Christopher's System Center Blog

SCUG.BE at MICROSOFT EXPERIENCE DAYS

Dear [IT Professional],

This is your personal invitation to one of the two major technical
conferences we will be holding on June 7th 2012: The Best of
Microsoft Management Summit and Experience Windows Server 2012.

During The Best of Microsoft Management Summit (MMS 2012), we
will provide you with the best possible opportunity to learn
about what's new in System Center 2012. Led by experts who
attended MMS 2012 in Las Vegas, you can expect in-depth sessions
on infrastructure management, service delivery & automation,
application management, desktop & device management.

Discover the full program
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/enterprise/experiencedays/demo-mms.html

At Experience Windows Server 2012 day you will discover how
Windows Server is going beyond virtualization by scaling and
securing workload, how it will enable the modern work style by
giving people access to information and data regardless of the
infrastructure, network, device or application they use to
access it.
And you will discover the power of many servers with the
simplicity of one by efficiently managing infrastructure while
maximizing uptime and minimizing failures and downtime.

Join us and learn more about:

- New Hyper-V Virtualization Platform
- What's new in Active Directory
- Storage and Management Improvements
- Clustering Improvements
- Plus much more...
   
Discover the full program
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/enterprise/experiencedays/demo-windows-server.html

Places are limited, so register now for:

- The Best of Microsoft Management Summit 
   http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/enterprise/experiencedays/demo-mms.html

- Experience Windows Server 2012 
   http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/enterprise/experiencedays/demo-windows-server.html

Add to your Outlook calendar:

- The Best of Microsoft Management Summit 
  http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/enterprise/experiencedays/agenda-mms.ics

- Experience Windows Server 2012 
  http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/enterprise/experiencedays/agenda-experience-windows-server.ics]

These events are part of the Microsoft Experience Days
that take place on 6 and 7 June 2012.

Regards
Christopher KEYAERT

SCOM : Agent managed server not visible in the Console Agent Managed view

Hello All,

This morning, I had one agent managed server which stop to work correctly. The server appears as Not Monitored (Note : That’s could apply for some server in grey state) in the Console Computers view.

I checked in the Console Agent Managed view, and there, the server is not present at all.

In the agent managed server, we have the following event :

Event Type:    Warning
Event Source:    OpsMgr Connector
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    21034
Date:        5/10/2012
Time:        8:41:00 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    TYOBKP002
Description:
The Management Group XXXXX has no configured parents and most monitoring tasks cannot be performed.  This can happen if a management group in Active Directory does not have any server SCPs or if the agent does not have access to any server SCPs.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

The first step is to check if the Management Group Name and the Management server are well configured.

Before going further, be sure to have a good backup of your SCOM DBs. Log on to the OperationsDB database server and run the following query :

SELECT * FROM dbo.[BasemanagedEntity] where FullName Like '%Windows.Computer%' and Name Like '%AGENTMANAGEDSERVERFQDN%'

if the IsDeleted value is set to 0, run the following query :

UPDATE dbo.[BasemanagedEntity] SET IsDeleted = 1 where FullName Like '%Windows.Computer%' and Name Like '%AGENTMANAGEDSERVERFQDN%'

You could now close the Microsoft SQL console, and go back to the Agent Managed server and stop the System Center Management service.

Go to the SCOM Agent Installation folder and delete the Health Service State folder.

Start the the System Center Management service.

After a few seconds, in the event viewer, you will see that event, don’t worry, this is normal.

After a few minutes, the server will reappear as Not Monitored in the Console Agent Managed view.

In the event log, we could see that agent has returned to communicating with the management server.

And after some minutes, it could take up to 30 minutes, the agent will go back to Healthy in the Console Agent Managed view.

Regards
Christopher KEYAERT

System Center 2012 RTM is available

Yesterday, during the  Microsoft Management Summit keynote, Microsoft announced the availability of System Center 2012 RTM. You could download for free, the evaluation version via the following link : http://aka.ms/PvtCld

The Microsoft private cloud evaluation includes:

System Center 2012

• System Center 2012 Unified Installer is a utility designed to perform new, clean installations of System Center 2012 for testing and evaluation purposes only. If you want to upgrade from an existing System Center installation or choose set up options such as high availability or multi-server component installs, please refer instead to the System Center 2012 component installation guides located on the Microsoft Private Cloud Evaluation Resource Page.
  User's Guide >>
• System Center 2012 App Controller provides a common self-service experience across private and public clouds that can help you empower application owners to easily build, configure, deploy, and manage new services.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Configuration Manager provides comprehensive configuration management for the Microsoft platform that can help you empower users with the devices and applications they need to be productive while maintaining corporate compliance and control.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager provides unified data protection for Windows servers and clients that can help you deliver scalable, manageable, and cost-effective protection and restore scenarios from disk, tape, and off premise.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection, built on System Center Configuration Manager, provides industry-leading threat detection of malware and exploits as part of a unified infrastructure for managing client security and compliance that can help you simplify and improve endpoint protection.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Operations Manager provides deep application diagnostics and infrastructure monitoring that can help you ensure the predictable performance and availability of vital applications and offers a comprehensive view of your datacenter, private cloud, and public clouds.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Orchestrator provides orchestration, integration, and automation of IT processes through the creation of runbooks that can help you to define and standardize best practices and improve operational efficiency.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Service Manager provides flexible self-service experiences and standardized datacenter processes that can help you integrate people, workflows, and knowledge across enterprise infrastructure and applications.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager provides virtual machine management and services deployment with support for multi-hypervisor environments that can help you deliver a flexible and cost effective private cloud environment.
  System Requirements >>

Christopher KEYAERT

SCOM 2007 R2 – Reporting : Value of '1/01/0001 12:00:00 AM' is not valid for 'Value'. 'Value' should be between 'MinDate' and 'MaxDate'

Hi Guys,

Yesterday, I migrated a SCOM 2007 R2 reporting module from a SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 to a SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2. The migration worked perfectly, the reports were available, I was able to start it, everything seems ok, but…

when I checked the scheduled reports, the schedule date/time display was set At 12:00 AM on 1/1/001.

And when I tried tried to edit a scheduled reports I’ve got the following error :

Hopefully the scheduled reports itself were still running fine, only the display was incorrect and an error message when I tried to edit it. I did some search and I found the following links :

http://wmug.co.uk/blogs/aquilaweb/archive/2008/10/14/reporting-error-value-of-1-1-0001-00-00-00-is-not-valid-for-value.aspx

http://qa.social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/eu/operationsmanagerreporting/thread/06d79194-2919-4236-bddf-371c7f1cc022

http://nocentdocent.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/reporting-error-when-a-different-locale-is-used-for-srs-and-console/

http://nocentdocent.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/issue-with-reports-and-non-en-us-locale/

All my servers were in English US format, none of the link above solved my problem. Finally, I found this thread :

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/operationsmanagerreporting/thread/c070e435-862b-4ccd-ab4a-d2202c61aab3

Update:

I opened up a case with Microsoft Support and resolved the issue. Apperantly this is a known issue and the bug will be addressed in CU6. Microsoft was able to give me a hotfix (QFE_MOMEsc_4724.msi) which I applied on all systems that have SCOM Console. I am told that this issue occurs when SCOM 2007 R2 CU5 runs on SQL 2008 R2.

I hope it helps to others that run into same problem.

ZMR 

I contacted my Microsoft Premier Support Contact and they sent me the hotfix. (Reference : Hotfix for MOMEscalation 4724).

This hotfix is simply a new DLL, Microsoft.MOM.UI.Common.dll, that you will have to place in the Operations Manager installation folder on all the machines where you run the Operations Manager Console. When done, just restart the Operations Console, and you will be able to see the Schedule information and edit the jobs without any error message.

As this hotfix is not public, you will have now other choice than contacting the Microsoft Support to get it. I received the confirmation that this hotfix will be included in the SCOM Cumulative Update 6, but we don’t know the release date yet.

Christopher KEYAERT

Orchestrator 2012 : Statistics not updated in Web Console

Hello All,

You may be already experimented this issue with System Center Orchestrator 2012 RC, the statistics available in the web console are never updated and always stay at zero. The two print screens below represent the problem that I had in my lab environment :

This problem is due to a SQL Store procedure that doesn’t start and doesn’t update the statistics in the web console.

To solve that, the very first step is to ensure that the SQL Broker in enable on your SQL Server. Go to you SQL Server and run the following Query :

select is_broker_enabled from sys.databases where name= 'Orchestrator’

If it is not (you get a return value of 0) then you need to enable it by doing the following:

alter database Orchestrator set enable_broker WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE

Now, we’ll check the last execution time of the procedure that is taking care of the statistic update. Execute the follow query :

SELECT
      [m].[Name],
      [m].[IsEnabled],
      [m].[IntervalInSeconds],
      [m].[LastExecutionTime]
FROM [Orchestrator].[Microsoft.SystemCenter.Orchestrator.Maintenance].[MaintenanceTasks] [m]

This will return the following table :

We could see that the LastExcutionTime of the Statistics store procedure is MARCH 15, or this normally procedure has to run every 10 minutes (600 seconds). It’s clear that something is going wrong there.

