Privacy Statement for System Center 2012 - Operations Manager

Applies To: System Center 2012 - Operations Manager

On This Page

  • Customer Experience Improvement Program

  • Operational Data Reporting

  • Operations Manager Error Reporting

  • Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) Error Forwarding

  • Agentless Exception Monitoring CEIP Forwarding

  • Microsoft Update

  • Application Performance Monitoring (APM)

At Microsoft, we're working hard to protect your privacy, while delivering products that bring you the performance, power and convenience you desire in your personal computing. This privacy statement explains many of the data collection and use practices of Microsoft System Center 2012 – Operations Manager. This privacy statement focuses on features that communicate with the Internet and is not intended to be an exhaustive list. It does not apply to other online or offline Microsoft sites, products or services.

Collection and Use of your Personal Information

When we need information that personally identifies you or allows us to contact you, we will explicitly ask you for it. The personal information we collect from you will be used by Microsoft and its controlled subsidiaries and affiliates to provide the service(s) or carry out the transaction(s) you have requested or authorized, and may also be used to request additional information on feedback that you provide about the product or service that you are using; to provide critical updates and notifications regarding the software; to improve the product or service, for example bug and survey form inquiries, or to provide you with advance notice of events or to tell you about new product releases.

Except as described in this statement, personal information you provide will not be transferred to third parties without your consent. We occasionally hire other companies to provide limited services on our behalf, such as performing statistical analysis of our services. We will only provide those companies the personal information they need to deliver the service, and they are prohibited from using that information for any other purpose.

Information that is collected by or sent to Microsoft may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country in which Microsoft or its affiliates, subsidiaries or agents maintain facilities, and by using a Microsoft site or service, you consent to any such transfer of information outside of your country. Microsoft abides by the safe harbor framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of data from the European Union. Microsoft may disclose personal information about you if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on Microsoft or the site; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of Microsoft (including enforcing our agreements), or (c) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of Microsoft employees, users of Microsoft products or services, or members of the public.

Collection and Use of Information about Your Computer

Operations Manager contains Internet enabled features that can collect certain standard information from your computer ("standard computer information") along with information needed for a specific feature and send it to Microsoft. Standard computer information includes information such as your IP address, operating system version, a code that identifies the manufacturer of your computer, and your regional and language settings. This computer information is generally not personally identifiable.

Security of Your Information

Microsoft is committed to protecting the security of your personal information. We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. For example, we store the information you provide on computer servers with limited access that are located in controlled facilities.

Changes to the Privacy Statement

We may occasionally update this privacy statement. When we do, we will revise the "last updated" date at the top of the privacy statement. We encourage you to periodically review this privacy statement to be informed of how Microsoft is protecting your information.

For More Information

Microsoft welcomes your comments regarding this privacy statement. If you believe that Microsoft has not adhered to this privacy statement, please contact us by e-mail at OMPrivacy@microsoft.com.

Microsoft Privacy

Microsoft Corporation

One Microsoft Way

Redmond, Washington 98052 USA

Specific Features:

The following features describe the functionality and controls in Operations Manager:

Customer Experience Improvement Program

What This Feature Does: If you choose to participate, the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) feature will collect information about how all users of the Operations Console use Operations Manager so that we can identify trends and usage patterns. This information helps improve the quality, reliability, and performance of Microsoft software and services.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: The information CEIP collects includes software and hardware performance, as well as basic software and hardware configuration such as RAM, processor type, and screen resolution. We do not collect names, addresses or other contact information. For more information about CEIP, see the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program.

Use of Information: The information collected is used to help improve Microsoft's products and services. Microsoft employees, contractors and vendors who have a business need to use the data are provided access as necessary.

Choice/Control: The first time you install the Operations Manager Database server, during setup you'll be asked whether you would like to participate in CEIP.

To turn CEIP on or off later:

  1. Start the Operations console, and in the navigation pane, select Administration.

  2. In the Administration workspace under Device Management, select Settings.

  3. In the Settings view, under Type: General, double-click Privacy to launch the Global Management Group Setting-Privacy property page.

  4. Select the CEIP tab.

  5. To turn CEIP off, select I don’t want to join this program at this time.

    To turn CEIP on, select Join the Customer Experience Improvement Program (Recommended).

