Global Service Monitor to Retire in November 2018

[Server Man]

System Center Operations Manager continues to be the tool relied upon by enterprise customers for IT operations and monitoring. Global Service Monitor in SCOM provides the ability to monitor the availability of external web-based applications from multiple locations across the globe. As of November 07, 2018, we will retire the Global Service Monitor and recommend that customers transition Global Service Monitor users to next generation web application monitoring capabilities allowing them to take advantage of our Azure hosted services for these capabilities, powered by Azure Application Insights.

Application Insights is an extensible Application Performance Management (APM) service for monitoring applications on multiple platforms. It offers greater control, and richer alerting, diagnostics, dashboarding and reporting capabilities over an interactive data analytics platform. With the transition to Azure Application Insights, customers stand to benefit in the long term from Azure monitoring investments including improvements in reliability and performance.

GSM Customers will be notified of the retirement through an alert in the SCOM console sent down from the GSM. If you are a GSM customer, during your transition, you do not need to change your tests; Application Insights supports the tests GSM supported (single URL ping and multi-step web tests), the frequency of the tests and locations supported are the same as well. The migration script (Link to Migration Script) will provision your tests with the same configuration in Application Insights. The migration script will also provision alert rules based on what you are currently using in SCOM . Please use the migration script to migrate your GSM tests to Application insights by the end of October 2018. Post migration, SCOM customers can use the Azure Management Pack (CTP version) (Link to Azure MP) to integrate with Application Insights and view the alerts from their tests in Application Insights in the SCOM console.

We thank the SCOM customers for their usage of the GSM service. This transition provides yet another value to System Center customers as they continue to be able to take advantage of Azure management offerings. Should you have any questions, please contact your account team or Microsoft Support.

FAQ

1. What is GSM?

System Center Global Service Monitor is a cloud service that provides a simplified way to monitor the availability of external-web-based applications from multiple locations around the world. See Global Service Monitor.

1. What is Azure Application Insights?

Application Insights is an extensible application performance monitoring service in Azure, supporting applications on a variety of platforms. See Application Insights | Microsoft Azure

1. Does my price increase because of this transition?

GSM was provided as a software assurance benefit of your System Center purchase. When you migrate to Azure Application Insights, Microsoft will transition migrated tests and alert rules at no additional charge

1. Do I get any other Azure benefits as part of this transition?

No. Only the migrated tests, and the alert rules associated with them will be provided at no additional charge. All other Azure consumption will be subject to applicable pricing.

1. So, if I add more availability tests or use Application Insights for server-side monitoring, I will be charged?

Yes, that is correct. Only the migrated tests are provided at no additional charge. All other use is subject to applicable pricing.

1. What happens if I don’t migrate the tests?

Existing GSM tests will stop working after 11/07/2018. We strongly encourage you to migrate the tests and validate the alert rules in Azure well before that date.

1. What happens if I don’t migrate tests using the migration script provided by Microsoft?

Only the tests which are migrated using the script, would be provided at no additional charge in Azure Application Insights.

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