To start manually this procedure, we have to run the follow query :

EXEC [Microsoft.SystemCenter.Orchestrator.Maintenance].[EnqueueRecurrentTask] @taskName = 'Statistics'

After a few seconds, we must find some data in the following table :

SELECT *
FROM [Orchestrator].[Microsoft.SystemCenter.Orchestrator.Statistics.Internal].[Statistics] 

Running manually the procedure must solve the issue in the majority of the case, but if you still have any statistic  data after running all the SQL queries above, it’s certainly due to your SQL Server that is not working properly.

In fact, it was my case, still no updated statistics. if like me, you are running  your lab SQL server in  a VM on your laptop, VM that you never shutdown /reboot, but always use the PAUSE feature. This could cause some problem with the SQL Store procedures.

How to solve that ? Simply reboot your SQL Server. After the reboot, my statistic updated automatically.

I hope this help you

Thanks to Travis Wright and Chris Sanders for their help on this topic.

Christopher KEYAERT

Orchestrator 2012: how to build your first runbook – Session recording available

Hello all,

The recording of my last week session about “Orchestrator 2012 – How to build your first runbook” is available on TechNet Edge :http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/hh916316

The slide deck is available on Slide Share :

You could also download the Runbooks that I created during the session : DOWNLOAD

Cheers
Christopher

BMC Products Integration Packs for Orchestrator 2012

Dear All,

Kelverion company closely worked with Microsoft for releasing a new set of Orchestrator 2012 Integration packs for the following BMC Products:

• BMC Bladelogic v8.1, 8.2
• BMC Remedy ARS v7.5, 7.6
• BMC Enterprise Event Manager (BEM) v7.4
• BMC Atrium CMDB v7.6.04

The license is free of charge for the current BMC IPs on completion of an end user license form, detailing the number of Orchestrator databases and which BMC products are to be licensed.

The licensing of the Integration Packs is per Orchestrator database i.e. so normally a customer would have at least one license for production and one for development as a minimum.

These free IPs are supplied without warranty or support and you could download it here: http://www.kelverion.com/bmc-download

Downloads are supplied with a 14 day evaluation license but you simply have to send an email to info@kelverion.com to obtain permanent license keys.

More details about the activities available below :

Integration Pack for BMC Atrium CMDB

Supported Versions

• BMC Atrium CMDB 7.6.04 is supported. Future compatibility is dependent on BMC Atrium Core Web Services.  Prior versions to 7.6.04 are not supported.

Activities

The Integration Pack supports the following activities for both CIs and relationships:

• Create Instance
• Delete Instance
• Get Instance
• Monitor Instance
• Update Instance
• Start Reconciliation Engine Job

Integration Pack for BMC Enterprise Event Manager (BEM)

Supported Versions

Starting with BMC Enterprise Event Manager 7.4 with Impact Integration Web Server 7.4 (developed with 7.4.01).  Future compatibility is dependent on changes to Impact Integration Web Server.

BEM Activities:

• Create Event
• Update Event
• Set Event Status
• Get Event
• Monitor Events

Integration Pack for BMC Remedy AR System

Supported versions:

Starting with BMC Remdey AR System 7.5 and 7.6. (developed with Remedy 7.5). Future compatibility is dependent on Remedy Web Service. Version 7.1 or below is not supported.

Activities:

The Integration Pack supports the following activities:

• Create Request
• Update Request
• Get Request
• Monitor Request

Integration Pack for BMC BladeLogic

Supported versions:

Starting with BMC BladeLogic Server Automation 8.1

BladeLogic Activities:

• Create BLPackage from Audit
• Create Deploy Job (BLPackage Deploy Job or Software Deploy Job)
• Run Job  (Audit Job, ACL Push Job, Batch Job, BLPackage Job, Compliance Job, Component Discover Job, File Deploy Job, Software Deploy Job, NSH Script Job, Snapshot Job, Virtual Infrastructure Discovery Job)
• Export Audit Results
• Set Server Property
• Run BLCLI Command

More information on this website : http://www.kelverion.com/

Cheers
Christopher

Slide deck available for the Live Meeting : Orchestrator - How to build your first runbook–

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday afternoon, I did a live meeting about “System Center Orchestrator : How to build your first runbook” at Microsoft Belgium. I would like to thanks the 40 participants to that meeting and the persons who already sent me their feedback.

The recording will be available next week on TechNet Edge, but I already published on SlideShare the session slide deck :

As promised, you could also download the Runbooks that I created during the session : DOWNLOAD

Cheers
Christopher

TechDays content is online

If you missed TechDays 2012 in Belgium (Braine l’Alleud), there is no way to bring you back the whole 10th anniversary experience. That’s the bad news, the good news however is that we go a long way and bring you a recorded video of each of the sessions so you can learn from the best.

From now on, you can browse all the sessions, view them online or download to your favorite media player and download the slides.

We welcomed many top speakers like Scott Guthrie, Brian Keller, Jeff Prosise, … in the developer track and Ward Ralston, Corey Heynes, John Craddock, … in the IT Pro track.

Happy learning and feel free to share your thoughts about TechDays 2012 via #techdaysbe!

Microsoft TechEd Europe

TechEd Europe 2012 (26-29 June, Amsterdam)

TechEd is for technology professionals involved in building, deploying or maintaining IT solutions using Microsoft technologies. TechEd Europe will offer four days of more than 1,000 education opportunities and hands-on training across the full range of Microsoft products and solutions. You will learn in-depth about the latest technology trends and how you can leverage these effectively in your business. TechEd is the forum to gain the expertise, connections, and insights that will help you get the most from your existing IT investments.

TechEd: Where You Get IT All
TechEd offers over 400 breakout sessions spread across 12 tracks featuring diverse technologies at a level of detail unmatched in the industry – from understanding the latest business productivity solutions to diving deeper on Microsoft’s Cloud strategy. TechEd also features over 250 self-paced labs created by product experts, and is an ideal place to pick up new ideas and skills to increase productivity and build better solutions.

Plus TechEd Europe offers an additional day of deep training via the pre-conference seminars happening on Monday, 25 June. These day-long sessions will enhance your learning experience through supplemental in-depth, comprehensive training. Take an accelerated path to the certifications and skills you need to increase your professional appeal and prepare to add new value in the real world, with an extended skill set you can put to use immediately.

Register by 31 March and Save €300: http://europe.msteched.com/Registration

Live Meeting : SC Orchestrator - How to build your first runbook

Hello everyone,

You just installed System Center Orchestrator, Great, but what's next?

On Tuesday, March 20, 2012 2:00 PM (GMT+01:00), I will do a live meeting to present the System Center Orchestrator basics for runbook creation. We will speak about bests practices, how to use out of the box activities, configuring Orchestrator Integration Packs, runbook creation and a lot more.

We will show you how to build your first System Center Orchestrator runbook from scratch.

This is a live meeting and it’s free, to register follow this link : https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032506833&Culture=en-US

Regards
Christopher Keyaert

OpsMgr / SCOM : ADFS 2.0 MP Discovery Issue

Hi Everyone,

One of my customer requested me to implement the Active Directory  Federation Services 2.0 Management Pack on Operations Manager 2007 R2.

Management Pack is available here with the Guide :
http://systemcenter.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/applications/active-directory-federation-services-2-0-adfs-monitoring-management-pack-12884905753

The only pre-requisite of this management pack that I found in the documentation is to enable the IIS 6 Management Compatibility:

After several hours, still no server in the Federation Servers State view, nothing strange in the event viewer:

Hopefully, one colleague of mine, that I would like to thank you, found the solution in the Know Issues on Microsoft TechNet :

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff730220.aspx

In fact, there is a second pre-requisites that is not in the ADFS MP guide, we have to disable IP version 6 (IPV6) on the agent computer that is running AD FS 2.0.

We have first to disable IPv6 in the Local Area Connection Properties :

But we have also to do it in the server registry. To do that, follow the step below :

• Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then click regedit.exe in the Programs list.
• In the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
• In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry subkey:
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters \
• Double-click DisabledComponents to modify the DisabledComponents entry.

Note If the DisabledComponents entry is unavailable, you must create it. To do this, follow these steps:

• In the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.
• Type DisabledComponents, and then press ENTER.
• Double-click DisabledComponents.

And finally, the value of the key:

• Type 0xffffffff to disable all IPv6 components, except the IPv6 loopback interface

More details on disabling IPv6 : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852

You have to do the steps above on all the servers running ADFS 2.0.

Normally, your ADFS 2.0 servers will now shortly be appear in the Operations Manager Console.

