SCOM: SCOM 2012 RMS Emulator fail over

I wanted to test how to failover the RMS Emulator role in SCOM2012 to another Management Server and how to move the agents to another Management server when the server hosting the RMS Emulator role fails.

This post describe the test performed in a lab environment along with some screen shots.

Lets start with 2 Management servers OM1 and OM2. OM1 was the first installed Management Server and by default gets the RMS Emulator role as can be seen below:

The following agents are connected to OM1

To test the failover, shut down OM1 management server. If AD integration is setup then all agents will failover to OM2 which is the next available Management Server. If AD integration is not setup the agents will have to be either manually or via powershell command be migrated to another management server. However the RMSE role will not automatically fail over to another Management Server.

Adding the RMS Emulator Role to another Management Server

1. Open Operations Manager Shell on another Management Server which needs to RMS Emulator role added and run the following commands:

$MS = get-SCOMManagementServer -Name <FQDN of Management Server>
set-SCOMRMSEmulator $MS

Now if you check the Management Servers in the console, OM2 which has been made the RMSE will show RMS Emulator as Yes

Considering AD integration is not set up, the agents which were connected to OM1 will have to be migrated to OM2.

Right click on an agent and select Change Primary Management Server

Select OM2 from the list and click OK.

This can however become tedious if you have 1000’s of agents to move.

Below commands will move all agents at once

$MS1 =
Get-SCOMManagementServer | ? {$_.name –eq “<FQDN of primary MS”>}

$agents =
Get-SCOMAgent –ManagementServer $MS1

$MS2 =
Get-SCOMManagementServer | ? {$_.name –eq “<FQDN of failover MS”>}

If you want
to move individual agents

Set-SCOMParentManagementServer
–agent(Get-SCOMAgent –name “<FQDN of Agent>”>) –FailoverServer:$MS2
–PassThru

OR

To move all
agents in the array $agents

Set-SCOMParentManagementServer
–agent($agents) –FailoverServer:$MS2 -PassThru

If AD integration has been setup then Auto agent assignment can be setup as follows:

In the console go to Administration – Managed servers and right click on the server where you want to setup failover and go to properties.

Click Add
On the introduction page click Next
On the domain page select the domain
On the inclusion page, click criteria and next. Click ok
Click next on the exclusion page.
On the agent failover page you can select automatic or manual failover and exclude any management servers if needed