  6. Click OK.

Important Information: The Operations Manager administrator or other administrator with sufficient privileges may construct Group Policy to opt in or out of CEIP by setting a registry-based policy. The relevant registry key and settings are as follows:

Key = HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\SQMClient\SCOM

RegEntry name = CEIPEnable

Entry type REG_DWORD (Hexadecimal):

0 is off

1 is on

Operational Data Reporting

What This Feature Does: Operational Data Reports summarize how Operations Manager is being used in your management group. If you consent to sending operational data reports to Microsoft, each week, SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services reports will be generated from the operational data in your Operations Manager Data Warehouse and sent to Microsoft.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: Operational Data Reports are XML files with data about your system configuration and the Microsoft-authored management packs that you are using. The reports include information about the operational environment of a management group, such as the number of agents controlled by Operations Manager, the most common alerts, and which management packs you are running.

Sample Operational Data Reports can be viewed at the Operations Manager web site along with descriptions of the data collected. If you have consented to sending these reports, you may view the reports that will be sent to Microsoft by navigating to the %windir%\temp\OpsMgr 2012 Operational Data Reports folder on the management server running the ODR workflows. Note: You can determine this by running the Show Running Workflows task against each of the management servers in the management group.

You can also view your Management Group, Management Pack, and Most Common Alerts Operational Data Reports by going to the Operations Console and in the Reporting View running these reports in the Microsoft ODR Report Library folder.

Use of Information: Microsoft uses the data in Operational Data Reports to better understand how the Operations Manager product works as deployed in customers' environments. These reports will help improve future software and services.

Choice/Control: The first time you install the Operations Manager Data Warehouse server, you'll be asked whether you would like to send Operations Data Reports to Microsoft.

To turn Operational Data Reporting on or off after install:

  1. Start the Operations console, in the navigation pane select Administration.

  2. In the Administration workspace, under Device Management, select Settings.

  3. In the Settings View, under Type: General, right-click Privacy and choose Properties from the context menu.

  4. Select the Operational Data Reports tab.

  5. To turn Operational Data Reports off, select No, don’t send operational data reports to Microsoft.

    To turn Operational Data Reports on, select Yes, send operational data reports to Microsoft (recommended).

  6. Click OK.

Important Information: Operational Data Reporting cannot be configured using Group Policy.

Operations Manager Error Reporting

What This Feature Does: Operations Manager Error Reporting asks users to send error report data to Microsoft via the Internet. This feature allows you to report problems you may be having with Operations Manager Management Servers, Gateway Servers, and Agents components. Please note that this feature does not control error reporting for other Operations Manager components such as Operations Console, Web Console, and Reporting Server. The Operations Manager Database and Data Warehouse error reporting behavior is defined by what settings SQL Server 2005 is using.

Choice/Control: The first time you install the Operations Manager Database server, you'll be asked whether you would like to send Operations Manager Error Reports to Microsoft. You can choose automatic reporting in which case reports will be sent without prompting you. Alternatively, you can choose to be prompted for approval each time an error report is generated, which lets you review the information in a report before it is sent.

To turn Operations Manager Error Reporting on or off for the agents:

  1. Start the Operations console, in the navigation pane select "Administration".

  2. In the Administration workspace, under Device Management, select Settings.

  3. In the Settings view, under General, right-click Privacy and choose Properties from the context menu.

  4. Select the Error Reporting tab.

  5. To turn Operations Manager Error Reporting off, click Don’t generate error reports.

    To turn Operations Manager Error Reporting on and automatically send error reports, click Automatically send error reports about this product to Microsoft without prompting the user (recommended).

    To turn Operations Manager Error Reporting on and queue error reports, click Prompt the user for approval before sending error reports to Microsoft.

  6. Click OK.

  7. In the navigation pane, under Device Management, click Agent Managed.

  8. Select one or more agents in the middle result pane.

  9. Right-click the agent and choose Repair in the context menu.

  10. If your Management Servers Action Account does not have the right permissions on the agents, in the Repair Agents dialog box, choose the Other user account option, and type in the credentials of an account that has access to the agents.

  11. Click Repair.

  12. Click Close when completed.

To turn Operations Manager Error Reporting on or off for the management servers and gateway servers:

  1. Log on to a server where the management server or gateway server is installed.

  2. Click Start, and then click Run.

  3. In the Run box, type regedit and click OK.

  4. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HealthService\Parameters\.

  5. Double-click the Error Reports Enabled DWORD value and set the value data 1 to turn on Error Reporting or 0 to turn off Error Reporting.

    Optionally, if you have enabled Error Reporting but would like to queue error reports before sending to Microsoft, you can edit the Queue Error Reports DWORD value and set the value data to 1 which will queue error reports to prompt for approval or 0 to directly send error reports to Microsoft.