Regards
Christopher Keyaert

SharePoint 2010 MP : how to automate the SharePointMP.Config configuration

Dear all,

If you already installed the SharePoint 2010 management pack for Operations Manager 2007, you know that this management pack requires the some extra configuration with a file named SharePointMP.Config

First, I invite you to take a look to the following post to help you to understand how the SharePoint 2010 management pack works :

http://blogs.technet.com/b/berryst/archive/2011/03/25/configuring-scom-r2-management-pack-for-sharepoint-2010-foundation-monitoring.aspx

In fact, It’s quite simple, each time that a server is added to a SharePoint farm, it has to be added to the SharePointMP.Config XML file, like the example below :

and to complete the configuration, the Operations Manager task “Configure SharePoint Management Pack” must be also started from the Operations Manager Console.

Unfortunately, these both actions have to be done manually and each time that a SharePoint server is added to a SharePoint farm…. not really nice…. So let’s try to automate that with PowerShell

First part of the Script, we define the variables :

The script connects to each Central Admin SharePoint server that you defined in the variables, to retrieve the complete servers list of each SharePoint farms.

The script is now building the SharePointMP.Config XML file and will copy it to the %ProgramFiles%\System Center Management Packs\ folder on the RMS.

Last step is to start the “Configure SharePoint Management Pack” task in Operations Manager, like you could do it in the Operations Console.

The following script has some requirements about the service account that it will use to run :

• local admin on all SP2010 Front End and Application servers
• local admin on all SQL boxes that host SharePoint 2010 Databases
• local admin on Operations Manager Root Management server
• Operations Manager Administrator
• dbo for the actual SharePoint databases
• full farm admin rights within SharePoint 2010

Normally, most of this requirements are already meet with the installation of the SharePoint management pack itself.

The script is limited to the use of the default “SharePoint Discovery/Monitoring Account” Operations Manager Run As Account.

To summary, you have to run this script, on the RMS, every time that you added a server into a SharePoint Farm. Tips : Create a schedule task and run it once per day…. no more manual action to do.

Let’s try to run the script manually :

The xml file is built :

The task successfully ran:

The SharePoint 2010 management pack configuration is now completed and fully automated.

The complete script is available here : DOWNLOAD
Use it at your own risk, feel free to modify it and distribute it.

Regards
Christopher Keyaert

Prepare your environment to Operations Manager 2012 – Part III Moving the RMS role

Hi All,

To continue the serie about “Prepare your environment to Operations Manager 2012”, we have now to move the RMS role to a Windows Server 2008 R2 server and remove the Windows Server 2003 server.

Pre-requisites

Resources

I invite you first to read my previous post :
Prepare your environment to Operations Manager 2012 – Part I Actions Plan
Prepare your environment to Operations Manager 2012 – Part II Updating the SQL Server

Adding a new management server

The really first step is to add our brand new Windows Server 2008 R2 server as a management server in our existing Operations Manager Management Group. As this is a quite regular process, I will skip some screens.

First step, we have to install the .Net Framework 3.5.1.

Don’t forget to add your service accounts as Local Administrator of this new server.

Let’s starting the installation of this new management server.

We only have to install the Manager Server and the User Interfaces.

We have to specify our DB server (the new one, running SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1).

Specify the Action Account for this management server.

Specify now the SDK and Config Service Account.

We are new ready for the installation.

Installation done.

Don’t forget to apply the Cumulative Update 5 to this new management server.

CU5 Installed on our new management server.

if we take a look in the console, we could see that our new management server is working well.

Moving the RMS role

As our final goal is to remove the Windows Server 2003 server, we have to promote as RMS our new installed management server.

Pre-requisites

• Make sure that you have a backup of the databases and all servers.
  
• Backup the Key from the RMS by using SecureStorageBackup.exe and copy it to the MS that you want to promote.
  
  
• Be sure to have all the services accounts passwords available.
  
• Be sure that no agent, no Linux servers, no website, no network devices that are currently monitored by the RMS.
  
• Run the command prompt as Administrator

To promote a management server to a root management server role

• On the management server that you want to promote, copy the ManagementServerConfigTool.exe tool from the SupportTools folder of the installation media to the installation folder (by default, C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007), called installdir in this example.
  
• Open a command prompt window using the Run as Administrator option, and then change the folder to the installdir folder.
  
• Type the following command:
  SecureStorageBackup.exe Restore < filename >
  
  
• Provide the password as required.
  
• On the management server, open a command prompt window using the Run as Administrator option, and then type the following command:
  ManagementServerConfigTool.exe PromoteRMS
  

To configure the reporting server with the name of the new root management server

• Log on to the reporting server.
  
• Navigate to the installation folder of Reporting Services for example, C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS10_50.MSSQLSERVER\Reporting Services\ReportServer 
  
• Open the rsreportserver.config file in Notepad, and locate the two instances of <ServerName>ServerName</ServerName>, where ServerName is the name of the original root management server. Change ServerName to be the name of the new root management server.
  
  
  
• Save the file, and then close Notepad.
  
• Open the registry and locate the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\Reporting.
  
• Change the DefaultSDKServiceMachine value to be the name of the new root management server.

If we start the console, connect it to the new RMS, we could see that the RMS role has been well moved.

Removing the Windows 2003 Server

As we now have our brand new RMS running on Windows Server 2008 R2, the last thing that we have to do is to uninstall Operations Manager 2007 R2 from the Windows Server 2003 server.

Go to the Windows Server 2003, Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and remove Operations Manager 2007.

The last step is to remove the server from the Operations Manager Console, right click on it and chose delete.

Click on YES.

Our Operations Manager Group is finally compliant for the upgrade to Operations Manager 2012. I will cover this process step by step into a next post.

Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any question.

Regards
Christopher Keyaert

Prepare your environment to Operations Manager 2012 – Part II Updating the SQL Server

Hi All,

As promise, the second part of this series will show you to how to update your Operations Manager 2007 R2 infrastructure from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Pre-requisites

Resources

I invite you first to read my previous post : Prepare your environment to Operations Manager 2012 – Part I Actions Plan

Marnix Wolf, an Operations Manager MVP, already posted a series about the same subject, and I really advise you to read it :

Preparing for migrating to OM12: Moving from SQL 2005 to SQL 2008 – Part I: Along came a theory
Preparing for migrating to OM12: Moving from SQL 2005 to SQL 2008 – Part II: Phase I – The Preparations
Preparing for migrating to OM12: Moving from SQL 2005 to SQL 2008 – Part III: Phase II – The Migration

Infrastructure

Below, the pre-requisites from a infrastructure point of view :

• Your current SCOM 2007 R2 Infrastructure must be at least Cumulative Update 4 (CU4) Level, but my personal advice it’s to update it first to the last Cumulative Update, the CU5.
• A brand new server running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.
• .Net Framework 3.5.1 role installed.
• Microsoft SQL Server R2 2008 source +  SP1 Package.
• Add you SQL Service Account to the local administrator group of the new server.
• Backup all your SCOM 2007 R2 Infrastructure.

SQL Server 2008 R2 installation

let’s starting

We’re starting a new SQL installation

Select SQL Server Feature Installation

Check at least the check boxes below

Just click on next.

Use the default instance, or create a new one, depending of your environment.

Review the information and click on next.

Configure your Run As Account for the SQL Server.

In the Collation Tab, select SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS and click next.

Specify the SQL Admins for your new SQL Server.

Select Install the Native Mode Default Configuration and click Next.

Just review the information and click on Next.

Just review the information and click on Next.

Just review the information and click on Install.

Installation is in progress.

Installation Completed Successfully.

It’s now time to install the SP1, run the SQLServer2008R2SP1-KB2528583-x64-ENU.exe that you have previously downloaded on Microsoft Website.

Accept the license terms and click next.

Review the information and click on next.

Review the information and click on next.

Review the information and click on update.

Update is in progress.

SP1 has been successfully installed.

Report Server Uninstallation

You must back up any custom reports that were authored outside of Operations Manager 2007. For more information about this, see Moving the Report Server Databases to Another Computer in the SQL Server 2008 Books Online (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=151513).

Go to your current SCOM reporting Server, Add and Remove Programs menu and uninstall the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Reporting Server.

Uninstallation in progress.

SQL Server 2005 : Backup the DBs

Go on your SQL Server 2005, start the SQL Management Studio, select OperationsManagerDB, Tasks, Backup.

Select the backup location for your Operations DB.

In the options, check Verify backup when finished and click on OK.

The backup of the Operations Manager DB completed successfully.

Do exactly the same operations than above for the Data Warehouse DB.

We’ve got now, two DB Backup files.

SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 : Restoring the DBs

It’s now time to go on your brand new SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 server to restore the two databases.

Start the Sql Management Studio and choose Restore Database.

Select restore from Device and add the backup file of your OperationsManager DB and click OK

Check the Restore box next your DB name.

