Monitoring SCOM (private preview)

With Instana, you can monitor Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), which is a cross-platform data-center monitoring system that monitors your IT infrastructure. For more information about the SCOM product, see the SCOM documentation.

After you install the Instana host agent, the Microsoft SCOM sensor is automatically installed. You can view the SCOM monitored hosts and their associated metrics and alerts in the Instana UI after you configure the sensor. For more information about the configuration of the sensor, see Configuring the Instana SCOM sensor.

Supported information

Supported OS

The supported operating systems of the SCOM sensor are consistent with host agents requirements, which can be checked in the Supported operating systems section of each agent, such as Supported operating systems for Unix.

Supported versions

Instana supports metrics and alerts (imported to Instana as events) for Microsoft SCOM 2022 and later.

Configuring the Instana SCOM sensor

You must configure the Instana Microsoft SCOM sensor with the endpoint of your Microsoft SCOM server and the information that is used to authenticate to the SCOM server. The required configuration varies with the authentication mechanism that is used, Kerberos or Windows New Technology LAN Manager (NTLM).

Configuring Kerberos authentication

If you want to use Kerberos to authenticate to SCOM, you need to configure the following fields in the agent configuration file <agent_install_dir>/etc/instana/configuration.yaml:

com.instana.plugin.scom:
  enabled: true
  poll_rate: 30
  endpoint: 'http://scomhostname/OperationsManager' 
  username: 'username'
  password: 'redacted'
  kerberos_realm: 'realmname'
  kdc: 'key-distribution-center-hostname'

The following table contains the supported configuration options for Kerberos:

Name Type Required Default Description
enabled boolean Yes False This variable verifies whether the sensor is enabled.
endpoint string Yes NA The endpoint of your SCOM server API.
username string Yes NA The username that is used to authenticate with the SCOM server API.
password string Yes NA The password that is used to authenticate with the SCOM server API.
kerberos_realm string Yes NA The name of the Kerberos realm that you are authenticating to.
kdc string Yes NA The name of the Kerberos key distribution center (KDC) that is used by your Kerberos realm.
poll_rate integer No 30 The number of seconds between metric queries. This time might need to be adjusted to account for any poll rate limit imposed by your endpoint.
target_zone string No N/A The name of the generic zone where hosts that are monitored by SCOM are displayed on the Instana Infrastructure map. If not specified, the hosts are displayed in Undefined Zone.

Configuring NTLM authentication

If you want to use NTLM to authenticate to SCOM, you need to configure the following fields in the agent configuration file <agent_install_dir>/etc/instana/configuration.yaml:

com.instana.plugin.scom:
  enabled: true
  poll_rate: 30
  endpoint: 'http://scomhostname/OperationsManager' 
  username: username
  password: redacted

The following table contains the supported configuration options for NTLM:

Name Type Required Default Description
enabled boolean No False This variable verifies whether the sensor is enabled.
endpoint string Yes NA The endpoint of your SCOM server API.
username string Yes NA The username that is used to authenticate with the SCOM server API.
password string Yes NA The password that is used to authenticate with the SCOM server API.
poll_rate integer No 30 The number of seconds between metric queries. This time might need to be adjusted to account for any poll rate limit that is imposed by your endpoint.
target_zone string No NA The name of the generic zone where hosts that are monitored by SCOM are displayed on the Instana Infrastructure map. If not specified, the hosts are displayed in Undefined Zone.

SCOM endpoint

The SCOM sensor uses the SCOM REST API to collect information about the hosts that SCOM is monitoring. The SCOM REST API endpoint is required to communicate with SCOM. The endpoint is formatted as follows: https://<scom-hostname>/OperationsManager

You need to configure the Instana SCOM sensor with the SCOM REST API endpoint. The entire endpoint, including the OperationsManager suffix, must be included in the Instana agent configuration.yaml file.

For more information about the SCOM API, see the SCOM documentation.

Viewing metrics

To view the metrics, complete the following steps:

  1. In the sidebar of the Instana UI, select Infrastructure.
  2. Click a specific monitored host.

Then, you can see a remote host dashboard with all the collected metrics.

Configuration data

  • OS Category (Linux or Windows)
  • Total Memory
  • Hostname and FQDN
  • Disk Capacity

Performance metrics

  • CPU Used %
  • CPU Load
  • Memory Used
  • Swap Used (Linux only)
  • Disk Used
  • Network RX and TX Bytes (Linux only)

Viewing alerts

SCOM alerts are imported to Instana as issues. To view the issues, complete the following steps:

  1. From the navigation menu in the Instana UI, select Events.
  2. To filter out events that are not issues, click the Issues tab.
  3. To filter on issues that are imported from SCOM, enter the following query in the search box: entity.remote.host.source:SCOM

Then, you can see a list of the alerts that are imported from SCOM. The Instana issues remain open while the corresponding SCOM alert remains open. When the SCOM alert closes, the Instana issue closes within a few minutes.

Troubleshooting

Agent monitoring issues

If the SCOM sensor cannot communicate with the SCOM server, an agent monitoring issue is created. The issue describes which configuration parameter might be incorrect. For example, if the sensor receives an HTTP 401 or 403 error from the SCOM server, the credentials are likely to be incorrect or expired. The following configuration parameters can lead to agent monitoring issues:

  • endpoint
  • kdc
  • realm
  • password (HTTP 401 or 403)
  • poll_rate (HTTP 429)

Agent OutOfMemoryError

If you are connected to the SCOM server that is monitoring many hosts, the JVM heap size of the Instana agent might need to be increased. If you find an OutOfMemoryError error in the agent log, consider increasing the Instana agent's maximum heap size. For more information, see the JAVA_OPTS environment variable in the Environment variable reference.