Microsoft OMS is a cloud-based service providing the services such as automation, backing, disaster center and log analyses collectively which are one of the services required by IT Services of customers the most. You can view and manage all of the services it provides through a single console.
OMS products are mainly comprised of four sub-services, including;
- Insight & Analytics
- Security & Compliance
- Automation & Control
- Protection & Recovery
The list of features it offers for these 4 main topics are as follows;
Log Analytics
- Universal as well as custom log collection and analysis through machine learning
- Unlimited data retention
- Ability to analyze structure and unstructured data
- Realtime monitoring and search
- Dashboard with search queries
- Third party intelligence packs
- Automated remediation through “Alerts” feature
Security Analysis
- Security log detection
- Breach and threat detections
- Forensic analysis
-
Malware detection and software update status
Automation
- VM provisining
- Application deployment
- Runbook gallery
- Graphical designer
Disaster Recovery
- Automated protection & replication of VMs
- Customizable recovery plans
- Supports replication & protection of virtual and physical machines
- Orchestrated recovery (failback)
- Backup
- Support for application, server and data backups
- Geo-replication capability
Each of these services is actually a service which is quite important for different customer segments and providing such services via the conventional IT infrastructure requires quite amount of budget and human resources. In such a case, companies can purchase the OMS product either as a whole or separately as aforementioned 4 main topics in order to monitor the available IT infrastructure, to back up regularly, to cause the system to be operative in case of a disaster or to see the alterations in systems, possible attacks and gaps and; therefore, to monitor their systems. We know that large institutions, banks, telecommunication, GSM companies and large holdings currently have similar systems. OMS also provides many opportunities for those kinds of companies.
Primarily, Insight and Analytics feature offers a reporting opportunity for the entire of your organization through a single screen in an integrated way for customers currently having products such as Microsoft SCOM. You can reach more information in a faster way with less efforts since it works with the available systems in an integrated wat.
You may have some questions in your minds such as; Where is my data in corporate companies? Is azure suitable for me? My institution is subject to a series of regulations. You shouldn’t have any hesitations in this regard. There are certainly reference clients in many countries including Turkey that started using these systems before you. You can consult your business partner with whom you will conduct a project. At this point, I would like to help you about the technical issues to learn the background beyond references. First of all, you can initiate its use with services which are provided for you by using the cloud technology within your available work load and which will not constitute any obstacle for you. The best example for this may be Azure Site Recovery, which means you don’t have to locate a copy of the virtual systems you have on Azure in terms of the ASR feature provided for you with OMS. As you know, there is the Enterprise-to-Enterprise (E2E) (On-premises to on-premises) scenario on Azure and you can use the protection and Disaster Recovery service that comes with OMS without placing your available serves on Azure. In this scenario, no data of yours is disclosed since Azure is responsible only for the management, viz. disaster transition processes. Similarly, the automation service is one the services which are appreciated the most by IT managers and its main goal is to reduce the work load of IT workers. Your data is not the concern in this service. One of the services we transmitted fast, Operational Insights similarly collects the log files in your servers. Namely, it doesn’t keep your application data or the data in your servers. We all know the content of log files, the major contents which you may consider as critical are the server names, IP addresses and user names. And such information should not be regarded as risky information belonging to you for a player received all of the security certificates in a cloud field such as Microsoft; which means the information which became available on the cloud should not be regarded as the information that is made public. I grant the firms right in terms of regulation because otherwise there are penal sanctions; however, information in log files is not subject to regulations. There is a more flexible structure here and you can select the types of logs you wish as well as selecting the machines from which the logs will be collected. It will of course provide differences in terms of the service provided for you. For instance, you may ask only the application logs to be collected and the security logs not to be collected; however, in such a case, you need to have another platform to learn who attacks on your systems and from where.
Now we are more comfortable about the data, which means we really believe these services are safe and effective but we currently have some investments and how are we supposed to act then? As I stated in the first section of my article, it is an important advantage that it works with SCOM in an integrated way.
That is to say that it doesn’t keep any of your application data or the data in your servers. We all know the content of log files. the major contents which you may consider as critical are the server names, IP addresses and user names. And such information should not be regarded as risky information belonging to you for a player received all of the security certificates in a cloud field such as Microsoft; which means the information which became available on the cloud should not be regarded as the information that is made public. I grant the firms right in terms of regulation because otherwise there are penal sanctions; however, information in log files is not subject to regulations. There is a more flexible structure here and you can select the types of logs you wish as well as selecting the machines from which the logs will be collected. It will of course provide differences in terms of the service provided for you. For instance, you may ask only the application logs to be collected and the security logs not to be collected; however, in such a case, you need to have another platform to learn who attacks on your systems and from where. Now we are more comfortable about the data, which means we really believe these services are safe and effective but we currently have some investments and how are we supposed to act then? As I stated in the first section of my article, Which means; it provides automation support not only for on-prem but also for your cloud-based operations and systems like a system center product. Additionally, it can also work with the ITSM products that we currently use in an integrated way. For instance, you need to monitor logs and back up but you don’t need a cloud-based automation; in this case, you don’t have to use this product inside OMS. That means, as I said, if having your work load on the cloud is an advantage for you, you should use it but if it is not necessary, you can continue on-prem. Additionally, you can turn it into OMS Automation from Orchestrator by using the System Centre Orcherstrator Migration Toolkit for runbooks that you currently use. If you manage a large organization or manage multiple organizations from a single center, OMS provides you with the “Multi-Tenant” opportunity by offering different workspaces. Even you can consolidate reports from different organization on a single screen by using PowerBI. Or you can use OMS APIs for your own applications. Finally, before going around the product informing section for OMS, I would like to talk about the licensing issue. Firstly, you can purchase OMS as a package with all of its services or as an addition to the present System Centre license, this is an advantage.
You can buy system center Add-on license
What is the difference between OMS Subscribe and Add-on
You can find more technical details about license model;
List price;
Please ignore the prices above because they will differ due to the updates in the price policy, your agreement and special offers provided for you. You can only use them as references. Yes, here is the end of my article. In the following episodes of my article, I will be handling the 4 main topics coming with OMS package one by one.
See you in my next article.