In the Destination for restore, you are now able to specify the OperationsManager DB.

Review all the information, and click on OK.

Do exactly the same for the Data Warehouse DB.

Both DBs are now available.

Now, we have to authorize the SCOM service accounts to connect to these newly restored DBs. For that simply go Sql Management Studio, Security Logins and do a right click, chose new login.

In the User Mapping part, we have to copy exactly the same rights that we have on the SQL Server 2005.

On the SQL Server 2005 :

Replicate the exact same configuration, for each Maps to the SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1.

If you are using several account to connect to the different Database, apply the same than what we did above for all your accounts. For my lab environment, I just have a second account.

We have to Enable the CLR on the Operations Manager DB on the SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 server. Just copy past the query below.

Click on Execute and check the result.

Now, in the OperationsDB, search for the table dba.MT_ManagementGroup.

Select Edit Top 200 Rows.

Change the SQLServerName_6B1D1BE8_EBB4_B425_08DC_2385C5930B04 value from your SQL Server 2005 server name to the SQL Server 2008 server name.

Go on your OperationsManagerDW Db, select the table dbo.MemberDatabase.

Select Edit Top 200 Rows.

Change the ServerName value from your SQL Server 2005 name to the SQL Server 2008 name.

Enable the SQL Broker, for that, take a look to Alexander's post : http://scug.be/blogs/scom/archive/2008/11/22/the-sql-server-service-broker-for-the-current-opsmgr-database-is-not-enabled.aspx

RMS & MS : Changing the link to the DB server

We now have to change the SQL server reference on the RMS server and every MS to point to the new SQL Server. For that, stop the three System Center Services.

Launch the RegEdit and look for the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\Setup

We have to change the DatabaseServerName value to point to our new SQL Server.

Start the 3 Operations Manager Services on the RMS and the System Center Management service on the MS. 

In the Event Logs, you must see these events.

Last but not least, the reporting server.

Microsoft released a KB for running Operations Manager 2007 R2 on SQL Server 2008 R2 KB245714. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2425714

Open Computer Management, in the Computer Management MMC snap-in, expand System Tools, expand Local Users and Groups, and then click Groups.

Locate the following group:
SQLServerReportServerUser$<hostname>$MSRS10_50.<SQLInstanceName>

Rename the group to the following by removing "_50" from the group name:
SQLServerReportServerUser$<hostname>$MSRS10.<SQLInstanceName>

Install System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Reporting.






Select only the Reporting Server Part.


Specify the name of you RMS server.


Specify the name of your new SQL Server.


Review the information and click on Next.


Click on Next.


Click on Next.


Click on Install.


Installation in progress.


Installation done.

The Reporting is Back in SCOM Console.

After you install System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Reporting, rename SQLServerReportServerUser$<hostname>$MSSRS10.<SQLInstanceName>


back to original name SQLServerReportServerUser$<hostname>$MSSRS10_50.<SQLInstanceName>

We could now remove the SQL Server 2005 and enjoy our new SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1.

I hope this post will help you to prepare your environment to be ready for SCOM2012. The next post of this series will show you how to migrate your RMS role from Windows Server 2003 SP2 to Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Christopher Keyaert – Ops Mgr MVP

Techdays 2012 Belgium : My agenda

Hi,

The TechDays 2012 Belgium will happen between the FEB 14 and FEB 16 in Belgium at KinePolis Imagibraine. During these 3 days, a lot of IT Pro sessions will be delivered, the complete list is available http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/Home.aspx

My Agenda for the TechDays :

Monitoring and Operating a Private Cloud with System Center 2012
Speaker : Adam Hall | Level : 300
Date : 14 February 2012 | Timeslot : 10:45 - 12:00
Themes : Cloud, Virtualization, ITPRO, Level 300, Hyper-V, System Center, Windows Server 2008 R2
Type : IT Pro
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/SessionDetail.aspx?sessionId=232

Configuring and Deploying a Private Cloud with System Center 2012
Speaker : Adam Hall | Level : 300
Date : 14 February 2012 | Timeslot : 13:00 - 14:15
Themes : Cloud, Virtualization, Windows Server 2008 R2, System Center, ITPRO, Level 300, Hyper-V
Type : IT Pro
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/SessionDetail.aspx?sessionId=231

The Private Cloud, Principles, Patterns and Concepts
Speaker : Tom Shinder | Level : 300
Date : 15 February 2012 | Timeslot : 13:00 - 14:15
Themes : Cloud, Level 300, ITPRO, Virtualization
Type : IT Pro
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/SessionDetail.aspx?sessionId=252

Private Cloud Day Session 1: Building your Private Cloud Infrastructure
Speaker : Kurt Roggen | Level : 300
Date : 16 February 2012 | Timeslot : 09:00 - 10:15
Themes : Deep Dive Post-conference, Cloud Computing, Virtualization
Type : IT Pro
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/SessionDetail.aspx?sessionId=284

Private Cloud Day Session 2: Creating & Configure your Private Cloud
Speaker : Kurt Roggen | Level : 300
Date : 16 February 2012 | Timeslot : 10:45 - 12:00
Themes : Cloud, Deep Dive Post-conference
Type : IT Pro
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/SessionDetail.aspx?sessionId=285

Private Cloud Day Session 3: Monitor & Operate your Private Cloud
Speaker : Mike Resseler | Level : 300
Date : 16 February 2012 | Timeslot : 13:00 - 14:15
Themes : Cloud, Deep Dive Post-conference, ITPRO
Type : IT Pro
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/SessionDetail.aspx?sessionId=256

Private Cloud Day Session 4: Automating & Delivering Services in your Private Cloud
Speaker : Mike Resseler Kurt Roggen | Level : 300
Date : 16 February 2012 | Timeslot : 14:30 - 15:45
Themes : Cloud, Virtualization, Level 300, ITPRO, Deep Dive Post-conference
Type : IT Pro
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/SessionDetail.aspx?sessionId=255

Private Cloud Day Session 5: A Solution for Private Cloud Security
Speaker : Tom Shinder | Level : 300
Date : 16 February 2012 | Timeslot : 16:15 - 17:30
Themes : Cloud, Virtualization, Deep Dive Post-conference, ITPRO, Level 300
Type : IT Pro
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/SessionDetail.aspx?sessionId=253

Christopher Keyaert – Ops Mgr MVP

Prepare your environment to Operations Manager 2012 – Part I Actions Plan

Hi all,

I will start this new series of posts about Operations Manager 2012 by explaining how to prepare your SCOM2007 environment to move to SCOM2012. The very first step to do before updating OM itself is to update the existing environment configuration, OS and DB, to be compliant with the OM2012 requirements.

Hopefully for us, you will see that there is several OS and DB configurations supported by bot Operations Manager releases, OM2007 and OM2012.

I invite you to take a look to the information available on Microsoft TechNet :

Operations Manager 2007 R2 Supported Configurations
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb309428.aspx

Operations Manager 2012 Supported Configurations
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh205990.aspx

I did a summary of he OS and DB configurations information in the tables below :

Supported Configuration for OM2007 and OM2012

Management Server supported configuration :

DB Server supported configuration :

As you can see, several configurations are supported by OM2007 and OM2012.

The actions plan – Theory Part

In this posts series, we will work on a really small SCOM 2007 R2 infrastructure. We just have, one DB server and one Root Management Server. Concerning the configuration, both are running Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 X64 and the Operations Manager DBs are hosted on SQL Server 2005 SP3.

As we could conclude from the tables above, our current Operations Manager 2007 infrastructure is not eligible for Operations Manager 2012. We have to update the Operating Systems on both servers and the SQL Server version must be also updated.

Updating the DB server

As we have to move from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1, we will install a brand new server which will run Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1.

We will move the Operations Manager 2007 DBs from the old SQL Server 2005 to the new SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1. Don’t worry  too much about this part, the second post of this series will explain in detail how to move the Operations Manager DBs from SQL 2005 to SQL 2008.

Once done, we will remove the old SQL Server from our infrastruture.

Updating the RMS server

Now that our Operations Manager is running on the new SQL Server 2008, we will update the RMS. Our Root Management Server is currently running Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 X64. To be compliant to SCOM2012, we will have to update it to Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

For doing this update, we will first install a brand new server running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and install it as a new Management Server in our current SCOM 2007 R2 infrastructure.

Once done, we have to promote our brand new Management Server as Root Management Server of our OM infrastructure. The old RMS will be retrograded to a Management Server role.

and finally, we will remove the Management Server which is running Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 X64.

We have now an environment eligible to Operations Manager 2012.

Conclusion

As we noticed, there is several step to accomplish. This first post was the actions plan, the theory, in my next posts, we will do it in practice.

