, the more data connections you have the better the charts will be. Once you click “Save“, the new view you created will be added to the dashboard. The real win comes when you start to connect your Data Center Services and On-premises Servers to this. This then becomes the core place to go for viewing your entire infrastructure alerts, logs and notifications. Most of the features are in preview, they work but may change. Each one really focuses on the following core scenarios:

Log Analytics: Real-time operational intelligence. Deliver unified management across your datacenters and public clouds. Collect, store and analyze log data from virtually any source and turn it into real-time operational intelligence.

Automation: Simplified cloud management with process automation. Create, monitor, manage and deploy resources in your hybrid cloud environments while reducing errors and boosting efficiency to help lower your operational costs.

Availability: Fully integrated availability solution including rapid disaster recovery. Protect your data using capabilities only possible from the cloud. Enable backup and integrated recovery for all your servers and critical applications, to prepare you in the event of a disaster.

Security: Centralized control of server security. Identify missing system updates and malware status. Collect security related events and perform forensic, audit and breach analysis. Glean machine data from all your servers, no matter where they are, and receive deep analytics to react fast to issues.

Overall this s a great tool whether you are all in the cloud or running in a Hybrid scenario. To learn more visit: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/operations-management-suite

Reference:
Cleary, L. (2017). Microsoft Operations Management Suite with Office 365. [online] Liam Cleary [MVP]. Available at: https://www.helloitsliam.com/2017/04/14/microsoft-operations-management-suite-with-office-365/ [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].

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