Azure Pack
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Load Balance runbook job.
We currently manage 1000's of servers with SMA and runbooks. Unfortunately, once a runbook starts on a runbook worker, it is run from that single worker until completion. If I want it to run on multiple workers, I have to make two separate runbooks each calling a different list then link the runbook to the runbook worker to ensure it is run on two different servers. If there was a way to load balance this job so that 2 (or more) runbook workers completed the job together, this would greatly increase efficiency.
7 votes -
Add SMA to RBAC of Azure Stack
Hi
Please add SMA also to the new RBAC of Azure Stack. We need Access Control for the Runbooks, credentials and connections in our SMA environment12 votes -
Automation: Preserve Job Exception
Currently, if a runbook 'throws' an error, it is presented under the 'Job Exception' header on the Dashboard view of a specific job and the job is suspended. If the job is then stopped, the 'Job Exception' section is removed and the data can not be viewed on the dashboard or with the Get-SmaJobOutput cmdlet. Please make this data more accessible after the fact.
1 vote -
Index JobStreams Table
Out of the box the JobStreams table does not have an index for JobID and TenantID. The result is that Get-SMAJobOutput and the web portal can get quite easily bogged down. Even with job history set to the standard 30 days and process/debug logging off, this table can get quite large on a busy environment. Simply indexing this table drastically improves the overall performance of SMA. I had a few runbooks with process monitoring turned on and the table reached over 17 million rows (at which point I couldn't get any output from SMA)
In my environment, I created the…
3 votesThanks for sharing this feedback!
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Provide guidance on which direction SMA & Orchestrator are going
Enterprise solutions are looking for a 'Complete Package' and we are not being given proper guidance on the future of Workflow Automation within Microsoft. SMA with Workflows is literally, not figuratively, 10x slower than PowerShell executed with a C# engine. For a real life example, review the Accenture/Avanade implementation of their workflow engine. Orchestrator provides the GUI interface that allows for ease of management. PowerShell Workflow does not allow enough flexibility for Master Variable sets when working with multiple client or domains and SMA has scalability issues. So what should we be using to ensure our customers will have dependable,…
3 votes
Beth Cooper
responded
I want to make sure that I’m answering all of your questions here so let me know if I’ve missed anything. It sounds like your customers are having performance issues and miss the GUI offered by SCO. It also sounds like you are looking for guidance on where you should tell customers to look for the future. Any other questions?
SMA just released PowerShell script support in TP5: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/orchestrator/2016/04/28/powershell-script-runbook-support-in-system-center-service-management-automation-2016-sma-part-1/. Since scripts are not compiled like workflows, the perf issues that you were seeing will go away if you convert your workflows to scripts. This also reduces the learning curve since PowerShell scripts are more well-known than Workflow.Automation’s new features will show up first in Azure Automation and then we bring functionality to SMA. This means that if customers want the most up to date capabilities or want to see their feedback more rapidly integrated to the…
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Add JSON as SMA asset variable
Could it be possible to add JSON as possible asset for SMA variables. At the moment we can use string on single line which is limited to 512 characters.
In my case I have large configuration definition which I want to parse, took some parameters and make modifications.
6 votesThanks for the feedback! We can look into adding json variable support (may be a generic object variable). How many characters are you looking to support in your json variable?
Also, you can use the Set-AutomationVariable activity from within your runbook to create variables larger than 512 characters. The database actually doesn’t limit this, but the API does. Using the “set” activity in the runbook gets around this limit.
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Allow customers to create Runbook (Hosters)
Allow customers create their own Runbook in WAP
10 votesThanks for the feedback. I think this is the same request as this: http://feedback.azure.com/forums/255259-azure-pack/suggestions/6036496-runbook-as-a-service
Can you confirm? If so please submit a vote for that request and I will close this out as a duplicate. -
Improve speed DiscoverAllLocalModules for SMA
It would be good if DiscoverAllLocalModules would keep hash information about modules so when it goes through the discovery it would not need to process all the modules, that would increase speed exponentially, if the hash of the module has change then the DiscoverAllLocalModules would know that the module has been updated.
24 votesThanks for the feedback! We can look into this.
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Speed up search
When searching for SMA entities, the search intellisense thingy kicks of after typing the first letter, which bogs it down so much is practically useless. Would be much better to wait until, say, 3 letters are typed before doing filtering.
1 voteHi Trond,
Thanks – this is something our team is aware of and has been on our backlogs.
Thanks,
Beth -
Add tagging for variables/credentials and connection for central management in multi-tier SMA environment
This is a scenario that came up recently thinking about multi-tier SMA environments. Where one have different AD's isolated from each other, but wanting a central master SMA orchestrator.
As for Runbooks where one can use tags as a means to target and distribute the code to different SMA installations downstream. This would also be nice to have for assets types, as this would allow a similar distribution scenario. Enabling having a (HA) central SMA installation where all assets are maintained.
Even better would be a scenario where one could figure out how to allow for assets with the same…
1 voteThanks for this suggestion!
