Deploy SCOM as a highly available monitoring solution using Microsoft technologies

Paul Keely MVP

paul@paulkeely.com

SCOM 2012 HA OPTIONS

SCOM 2012 WITH SERVER 2012 R2 & SQL 2012

SP1

1

SCOM 2012 HA

OPTIONS

CONTENTS

Introduction .............................................................................................. 2

Deploying SCOM with the different HA options ...................................... 2

Basic SCOM Design ............................................................................ 4

Distributed Design ................................................................................ 5

Local site HA ........................................................................................ 7

Multi-site HA with SQL AlwaysOn........................................................ 9

ABOUT THE AUTHOR .......................................................................... 17

USING THE

NEW

FEATURES

IN SERVER

2012 AND

SQL 2012

Design options for

SCOM in a HA

environment

2

INTRODUCTION

As a full time System Center consultant I am often asked about deploying products in the System Center

suite in a multi-site global deployment. The application that comes up top of the list is SCOM. Companies

want to monitor data centers across the globe with SCOM deployments that are 100% Highly Available

(HA). Once we look at multi-site SCOM deployments we are going to naturally incur additional costs and

complexity. In this guide we will look at a diagram that looks at the components and shows the flow

between each component. We will then examine each configuration, looking at the pros and cons.

DEPLOYING SCOM WITH THE DIFFERENT HA OPTIONS

So in this section, we are going to walk through the different options for installing SCOM in a multi-site

environment and what considerations you may need to take into account in designing and

implementing your SQL Server or servers. SCOM is a great product in the System Center suite to

discuss because a lot of companies require multi-site monitoring and want to have the ability to have a

HA SCOM whereby if they lose a primary data center they want monitoring to failover to a secondary

datacenter or DR site.

We are going to start off with the most basic SCOM deployment and work our way up from there. If you

are a seasoned SCOM pro please excuse the basic nature of

this, but it will be helpful for others to understand what it’s all

building on.

Just in case some of the common abbreviations are not

familiar to you

MG Management Group, the security realm between the MS and the SQL DB

MS Management Server, the server that has a writable connection to the SQL DB

DB Data Base, the SCOM, monitoring and reporting databases that are hosted by SQL

GW Gateway, the SCOM, role that is used in remote locations to forward to a MS

MP Management Pack, XML document that holds discoveries, rules, monitors and reports

Firstly we need a management server and a SQL Server to host

the SCOM DB. A server we want to monitor, has a SCOM agent

loaded on it, and it sends its monitoring data to the

management server and the management server in turns writes

that data to data bases on a SQL Server. If we deploy SQL

standard and it is only running to support System Center then

there is no cost for the SQL license.

SQL Licensing

Licensing is always a complex

issue with System Center, and it

doesn’t get easier with SQL, that

being said I have been told from

several sources that the no cost

for SQL standard also applies for

clustered instances of SQL

standard only being used to

house System Center DB’s. It

was also confirmed to the MVP

group that you can deploy

SharePoint where it’s only

purpose if to house System

Center dashboards and there is

no licensing requirement

3

We will then move on to basic SQL clustering whereby we cluster the SQL DB on two servers. With

Server 2012 the cluster build and on-going management is a much easier prospect than any other version

of Windows.

The other scenarios covered in this guide are quite advanced and many of them are only possible with

either Server 2012 and or SQL 2012. What is important to keep in mind, is that any solution that involves

HA and no single point of failure comes at a price, and usually a high one.

4

Basic SCOM Design

SCOM is installed on a single VM with a SQL

instance on a separate VM.

An agent is installed on a server.

The agent comunicates direct with the

management Server (MS)

The SQL is a stand alone SQL standard edition that comes with the

SCOM licence

©Paul Keely MVP

paul@paulkeely.com

5

Distributed Design

6

7

Local site HA

In this configuration we are going to overview basic HA with SCOM in a single site. The reason

we are using a single site is to get the basic tenants of design across, to facilitate a discussion on

HA, before we get into more complex multi-site options.

8

9

Multi-site HA with SQL AlwaysOn

This is a more complex and costly option but allows for multi-site, multi-server failover.

10

11

SQL Stretched Cluster

In this example we are using a 2 node cluster using a replicated SAN

12

13

HA using two separate MG’s

In this configuration we are going to deploy two completely separate MG’s in two separate data centers. All agents will be deployed to both MG’s but we will only focus on the prod instance.

14

15

Using HyperV Replica Deploying the SQL Servers as VM’s

16

17

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Keely is a Cloud and Datacenter MVP and works as a managing principle consultant for Infront

Consulting group in Europe. He works on enterprise deployments of System Center for global

companies.