Integrating Operations Manager with Development Processes

Article
1/17/2024

Integrating Operations Manager with Development Processes

An IT administrator needs to speed up communications between Development and Information Technology (IT) Operations (DevOps) teams and reduce the time it takes to resolve issues. With each team using different toolsets and having different information needs and workflow processes, communication between these teams has been a challenge.

Using several new management packs, IT administrators can integrate Operations Manager in System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) with development tools, such as Team Foundation Server, Microsoft Visual Studio, and IntelliTrace to:

Integrate IT operations and development workflow processes.
Let developers use their own work environment to view and track the issues that he sees as alerts in Operations Manager.
Give developers the detailed information they need to find and fix the problem code.
Know the status of an issue by checking the Operations Manager console.
Know when the development team has fixed a problem.

Solution description

This solution helps you streamline communication between DevOps teams. It can help you decrease the time it takes to deliver an application into production, where it can deliver value to your customers. The solution lets you:

Configure file attachments for Operations Manager alerts. Proper configuration enables integration with Team Foundation Server, IntelliTrace, sharing Application Performance Monitoring events with developers, Global Service Monitor web tests, and any other scenarios that require files to be associated with Operations Manager alerts.
Synchronize Operations Manager alerts and Team Foundation Server work items. When synchronization is enabled, IT operations can assign alerts to the engineering team—and you can always know the status of each alert.
Use Team Foundation Server to configure engineering process templates. Operations Manager integration with Team Foundation Server introduces a new "Operational Issue" work item type definition that can be embedded into any of your organization’s engineering processes.
Help developers to debug applications by collecting and sharing IntelliTrace snapshots directly from Operations Manager. When Team Foundation Server and Operations Manager are integrated, these snapshots can be automatically attached to Team Foundation Server work items.

This solution is intended to serve as a high-level example, not as comprehensive or detailed guidance. We hope that you will use the example solution as a guide to posting descriptions of your own solutions that are particular to your business or organization. Then, others can use your solutions to build their own solutions using multiple System Center components. For an example scenario article template, see Cross Component Scenario template on the TechNet Wiki.

System Center 2012 components and other products, features, and roles

You’ll need these components and products for this solution:

IT Operations: System Center 2012 - Operations Manager or Operations Manager in System Center 2012 SP1- to view alerts and import the DevOps management packs
IT Operations: Team Foundation Server Object Model for TFS 2010 on the MSDN Download Center (Team Foundation Server 2010 SP1 Object Model Installer) or the Team Foundation Server Object Model for Team Foundation Server 2012 on the MSDN Download Center (Team Foundation Server 2012 Update 1 Object Model Installer). You can also install the Team Foundation Server Object Model for Team Foundation Server 2012 when you install Visual Studio 2012. Installing Team Foundation Server on a server also installs the Team Foundation Server Object Model on that server.
IT Operations: The DevOps management packs enable alert attachments and integration with Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server, and IntelliTrace. Because the management packs you need to import can depend on which version of System Center, Visual Studio, and Team Foundation Server you are running, see the configuration topics for the specific management packs you will need.
Development: Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate (includes IntelliTrace)
Development: Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 or Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012

How does this solution fit into your IT strategy?

This solution increases organizational efficiency and reduces the time for issue resolution. In addition, you can get architectural guidance for the Microsoft cloud strategy, which is hosted on the Private Cloud Solution Hub. The strategy describes how organizations can use a private cloud to deliver information technology as services by providing a pool of computing resources. These resources are delivered as a standard set of capabilities that are specified, architected, and managed based on requirements that a private organization defines.

How do you prepare System Center for this solution?

Your IT operations team should be running System Center 2012 or System Center 2012 SP1 and have the DevOps management packs imported. Your Development team should be running Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server, and IntelliTrace.

Note that you don’t need to use all of these integrations, of course, but each one adds another degree of efficiency and problem-solving ability into your DevOps workflow.

How to accomplish this solution

(A bulletin board for your ideas)

These are the three major steps to getting started with the DevOps management packs and configuring Operations Manager for Team Foundation Server and IntelliTrace integration. The topics that are linked to in each step here give you further details on the specific configurations and imports that you might need along the way.

Configure file attachments for Operations Manager alerts. Configuring file attachment lets you integrate Team Foundation Server, IntelliTrace, sharing Application Performance Monitoring events with developers, Global Service Monitor web tests, and any other scenarios that require files to be associated with Operations Manager alerts. This lets you add information to alerts and to share that information from the familiar environment of Operations Manager. For more information, see How to Configure File Attachments for Operations Manager Alerts in System Center 2012 SP1.
Synchronize System Center 2012 – Operations Manager alerts and Team Foundation Server work items. When synchronization is enabled, IT operations can assign alerts to the engineering team. When you assign an alert to engineering, Team Foundation Server creates a new work item. The workflow then tracks and synchronizes changes that are made to Team Foundation Server work items and changes that are made to associated Operations Manager alerts. This means that you can manage issues directly from the Operations Manager console without having to use or map to Team Foundation Server work items, use specific development tools, or find some other way for you and your development team to communicate the status of a resolution. For more information, see How to Configure Integration with TFS in System Center 2012 SP1.
Integrate IntelliTrace. This helps developers debug applications by collecting IntelliTrace snapshots directly from Operations Manager. When Team Foundation Server and Operations Manager are integrated, these snapshots can be attached automatically to Team Foundation Server work items and can help developers investigate problems by giving them visibility to application execution history without the developers needing access to the servers where the applications ran. And all of the information is synchronized with the alert, so you can manage the issues from the Operations Manager console. For more information, see How to Configure Integration with IntelliTrace Historical Profiling in System Center 2012 SP1.

How can you customize or extend this solution?

<Extension 1 by Company X1 lets you do Y1.>
<Extension 2 by Company X2 lets you do Y2.>

More technical scenarios in the TechNet Wiki

Technical scenarios provide guidance for challenges that are solved either by using multiple System Center components or by using special configuration or customization. Several scenarios have been documented here in the TechNet Wiki, and this list will keep growing. For more technical scenarios, see the System Center 2012 TechCenter Scenarios page.

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Integrating Operations Manager with Development Processes