Recently, I was contacted by Squared Up and asked if I would do a review of their product. Since I’ve reviewed other third-part products in the past, of course I would be willing to review this one.
For reference, although not SCOM-based, here are some other products that I have reviewed:
- ITQ’s End User Portal for System Center Orchestrator
- SCSM 2012 Dashboard by Signature Consultancy
- SMTrak Enterprise Dashboard by Signature Consultancy
- Advanced Portal for SCSM 2012 by CodeCraft-Solutions
- SCSM Dashboard by Expit Ensight
- SCUtils Knowledge Base For SCSM 2012
So let’s get started. This series will cover the Squared Up HTML 5 Dashboard and Web Console.
- Squared Up’s HTML5 Dashboards & Web Console for SCOM – Part 1: Introduction
- Squared Up’s HTML5 Dashboards & Web Console for SCOM – Part 2: Prerequisites
- Squared Up’s HTML5 Dashboards & Web Console for SCOM – Part 3: Installation
- Squared Up’s HTML5 Dashboards & Web Console for SCOM – Part 4: Activation
- Squared Up’s HTML5 Dashboards & Web Console for SCOM – Part 5: Configure the SCOM Data Warehouse
- Squared Up’s HTML5 Dashboards & Web Console for SCOM – Part 6: Customize Dashboards
Customize Dashboards
Now that we finally have everything setup, connected, and configured, we can start working with the Dashboards.
Out-Of-The-Box
First, let’s take a look at what comes out of the box.
When you first log into Squared Up, you’ll see the Overview screen. On here you’ll see all Critical items (i.e. Alerts, Distributed Applications, and Servers).
If you click on any of the objects, the view will drill down to provide more details.
On the Alerts tab is where you will be able to see not only the Critical Alerts, but also the Warning Alerts as well.
On the Servers tab it will show only servers that are in one of the following states: Critical, Maintenance, or Offline.
On the Active Directory tab, in my case no data was shown. This may be due to my lab environment running Windows Server 2016 TP3, and specifically ADDS with Forest/Domain Functional Level at Windows Server Technical Preview.
UPDATE: I have been informed by the Vendor that this specific dashboard template is looking for data based off of the “Active Directory Server 2008 and above (Discovery)” MP. This includes support for AD DS in Windows Server 2012 R2, but not the Technical Preview yet (obviously).
On the SQL Servers tab I was able to see some performance data.
On the Web Servers tab, also, performance data was available.
On the Network tab I didn’t have any data, but this was due to not monitoring any network devices with SCOM at the time.
On the Groups tab it shows all the groups from SCOM. You can use this when creating custom views.
Custom Dashboards
On the Quick View tab, you can choose from a variety of types to work with.
Squared Up has a good Quick Start Guide that will guide you through using the dashboard designer to create custom dashboard specific to your needs.
Conclusion
All in all, the dashboards are a really nice addition to SCOM. In fact, Squared Up also has some PlugIns they’ve developed to even further enhance your experience, including:
Enjoy checking out these highly recommended dashboards.