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CentOS Linux - Monitoring Setup with SCOM 2012 R2

I'm not a Linux guy...know very little but was able to pretty quickly get a CentOS 6.5 VM managed by both SCCM and SCOM 2012 R2. I did run into a few 'gotcha's' and thought I'd share here to hopefully save some of you the same experience...

You can use Kevin Holman's Blog post here as a backdrop for the basic steps.

https://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2012/03/18/deploying-unix-linux-agents-using-opsmgr-2012.aspx

You need to create the Linux Resource Pool, certificate stuff (in my lab I have only 1 management server so that part is easy - you just run the export command in the blog post...and that's it) and then run the discovery process.

One important thing I missed up front is that the Linux VM needs to be able to resolve via DNS.  There is an IP lookup in the discovery wizard, but you need to have A and PTR records associated with the machine in DNS.  In my case, I created a static A record pointing the hostname I assigned during the CentOS setup to the OS with it’s IP address.  I clicked the checkbox to create the associated PTR record.  If you don’t create the PTR record you’ll get an error during the discovery (meaning, it won’t find anything).

A couple things you’ll need to do to the VM:

1) Make sure SSH is running.  That’s how you will connect to it via SCOM.

2) You may run into a firewall issue – you’ll either want to disable it (lab) or poke holes.  SCOM needs ports 22 and 1270 open to communicate with the VM for discovery/management.

3) OpenSSL needs to be installed/running as well.

The one thing you will have to do is make sure you have the latest/greatest Linux/UNIX MP's installed.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29696

Click the download link and make sure you scroll down a bit to pull the R2 bits down.

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You will then import these MP’s into SCOM 2012 R2.  You should get to this version.  The key for CentOS is getting the Universal MP’s installed.  I went ahead and installed others as well…future proofing myself.   1021 is the version that you’ll get from the above download.

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After a successful discovery you’ll click the “MANAGE” link and it will install the agent and put the OS under management.

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By the way, if you are interested in getting this working with SCCM (2012 R2 agent installed and managed by SCCM) – there is a great tutorial here. 

https://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/9357-how-can-you-manage-linux-based-clients-in-system-center-2012-r2-configuration-manager/