Stay tune for the next post, in which I will explain in detail how to move the Operations Manager DBs from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Resources

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 download
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/bb738014.aspx

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2012 RC download
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27974

Operations Manager TechNet Forums
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/systemcenteroperationsmanager

Christopher Keyaert – Ops Mgr MVP

SCOM / OpsMGr : What does the Root Management Server Emulator (RMSE) actually do

Cameron Fuller, a well know Ops Mgr MVP, wrote a really good post about What does the Root Management Server Emulator actually do.

His summary :

The RMS Emulator only provides backward compatibility to management pack using things which target the ‘Root Management Server’ class instance (Target=”SC!Microsoft.SystemCenter.RootManagementServer). The RMS emulator is hosted on a management server and as such it does a lot of activities that aren’t specific to the RMSE role. Everything else the RMS used to be responsible for is managed by the “All Management Servers Resource Pool”, the “Notifications Resource Pool” and the “AD Assignment Resource Pool”.

I really invite you to read the complete story available : HERE

Christopher

SCOM 2012 : How to move RMS Emulator role

Hi,

As you probably know, in SCOM 2012, there is no RMS role anymore. For keeping backward compatibility with some management packs that required the RMS role, Microsoft created the RMS Emulator role.

By default this role is hosted on the first management server that you installed.

As you can see, SCOM2012.vnext.be server is hosting the RMS Emulator role. This is confirmed by the following PowerShell command : GET-SCOMRMSEmulator command-let.

Now, if you want to move this role to another, simply execute the command : Get-SCOMManagementServer -Name "NewServerThatWillHostRMSEmulatorRole" | Set-SCOMRMSEmulator

You could confirm the move of the RMS Emulator role by retyping the command : GET-SCOMRMSEmulator

Or by looking on in the SCOM Console :

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

MVP Microsoft 2012 !!!

Two days ago, I received the Microsoft MVP award for the first time. I’m really happy and proud of this status. I will continue to do my best for sharing my knowledge with the System Center Community.

I would like to thank you all my readers, the persons who follow me on tweeter, SCUG.be Team, Microsoft and of course the System Center Community.

Thank you
Christopher

SCOM 2007 : The error is 0x80FF0066(0x80FF0066).

Hi Guys,

First day back to work after the Xmas holidays and first error of the year
Below 3 events that I found on a customer server, that was not reporting to Operations Manager anymore.

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    HealthService
Event Category:    Health Service
Event ID:    1220
Date:        1/3/2012
Time:        4:22:36 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    xxxx
Description:
Received configuration cannot be processed. Management group "xxxx". The error is 0x80FF0066(0x80FF0066).

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    HealthService
Event Category:    Health Service
Event ID:    7022
Date:        1/3/2012
Time:        4:22:35 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    xxxx
Description:
The Health Service has downloaded secure configuration for management group xxxx, and processing the configuration failed with error code 0x80FF0066(0x80FF0066).

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Event Type:    Warning
Event Source:    HealthService
Event Category:    Health Service
Event ID:    7004
Date:        1/3/2012
Time:        4:22:35 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    xxxx
Description:
The Health Service received a secure message from management group xxxx which was encrypted using the wrong public key.  This message has been discarded and the public key will be re-published.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

The root cause is a missing registry key on the server. Take a look to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HealthService\Parameters\Management Groups\UCBOM2007\SSDB\References

On the non working server :

On a working server :

When you compare the both servers, you notice that the following registry key is missing :

Just import the missing registry key from the working server to the non working server, and after a few seconds, the event below will appear, problem fixed

Event Type:    Information
Event Source:    OpsMgr Connector
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    21025
Date:        1/3/2012
Time:        4:28:37 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    xxxx
Description:
OpsMgr has received new configuration for management group xxxx from the Configuration Service.  The new state cookie is "24 58 21 8C 7C D4 70 68 B2 87 1A 52 EA BE 7F 66 43 10 FC A7 "

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

If you want more information about this issue, I invite you to read the two followings posts :

http://thoughtsonopsmgr.blogspot.com/2009/02/eventid-7024.html
http://www.systemcentercentral.com/tabid/60/indexId/34058/tag/Forums+Operations_Manager/Default.aspx#vindex56241

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

SCCM 2007 : Get Service Window with PowerShell / WMI

Hi,

Just a quick post to show you how to retrieve SCCM Client Service Window directly from a PowerShell script. The script is really simple, it queries the class CCM_ServiceWindow in the namespace "root\CCM\policy\machine\actualconfig". This script must be executed directly on a SCCM Client computer.

Script :

Output :

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

TechDays 2012: 80% of agenda online and 1 more week to benefit from 15% discount

Just 1 more week to benefit from a 15% discount on your ticket for TechDays 2012: the Early Bird pricing ends on December 21. Registrations are coming in strong, so be sure to secure your spot before we sell out!

Top Speakers

Developer Track	Alex Turner	Brian Keller	Jeff Prosise
IT Pro Track	Corey Hynes	John Craddock	Adam Hall

We are happy to confirm speakers like:

- In the Developer track: Alex Turner, Brian Keller, Bart De Smet, Gill Cleeren, Jeff Prosise, Maarten Balliauw, Matt Milner, Ben Riga, Steve Sanderson, Nikhil Kothari, Rob Miles, Tarek Madkour, Wade Wegner

- In the IT Pro track: John Craddock, Kurt Roggen, Ilse Van Criekinge, Adam Hall, Corey Hynes, Kim Oppalfens, Mike Resseler, Dan Holme 

International speakers are teamed up with our local experts to give you a top content mix.

TechDays program: 80% of agenda is finalized

This year promises to bring a lot of new content from Microsoft. Looking at the next versions of tooling, languages, OS and management you know this is not a standard TechDays event. Our content is split into current and upcoming technology.

Deep Dives (February 16)

Peter Himschoot and Jurgen Postelmans (U2U) will be delivering a full day .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio (Dev11) Futures for Web Development Deep Dive covering all the latest and greatest in .NET 4.5, focusing on Web Development with ASP.NET, HTML5 and WCF.

Rhonda Layfield will be delivering a full day deep dive covering all the different tools and techniques to deploy Windows 7, she will also cover the upcoming Windows OS deployment tools.

Mike Resseler & Tom Shinder will deliver a full day covering private cloud topics, including Management and Operations of your private cloud infrastructure.

About TechDays 2012

Join our 10^th anniversary edition in a new location (Kinepolis Imagibraine - Braine l'Alleud) and learn about:
• Windows & Internet Explorer
• Windows Server 8 & Hyper-V
• Windows Phone 7 development
• System Center 2012 & Windows Intune
• Tooling and languages with Visual Studio, C# and VB Futures
• Next generation apps
• Cloud development with Windows Azure Platform
• Web development with HTML5, JavaScript and ASP.NET
• ...

> REGISTER NOW

Hope to see you at the TechDays 2012!

Questions? Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook or simply via e-mail.

TechDays 2012 : Sessions and Speakers

Celebrate 10 years of Microsoft TechDays in Belgium! Year after year thousands of technology professionals come together to network with peers and experts, while diving deep into Microsoft technologies and learning about the latest products and solutions. TechDays is one of the premier technical events in Belgium & Luxembourg and not to be missed!

Some SCUG members will deliver great sessions during this event, I hope to see you there

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

System Center Orchestrator 2012 Release Candidate has been published

Hi Guys,

Microsoft just published the Release Candidate of System Center Orchestrator 2012. You could download it at the following address : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27842

What’s new ?

System Center Orchestrator 2012 Release Candidate

As part of the release candidate Microsoft has delivered the following features:

• Install Experience
  • Improved prerequisite checks
  • Implementation of Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP), error reporting and interface with Microsoft Update
  • Allow user to log on as a service and select different service accounts for each service
  • Design Improvements( Error handling, port # for DB, increased logging, enabling log on as a service automatically)
  • UI Consistency between other System Center components
  • Time bomb(easy conversion from EVAL to licensed SKU)
• Security improvements
  • Encryption of DB connection
  • Encryption/decryption of passwords
• Globalization
  • Unicode capable
  • Convert SSH to Unicode
• Web service
  • Versioning
• Orchestration Console
  • Browse events
  • View events
  • UI Updates
• Bug fixes across all product features

System Center Orchestrator 2012 Integration Toolkit

• Rebranding, security enhancements, new generic activity icons
• Wizards can upgrade 6.3 activities and IPs to be compatible with Orchestrator
• Fixes issues with upgrading IPs multiple times
• Fixes issues with DLL / dependent file conflicts among different IPs

System Center Orchestrator 2012 Release Candidate Integration Packs

• System Center 2007 Operations Manager
• System Center 2010 Service Manager
• System Center 2008 Virtual Machine Manager
• System Center 2010 Data Protection Manager
• System Center 2007 Configuration Manager

Stay stunned for a future complete review of this new release  

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Resources :
Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 RC is available as public RC at the Microsoft Download Center : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27842

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Team Blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/scorch/

TechNet Forums for System Center Orchestrator : http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/systemcenterorchestrator

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

SCOM2007 : New Server OS MP, version 6.0.6957.0 has some bad bugs

Hi All,

As you probably already noticed, Microsoft has released some days ago the new New Base OS MP 6.0.6957.0.

