News

New Microsoft Project Manages Virtual Machines On-Premises

The VMM Analytics integration with OMS will enable "compelling use cases" for organizations.

• By Kurt Mackie
• 09/21/2017

Tracking virtual machine (VM) status can be tricky, given their portable nature and proliferation in the average datacenter. Microsoft has made that job easier with a new, open source project.

Microsoft has established the project on GitHub. Called "VMM Analytics," it works with the Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) as part of its Azure Log Analytics component. The System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) Analytics software works "alongside the System Center products to provide modern IT management scenarios," according to Microsoft's announcement this week. VMM Analytics is an open source project, permitting code contributions, but it also comes with prebuilt reports for certain data visualizations.

The VMM Analytics integration with OMS will enable "compelling use cases" for organizations, according to Microsoft's announcement. For instance, it can show a single view of "multiple VMM instances." OMS users can set up notifications for VMM job completions or failures. OMS users can correlate data with other Log Analytics events for troubleshooting purposes. Lastly, Azure Automation runbooks can be set up to carry out remediation procedures based on VMM job data.

OMS is Microsoft's management solution for handling "hybrid" cloud workloads, such as workloads running on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, as well as workloads running in an organization's datacenter. Last month, Microsoft previewed Device Health, a Windows Analytics OMS component that reports on Windows 10 device health. The OMS Network Performance Monitor addition is designed to check network connections for cloud-based applications as well as premises-based apps.

OMS users get the rights to use various System Center components according to the OMS subscription type (E1 or E2) that they purchase. Existing System Center product users with Software Assurance also can add OMS support via "add-ons." Those details are buried in Microsoft's datasheet at this OMS pricing page.