Community Round-Up: February 2021

February has been yet another busy month for the community! Cookdown share some handy tips and tricks to turn SCOM alerts into actionable ServiceNow incidents, Billy York shows us how to find orphaned Azure resources using Azure Resource Graph, and Thomas Maurer and Scott Hanselman demonstrate how to use Azure Arc and Azure Stack to build modern hybrid applications.

In SquaredUp news, SquaredUp Live – an unmissable event where we reveal our vision for unified IT observability – will take place on 27-28 April and SCOMathon is due to return on 8-9 June! We also show you how SquaredUp customers have saved on their Azure costs, while Shawn Williams shares more of his dashboarding expertise in his Communicating Strategically blog series.

Azure Monitor

Finding Orphaned Azure Resources using Azure Resource Graph
As a follow up to his Azure Resource Graph examples repo, Microsoft MVP and Azure expert, Billy York, shows us how to find orphaned Azure resources using Azure Resource Graph.

Using Azure Arc and Azure Stack to build modern hybrid applications
Thomas Maurer, Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, and Scott Hanselman, Partner Program Manager at Microsoft, discuss how to architect, deploy, and manage hybrid applications using Azure Arc and Azure Stack in this Azure Friday video.

Work Item Integration Update
Check out this update from Microsoft on the Work Item Integration functionality, which allows you to easily create work items in Github or Azure DevOps based on bugs or issues identified in Application Insights.

Microsoft announces preview release of Azure Firewall Premium
Microsoft has announced the preview release of Azure Firewall Premium, which provides next-generation firewall capabilities that are essential for highly sensitive and controlled environments.

How to check the available VM Sizes (SKUs) by Azure Region
Microsoft Azure has different Azure Regions available around the world, but sometimes certain Azure services and VM sizes are not available in some regions. Thomas Maurer shares simple ways to see which Azure VM sizes are available in an Azure region.

App Insights Availability Webtests: Easily calculate SLA, downtime, and outages with New SLA Report
Having tests scattered across multiple resources and having to write your own queries for basic reporting are some common App Insights challenges. The new SLA Report enables you to effortlessly calculate SLA, downtime, and outages.

Paging in Microsoft Graph REST API
Michael Seidl, Microsoft MVP and Automation enthusiast, has written an informative series of blogs on how to use Microsoft Graph REST API. Check it out here!

Windows Server Hyper-V and Virtualization Learning Path
Thomas Maurer shares Microsoft’s new Windows Server Hyper-V and Virtualization learning path, which explains how to implement and manage Windows Server VMs and container workloads using Windows Server Hyper-V.

How to use the Temporary Access Pass (TAP) through the Azure Preview Portal
Michael Mardahl, Microsoft MVP and Cloud Architect, shows us how you can easily increase your company’s security by using Temporary Access Pass.

Migrate your .NET applications with Azure App Service and Azure SQL Database
Learn how Azure App Service and Azure SQL Database can take care of the availability, scale, security, and infrastructure management of your apps, so you can focus on growing your business.

How to manage Certificates on your Hybrid Servers using Azure Arc Key Vault Extension
Thomas Maurer shares how Azure Arc enabled servers allow you to manage your Linux and Windows Servers directly from the Azure control plane, and how the new Azure Arc Key Vault extension allows you to manage certificates on these machines.

Finding Columns that are being used by multiple services in AzureDiganostics table
Microsoft MVP and Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, Stanislav Zhelyazkov, demonstrates how to find out if the custom column is being used by several services, using Kusto query language.

New troubleshooting report for URL web tests
This handy article from Microsoft discusses the new troubleshooting report for URL web tests and the steps to detect exactly where a network problem occurred that caused a failed web test.

Azure Image Builder Service now generally available
Azure Image Builder supports images from multiple Linux distributions, Azure Marketplace, and Windows Virtual Desktop environments. You can now build images for specialized VM sizes and create images for GPU VMs. Find out more!

