I invite you to read the previous posts :

ACS Part I : Introduction & Collector Installation
ACS Part II : ACS Reports Deployment & Access

Now that your collector and reporting servers are up and running, we will enable the Forwarder service for the servers that you want to store security events in the ACS database.

1. Go to the OpsMgr Console > Monitoring > Operations Manager > Agent State.

2. Select the servers for which you want to enable the ACS forwarder and in the task pane, click on Enable Audit Collection.

3. Click on Override  and precise your ACS Collector server name in the new value field.

4. Review your configuration :

5. Click on Run and review the result :

6. To check if your forwarders are well connected to your Collector, you could go to the OpsMgr Console > Microsoft Audit Collection Services > Collector > Performance > Connected Clients.

You have now a functional ACS environment.  
The next posts will be about the ACS Reports utilization and on how to use ACS in an untrusted environment.

Christopher KEYAERT.

ACS · click · deployment · III · Reports

Previous post about ACS :

ACS Part I : Introduction & Collector Installation

Reports Deployment

Now that you have a running ACS Collector, you have to publish the ACS Reports on your SQL Reports Services server. 

1. From the Operations Manager source, copy the files and folders present in the ReportModels\ACS to temporary folder, for example: D:\ACS

2. Open a command prompt
3. Go to the folder you just created (D:\ACS)
4. Executing the following command

UploadAuditReports.cmd reportsrvfqdn http://reportsrvfqdn/ReportServer ACSFOLDER

5. Don’t take care of the two warnings

6. Start your web Brower and go to http://reportsrvfqdn/Reports

7. Click on Show Details and go to DB Audit.
8. Adapt the Connection String field to point to your ACS Database
For example:
data source= xxxx\SQLDB1;initial catalog=OperationsManagerAC;Integrated Security=SSPI

9. If you are using the same reporting for Operations Mananger and ACS, select also the option Credentials supplied by the user running the report and check Use as Windows Credentials when connection to the data source.

10. Click Apply.

Access Control List

1. Create a new Active Directory group for your Security Administrator and add them as member. (By example: SCOM2007-ACSAuditors)

2. Go to your Database server and add the group as Users for you ACS DB.

3. Grant your group as db_datareader of your ACS database.

4. Your Security Administrator could now access to the ACS Reports through the SQL Reporting Services Web Interface : http://reportsrvfqdn/Reports  > Audit Reports

The next post will be about the ACS Forwarder Configuration.
Feel free to contact in case of any remarks and/or comments.

Christopher KEYAERT

ACS · Audit Collection Services · operations manager · opsmgr · Scom

Hi everyone,

With Operations Manager 2007, Microsoft introduces Audit
Collection Services (ACS) as an optional but integrated component of an OpsMgr
management group. By deploying and using the ACS components of Operations
Manager, the administrator will be able to store and present security audit
information.

What is the idea?

ACS Forwarder: It’s your servers/workstations where you
installed an OpsMgr Agent and for which you want to collect the security event
log.

ACS Collector: It’s an OpsMgr management server which will be
designated as an ACS collector.

ACS DB: ACS requires having his own database. Depending of the
numbers of you forwarder, the DB could grow really fast. Satya Vel, a System
Center Program Manager, published an Excel sheet for helping you to size the
ACS DB. (http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2008/07/02/audit-collection-acs-database-and-disk-sizing-calculator-for-opsmgr-2007.aspx)

ACS Reporting: ACS is using SQL Reporting Services, so you have
the choice to install a new fresh server, or using the one that you already
used for OpsMgr reports. If you want to use your existing SQL Reporting server
and want continue to be in a Microsoft supported configuration, each time that one
of your Security Administrators want to generate an ACS report, he will have
to enter his credentials.

The best practice is to generate ACS reports directly from
the SQL Reporting web interface and not directly from the integrated reporting
pane available in SCOM console. This is due to the fact that ACS reports could
contain sensitive information and you don’t want that all your SCOM Operators
could see that information. The other advantage, and that you just need to
provide the web url to you Security Administrators, no need to install the SCOM
Console.

Security Administrator: Is the person of you company that will
be able to generate ACS Reports through the web interface of SQL Reporting
Services.

Continue to read on my SCUG Blog

ACS · Audit Collection Services · momteam · security event · sizing calculator