Hybrid Cloud, Azure, AWS and System Center: Microsoft Azure Operational Insights (formerly known as System Center Advisor)

[Updated 3 December 2014] – Updated dashboard with more result after install agent.

For those who has played around with System Center Advisor (https://systemcenteradvisor.com/) will realize that the product is now rename to “Microsoft Azure Operational Insights” (https://preview.opinsights.azure.com/). Don’t worry about your previous data as it is automatically be transferred across to Operational Insights.

System Center Advisor

Microsoft Azure Operational Insights

Let have a simple walkthrough on Operational Insight portal.

[Pricing]

Currently under Preview. No cost to participate

[Sign in]

Using Organizational ID or Microsoft Outlook. We are using our outlook.com id to login in.

[Requirement]

1. Individual computer after install agent or

2. Operation Manager Management Server . Must install with SCOM Update Rollup 2

[How it works?]

1. Data is send directly to the Operational Insight Service

2. A secure HTTPS connection is established between the Operation Manager Management Server or individual computer and operation Insight service using port 443.

3. Collected data is compressed before send to Operation Insight service. This data is stored in the Windows Azure North America datacenter

[ Firewall ]

Open port 80 and 443

Types of data that it is going collect:-

Intelligence Pack	Data Types
Configuration Assessment	Configuration Data
Capacity Planning	Performance Data (Require integration between SCOM and VMM)
Security Assurance	Windows Security Events, Firewall log
Antimalware	Configuration Data (Require Windows Defender or System Center Endpoint Defender)
System Update Assessment	System Update Data
Log Management	Windows Event Log / IIS Log
Change Tracking	Software Inventory and Windows Service Metadata
SQL Assessment	Configuration Data (Require .Net 4)
AD Assessment (Coming Soon)	Assess the risk and health of AD environments
Security (Coming Soon)	Provide the ability to explorer security related data and help to identify security breaches

[Mobile App]

Only available to Windows Phone at this moment. For android and IOS, you need to submit a request and Microsoft will send notification to your email account when the mobile app is available.

[ Exploring Portal]

Portal is build with HTML 5

1. Creating workspace. We called it “MS4UCloud”. Go to Setting to change your user information.

2. Add Intelligence Pack into Operation Insight

3. Download the agent from here:- http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=517476&clcid=0x409.

Install Microsoft Monitoring agent to individual server / computer. We test deploy this to stand alone server without SCOM on-premise.

Enter workspace ID and Workspace name.

This information is available within Operational Insight Portals. Click overview and look for “Server and Usage” and click Configure

Meanwhile, if you do has Operation Manager on-premise then you can go to Administration | System Center Advisor and Register to Advisor Service. To select which server to send data, you can click “Add a computer/Group”