SCOM 2012 HA OPTIONS

SCOM 2012 WITH SERVER 2012 R2 & SQL 2012

SP1
Deploy SCOM as a highly available monitoring solution using Microsoft technologies
Paul Keely MVP
paul@paulkeely.com

SCOM 2012 HA
OPTIONS

USING THE
NEW
FEATURES
IN SERVER
2012 AND

CONTENTS

SQL 2012

Introduction .............................................................................................. 2
Deploying SCOM with the different HA options ...................................... 2

Design options for

Basic SCOM Design ............................................................................ 4

SCOM in a HA

Distributed Design ................................................................................ 5

environment

Local site HA ........................................................................................ 7

Multi-site HA with SQL AlwaysOn........................................................ 9
ABOUT THE AUTHOR .......................................................................... 17

INTRODUCTION
As a full time System Center consultant I am often asked about deploying products in the System Center
suite in a multi-site global deployment. The application that comes up top of the list is SCOM. Companies
want to monitor data centers across the globe with SCOM deployments that are 100% Highly Available
(HA). Once we look at multi-site SCOM deployments we are going to naturally incur additional costs and
complexity. In this guide we will look at a diagram that looks at the components and shows the flow
between each component. We will then examine each configuration, looking at the pros and cons.

DEPLOYING SCOM WITH THE DIFFERENT HA OPTIONS

So in this section, we are going to walk through the different options for installing SCOM in a multi-site
environment and what considerations you may need to take into account in designing and
implementing your SQL Server or servers. SCOM is a great product in the System Center suite to
discuss because a lot of companies require multi-site monitoring and want to have the ability to have a
HA SCOM whereby if they lose a primary data center they want monitoring to failover to a secondary
datacenter or DR site.
We are going to start off with the most basic SCOM deployment and work our way up from there. If you
are a seasoned SCOM pro please excuse the basic nature of
this, but it will be helpful for others to understand what its all
building on.
Just in case some of the common abbreviations are not
familiar to you
MG
MS
DB
GW
MP

Management Group, the security realm between the

MS and the SQL DB
Management Server, the server that has a writable
connection to the SQL DB
Data Base, the SCOM, monitoring and reporting
databases that are hosted by SQL
Gateway, the SCOM, role that is used in remote
locations to forward to a MS
Management Pack, XML document that holds
discoveries, rules, monitors and reports

Firstly we need a management server and a SQL Server to host

the SCOM DB. A server we want to monitor, has a SCOM agent
loaded on it, and it sends its monitoring data to the
management server and the management server in turns writes
that data to data bases on a SQL Server. If we deploy SQL
standard and it is only running to support System Center then
there is no cost for the SQL license.

SQL Licensing
Licensing is always a complex
issue with System Center, and it
doesnt get easier with SQL, that
being said I have been told from
several sources that the no cost
for SQL standard also applies for
clustered instances of SQL
standard only being used to
house System Center DBs. It
was also confirmed to the MVP
group that you can deploy
SharePoint where its only
purpose if to house System
Center dashboards and there is
no licensing requirement

We will then move on to basic SQL clustering whereby we cluster the SQL DB on two servers. With
Server 2012 the cluster build and on-going management is a much easier prospect than any other version
of Windows.
The other scenarios covered in this guide are quite advanced and many of them are only possible with
either Server 2012 and or SQL 2012. What is important to keep in mind, is that any solution that involves
HA and no single point of failure comes at a price, and usually a high one.

Basic SCOM Design

An agent is installed on
a server.

The agent comunicates

direct with the
management Server
(MS)

SCOM is installed on a
single VM with a SQL
instance on a separate
VM.

The SQL is a stand alone

SQL standard edition
that comes with the
SCOM licence

Paul Keely MVP

paul@paulkeely.com

Distributed Design

Local site HA
In this configuration we are going to overview basic HA with SCOM in a single site. The reason
we are using a single site is to get the basic tenants of design across, to facilitate a discussion on
HA, before we get into more complex multi-site options.

Multi-site HA with SQL AlwaysOn

This is a more complex and costly option but allows for multi-site, multi-server failover.

10

SQL Stretched Cluster

In this example we are using a 2 node cluster using a replicated SAN

11

12

HA using two separate MGs

In this configuration we are going to deploy two completely separate MGs in two separate data centers.
All agents will be deployed to both MGs but we will only focus on the prod instance.

13

14

Using HyperV Replica Deploying the SQL Servers as VMs

15

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Keely is a Cloud and Datacenter MVP and works as a managing principle consultant for Infront
Consulting group in Europe. He works on enterprise deployments of System Center for global
companies.

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