  6. Click OK when completed and the change will take effect

Important Information: Error Reporting for Operations Manager Management Servers, Gateway Servers, and Agents cannot be configured using Group Policy.

Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) Error Forwarding

What This Feature Does: Operations Manager can be configured to collect error reports generated due to application and operating system problems from all the computers in an enterprise running Windows operating systems and managed by Operations Manager. Additionally, Operations Manager can also be configured to forward the error reports to the Microsoft Error Reporting service.

Information Collected, Processed, or Transmitted: The forwarded error reports to Microsoft can be either in Basic or Detailed format. In Basic format, the error report forwarded contains only the signature of the error used to uniquely identify an error without specific information about the environment in which it was generated. In Detailed format, the error report can consist of a detailed memory dump, registry settings, results of a Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) query, and additional files along with the error signature from the computer on which the error report was generated.

Reports might unintentionally contain personal information, but this information is not used to identify or contact you or your organization. For example, a report that contains a snapshot of memory might include a name, part of a document the user was working on, or data the user recently submitted to a website.

Choice/Control: This feature is off by default. During the process of configuring client monitoring, you can specify the policy for Error Forwarding to Microsoft.

  1. Start the Operations console, in the navigation pane select Administration.

  2. In the Administration workspace, under Device Management, select Management Servers.

  3. In the Management Servers view, select any management server that has Client Monitoring Mode disabled, and right-click the management server.

  4. Click Configure Client Monitoring to open the Configure Client Monitoring wizard.

  5. On the Error Forwarding page, select Forward all collected errors to Microsoft (Recommended) to enable Error Forwarding to Microsoft.

    If you do not want to enable Error Forwarding to Microsoft, leave the option unselected.

  6. After completing the wizard successfully, if you chose to enable Error Forwarding, a group policy template is created that can be used by an administrator with sufficient privileges to configure the managed computers in the enterprise to send error reports to the Management Server. Until the policy is active on the managed computers, these computers will not send error reports to the management server.

To enable or disable Error Forwarding after a management server has Client Monitoring Mode enabled:

  1. Start the Operations console, in the navigation pane select Administration.

  2. In the Administration workspace, under Device Management, select Management Servers.

  3. In the Management Servers view, select any management server that has Client Monitoring Mode enabled, and right-click the management server.

  4. Click Properties.

  5. In Properties, click the Error Forwarding tab.

  6. On the Error Forwarding page, select Forward all collected errors to Microsoft (Recommended) to enable Error Forwarding to Microsoft.

    If you do not want to enable Error Forwarding to Microsoft, leave the option unselected.

  7. After clicking OK, Error Forwarding will be enabled if the option was selected in the previous step.

To selectively control the error reports forwarded to Microsoft after Client Monitoring mode has been enabled:

  1. Start the Operations console, in the navigation pane select Administration.

  2. In the Administration workspace, under Settings, double-click Privacy.

  3. In Properties, select the Error Transmission tab.

  4. On the Error Transmission tab, you can set the filter(s) to exclude error reports forwarded to Microsoft based on user name, computer name, application name, module, and application error type. Click Filter to set the exclusion filter criteria.

  5. If you want to include additional diagnostic data requested by Microsoft from the managed computers in the error reports forwarded to Microsoft, you can select Upload the diagnostic data collection requests. If this diagnostic data should include files, registry settings, WMI queries and memory dumps, select the corresponding boxes on the tab.

  6. After you click OK or Apply, the selected inclusion and exclusion policies defined in the steps above will be applied to all management servers that have Error Forwarding enabled.

To disable Error Forwarding and Client Monitoring mode:

  1. Start the Operations console, in the navigation pane select Administration.

  2. In the Administration workspace, under Device Management, select Management Servers.

  3. In the Management Servers view, select any management server that has Client Monitoring Mode enabled, right-click the management server, and click Disable Client Monitoring.

  4. Select Yes in the Confirm Disable Client Monitoring dialog box.

Please note that by disabling Error Forwarding in this manner, the management server will also stop forwarding centrally collected CEIP data to Microsoft. Managed computers may individually continue to send error reports and CEIP data if so configured.

In order to disable error forwarding from the managed computers, an administrator with sufficient privileges will have to undo the group policy that was applied during the process of configuring client monitoring.

For more information on how to further configure AEM, please review Client Monitoring Using Agentless Exception Monitoring in Operations Manager in the Operations Manager Operations Guide on TechNet.

