Operations Manager leverages the functionality of SQL Server Reporting Services to provide comprehensive reporting functionality. Operations Manager ships with a large number of built-in reports. Importing management packs also adds to the available reports. Administrators can also create their own reports. Reports are available in the Reporting node.Figure 1 shows the reports in the Generic Report Library.
FIGURE 1 Generic Reports
The generic report library includes the following reports:
- Alert Logging Latency Displays the logging latency of an alert for monitored objects over time.
- Alerts Lists alerts raised during a specific duration for given filter parameters.
- Availability Availability state for selected monitored objects.
- Configuration Changes Changes in configuration for monitored objects over time.
- Custom Configuration Configuration data filtered by specific parameters.
- Custom Event Event data filtered by specific parameters.
- Event Analysis Events and a count by monitored server filtered by specific parameters.
- Health Health state for monitored objects based on overall entity health. Figure 2 shows a health report for three monitored computers over the last 24 hours.
FIGURE 2 Availability report
- Most Common Alerts Most common alerts rose during report duration for given parameters.
- Most Common Events Most common events rose during report duration for specific parameters.
- Overrides Overrides applied to specific management packs over time.
- Performance Performance counter values over time.
- Performance Detail Detailed performance information over time.
- Performance Top Instances Top or bottom set of instances for selected objects for a specific performance counter rule.
- Performance Top Objects Top or bottom set of objects for selected objects for a specific performance counter rule.
More Info: Operations Manager Reports
You can learn more about reports in Operations Manager at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh212786.aspx.
Running reports
When running a report you’ll need to specify the report parameters. This includes specifying the objects you want the report run on, and the period that the report should recover. Other reports will require report specific parameters be configured.
For example, to run the generic Availability report for the last day, perform the following steps:
1. In the Reporting workspace of the Operations Manager console, expand the Reporting pane, click the Microsoft Generic Report Library node, and click the Availability Report.
2. On the ribbon, click Open.
3. On the Availability - Operations Manager - Report dialog box click Today under From, and then click Yesterday.
4. On the Availability - Operations Manager - Report dialog box, click Add Object.
5. On the Add Object dialog box, click Options. On the Options dialog box, click Add.
6. On the Add Class dialog box, type Computer, and click Search. Click Computer, and click Add, as shown in Figure 3, and click OK.
FIGURE 3 Computer class
7. On the Options dialog box, click OK, and on the Add Object dialog box, click Search.
8. A list of Computers that are monitored by Operations Manager will be displayed, as shown in Figure 4. Select the computers that you wish to generate the Availability Report for, and then click OK.
FIGURE 4 Add computer objects
9. In the list of Down Time items, select all of the options. Figure 5 shows an approximation of what this dialog box would look like if completed using these instructions for computers OpsMgr.tailspintoys.internal, Orchestrator.tailspintoys.internal, and SYD-DC.tailspintoys.internal.
FIGURE 5 Report properties
10. Click Run, to run the report. Figure 6 shows a sample of the report output.
FIGURE 6 Availability report
11. To view more detailed information about an individual computer’s availability, you can click the Availability Tracker hyperlink. This will generate a report similar to the one shown in Figure 7
FIGURE 7 Detailed report information
12. You can save the report parameters by clicking Save To Favorites on the file menu once the report has run. When you do this, you provide a name for the report. Figure 8 shows the Save To Favorites dialog box.
FIGURE 8 Save To Favorites
More Info: Running Operations Manager Reports
You can learn more about running reports in Operations Manager at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh230683.aspx.
Scheduling reports
By scheduling reports, you can have reports periodically delivered through email or published to a file share. SQL Server’s report server also caches scheduled reports, making them quicker to access through the console. Prior to scheduling a report, you should create a template of the report that you wish to schedule and save it as a favorite report. If you want to email reports, you’ll need to create an email channel by specifying an SMTP server through the channel’s node, under notifications in the Administration workspace.
To create a scheduled report based on a report that has been saved as a favorite report, perform the following steps:
1. In the Reporting workspace of the Operations Manager console, click the Favorite Reports node, and then click the favorite report that you want to configure as a scheduled report.
2. On the Tasks menu, click Report, and then click Schedule.
3. On the Delivery Settings page, shown in Figure 9, specify the following information:
- Description A description of the scheduled report.
- Delivery Method How the report will be delivered. By default you can select a file share location, or, if configured, for the report to be emailed.
- File Name The name associated with the report.
- Path When using a network share, this will be the share that will host the report.
- Render Format The format the report will be saved in. Options include Excel, HTML 4.0, Word, Data Feed, TIFF file, RPL Renderer, MHTML, PDF, Excel 2003, CSV, Word 2003, and XML file with report data.
- Write Mode This determines whether the name of the report will be updated each time the report is run, whether any existing report will be overwritten, or if no report will be written if one already exists.
- File Extension Determines if the appropriate file extension will be appended to the report name.
- User Name and Password Credentials used to write the report to the shared folder.
FIGURE 9 Report subscription
4. On the Schedule page, shown in Figure `0, specify the report schedule. You can configure reports to be run once, hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly, as well as configuring how often each period the reports are generated.
FIGURE 9 Report schedule
5. On the Parameters page, you can review or alter the parameters of the report. For example, if you had a favorite report for availability that included four servers, but you wanted the scheduled report to only provide information on three, you could alter the parameters of the report to generate the desired report here. Figure 2-82 shows the parameters page of the Subscribe To A Report Wizard. Click Finish to create the report.
FIGURE 10 Report parameters
More Info: Scheduling Operations Manager Reports
You can learn more about scheduling reports in Operations Manager at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh230723.aspx