This management pack adds a lot of new cool functionalities that Kevin Holman explained on his blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2011/09/30/opsmgr-new-base-os-mp-6-0-6956-0-adds-cluster-shared-volume-monitoring-bpa-and-many-changes.aspx

Now after several days, we’re starting to notice that this new management pack has also some “bugs” :

1: Report execution might fail because of lacking proper security settings on a Stored Procedure;
2: Importing the MP might fail when one has many overrides in place for diskspace. All because of a spelling error;
3: Knowledge is out of date for the new default values in the free space monitors;
4: The BPA monitors can be noisy for Server 2008R2 systems;
5: The “performance by utilization” report section dealing with Logical Disk % Idle time is upside down: the lowest idle time values are on top (100% Idle time is the lowest) and the highest idle time (anything close to 10% or even less) are on the bottom.
6: Impossible to deploy the new reports on SQL2005

Marnix Wolf and Bob Cornelissen started to report these bugs on their own blogs :

http://thoughtsonopsmgr.blogspot.com/2011/10/more-than-one-lets-ask-for-new-improved.html
http://www.bictt.com/blogs/bictt.php/2011/10/04/asking-for-a-quick-fix

Marnix also took the really good initiative to open a bug report on connect :

If you also noticed these bugs, please go to the link below and share your experience :

https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgr/feedback/details/692944/new-server-os-mp-version-6-0-6956-0-has-some-bad-bugs

This is not a flame or something like that, just an initiative to get a fixed and working MP very soon with all the great new stuff that was added and without at least most of the issues!

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

System Center Orchestrator 2012 : notes from the field – Sessions Online

Hi Guys,

Last week, with my friend Kurt Van Hoecke (SCSM Expert), we delivered two sessions at Microsoft Belgium on System Center Orchestrator 2012. These sessions have been recorded and are now available online on Technet.

System Center Orchestrator 2012: An Overview by Kurt Van Hoecke.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/video/system-center-orchestrator-2012-an-overview

System Center Orchestrator 2012: Migration Plan by Christopher Keyaert.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/video/system-center-orchestrator-2012-migration-plan

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Resources :
Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 beta is available as public beta at the Microsoft Download Center : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26503

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Team Blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/scorch/

TechNet Forums for System Center Cross Platform and Interoperability :http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/scinterop

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

SCOM2007 : Performance Degradation / Maintenance Mode Scheduling Tool

Hi Everyone,

Last week, I’ve been called by one of my customer, who told me that they saw a huge performance degradation of their SCOM2007 R2 environment.

This customer has a quite big infrastructure, around 2200 servers, using Nworks MP, NetApp MP, Oracle Enterprise Manager connector, Opalis 6.3, Scheduling maintenance mode ….. This environment was working well since a long time and no major modification has been done so far.

The symptoms :

• Taking more 10 min for connecting to the console.
• Console navigation extremely slow or not responding.
• High CPU usage on the RMS.
• Very high CPU usage on the DB Cluster.
• Connection lost time to time to the DBs

After we checked everything we could, it was time to call the Microsoft Premier Support. After several days of investigation with them, we didn’t identity clearly the root cause. so, It was time to turn off one by one each connectors, each third party software that were connecting to Operations Manager.

It took time but we finally found which application was causing our nightmare since several days…. it was the Maintenance Mode Scheduling Tool.

This tool has been released part of the Administration Resource Kit for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 published by Operations Manager Product Team some months ago. More information available here : http://blogs.technet.com/b/jimmyharper/archive/2011/07/14/maintenance-mode-scheduling-tool.aspx

This is really an excellent tool that provide you an user interface for scheduling maintenance mode of your servers. My customer was using it a lot for disabling the monitoring during batch processing, planned reboot and so on.

Since we turned it off by disabling the rule Maintenance Mode Workflow, the Operations Manager infrastructure went back to business. So I continued to investigate on why this tools was causing all our troubles and I finally found this post : http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2011/06/21/schedule-maintenance-mode-reskit-tool-info.aspx

Best Practices:

• Do not go beyond 20 Jobs scheduled.  Anything over this will start to place too much load on your Root Management Server
• Do not schedule more then 20 items in one Job.  If you need to go over this please create a group and target this.  Note: The MP has a bug that only limits you to select up to six objects.  I have attached an updated MP that corrects this issue below.
• When scheduling a group make sure to select system.group then select the group.  If you select the group itself the tool lists the individual group membership.

My customer had more than 40 Jobs scheduled…. so we were clearly not respecting the best practice and that was explaining why our performance degradation came slowly day per day.

Currently, the only solution that we have for scheduling maintenance mode without using that’s tool is to come back to a PowerShell script that we will run from a windows schedule task.

Resources :
System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Evaluation : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/systemcenter/om/bb498233

Technet Forums : http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/systemcenteroperationsmanager

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

System Center Opalis Integration Server 6.3 Unleashed book – Available

Hi everyone,

Just a little post for telling you that the System Center Opalis Integration Server 6.3 Unleashed book is now in stock at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/System-Center-Opalis-Integration-Unleashed/dp/0672335611/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315594827&sr=8-1

I already received my copy, do you have yours ?

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

TechNet Virtual Labs: System Center Opalis

Step into the System Center Virtual Labs for Free

It's simple: no complex setup or installation is required to try out System Center running in the full-featured TechNet Virtual Lab. You get a downloadable manual and a 90-minute block of time for each module. You can sign up for additional 90-minute blocks any time.

• TechNet Virtual Lab: Opalis: Building Advanced Policies
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Opalis: Building Error Handling into Policies
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Opalis: Controlling Policy Execution with Advanced Functions
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Opalis: Creating Basic Policies with Foundation Objects
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Opalis: Creating Your Own Integration Pack with the QIK
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Opalis: Incorporating Advanced Logic into Your Policies
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Introduction to Opalis

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

Microsoft Community Contributor Award

Hello Microsoft Community,

I’m proud to tell you that I just received a Microsoft Community Contributor 2011 Award for my contribution to the Microsoft Online Community through Technet Forums, vNext.be and Scug.be  

Thank you !

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

System Center Orchestrator notes from the field

Hi Everyone,

Kurt Vanhoucke and myself will present two sessions about System Center Orchestrator 2012.

Event Details

Come and join us for our first event after the hot summer months. During this event we will discuss the new System Center Orchestrator, what has changed, new integration packs and also how to migrate from Opalis 6.3 to SCORCH.

Agenda

Thursday, September 29, 2011 from 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM (GMT+0100)

Location

Microsoft Belgium
Leonardo Da Vincilaan 3
Zaventem
Belgium

or Online via LiveMeeting (Lync)

Registration

Go to the registration website.

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

Best of MMS 2011 - Introduction to Opalis and a Sneak Peek at System Center Orchestrator

Get a sneak peak preview of System Center Orchestrator and see what Opalis can do in your environment today.

By combining the power of the system center suite, we will demonstrate an entire workflow automated through Opalis. This will provide the attendees a view of the Opalis solution and how to implement runbook solutions with or without other System Center Products.

Watch the video : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/introduction-to-opalis-and-a-sneak-peek-at-system-center-orchestrator

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Resources :
Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 beta is available as public beta at the Microsoft Download Center : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26503

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Team Blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/scorch/

TechNet Forums for System Center Cross Platform and Interoperability :http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/scinterop

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

System Center Orchestrator 2012 : Activate the Audit Trail

The Audit Trail is a collection of text file logs that contain information about the interaction of a Runbook with external tools and systems. This provides a quick method to identify what and who made changes for audit purposes.

How to activate/deactivate the Audit Trail:

• Open a command prompt with the Run as administrator privilege.
  
  
• and go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft System Center\Orchestrator 2012\Opalis Integration Server\Management Service
   
  
• To activate the Audit Trail: atlc /enable
  
  
• To deactivate the Audit Trail: atlc /disable
   

Where are the audit files ?

In the folder : C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft System Center\Orchestrator 2012\Opalis Integration Server\Management Service\Audit

The file contains information about the date and time at which the policy was launched, the user name and domain that launched the policy, the name of the computer where the policy ran, and the name of the policy that was launched.

In the folder : C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft System Center\Orchestrator 2012\Opalis Integration Server\Action Server\Audit

The file contains information about the date and time at which the activity ran, the name of the action server it ran on, the ID of the Policy Module that ran it, and the Object XML.

For having a better view, I advise your to copy/paste the output into a XML indenter tool (Example : http://xmlindent.com/).

Depending on how many policies you run and how many objects those policies contain, the Audit Trail may consume a large amount of disk space on the computer that runs the management server and action server. (When a file reaches 200 megabytes in size, a new file is created) Two solutions, active it only when needed and cleaned the files after, or create a little Runbook for archiving these files to another location.

