Azure Operations Management Suite Explained – Part 1

By Bala Murugesan, Microsoft Cloud Specialist, Data^#3

Last year, Microsoft introduced Azure Operations Management Suite (OMS) and since then, this solution is being continually enhanced and updated, providing greater value and a vast array of functionality. I recently engaged with one of our local customers in Australia where we implemented OMS Log Analytics for their Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform, and as a result, I have gained a lot of insight and I thought it worth a share. In this blog post, I will be covering the overview of OMS Architecture and its solutions Packs functionalities.

What is OMS?

Microsoft OMS is a SaaS management offering that works with any Cloud provider. Built to stand alone or extend upon the foundation of Microsoft System Center, OMS enables you to leverage a single portal for all your management tasks. With OMS you can onboard and integrate resources quickly and as you can see in the graphic below, OMS allows you to manage workloads across Windows, Linux, Private, Hybrid, and Public Clouds.

OMS offers a solution that addresses metrics that you are most likely concerned about, and you can simplify management tasks while extending their capabilities, including:

Log Analytics Architecture

Log Analytics is a service in OMS that helps you collect and analyse data generated by resources in your Cloud (Public or Private) and even on-premises environments. It gives you real-time insights using integrated search and custom dashboards to readily analyse millions of records across all of your workloads, regardless of their physical location, as shown below:

Solution Packs

OMS provides various solution packs as part of the suite with a few important ones highlighted below:

Alert Management • Web-based Alert visualisation • Integrated search for deeper analysis • Common alert queries
Capacity planning Plan for future capacity and trends using historical data i.e. • VM utilization and efficiency • Compute projection • Storage utilisation
Active Directory Assessment Using Microsoft best practice metrics and data collection, potential issues can be readily identified, including: • Security and compliance • Availability and business continuity • Performance and security • Upgrade, migration and deployment
SQL Server Assessment Once again, using Microsoft and Industry best practice SQL server on-premises or in the Cloud can be assessed in real-time for: • Security and compliance • Availability and business continuity • Performance and security • Upgrade, migration and deployment • Operations and monitoring • Change and configuration
Security and Audit: Collect security related events and perform forensic, audit and breach analysis to keep a close eye your assets: • Security posture • Notable issue • Summarise threats

That’s all for now. In my next post, I will dig into the setup and how to analyse logs and report through OMS. Hope this helps get you started!