SCOM

SCOMathon is back!
SCOMathon – the virtual SCOM community conference organized by SquaredUp and Cookdown – is back and bigger than ever! In June this year, SCOMathon will be spanning not one, but two days, across multiple time zones. Catch you there!

SCOMathon Workshop Week post-event review
See what the SCOM community thought of SCOMathon Workshop Week and what else we have in store!

Coffee Break: Microsoft launches new M365 Management Pack for Office 365
Aakash Basavaraj, Program Manager at Microsoft, joins Cookdown's Director of Products, Bruce Cullen, and SquaredUp’s Technical Evangelist, Sameer Mhaisekar, to showcase the much-anticipated SCOM Management Pack for Microsoft Office 365.

How can I convert SCOM alerts into actionable ServiceNow incidents?
Looking for a solution to turn SCOM alerts in actionable ServiceNow incidents? Read this handy blog by Cookdown, which provides a step-by-step guide on what questions to ask to make sure you find the right integration tool for your business monitoring needs.

Where is my SCOM group?
Determining where groups are saved, stored or defined is not an easy feat. This article by Tyson Paul explains why the monitoring workflow and SCOM group must be saved into the same unsealed MP.

Configuring the Active Directory Management Pack AD Topology Discovery overrides
Microsoft MVP and SCOM expert, Kevin Holman, announces an update to the Active Directory Management Pack first released back in 2016. It now supports Domain Controllers running Windows 2012, 2012R2, 2016, and later.

Support for SCOM console deprecated on Windows Server Core OS
Have you ever tried to import a management pack only to receive an error message? Read this informative blog post by Gautam R., System Center Support Engineer at Microsoft, on how to resolve this issue.

How to get the most from your ITSM monitoring integrations
Are your SCOM alerts and ServiceNow incidents working in harmony? If not, let Cookdown break it down for you with some handy tips and tricks.

Workflow Analyzer for SCOM is back!
The workflow troubleshooting tool for SCOM is back and better than ever! Tyson Paul discusses the reboot and its improvements, then demonstrates how it allows you to initiate a trace of a specific workflow.

The hidden costs of ServiceNow IT Operations Management
Check out this blog post by Cookdown about their SCOM Connector for ServiceNow – the simplest way to integrate these two tools and optimize your IT Operations Management, delivering greater visibility, performance, and cost savings.

SquaredUp

SquaredUp announces first user conference - SquaredUp Live!
Join us for an unmissable event where we reveal our vision for unified IT observability and bring together the SquaredUp community to help shape the future.

SquaredUp helps customers save 20% of Azure costs
If you are you suffering from overspending in Azure, lack of cost visibility and lack of context, you’re not alone! Read this blog post to see how we have helped our customers save on their Azure costs.

Building powerful tailored SCOM dashboards with Enterprise Applications (Part 2)
In part 2 of our Communicating Strategically blog series, SquaredUp’s Technical Evangelist, Shawn Williams, shows you how to further tailor your SCOM dashboards for different audiences and display your critical service offerings using Enterprise Applications.

Communicating Strategically with Manual Reporting Availability (Part 3)
Shawn Williams, SquaredUp’s Technical Evangelist, takes us through using Manual Reporting Availability to communicate effectively with end users, upper management, and the infrastructure teams.

Layering customer, infrastructure and business perspectives into your monitoring (Part 4)
In the final part of our Communicating Strategically blog series, Shawn Williams demonstrates how to layer in availability and infrastructure components for a holistic approach to monitoring.

Community Answers

WebAPI dashboard ideas
We’re building some new dashboards to show off the WebAPI tile and wonder if anyone in the community has anything they’d love to build for themselves but haven’t tried yet. Please share your ideas with us! We’d be happy to share back our JSON samples if we’re able to get something together.

Monitor Script PowerShell parameter
Check out this post for some great advice for using parameters in PowerShell.

Cloud Database-based monitoring
Do you have any tips for setting up monitoring for a Cloud-based Database in SCOM2016? If so, please share them with the community.