An introduction to Squared Up for end users

The basics…

What is Squared Up?A brand new HTML5 web console and dashboarding solution for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager

A presentation layer only.

Fast, intuitive access to dashboards, drilldowns, performance data, alerts and more.

Highly customisable data visualization.

Automatic application discovery and mapping (VADA).

Integrated with Visio (for diagrams and other visuals), Excel (for perf. data) and SharePoint (for publishing dashboards).

Also pull in data from OMS, plus external WebAPIs (e.g. ServiceNow, Splunk) & SQL DBs (e.g. Service Manager).

Can I monitor this with Squared Up?

How can I display this with Squared Up?

SCOM is doing all the actual monitoring

“Can I monitor this with SCOM?” Generally the answer is yes, SCOM is designed to be highly extensible, you can monitor whatever you want.

SCOM issues(speak to your SCOM admin )

How can I access this with Squared Up?

These alerts are too noisyWhy do these alerts keep re-opening?These thresholds are wrongWhy am getting alerts when I’m patching my servers?We’re not collecting the performance information I need

Top TipThe free PowerShell Monitoring Management Pack can also make it much easier for

you to get your own custom monitoring into SCOM, all based on PowerShell – make sure your SCOM admin has this installed!

What are we going to cover?Let’s show you around Squared Up, how to use it and give you some ideas as to what you can achieve with it. UI introduction to Squared Up

Drilldowns, performance reporting & actions

Introduction to alerts

Application discovery and mapping

Example dashboards / visualisations

Intro to building custom dashboards

Visio integration

An introduction to the User Interface

UI IntroductionA quick tour of the Squared Up UI to help you find your way around.

What’s on a basic dashboard

Open Access dashboards

Universal search

Server drilldowns & UIWhat are Perspectives?

Monitored Entity

Performance data

Performance reporting

Export to Excel

Maintenance Mode and Tasks

UI IntroductionUniversal search

Perspectives Essentially a ‘raw’ view of all the data SCOM has for this object

All of the performance data SCOM has for this object Change timeframe for

performance data

Put server into maintenance mode

Trigger SCOM task

Click on any performance data to get to performance

reporting view

All alerts for this object

Server drilldown

All SCOM objects have these default views in Squared Up

DEMO

An introduction to alerts

AlertsA quick guide to dealing with alerts in Squared Up

But first…..Monitor vs Rule alerts – a dummy’s guide.

This is a common SCOM problem which we try to help you with.

Monitor alerts1. Should not be closed! Go and fix the issue instead and the alert will close itself!

2. Monitor alerts turn your objects red (ie. makes your dashboards go red).

3. Looks like this in Squared Up (solid icon).

4. Squared Up warns you about closing them, to prevent you from doing so when you shouldn’t.

Rule alerts1. You can think of these as being more like ‘informational’ alerts.

2. Rule alerts do not turn your objects red (ie. they don’t make your dashboards go red).

3. Looks like this in Squared Up (non-solid icon).

4. You’re ok to close these.

Alerts UIWhen the alert

was raised

The affected component and where it sits in the stack

Alert history

Company knowledge Edit Company knowledge

What apps are affected. In this case, the critical component is on a server that’s part of our “Order Processing” app but the

app itself is healthy

Assign alert to an owner

Update the alert state

Reset the monitor that’s raised the alert

Alert drilldown

DEMO

An introduction to application mapping

Application MappingAn introduction to our Visual Application Discovery and Analysis (VADA) feature.

How it worksPoint in time discovery carried out by the SCOM agent (Windows and Linux).

Based on netstat data (processes, connections and ports).

Easy for you to filter out the noise.

Save app back to SCOM (so that your application is defined going forward).

What that meansThe hard part is already done (setting up SCOM, getting the agent on your server etc).

Lightweight, non-invasive, no overhead.

Safe to put in the hands of your app teams.

Defining your apps gives you lots of benefits (re. building dashboards, targeting alerts, pulling in external data etc).

Application Mapping

Unopened upstream

connections

Filtered connections

Mapped connections

Port

Manage global filters

Save as application

in SCOM

Zoom and fit to screen

View health states

Detailed health & performance

data

Application Mapping

1. Monitored by SCOM2. Discovery can be run from this node

3. Health & performance data (should be) available

1. Not monitored by SCOM2. Discovery cannot be run from this endpoint

3. Health & performance data not available4. If you app is dependant on this endpoint, consider

including it in your monitoring strategy

In discovery mode, you’ll see two types of entity on the map

DEMO

An introduction to building custom dashboards

Building custom dashboards

Status – display health status of objects (e.g. apps, servers etc).

Alerts – display alerts (open, closed etc).

Monitors – display just the health of specific monitors.

Dynamic Table – KPI-type visualisation for an at-a-glance overview.

Visio – integrate Visio diagrams and tie to SCOM monitoring data.

Image – incorporate bitmap image and overlay SCOM objects.

SLA – SLA dials for uptime reporting.

Web Content – insert raw html or embed other web pages via iframe.

SQL – pull data from any SQL DB and display in tabular or scalar number format.

Performance – SCOM performance data as line graph, sparkline, bar chart or heatmap.

SCOM Task – use the SCOM agent to pull live, on-demand data into drilldown views.

OMS – pull data from Log Analytics and display in tabular or scalar number format.

Web API – pull data from any Rest API and display in tabular or scalar number format.

DEMO

An introduction to Visio integration

Visio integrationA quick walk-through of tying SCOM data to your Visio diagrams to make those ‘live’ in Squared Up.

1. Get the SCOM IDs of the items your interested in into Excel (using Squared Up).

2. Import that Excel file into your Visio document.

3. Tie those IDs to the respective stencil in Visio

4. Save as an SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) file

5. Import into Squared Up

6. Hey-presto, you’re done!

DEMO