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Managing from the Cloud with System Center Advisor�AM B319

Paul Mestemaker

Sr. Program Manager

Microsoft Corporation

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Session Objectives and Takeaways

  • Session Objectives:
    • Learn about the benefits of Advisor
    • Understand Advisor’s high-level architecture to understand data security, privacy, and control
    • Learn how to diagnose and troubleshoot Advisor deployments
  • Key Takeaways:
    • System Center Advisor is available through Software Assurance
    • System Center Advisor works with Windows Server and Server Workloads (e.g. SQL, Exchange, SharePoint)

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The Wisdom of the Cloud

CUSTOMER CONFIGURATIONS

Microsoft Customer Service and Support

Knowledge Base

BEST PRACTICE CONFIGURATION

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System Center Advisor Benefits and Features

Available as Software Assurance benefit

Proactively avoid problems

    • Alerts for unpatched, misconfigured, or unsupported configurations
    • Regular assessment of server configuration
    • Access from the web

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Reduce downtime

    • Prevent problems experienced by customers similar to you
    • Compare with Microsoft best practices
    • Access centralized configuration data

Resolve issues faster

    • Access current and historical configuration data
    • Share configuration data with internal or Microsoft support staff
    • Get instant access to guidance

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Introduction to System Center Advisor

Paul Mestemaker�Sr. Program Manager�Microsoft

DEMO

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System Center Advisor: How It Works

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Proactive Knowledge

Advisor alerts customers when workloads are:

  • Unpatched (Beyond Microsoft Update, based on customers need, what CSS wishes customers would deploy)
  • Misconfigured (Can be simple or complex, May not be what you normally think of as “configuration”)
  • At risk of data loss (Event log errors that normally cause downtime, we point you to articles with solutions “as if you were calling CSS”)
  • Unsupported (“Actually that is not supported…” Where can anyone find all of these?”)

A real-time monitoring product (like System Center Operations Manager) will continue to be the recommended alerting solution when server roles are:

    • Unavailable
    • Underperforming
    • Causing LOB downtime / business impact

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Recent and Historical Context

Advisor provides context with historical data:

  • Configuration Snapshot (latest information about my server, instance, or database)
  • Configuration History (highlights changes between snapshots)
  • Examples of Data
  • Basic OS properties (server name, OS version, IP address, et al)
  • Basic SQL properties (sys.configurations, sys.databases, SERVERPROPERTY_EX, et al)

This is not an all-inclusive configuration manifest. We started with the common settings that CSS needs to diagnose problems. The type of data collected will continually expand based on CSS and customer feedback (e.g. usefulness, collection overhead, data size, data sensitivity).

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Commercial Availability

ANNOUNCEMENT

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Advisor and Software Assurance

  • Advisor is offered as a Software Assurance (SA) benefit
  • Licensing
    • Customer must have an active SA license for the workload being monitored by Advisor (SA for Windows Server or SQL Server)
    • As additional workloads are added, SA licenses for those workloads will be honored
  • 60-day free trial for simple barrier free onboarding
  • Do not need to enter an agreement number

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Global Availability

ANNOUNCEMENT

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Global Availability

  • Localized versions and list of languages is still TBD

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  • For the current list, visit: http://www.microsoft.com/online/faq.aspx#international

Geographies (Apr 2012)

  • Australia
  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Brazil
  • Canada
  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • France
  • Germany
  • Hong Kong
  • Iceland
  • India
  • Ireland
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Luxembourg
  • Netherlands
  • New Zealand
  • Norway
  • Portugal
  • Singapore
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • Switzerland
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

Details

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Advisor Workloads

Exchange Server

  • Support for Exchange 2010

SharePoint Server

  • Support for SharePoint 2010

SQL Server

  • Support for SQL Server 2008, 2008 R2 & 2012

Windows Server

  • Support for Windows Server 2008 & 2008 R2
  • Note: Focus on AD, Hyper-V, and Core OS

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Setting up Advisor for the First Time

