Blog Post

System Center Blog
4 MIN READ

Announcement: SCOM is now available in Azure too!

AnkurGuptaPM's avatar
AnkurGuptaPM
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Nov 14, 2023

We are excited to announce the General Availability of Azure Monitor SCOM managed instance (SCOM MI). We built this new capability with you, our SCOM users, in mind so that you can bring SCOM monitoring capabilities and configurable health models to Azure Monitor and the cloud. With this added capability Azure Monitor enables you to modernize the monitoring configuration for your applications and migrate them to Azure at your own pace.   

 

You can monitor workloads running everywhere with SCOM MI, as it is hosted in Azure and has the capability to monitor workloads running on Azure and off-Azure. Furthermore, all investments you have made in SCOM hitherto are preserved since SCOM MI is compatible with existing SCOM management packs (MPs) and existing configurations on the on-prem setup can be easily replicated to SCOM MI.  

 

With GA, SCOM MI enables SCOM capabilities in Azure, simplifies management of SCOM infrastructure, and enables the common set of Azure Monitor tools for correlation, analysis, visualization, and response to the collected telemetry with SCOM MI or other data sources supported in Azure Monitor. SCOM MPs for Core OS (Windows), SQL Server, Oracle, Exchange, SharePoint, and the different Windows roles have been validated for SCOM MI. Moving a SCOM setup to SCOM MI leverages cloud advantages and cuts down the total ownership cost (including infrastructure, software, and operational expenses) by as much as 30% over a multi-year period. (The calculator can be found here. Please add specific charges for SQL MI, VMSS, and the SCOM MI instance to the calculator)

 

Key Benefits and Value additions 

 

Azure based lifecycle management of the System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) setup, including deployment, updating, and decommissioning.  

  • Hands off maintenance of the SCOM instance, including the databases, management servers, and SCOM updates. A managed experience where you don’t have to deploy and plan the upkeep of SCOM, thereby reducing manual intervention and increasing efficiency. 
  • Get informed about the latest available SCOM updates and One-click experience to patch their instances. 
  • Simple Azure based capability to adjust (scale) the SCOM setup based on the number of servers to monitor. Add/Remove SCOM management servers without updating the agents. 
  • [In preview] Manage the agent deployment on monitored servers using the Azure control plane through VM extensions  
  • [In preview] Simplify management of SCOM gateway servers on Arc-enabled machines via VM Extensions, and Azure managed identities instead of certificates 

Integrated experience to Interpret and Respond to data collected with SCOM MI & other sources supported by Azure Monitor 

  • View all SCOM alerts with Azure Monitor alerts and use all capabilities to respond to alerts (including those with ITSM tools such as ServiceNow) 
  • Integrate SCOM events data in an LA workspace to get a systemwide view and deeper insights by looking across data from different data sources.   
  • Modern Power BI reporting, replacing the SCOM data warehouse and the SSRS deployments. 
  • [In preview] Advanced dashboarding and analysis using Azure Workbooks and Azure Managed Grafana  

Consistent experiences for monitoring workloads on Azure and off Azure  

  • Monitor all your workloads by using the same SCOM MPs that are used for on-prem monitoring with SCOM. With SCOM MI, all Windows-based 1P MPs are supported along with other popular MPs like M365, AzureMP, Cert-based monitoring MP among others
  • For monitoring off-Azure workloads (enabled via Azure Arc), utilize SCOM MI and get an identical monitoring experience as you will get for your Azure and on-prem workloads 

 

Here are what some of our customers and partners, who tried SCOM MI during preview, have to say:

 

Moving our server monitoring to SCOM Managed Instance has reduced the complexity and simplified the management of the underlying SCOM infrastructure including provisioning, patching, and scaling. This enables us to leverage the benefits of Operations Manager while supporting our direction to modernize by adopting PaaS and SaaS solutions – PCL Constructions, Canada 

 

"Azure Monitor and SCOM can finally come together on a single, unified platform through SCOM MI. This not only relieves the burden of all infrastructure related concerns but is also ingeniously managed by Microsoft. Ist support for the concept of Management Packs, allows you to focus on what truly counts. With SCOM MI, you can be confident in a consistent monitoring experience." - Stoyan Chalakov, Microsoft MVP, SCOM user and fan

 

"Azure Monitor SCOM MI takes away the burden of maintaining a monitoring infrastructure and integrating it into a cloud mindset. Meanwhile, being able to deliver the deep and customizable way of monitoring through SCOM that we have trusted for over 2 decades. Picking the best of both worlds and giving development opportunities going forward. Excited about the future!" Bob Cornelissen, Microsoft MVP

 

At Silect where our focus is on innovation, Azure Monitor SCOM MI has ensured our hybrid IT infrastructure is providing the services we need to continue to deliver value and innovation to our customers without having to worry about scaling, patching and maintaining the SCOM components. The introduction of Azure Monitor SCOM Managed Instance is possibly the most exciting change we’ve seen in the 20 years we’ve been delivering solutions to customers using SCOM.” - Harold Dyck, Founder & President, Silect Software Inc. 

 

Get started with modernization of SCOM deployments and continue with migrations to Azure. 

 

 

Updated Nov 16, 2023
Version 2.0