One of the best ways to know what is on the roadmap for Microsoft OMS is to log in and check out the Solutions Gallery (shown below). This blog post contains information which is publicly available if you access the Solutions Gallery from the Microsoft OMS site (http://www.microsoft.com/oms) with your account.
During a recent view of the solutions as of last week there are three new Solutions which are listed as “Coming Soon”. These are:
- App Dependency Monitor: Automatically discovery and map servers and their dependencies in real-time.
- Containers: See Docker container performance metrics and logs from containers across your public or private cloud environments.
- Azure Networking Analytics: Gain insight into your Azure network data.
The Application Dependency Monitor (shown below on the left) looks similar to what we have in BlueStripe (shown below on the right). This would be logical as Microsoft purchased BlueStripe and it was stated that (Microsoft) “will absorb the technology into the new Microsoft Operations Management Suite” per https://rcpmag.com/articles/2015/06/10/microsoft-bluestripe-buy.aspx. I am not saying that this is BlueStripe in OMS but I am saying that the description and visualization are extremely similar and this would be a logical way to represent this type of functionality.
Additional details from the Solutions Gallery are shown below:
The second item listed as “Coming Soon” is Containers. This is a logical play as the indication is that Windows Server 2016 will support Containers (http://www.computerworld.com/article/2919331/data-center/microsoft-preps-windows-server-2016-for-the-container-age.html). Monitoring for Containers will be key as this technology becomes more mainstream.
Additional details from the Solutions Gallery are shown below:
Finally, the third item listed is Azure Network Analytics. Details are provided in the two screens shown below.
Highlights from the details provided include:
- Troubleshoot issues across your Azure networks
- Top network security rules that blocked or allowed the most number of flows
- Top MAC addresses with the most number of blocked or allowed flows
Summary: OMS continues to be extremely quick to evolve and with new features coming soon for Application Dependency, Containers, and Azure Networking this should be very interesting space to keep an eye out on!
Geek Trick #1: Keep an eye on the Solutions Gallery to see what is labeled as “Coming Soon”. If you really want to know what’s changing here when it changes think about a synthetic transaction monitor in SCOM to watch this particular page for changes. J
Geek Trick #2: To look for what’s new in preview features (features which are available in public preview which you can enable) go to the Settings tab on the Preview Features section. Currently the two publicly available preview features are “Alerting” and “Alert Remediation”.
