[1] System Center Advisor consists of a web service, an agent that collects data (an on-premises computer program) and a gateway (another on-premises component) that communicates with the service on behalf of the agent.

Once the agent, gateway and web service are properly configured, an administrator may use the web service to manage the configuration of the affected servers from any physical location that has an Internet.

[2][3] System Center Advisor reached general availability in January 2012,[1] having spent ten months in release candidate stage.

[4] It was made available in 26 countries through Microsoft Software Assurance offering, although it was possible to test-drive this service for 60 days.

[7] System Center Advisor was renamed to Azure Operational Insights in 2014 [8] and became the Log Analytics service as part of the Microsoft Operations Management Suite in Azure.