Following-up on my last month’s Linkedin Digest, I am staring a new Azure Operations Management Suite Blog Series.
Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) enables organisations to gain insight and control with Service Management, Security Orchestration and IT Operations across Azure, Hybrid Cloud and on-premises data centre.
The product provides focus on the following mainstream IT Operations, and Service Management functions.
- Insight and Analytics
- Automation and Control
- Security and Compliance
- Protection and Recovery
I would do a separate blog post discussing and evaluating the Microsoft Operations Management Suite and the problem definition that the product addresses. In this post, would keep to basics and a step-by-step guide to setup and overview of OMS Portal.
Before you begin the setup, few considerations in advance would be useful.
- Geographic Location (i.e. Azure Data Center Location or Azure Region)
- Workspace Subscription
- Granularity and Data isolation
Find Operations Management Suite and OMS Solutions
Find OMS Solutions using Azure Portals. Start with anyone (I choose Log Analytics). To setup first Microsoft Operations Management Suite Solutions, you need to add OMS Workspace or you can also link to your existing one.
Set up OMS Workspace in Azure Portal
The OMS Workspace would provide insight and reportability across all supporting assets. Depend on your organisation size and structure; you can have multiple workspaces. Minimising the number of workspaces would improve your ability to query and collate different operational data. You can not query across multiple workspaces.
Following are important factors to consider,
- Data Sovereignty or Data Privacy
- Compliance (i.e. Data Protection, GDPR/PII, PHI or PCI)
- Commercial or Organisational Structure
- Azure Billing
- Multi-tenant implementation
- Location (Azure Region)
You need to provide OMS Workspace name (would be part of DNS), selecting your Azure Subscription, Resource Group (may be useful for isolating IT assets). You would also require configuring Azure Location or Azure Region.
For pricing option, see Pricing. Once you are ready with initial configuration, provision the initial instance of OMS Workspace.
Pricing
There is various pricing model available with Microsoft Operations Management Suite. Pricing is subject to change, and you should evaluate the option by considering arability at the point of time.
I would leave the topic to your deep research. I researched price tag for personal awareness, and they look reasonable and affordable to SME to large enterprises. For the demo, I am going ahead with the Free plan, as it would provide me with enough fuel to evaluate important features alongside Service Fabric, VM Scale Sets, Networking (Subnet, VNet and Load Balancer), Security.
You can download detail suite price and licensing datasheet . You can also use web-based calculator for estimate pricing and licensing for Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) based on your specific requirements.
If your organisation already owns System Center, then it is worth comparing pricing option including Add-On for System Center. You can always change and switch the Pricing Tier, but there is some condition applies, i.e. Annual Commitment, SCOM License. For more, evaluate the OMS pricing in detail. Links and reference material already mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Managing Operations Management Suite in Azure Portal
Once the OMS Solution and OMS Workspace provisioned to your subscription, you can find add see the Azure Portal Management Dashboard. It is mainly useful for managing pricing, solutions and IAM.
Another important use case of the Azure Portal would be to enable or configure data sources. Operations Management Suite connects through different lines of evidence,
Storage Accounts Logs
OMS can import various logs from Azure Storage. It could be useful for the system not having direct connectivity or native agent to push the data. It does support all major server, application logs. You can also define the structure of custom log and field in OMS Portal Settings.
Virtual Machine and VM Scale Sets
Virtual Machine or VM Scale Sets can connect through Storage Account and OMS Agent. It does provide low latency health check, security and malware updates, patching and upgrade related information.
Azure Resources PaaS and SaaS
The PaaS or SaaS specific OMS Solution provides insight into your Azure Resources, such as Azure SQL, Azure Key Vault, Azure AD Azure Network, SQL Analytics.
There are many services currently supported by Microsoft OMS as an out-of-box solution, while rest can integrate through Application Insight or Storage Account Logs. Of course, you do not need to configure every available solution, but it ensures every business from fit-for-purpose and assure the long and steady roadmap.
Microsoft Operations Management Suite Portal
Let us visit the portal. You can explore various functions such as Log Search for querying log, My Dashboard would provide personalise deck where you can configure various cards, charts needed for your job function.
For advance users and administrators, you can configure, add new solutions and see usage from bottom three menu cards.
In a nutshell, Operations Management Suite (OMS) is a collection of cloud-based services, managed solutions for cloud environments and on-premises. OMS Log Analytics meets compliance requirements for ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 27018:2014, PCI: DSS, SOC1 Type 1 and SOC2 Type 1, Health Standards. You can read more at Microsoft Trust Center Compliance .