Paul Mestemaker�Sr. Program Manager�Microsoft

DEMO

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Preparing Your Environment

  • Setting up your environment only takes 5 minutes, but can take a day in elapsed time to see alerts
  • TIP: Upload now commands available here…

http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/advisor/gg697803.aspx

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Top Deployment Issues

  • Clock Skew
    • Recommendation: Make sure servers’ clocks are synced with internet time
  • Cannot download registration certificate due to secure IE on Windows Server
    • Recommendation: Download setup and certificate on a client OS
    • Work-around: Uncheck “do not save encrypted pages to disk” in Internet Explorer Properties
  • Agent cannot talk to a remote gateway in a workgroup
    • Recommendation: have a gateway on each non-domain joined server

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Topology Recommendations

  • Domain-joined servers
    • Recommendation: 1 agent/server
    • Recommendation: 1 gateway/N servers
  • Non-domain joined servers
    • Recommendation: 1 agent/server
    • Recommendation: 1 gateway/server
    • Problem: Agents/Gateways on separate servers could not communicate over machine boundaries through WCF

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Topology Example #1 – Domain Environment

Agent

Gateway

Agent & Gateway

Legend

S1

S2

…

SN

SN + 1

Advisor

Service

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Topology Example #2 – Workgroup Environment

Agent

Gateway

Agent & Gateway

Legend

S1

S2

…

SN

SN + 1

Advisor

Service

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Customization and Collaboration

Paul Mestemaker�Sr. Program Manager�Microsoft

DEMO

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How is Advisor different than Operations Manager?

TOP QUESTION

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Advisor and Your Management Solution

  • Advisor is not a real-time monitoring solution
  • Advisor leverages SCOM 2007 R2 Agent and Management Pack technology
    • Note: Advisor does not require SCOM, but can work side-by-side with SCOM via multi-homing
    • Note: Advisor works side-by-side with SCOM 2012
  • Reusing SCOM technology will …
    • Enable future better-together scenarios with Microsoft’s management platform investments (e.g. Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Service Manager)
    • Minimize duplication of data collection

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Wouldn’t having both Advisor and OM be too much overhead for my server?

TOP QUESTION

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Advisor Data Collection Details

  • Recommendation: deploy to test servers and monitor the effect in your environment
  • Low overhead
    • Agent CPU: < 1% average, occasional spikes
    • Agent Memory: < 75 MB
    • Gateway Upload: ~150KB/server/day
  • Server management data only
    • Diagnostic data (configuration settings, error logs)
    • Utilization (CPU, IO, Available Memory, etc.) [*]
    • Workload throughput (transactions/day, GB served/day) [*]
    • No customer data or custom workload data

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Isn’t sending data outside of my environment bad?

TOP QUESTION

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Data Privacy & Handling Sensitive Data

  • Complete Privacy Statement available
  • Advisor only has visibility into servers with Agents deployed on them (+ data queried from Active Directory about objects associated with that server)
  • Uploads are archived on-premise (5 days by default) for audit trail and to enable you to inspect the data
  • Upload time is configurable; you can stop uploading at any time
  • You can close your account and request to remove data from Advisor servers (account cleanup happens within 90 days)
  • Your organization will be the only non-Microsoft party who will have access to your individual organization’s data
  • Microsoft will not use this data for sales/licensing validation

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Why Try Advisor?

  • You can prevent problems in your environment that customers similar to you have already experienced
  • You can easily provision others to see information about your environment without giving them access to your servers (e.g. consultants/TAMs)
  • If you have SA, you can get this at no additional cost
  • If you don’t have SA, you can sign up for a 60-day free trial
  • It only takes 5 minutes to get started

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Learn more

  • System Center Advisor
    • Websites
      • http://www.SystemCenterAdvisor.com/
      • http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/advisor.aspx
    • 3 minute demo
      • http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/showcase/details.aspx?uuid=32e32209-71c4-43d2-b2ae-015598bf5b7d
    • Microsoft TechNet
      • http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/5176.what-s-new-in-system-center-advisor.aspx
    • Blog
      • http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2012/01/26/system-center-advisor-released.aspx
    • Tweet @PaulMest or #SCAdvisor

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  • What’s New in Monitoring SQL Server 2012 and SQL Azure for IT Operators?
    • AM-B314 - Titian 2206 - Thu, Apr 19 - 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM

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Further instructions found in the conference guide

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RESOURCES

Access MMS Online to view session recordings after the event.

http://www.mms-2012.com/

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© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.

The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the �part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.