OpInsights is a Microsoft cloud-based service that gives you the ability to collect, combine, correlate and visualize data from your infrastructure without having to build anything on your own. You just need to connect your servers to OpInsight – either directly or by using your on premise SCOM infrastructure. In this article I will walk you through the basic concepts and how to setup direct communication that allows you to start collecting and analyzing information within minutes! If you need more details what this is all about you can find details on the official web site (still in preview now).

So let’s start. If not already installed, you first of all you need to install the Microsoft Management Agent (MMA). This agent can be downloaded from the Microsoft web site. When you start the setup you can choose if you want to send data directly to OpInsights and if you also want to fully monitor the server with SCOM. In this example I only want to forward data to OpInsights and don’t want to use SCOM. So I select the first available option.

To make sure the agent knows where to send the data you need to add a workspace ID and a workspace key. You can get this information by connecting and logging in to the OpInsights web site. If not already done, register yourself with your Microsoft account and login. You can then go to the “Usage Data” area and click on “Configure” to get the needed data for direct agent configuration.

Copy the information and paste it to the MMA setup.

After a successful install you will see the MMA configuration in the control panel. If needed you can reconfigure the MMA here.

When MMA is installed you also have a new event log called “Operations Manager” that gives you some more insights what’s happening on your server.

Now you can start activating intelligence packs on the web site. These packs define what information gets collected on your servers and how it gets analyzed and visualized. They will be pulled down from OpInsight after a while and start doing the job. Over time, more and more intelligence packs will be released.

It can take some time until you see data for the first time in the OpInsights portal. Check out the different options to search, visualize and drill down into the collected data and you will discover that this service will be a great added value to your on premise infrastructure.

I will go into details about this service in some upcoming blog posts. For now discover the available options yourself and become a good friend with OpInsights!

Cheers
Marcel