Agentless Exception Monitoring CEIP Forwarding

What This Feature Does: Operations Manager can be set up to forward Customer Experience Improvement Program reports collected from the computers managed by Operations Manager to Microsoft. These CEIP reports are forwarded as is without any modifications or filtering. For more information about CEIP, see the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program.

Choice/Control: This feature is off by default. When users run the Configure Client Monitoring Wizard they can configure whether they would like to collect CEIP reports and create a Group Policy template used to configure the managed computers.

During the process of configuring client monitoring, you can specify the policy for CEIP Forwarding:

  1. Start the Operations console, in the navigation pane select Administration.

  2. In the Administration workspace, under Device Management, select Management Servers.

  3. In the Management Servers view, select any management server that has Client Monitoring Mode disabled, and right-click the management server.

  4. Click Configure Client Monitoring to open the Configure Client Monitoring wizard.

  5. On the CEIP Forwarding page, if you want to enable CEIP forwarding, for Do you want to centrally collect CEIP data and forward to Microsoft?, select Yes, use the selected Management Server to collect and forward CEIP data to Microsoft.

    If you do not want to enable CEIP forwarding to Microsoft, select No, please continue to send data directly to Microsoft.

  6. After completing the wizard successfully, if you chose to enable CEIP Forwarding, a group policy template is created that can be used by an administrator with sufficient privileges to configure the managed computers in the enterprise to send CEIP data to the management server. Until the policy is active on the managed computers, these computers will not send CEIP data to the management server.

To disable CEIP Forwarding:

  1. Start the Operations console, in the navigation pane select Administration.

  2. In the Administration workspace, under Device Management, select Management Servers.

  3. In the Management Servers view, select any management server that has Client Monitoring Mode enabled, right-click the management server, and click Disable Client Monitoring.

  4. Select Yes in the Confirm Disable Client Monitoring dialog box.

Please note that by disabling CEIP Forwarding in this manner, the management server will also stop forwarding centrally collected error reports to Microsoft. Managed computers may individually continue to send CEIP data if so configured.

In order to disable CEIP Forwarding from the managed computers, an administrator with sufficient privileges will have to undo the group policy that was applied during the process of configuring Client Monitoring.

Microsoft Update

What This Feature Does: Microsoft update is a service that provides Windows updates as well as updates for other Microsoft software, including Operations Manager. For details about what information is collected, how it is used, and how to change your settings, see the Update Services Privacy Statement at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=50142.

Choice/Control: If you are running any Operations Manager feature on a Windows server operating system, this feature is controlled by your Windows server settings. You can turn this feature on or off in Windows Update by clicking Change settings.

If you are running the Operations console or an Operations Manager agent on a Windows client operating system, see the Update Services Privacy Statement at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=115475 for details about controlling this feature.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM)

What This Feature Does: Allows monitoring of ASP.NET applications and Windows Communications Foundation web services from server- and client-side perspectives to get details about application availability and performance that can help pinpoint solutions. Allows administrators to specify settings, the types of events to collect, the performance goals to measure, and which servers to monitor. Operations Manager .NET Application Performance Monitoring provides insight into how web-based applications are running.  Administrators can see how frequently a problem is occurring, how a server was performing when a problem occurred, and the chain of events related to the slow request or method that is unreliable. This is the information needed to partner with software developers and database administrators to help ensure that application availability and performance are at optimal levels.  Application Performance Monitoring for server- and client-side perspectives might collect sensitive data and retain it in your database.

Sensitive data collection and retention

  • Application Performance Monitoring for server- and client-side perspectives might collect sensitive data and retain it in your database. Review your compliance policies before enabling application monitoring.

  • Client-side monitoring might additionally collect, transmit, and retain information from Internet browsers. This information for public-facing Internet applications might be collected from countries and regions other than where your database is located.

  • Enabling exception stack and global variables data collection sends page data to the monitored server. You should not collect exception stack and global variables for data-sensitive applications unless all pages are secured with https protocol.

  • Application Monitoring Operators, system administrators, and potentially others with elevated permissions will have access to this data.

  • No data is sent outside of the enterprise.

Choice/Control: Client-side monitoring is disabled by default. Administrators should review their compliance policies before enabling application monitoring. For instructions on enabling client-side monitoring, see “Enabling Client-Side Monitoring” and “Client-Side Modifying Settings” in .NET Application Performance Monitoring Template

-----
For additional resources, see Information and Support for System Center 2012.

Tip: Use this query to find online documentation in the TechNet Library for System Center 2012. For instructions and examples, see Search the System Center 2012 Documentation Library.
-----