System Requirements: System Center 2012 SP1 - Operations Manager

Microsoft supports running all Operations Manager server features in any physical or virtual environment that meets the minimum requirements that are stated in this document. However, for performance reasons, we recommend that you store the operational database and data warehouse database on a directly attached physical hard drive, and not on a virtual disk. Specifically, virtual computers that are running any Operations Manager server feature must not use any functionality that does not immediately commit all activity on the virtual computer to the virtual hard drive. This includes making use of point-in-time snapshots and writing changes to a temporary virtual hard drive. This is true for every virtualization technology that is used with Operations Manager.

Operations Manager is optimized for screen resolutions of 1280 x 1024 or larger. The minimum supported screen resolution is 1024 x 768.

Use the Operations Manager Sizing Helper to determine hardware requirements for each Operations Manager server feature. If you want to install more than one feature on the same computer, use the higher of the recommended hardware requirements for any of the combined features.

Supported Processors, Memory, and Disk Space

Operations Manager server features require a supported operating system. For a list of the supported operating systems for each server feature, see the Requirements by Feature section in this document.

Installing Operations Manager in System Center 2012 SP1 on Windows Server 2012 Core requires Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit (WoW64) support, .NET 4.5, Windows PowerShell 3.0, and Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra (the Minimal Server Interface). If you attempt to install Operations Manager without WoW64 support installed, the bootstrapper will present an error message indicating the side-by-side configuration is incorrect.

We recommend that you check for updates and hotfixes for Microsoft SQL Server. Note the following database considerations for Operations Manager:

• SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2012 are available in both Standard and Enterprise editions. Operations Manager will function with both editions.

• Operations Manager does not support hosting its databases or SQL Server Reporting Services on a 32-bit edition of SQL Server.

• Using a different version of SQL Server for different Operations Manager features is not supported. The same version should be used for all features.

• SQL Server collation settings for all databases must be one of the following: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS, French_CI_AS, Cyrillic_General_CI_AS, Chinese_PRC_CI_AS, Japanese_CI_AS, Traditional_Spanish_CI_AS, or Latin1_General_CI_AS. No other collation settings are supported.

  The Operations Manager data warehouse installer will always install the data warehouse with SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS regardless of the SQL Server collation.  Until this issue is resolved, always install the Operations Manager data warehouse on a SQL Server with the SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS collation. There are some compatibility issues when the Temp database on the data warehouse SQL Server instance is anything other than SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS and the data warehouse database is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. For more information about SQL Server collation setting impact and installation requirements in System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) between Operations Manager and Service Manager, see Clarification on SQL Server Collation Requirements for System Center 2012.

• The SQL Server Agent service must be started, and the startup type must be set to automatic.

• Side-by-side installation of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 reporting and Operations Manager in System Center 2012 SP1 reporting on the same server is not supported.

• The db_owner role for the operational database must be a domain account. If you set the SQL Server Authentication to Mixed mode, and then try to add a local SQL Server login on the operational database, the Data Access service will not be able to start. For information about how to resolve the issue, see System Center Data Access Service Start Up Failure Due to SQL Configuration Change

• If you plan to use the Network Monitoring features of System Center 2012 – Operations Manager, you should move the tempdb database to a separate disk that has multiple spindles. For more information, see tempdb Database.

If you want to install more than one Operations Manager feature on the same computer, you must install the prerequisite software for all of the combined features.

The following table shows Operations Manager feature interaction across a firewall, including information about the ports that are used for communication between the features, which direction to open the inbound port, and whether the port number can be changed.

Firewall Scenarios for Operations Manager in System Center 2012 SP1

In the preceding table, if SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1, SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2, SQL Server 2012, or SQL Server 2012 SP1 is installed by using a default instance, the port number is 1433. If SQL Server is installed with a named instance, it is probably using a dynamic port. To identify the port, do the following:

1. Run SQL Server Configuration Manager.

2. Open SQL Server Network Configuration.

3. Open Protocols for INSTANCE1 (or the instance that is running under it).

4. Open TCP/IP.

5. Click IP Addresses.

6. The port is under IPAll (usually the TCP Dynamic Ports).

Operations Manager requires the following minimum network connectivity speeds between the specified features.

Operations Manager supports the clustering configurations for Operations Manager features as shown in the following table:

Only Cluster service quorum node clusters are supported. Multisite clusters (geographically dispersed clusters) are supported for all Operations Manager cluster roles. You can use replication technology to help provide high availability for data in Operations Manager, but the latency of communications between components introduce risks to data replication and might introduce failover issues. We recommend that you use synchronous mirroring of data disks between sites. Synchronous mirroring means that the data is fully synchronized across all sites and ensures the correct behavior of applications in the event of failover across sites.

Operations Manager supports the following number of monitored items.

Operations Manager supports the following languages: English, Chinese-Hong Kong, Chinese-Traditional, Czech, Dutch, German, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

Support for different languages

If your systems run a language other than English, you can install Operations Manager for that language. You also have the option of installing English Operations Manager for your management group.

For example, if you use a German version of a Windows operating system on all your servers, you can install German Operations Manager features for your entire management group. If you have a German version of a Windows operating system on all your servers, you can optionally install English Operations Manager features for your entire management group.

Agents for different languages

If you use an English management group, you can monitor any Windows Operating System Locale type.

If you use another language, you can monitor Windows operating systems for English and that language. For instance, if you use a German management group, you can monitor only English and German Windows operating systems.

Console for different languages

Operations Manager consoles are language independent. For example, you can use an Italian Operations Manager console to connect to a German management group.

Operations Manager supports monitoring of network devices that support Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Port monitoring is available for devices that have implemented the interface MIB (RFC 2863) and MIB-II (RFC 1213) standards. In addition, peripheral monitoring, including processor and memory monitoring, is supported on a subset of devices. For more information, see System Center Operations Manager 2012: Network Devices with Extended Monitoring Capability.

Operations Manager can identify connected devices in a recursive discovery that use an IPv6 address; however, the initial device that is discovered must use an IPv4 address.

For more information about supported network devices, see Network Devices Supported for Discovery by Operations Manager 2012.

To view Application Performance Monitoring event details, you must install the Operations Manager web console. For more information, see How to Install the Operations Manager Web Console.

Application Performance Monitoring requires the following software:

• .NET Framework 2.0, .NET Framework 3.5, .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, .NET Framework 4, or .NET Framework 4.5.

• Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0. Application monitoring on a clustered IIS configuration is not supported.

• ISAPI and CGI Restrictions in IIS be enabled for ASP.NET 4.0. To enable this, select the web server in IIS Manager, and then double-click ISAPI and CGI Restrictions. Select ASP.NET v4.0.30319, and then click Allow.

Additionally, you must start the SQL Server Agent service and set the startup type to automatic.