Would creating accounts that can group runbooks and assets solve this? If you look at Azure Automation, we allow users to create accounts which should enable what you are talking about.
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Intergration with Orchestrator
Have direct access to Orchestrator runbooks from WAP SMA
3 votesThanks for the feedback! Right now, you can call Orchestrator from SMA and SMA from Orchestrator as a workaround. Some of our TechEd talks show this & there is a blog post: http://blogs.technet.com/b/privatecloud/archive/2013/12/12/automation-fun-with-orchestrator-and-sma-integration-points.aspx
that shows some basics. -
Build better local testing/debugging tools for SMA Workflows
It's very difficult to get a local machine set up so that Workflows destined for SMA can be tested and debugged on a local machine as though they were in the SMA environment. A lot of times you have to write a workflow on your local machine, put it in SMA, watch it break (often without much debugging output unless you used write-verbose), and then you have to try to fix it on your local machine. And your local machine doesn't match SMA, so you have to upload it to SMA again to test, watch if fail, and cycle repeats.…
25 votesSMA ISE Add-on which allows you to test and debug runbooks from ISE has been released.
powershellgallery.com/packages/SMAAuthoring..
Check this blog post for more details – blogs.technet.microsoft.com/orchestrator/20..
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Maintenance Mode for SMA workers
Allow me to put a worker into 'maintenance mode’
Drain off all running jobs. If job type is workflow stop at the next checkpoint instead of running until drain time is reached and ‘hard’ stopping
Update the load balancing algorithm to incorporate a heartbeat idea. If a worker is not online don't put new jobs into its partition of the jobs table35 votesThanks for the feedback! Having this functionality would definitely help in the case a worker goes down or needs to be restarted. We will take this into consideration.
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34 votes
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Minimizing script regions in the SMA authoring pane
This would be a pretty nice QOL change. For instance, some runbooks end up having a lot of parameters, which makes it kind of painful to author and maintain them in the authoring pane without the ability to collapse regions.
1 voteThanks for the feedback! We can investigate working with the Monaco control to see if we can get this feature in.
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WAP/SMA - Scheduled Task Frequency - Add Hours and Minutes options
At present it only seems possible to schedule 'one time' or 'daily' for the frequency for runbooks.
Proposal : Add options for hours and minutes
Justifcation : (1) Many of our scripts need to run on a more frequent basis, such as scanning ftp file drop locations for new files and processing them accordingly. The limitation of this at the moment restricts our ability to use these.
(2) Dependancy on Orchestrator restricts full migration to SMA, adds additional development time and testing.Current workaround : Make an Orchestrator runbook with a timer which calls the SMA runbook(s).
37 votesJust to confirm, you are looking for two additional frequencies: hour and minute. Our team can look into this.
Yes – you can have a monitor/long running runbook that triggers other runbooks on a timer as a workaround for the moment.
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Runbook publish order should be independent of parent/child order
In a situation where there's a parent and child runbook, and the parent runbook is uploaded first using Either the WAP gui or PowerShell (Import-SmaRunbook/Publish-SmaRunbook), the parent runbook is unable to "see" the child runbook even after the child runbooks is uploaded/published.
The required workaround is to republish the parent runbook, which performs some kind of "rescanning" of the available runbooks. In complex environments with lots of runbooks depending on others, this can be very time-consuming to do.
6 votes -
GUI : Wap Admin Portal Settings
Add options for
Fonts : Adjustable size for logged in user
Reason : they're awfully large by defaultQuoting : Enable or disable automatic double quotes that are put in when you type just one "
Reason : this can be somewhat annoyingJob History : Purge options to immediately clear all runbooks of logs
Reason : No option to do an immediate purge at the momentEdit Runbook Prompt : Enable/Disable options for the 'do you want to edit this runbook' prompt
Reason : I always want to, why would i click on it otherwiseParameters : Options for…
1 voteThanks for the feedback!
For fonts – is this for the runbook authoring or through the experience in general?
Also, the notifications bar is more for WAP in general as this is a general pattern.
The SMA team can take a look at everything else.Also, you can currently use the dropdown to select different job statuses on both the runbooks list and the Runbook >Jobs list views.
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SMA Runbook concurrency
The ability to set concurrency limits for individual runbooks would very useful (like Orchestrator).
Example use/case: Querying AD for the next free SamAccountName and creating an AD user. If two runbooks which would result in the same SamAccountName being provided are started at the same time one of them will fail. A maximum concurrency of 1 would solve this.
I've tried solving this with code in various ways, but have found no reliable way.
41 votesThanks for the feedback on this. We can investigate adding this functionality.
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Runbook Section - Display Options
1) Automation --> Runbooks --> Click on any runbook
After you have done this, the column to the left of the workbook then displays the list of runbooks (with the big left arrow at the top). The runbooks don't seem to be sorted in any order. A-Z would be nice. :-)2) Automation --> Runbooks
Add 'last modified' column to table.1 voteThanks for the feedback! We will look at this.
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