Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Available Now: Inside the Microsoft Operations Management Suite (V2)

These past few months have been pretty hectic for me and as a result, this blog had to take a back seat for a while. Along with the day job, presenting at conferences and some family vacation time, I've been busy working with the team on an updated release of the awesome 'Inside the Microsoft Operations Management Suite' book.

The original release of this book was an essential 'must-have' for anybody working with Microsoft's Operations Management Suite (OMS) and it was a constant reference for me over the last year and a half while I tried to get my head around this new technology. As is always the case with cloud technologies however, things change at a drastic pace and an updated release of the original book was duly needed.

Meet the Team

With so many new features added to OMS, this update was never going to be a quick and easy task. Thankfully, the full original authoring team of Stan, Tao, Pete and Anders signed up again for the new release (bio's below):


Along with the original authors, a new team of technical editors (myself included) were brought on-board to help get this over the line:


What's it about?

This updated release provides readers with an end-to-end deep dive into the full range of Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) features and functionality, complete with downloadable sample scripts.

Here's a rundown of the chapters to give you a good idea of the type of content you'll learn about:

Chapter 1: Introduction and Onboarding 
Chapter 2: Searching and Presenting OMS Data 
Chapter 3: Process Automation 
Chapter 4: Configuration Management 
Chapter 5: Change & Update Management 
Chapter 6: Extending OMS Using Log Search 
Chapter 7: Alert Management 
Chapter 8: Log Management & Performance Data 
Chapter 9: Azure & Office 365 Solutions 
Chapter 10: Service Map & Wire Data 
Chapter 11: Network Performance Monitor 
Chapter 12: Other OMS Solutions  
Chapter 13: Assessment Solutions 
Chapter 14: Security & Compliance 
Chapter 15: Protection & Recovery 
Chapter 16: ITSM Integration 
Chapter 17: Custom OMS Solutions

How much will it cost?

Keeping with the community spirit behind the first book, this release will be COMPLETELY FREE for download in E-Book format with the Kindle and Paperback versions coming to Amazon a couple months later. Keep in mind that the Kindle and Paperback versions will carry a nominal price to help cover production costs.

Download Info

You can download the e-book version right now from the link below and the Kindle and Paperback versions will be available on Amazon over the coming months:

 http://tinyurl.com/insideomsbook

Hopefully you enjoy reading this book and working through all the demos as much as we did and if you've any comments/requests, please ping them to the email address here.




Monday, August 21, 2017

Experts Live Europe 2017

After a few weeks off work on vacation, it's back to full swing this week as I prepare to travel over to Berlin tomorrow for the awesome Experts Live Europe conference.


Formerly known as System Center Universe Europe, this is one of my favourite conferences to present, network and learn at. If it's anything like last years event, then the week ahead is going to be a blast.

I'll be presenting a session on Wednesday afternoon titled 'Monitoring...The Next Generation' where I'll be talking about some of the best new monitoring features available in the Microsoft space.

Later on Wednesday, I'll be back on stage with my buddy Stefan Roth for an 'Experts Discussion Panel' titled 'Monitoring, Insights and Analytics'. For this panel, we're encouraging attendees to bring their questions and engage in conversations - which will hopefully give people some real technical value to bring back to their workplace.

With close to 100 different sessions to choose from spanning topics such as Microsoft Azure, OMS, EMS, Azure Stack, System Center and Windows Server, there's something for everyone. Check out the session schedule here.

Looking forward to seeing everyone over there and make sure to drop in to one of my sessions and say hello!