Community Round-Up: October 2020

Log Analytics has been the hot topic this October with contributions from the Microsoft tech community including ‘How to make Log Analytics queries more efficient’, ‘Monitoring health of Log Analytics’ & ‘Searching query history in Log Analytics’. October also brought exciting updates such as the ultimate ‘Azure Inventory Dashboard’ by MVP Billy York and Martin Ehrnst’s Azure Lighthouse jumpstart guide.

In SCOM news, SCOMathon workshop week was announced, upcoming webinar ‘Custom MP creation with PowerShell’ is now available to view and The Monitoring Guys bring you 3 ways to keep your SCOM MP files organized for good.

Azure Monitor

Azure Lighthouse jumpstart
See Microsoft MVP Martin Ehrnst’s top tips on how best to use Azure Lighthouse, plus learn how to manage and delegate resources.

Monitoring & Alerting for Windows Defender in Azure VMs
In this post, IT Pro Aidan Finn explains how you can monitor Windows Defender and create incidents for it with Azure VMs.

Azure Inventory Dashboard using Azure Monitor Workbooks
Microsoft MVP Billy York shares his ultimate Azure Inventory Dashboard using Azure Monitor workbooks. It represents a very detailed view of any Azure environment.

Collecting data with Azure Monitor from a Hybrid environment
In this 5-minute video, Senior Cloud Advocate Thomas Maurer shares how, using Azure Monitor, you can collect & configure data from a Windows computer in a hybrid environment, in a few easy steps.

Ignite 2020: Azure Monitoring and Analytics deep dive
Microsoft Senior Product Manager Rahul Bagaria and Principal Program Manager Evgeny Ternovsky discuss what's new in the Azure monitoring and analytics space, as well as future plans.

Monitoring health of Log Analytics
Learn how to monitor the health of your Log Analytics workspace in Azure Monitor using data in the Operation table.

Using Azure Sentinel to monitor Azure AD Emergency Accounts
Microsoft MVP Charbel Nemnom shares how to monitor Azure AD emergency accounts – otherwise known as break glass accounts – with Azure Sentinel.

How to make Log Analytics queries more efficient
In part 1 of this series by Microsoft Senior Customer Engineer Bruno Gabrielli, learn how you can make your Log Analytics queries more efficient by paying attention to query performance.

Flushing the MMA cache with Azure Automation
How can you ensure your Log Analytics agent (MMA) is always working properly to include an up-to-date configuration? Microsoft’s Bruno Gabrielli explains.

Log Analytics data export: How does it work?
Microsoft Senior Program Manager Yossi Yossifon breaks down how the Log Analytics data explorer works and explains the benefits of using it.

Searching query history in Log Analytics
Log Analytics query history is one of the most well-loved and used features – so we’re sure you’ll love this new search option to help you find specific items in your query history!

Log Analytics: New alert query examples
Check out Microsoft’s recent logs update – additional example queries for common log alerts. These queries are built for alerting on multiple resources and can be used for resource centric log alerts.

Scope and control with Log Analytics time picker
Read here to learn about the new Log Analytics time picker functionality – an easy way to specify time ranges for queries in Log Analytics.

Azure Load Balancer insights using Azure Monitor for Networks
Erich Robinson-Tillenburg joins Scott Hanselman to demo and explain health monitoring and configuration analysis for Azure Load Balancer using Azure Monitor for Networks.

Now available: Log Analytics Linux Agent for Fall 2020
The Log Analytics Linux Agent for Fall 2020 is now available. This release contains support for Python 3, additional distro support, and a new troubleshooting tool.

Azure Activity Logs Policy
Microsoft MVP Stanislav Zhelyazkov shares his policy for sending Azure Activity logs to Log Analytics.

SCOM

Introducing SCOMathon workshop week!
Join SCOMathon for a week of community-led SCOM workshops and networking. Suitable for SCOM users of all levels, these hands-on workshops will cover topics handpicked by the SCOM community itself!

Office 365 Supplemental Management Pack
Earlier this year the Monitoring Guys released their own completely redesigned M365 Supplemental Monitoring MP (v1). Expect to see v2 released soon.

Saving time with Easy Tune
In this post, see how much time you can save when tuning SCOM by using Cookdown’s Easy Tune.

Associating Incidents to a Problem
Cookdown share a server-side function that allows you to associate an incident to a problem in ServiceNow.

3 ways to keep your SCOM MP files organized
If you have a significant collection of MP files, read this post by the Monitoring Guys to learn a few easy ways you can keep them organized for good.

Coming soon: SCOM Update Rollup 10
Leon Laude shares the new features, improvements and fixes included in the highly anticipated SCOM UR10 – due to be released soon!

What is the difference between Hosting and Containment relationships?
Team Cookdown investigate why the difference between hosted & contained relationships matters with ServiceNow.

Get-SCOMRunningWorkflows Tool
The Monitoring Guys share a helpful tool to help you identify the workflows running on your agent(s).

Ignite 2020 SCOM takeaways
You spoke, Microsoft listened. The SCOM product team confirmed at Ignite 2020 that user feedback to make SCOM faster and enhance change tracking is finally being addressed!

Cookdown announce Easy Tune 2.0
Easy Tune 2.0 brings new and improved features & functionality, but also a more user-friendly, customer-focused portfolio of tuning packages – making tuning easy.

SCOMathon Coffee Break Webinar: Custom MP creation with PowerShell
SCOM Architect and Consultant Dujon Walsham joins Cookdown to showcase the latest version of his SCOM MP Creator – a tool that enables you to create an entire SCOM MP in XML using only PowerShell.

Get going with Azure SQL Managed Instance MP
Cookdown take a look at the new MP for Azure SQL Managed Instance – what it is, how it compares to the SQL version agnostic pack and how to set it up.

SquaredUp

Add context to your dashboards from SQL data sources
Learn how our new SQL visualizations can pull data from any SQL database, including the SCOM Data Warehouse and more.

Dashboards for multiple tenants in Azure
See how SquaredUp works with Azure Lighthouse to create a true single pane of glass for all your Azure tenants.

10 Free SCOM Management Packs
We've hand-picked ten of the best free SCOM Management Packs out there to help get you started on your journey to SCOM stardom.

NOC Operator dashboard and Root Cause perspective
See how our visualizations help you get actionable insights on SCOM by identifying the source of an alert, isolate the problem and take action quickly.

Introducing SquaredUp v4.8!
This latest release of SquaredUp for SCOM and SquaredUp for Azure is focused on addressing the most popular enhancements that our customers have requested.

How Mustache Pickers help you design better dashboards
Learn what you can do with our awesome Mustache picker productivity feature in SquaredUp.

Community Answers

Logical Disk Matrix Tile
Is there any way to include a column in the Matrix tile to show the exact disk space remaining? Leave your comments here!

Pinning on-prem Open Access dashboards into PowerBI report
Can you help Mark create some SquaredUp open access dashboards and pin as tiles into a much larger PowerBI report? Help the community by dropping your answer here.

Adjusting the height of a Tile
Is there any way to adjust the height of a donut status tile in JSON?

Open Access dashboards in Azure
Solved! Read this to learn how you can limit security Open Access dashboards to authenticated users only.

Availability SQL Query
Do you know of a SQL Query that can show the availability of any object or group? If so, drop your answer here!