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Resources :
Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 beta is available as public beta at the Microsoft Download Center : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26503

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Team Blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/scorch/

TechNet Forums for System Center Cross Platform and Interoperability :http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/scinterop

TechNet Library – Audit Trail : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg464925.aspx

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

Best of MMS 2011 - Operations Manager 2012: Overview, Setup and Configuration

This session will provide you with an overview of the capabilities in OpsMgr 2012. With Operations Manager 2012 public beta, this session will get you started by explaining the new OpsMgr 2012 configuration – without an RMS!! We'll also look at configuring high availability and pooling of management servers, as well as other new concepts to be sure that you are ready to get the most out of the upcoming beta.

Watch the Video : Operations Manager 2012: Overview, Setup and Configuration

Resources :
System Center Operations Manager 2012 Beta : Installation step by step
System Center Operations Manager 2012 Beta : Available for download

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

System Center Orchestrator 2012 : Copy Folder activity

Hi All,

As you probably notice, in the default activities available with Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Beta, there is no Copy Folder activity.

Someone asked why during one of the Community Evaluation Program meetings and the answer was quite simple : “RoboCopy could easily take care of this task”. Here we go, I will show you how to simply use Robocopy in a System Center Orchestrator 2012 Runbook.

Today scenario will be a content copy of the folder C:\SCO\FolderSource (including files / sub-folders)

into another folder C:\SCO\FolderDestination.

For that we will use the command Robocopy and two default Orchestrator activities, the Initialize Data and the Run Program.

Once done, we will create two new variables, one for our Source folder and the other for our Destination Folder.

Back to our Runbook, we could go directly in the properties of the Run Command activity.

• Mode : we choose Command execution.
• Details > Computer : I chose to run the command by the Orchestrator server, so right click in the Computer Field, choose Returned Data, check the box Show common Returned Data and select Runbook Server Name.
  
• Details > Command : Robocopy is built-in in Windows 2008, so we could call it directly. If you are running Windows Server 2003, you will have to download it and to specify the path in the command field.

After calling robocopy, we specify the two variables (FolderSource and FolderDestination) that we defined earlier, and finally we specify the parameters : /E /COPYALL /TS /FP

All the details about the parameters could be found here : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733145(WS.10).aspx

Our Copy Folder Runbook is now ready to run. Just press on the Run button and check the log history :

A little look in our destination folder, we could see that all the content has been well copied.

Of course this is a really simple activity, now you could re-use it in any of your existing Runbooks.

This Runbook is available here : DOWNLOAD

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Resources :
Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 beta is available as public beta at the Microsoft Download Center : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26503

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Team Blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/scorch/

TechNet Forums for System Center Cross Platform and Interoperability :http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/scinterop

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

System Center Operations Manager 2012 Beta : Installation step by step

As you are already aware, System Center Operations Manager 2012 Beta is now available for public download. The download link is available in my previous post : System Center Operations Manager 2012 Beta : Available for download

Once the file downloaded, you have to uncompressed it and let takes a look to the SCOM2012 installer.

Here the first screen of the new System Center Operations Manager 2012 installer.

So let’s go, click on install and we have now the license agreement.

In the following screen, you could choose which components you want to install. In my lab, I’m using a separate SQL Server which is also hosting the SQL Reporting service role. So I will uncheck the box for the Reporting Server component for the moment and we will install it later in this post, directly on the SQL server.

If you keep the box checked without having the Sql Reporting service installed on your current computer, you will be block later in the setup process.

So, we continue the setup process without the Reporting Server component. Here we just have to choose the Installation folder.

The new prerequisites checker is now in progress.

And the result. In my lab, two blocking prerequisites.

First one, I have to install the Report Viewer Controls. This is available as free download at the following url : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=3841

The second one is the IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility role missing.

Go the Server Manager, add role and now check the IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility.

We recheck the prerequisites, and we just still have two warnings. As I’m using Virtual Machines in a lab environment, we could ignore it and continue the setup process.

Totally new environment, so we create a new management group.

We are now at the SQL part of the setup, I specified my SQL 2008 R2 server name and the setup directly detects that the SQL Server Full-Text-Search is not installed on it.

Go to the SQL Server and run the SQL installer.

In the setup, we just have to add a component to an existing instance and we check the Full-Text-Search component.

Go back to our SCOM2012 installation, the setup is now ok with the configuration of the Operational database and to let us continue.

Now, the parameters for the Warehouse database.

For the web console, we choose the Default Web Site :

Choose your authentication mode for the web console. As it’s for internal use only, the Mixed Authentication is the one that we have to choose.

The credentials part is one of the most interesting and important of the setup. I decided to use one dedicated account as Server Action Account. This account will be use for agent deployment, tasks, …. and a second account for reading and writing into the databases.

We have to create two news users domain.

Adding them as local admin of our future SCOM2012 management server and also as local Admin of the SQL Server.

Now, there is a part on which I’m not really sure. For installing the DB, is the setup will use my current credentials ? Or is the setup will use the service account that we provided. (I will update the post when I ‘ll receive the answer )

In doubt, we go to the SQL server credentials and we add the SCOM2012_DB account as SysAdmin. Like this, the setup process will be able to create the DBs and assign it the rights.

Go back to the SCOM Installation, We just have to provide the credentials of the two accounts that we created.

My lab VMs don’t have internet access, so I’m not able to participate to the Customer Experience Improvement Program, but if you could, please do it.

SCOM2012 seems to be part now of the Microsoft Update program. Option that I will test when I will have a lab with internet access.

The installation Summary where we could review all the information we provided.

Installation in progress……

Woua, setup completed

I opened the new SCOM2012 console… and first surprise…. I’ve got already some alerts

So, It’s seems that the Action Account that we provided during needs to have Read/Write to the WareHouse Db ? What for ? As we already provided a separate service account for the DBs access. Personally, I think that this is a little bug of this first beta release, I will retrieve it to the Microsoft Connect Site.

Ok, but how to solve this ? Simply go to the SQL server, in the credentials part. We open the properties of the Action Account (SCOM2012_AA) and in the User Mapping part, we set the same rights than the SCOM2012_DB account has on the OperationsManagerDW database.

As we already are in the SQL Studio, we could also remove the SysAdmin right that we granted to the SCOM2012_DB account during the setup process. This is not needed anymore.

Once done, all the alerts disappeared

Ok, so now, what’s about the reporting ? Go to the SQL server where we have the Sql Reporting Services installed and Run the SCOM2012 Setup, click on Install.

Select only the Reporting Server component.

Installation folder location.

Prerequisites checker.

We have to specify one management server of our SCOM2012 infrastructure.

We are now able to select the SQL Server instance for reporting services.

Red Cross, this is not good

Hopefully, Microsoft did a great work on the SCOM2012 installer, and simply by clicking on the Red Cross, we have the reason of the failure.

We simply have to start the SQL Server Agent service and to set it to Automatically.

We specify the DB reader account that we already used before.

If you server has internet access, please choose Yes.

As I said before, my lab servers don’t have internet access, so I will handle the updates manually.

The installation Summary report.

Go for the installation.

Once done, we’re now able to generate reports in your all new SCOM 2012 infrastructure.

Stay tune for next posts about SCOM2012

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

System Center Operations Manager 2012 Beta : Available for download

System Center Operations Manager 2012 Beta is now available for public download.

Here’s what’s new

• Rich application performance monitoring and diagnostics for .NET applications plus JEE application health monitoring
• Support for monitoring heterogeneous environments
• Integrated network device monitoring and alerts
• Simplified management infrastructure (no more RMS)
• Common console across datacenter and clouds with customizable dashboards

Microsoft Download link : DOWNLOAD
Microsoft Official announcement : Read it

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

System Center Orchestrator 2012 : Data Manipulation

In some of your Runbooks, you will have to read text files, csv files, SQL results, and you have to extract, to manipulate these data for using it into other activities.

Orchestrator 2012 enables you to manipulate string data from text files, Published Data items, or other sources, and convert it into a usable form. You can also perform arithmetic operations, such as calculating sums and differences, and performing division and multiplication operations. For example, you can extract text from a text file using a text file management object, trim leading and trailing spaces from the text, and then retrieve specific parts of the text that you can pass to other objects as Published Data items.

I will demonstrate all that by using the following activities :

The Initialize Data activity is just use here as the start command of the Runbook, no need of any configuration.

The Read Line activity will return the raw data that we want to manipulate. We simple read the first line of a text file.

The Send Platform Event activity will be use for manipulating the data and showing the result.

For using the Orchestrator embedded data manipulations functions, we have to enclosed in square brackets ('[' and ']'). Keep also in mind that the functions are case-sensitive.

