The following blog post was written by Brett Boone. Thank you for sharing this with the community Brett!
The following blog posts discusses the process to upgrade from Operations Manager 2012 SP1 to Operations Manager 2012 R2. This blog post also shows the steps required to integrate the new System Center Advisor functionality available with 2012 R2.
SCOM 2012 SP1-R2 Upgrade
There are some recommended pre-upgrade steps to run/check before doing the upgrade from System Center Operations Manager 2012 SP1 to R2. Below are the steps that I ran along with the screenshots relevant.
One of the first recommendations was to clean-up the ETL tables in the OperationsManager database. This recommendation is to promote a faster upgrade and prevent possible timeout of setup. The recommendation was for setups with more than 100,000 rows but I ran it anyway on my 3220 rows for kicks as below.
The SQL scripts are listed below:
DECLARE @SubscriptionWatermark bigint = 0;
SELECT @SubscriptionWatermark = dbo.fn_GetEntityChangeLogGroomingWatermark();
Select COUNT (*)
FROM EntityTransactionLog ETL with(nolock)
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM EntityChangeLog ECL with(nolock) WHERE ECL.EntityTransactionLogId = ETL.EntityTransactionLogId)
AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM RelatedEntityChangeLog RECL with(nolock) WHERE RECL.EntityTransactionLogId = ETL.EntityTransactionLogId)
AND EntityTransactionLogId < @SubscriptionWatermark;
DECLARE @RowCount int = 1;
DECLARE @BatchSize int = 100000;
DECLARE @SubscriptionWatermark bigint = 0;
DECLARE @LastErr int;
SELECT @SubscriptionWatermark = dbo.fn_GetEntityChangeLogGroomingWatermark();
WHILE(@RowCount > 0)
BEGIN
DELETE TOP (@BatchSize) ETL
FROM EntityTransactionLog ETL
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM EntityChangeLog ECL WHERE ECL.EntityTransactionLogId = ETL.EntityTransactionLogId)
AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM RelatedEntityChangeLog RECL WHERE RECL.EntityTransactionLogId = ETL.EntityTransactionLogId)
AND ETL.EntityTransactionLogId < @SubscriptionWatermark;
SELECT @LastErr = @@ERROR, @RowCount = @@ROWCOUNT;
END
More Pre-Requirements were to remove any agents from the pending management view, stop or disable any connectors and to disable alert subscriptions.
Next was to verify that the OperationsManager Database had more than 50% free space and that the transaction logs were 50% the total size of the database. To check this I right clicked on OperationsManager database, clicked Reports, Standard Reports and clicked on Disk Usage.
My setup is pretty generic so I was ok on both of these requirements.
Next backup the OperationsManager, OperationsManagerDW and ReportServer databases then store them on a different location in case things go wrong.
For extra safety I did a checkpoint on the VMs themselves to ensure I had an easy way back.
Ok we are ready for the install….. Drum roll please…
My primary management server is also my SQL box, Report server and Web Console box so all roles will be upgraded as shown below.
Accept license agreement to continue
Keep default location or change to your liking
This popped up on me after running the Prerequisites check. It appears it needs to be running for the install to continue so I went and started the service.
My install uses local system for the account, but change as necessary for your environment.
Here we go…
At this stage my environment took about 45 minutes to complete this step so be patient.
During the install I was a little skeptical to the warning bang next to the management server piece, but it was simply letting me know that I am using an Evaluation version. No harm done
Off to my second management server for the install. So far so good…
The prerequisites failed and popped up the below. I was wondering why this didn’t happen on the first management server and remembered that I manually installed the report viewer controls on that box a while back. Oh well lessoned learned – install this before you run the upgrade.
So I download the report viewer controls fire off the install and bam the below error appears. Looks like it needs something for it to work also. Go get this piece as well and install.
After installing the CLR Types for SQL 2012 it requires a reboot. After reboot install the report viewer component, then the install will continue. No issues with the SCOM upgrade after that.
Now that both management servers are upgraded lets launch the console and go to the pending management view. Here we can see my boxes need an upgrade.
Right click select approve and let the upgrade complete.
After this I re-enabled my subscriptions and testing things out. So far so good – not a bad upgrade at all went pretty smooth.
System Center Advisor integration
One cool new thing that I wanted to share in the console is the System Center Advisor and how it is now integrated into the SCOM 2012 R2 console.
As you can see below in the administration pane it shows up right under settings. There are some things you need to do before it will start working though. If you are working in a lab environment you need to have internet connectivity otherwise in the real world you should be fine.
Go to the website below and click on “New to System Center Advisor? Create account” link
https://www.systemcenteradvisor.com/
You will be presented with an option to use a Microsoft account or an Organizational account. I chose the Microsoft account.
Enter in the info
After you click create accept the license agreement and click close at the screen below. (We will do the remaining configuration within the SCOM R2 console)
Now back over to the SCOM console. Go back under administration, expand System Center Advisor and click on Advisor Connection. In the middle pane click the button to “Configure Advisor”.
Click on the appropriate method that you used in the previous steps (in my case it was the Microsoft account)
Sign in
The advisor account you created should be listed as an available dropdown, click next.
And Create to continue
Now we can add computers to the advisor. In the same pane under administration->System Center Advisor->Advisor Connection click on “Add a Computer/Group”
Click on search and add the machines that you want to be monitored and then click OK
You will now see the computers listed under the “Advisor Managed” section in SCOM.
After a while (20-30 minutes) in my case you can log back into http://www.systemcenteradvisor.com and see what is going on behind the scenes. I was presented with a nice overview screen with lots of red and yellow to look into.
On the left pane you have more options click on the alert tab to view more info.
Here will show detailed info on the alerts. Click on the next pane for configuration information
Back in the SCOM monitoring pane we will see the same info under the “System Center Advisor->Active Alerts” pane. Very cool stuff!
Summary: The upgrade process from Operations Manager 2012 SP1 to Operations Manager 2012 R2 went was pretty straightforward. Be sure to back everything up and have an easy way to restore in case of issues and to do the best practice type steps such as making sure that there is enough free space in the Operations Manager database prior to attempting the upgrade. Thank you again to Brett for sharing this with the community!