Upper/Lower - converts text functions

The contain of our text file :

In the details part of the Send Platform Event properties, we call the use the Upper function into brackets :

Now just run the Activity and check the result in the Events pane:

Our text is now well completely in Upper case. Of course the otherwise function, Lower('Text'), also exist.

Field - returns text in a specific position

One other useful function is the Field function, this allow you to extract a part of a line base on a delimiter.

Field('Text', 'Delimiter', Field Number)

Our text file is now compose of information about users, separate by a comma, you could imagine a csv file that contains the list of your collaborators :

In the Send Platform Event, we use the Field function for extracting the information from the line that we just read in the previous activity :

Just have to Run the Runbook and here the result :

Nested Functions

You have also the capability to use data manipulation function within another function, here a example :

Upper(Field('Text', 'Delimiter', Field Number))

We keep the same text file than the previous case and we just want to have the email address in Upper case :

We just have to nested the Upper function with the Field function, like below :

We could now run our Runbook and here the expected result, the email address is well in upper case :


I hope this help This Runbook is available for download here : DONWLOAD
Below you have a description of all the available functions and the System Center Orchestrator 2012 Resources.

All the available functions

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Resources :
Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 beta is available as public beta at the Microsoft Download Center : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26503

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Team Blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/scorch/

TechNet Forums for System Center Cross Platform and Interoperability :http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/scinterop

TechNet Library – Opalis 6.3 Data Manipulation : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg440683.aspx

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

System Center Orchestrator 2012 : Internet Application monitor

Today, a new Runbook based only on the default activities, I will show you how to monitor an Internet Application with System Center Orchestrator 2012 beta.

Work case : we have an intranet website, we want to ensure the availability. If the website is not available we want to restart a service, re-check the availability, and if still unavailable, we want to be notify.

For that we will use the following activities :

1. Runbook design : Every x seconds, we check the availability of the website. If available, we just do an entry in the log with the information “Site up”. If the website is not available, we restart the World Wide Web Publishing Service. If the site become available after the service restarted, we do an entry in the log with the information “Site up”, if still available, we do an entry in the log with the information “Site down” and we send an email.

2. Monitor Date/Time activity : We decide to run this Runbook every 30 seconds.

3. Get Internet Application activity : In that activity, we define the website that we want to monitor. It’s also possible to check a particular word on the website.

This activity allows to monitor http website availability, but not only, the following protocols are available in General  part :

4. If the website is available the activity returns Success
 

5. Thanks to the Send Platform Event activity, We could now write in the log that the site web is available.

6. Now, if the website is not available, the Get Internet Application activity returns Failed.



We have to edit the link between the Get Internet Application activity and Start/Stop Service activity for using the failed condition.

7. The Start/Stop Service activity will restart the World Wide Web Publishing Service on the webserver.

8. If the service successfully started, we re-check the website availability for a second time. If available we could now link back to the previous Send Platform Event activity, that will write in the log that the site web is available.

9. If the Start/Stop Service activity didn’t succeed to restart the service, or if the website is still unavailable at the second check, we will use a second Send Platform Event activity for writing in the log that the site is down.

10. Send Platform Event activity configuration:

11. Last but not least, we could use the Send Email activity for being notify of the website unavailability.

12. Let’s testing the policy, the web site is available.

13. Start the Runbook :

14. Stop the World Wide Web Publishing Service, the website is now unavailable. 

15. The Runbook detects this unavailability, start the service, check again the availability and notify that the site a now available.

16. If the Runbook doesn’t succeed to start the service, or if the site is still unavailable after the service restart, we are notify.

Et voilà, how to simply monitor a website availability. As always, the Runbook is available here : DOWNLOAD

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Resources :

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 beta is available as public beta at the Microsoft Download Center : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26503

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Team Blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/scorch/

TechNet Forums for System Center Cross Platform and Interoperability : http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/scinterop

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

System Center Orchestrator 2012 : PingList RunBook

Hi community members,

Today, I will show how to create a simple Ping List Runbook with System Center Orchestrator 2012.

The main idea is to have a text file as input, this text file contains just a list of computers that we want to ping. As output, we want to have the computer name and next to it, a False or True value depending of the ping command succeeded or not.

So Let’s playing with System Center Orchestrator 2012

1. Open the System Center Orchestrator Runbook Designer.

2. Create a new folder and in it, create a new Runbook.

3. We will use the following activities :

4. Link each activity with the one on the right, and we will rename the activities for having a clear view of what our Runbook will do.
 

5. We will now create the variables that we will use in our Runbook. Go to Global Settings > Variables and create a new folder.

6. Create 3 new variables :

• Filepath : Path to the text file that contains the computer names that we want to ping.
• OutputFolder : Folder that will contain the result file of this PingList runbook.
• TimeOut : Value that we want to use with the ping command.

7. Go back to the PingList Runbook and open the Initialize Data activity. As in this Runbook, we will directly use variables, we don’t have to add anything here. So leave it blank as default.
I supposed that you notice that this Initialize Data activity correspond to the Custom Start activity available in Opalis, Microsoft just renamed it.

8. We use the Format Date/Time activity to add the Date and Time in the name of the output file. In the Input part, Date/Time field, do a right click and select Subscribe > Returned Data.

9. Check the box Show common Returned Data, and select the Activity start time variable.

10. In the Output part, we format the date in that way : M-d-yyyy_h-m-s. Of course, you could chose your own date/time format, just don’t forget that file name has some character restrictions.

11. The Format Date/Time activity must be similar to that:

12. In the Read Line activity, we have to specify the file in which we will read the computer names. In the File field, do a right click > Subscribe > Variable and select the FilePath variable that we defined earlier. As we want to read the input file until the end, we have to add the 1-END in the line numbers field.

13. The Ping activity is in fact a PowerShell function that I wrote some years ago. This function simply takes the computer name and a timeout value as input and return TRUE if the computer answered to ping and FALSE if not.

Here the PowerShell function :
function Ping (  [string]$strComputer,[int]$timeout=500)
{
trap { continue; }
$ping = new-object System.Net.NetworkInformation.Ping
$reply = new-object System.Net.NetworkInformation.PingReply

$reply = $ping.Send($strComputer, $timeout);
if( $reply.Status -eq "Success"  )
  {
  return $true;
  }
  return $false;
}

EDIT : TrondHindenes, one of our user group member noticed that indeed of the PowerShell function that I propose, we could simply use the following PowerShell command : test-connection –quiet Which return directly True or False. Thanks to him !

Just below this PowerShell function in the Run .Net activity, we have to call the function and specify the inputs like below :

14. Still in the Run .Net activity don’t forget to publish the output :

15. In the Output activity, we will specify the name of the output file like below:{OutputFolder}\PingResult-{format Result from “Format Date/Time”}.txt

Each line will have the following format:
{Line text from “Read Line”},{PingStatus from “Ping”}

16. “Et voilà”, now we just have to test our new PingList Runbook. Go to your input file and specify some computer names.

17. Start the PIngList Runbook :

18. Confirm that the Runbook ran successfully:

19. Go to the output folder, we have now a new file with the results of our Ping. 

20. Finally, enjoy the result  

You could download this complete PingList Runbook at the following address : DOWNLOAD

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT

System Center IPs and QIK for use with Orchestrator 2012 : Installation & Overview

Adam Hall, Senior Technical Product Manager for Orchestrator, just posted new Orchestrator Integration Packs for the System Center 2007/2008/2010 releases and the Quick Integration Kit (QIK).

Quick Integration Kit (QIK):
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/B/2/9B262883-BDF9-465D-99A8-9836539F4323/Opalis_Quick_Integration_Kit.EXE

1. System Center 2007/2008/2010 IPs direct download: http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/F/3/CF375506-F342-4974-B7B5-F06EFDEC159C/Opalis_SystemCenter_IntegrationPacks.EXE

2. Extract the files:

3. Start the System Center Orchestrator Deployment Manager, right click on Integration Packs and select Register IP with the Orchestrator Management Server.

4. Pass the welcome screen by clicking Next:

5. Click on add and select the IPs that you extracted:

6. Once all the Integration Packs added, click on Next:

7. Validate the information and click on Finish:

8. you will be prompt for license agreement, accept all of them:

9. Confirm in the log of the console than all the IPs has been well imported:

10. Go to Integration Packs view:

11. Select all of them, right click and select Deploy IP to Runbook Server or Runbook Designer:

12. Pass the Welcome screen:

13. Select all the IPs that you want to deploy on your Runbook server/Runbook designer:

14. Enter the name of your Runbook server/Runbook designer:

15. If you want to deploy immediately, left the options unchanged:

16. Review the information and click Finish:

17. Deployment in progress:

18. Confirm that the IPs has been well deployed on the Runbook Server/Designer:

19. Start the System Center Orchestrator Runbook Designer and take a look to the new IPs:

20. System Center Configuration Manager activities:

21. System Center Operations Manager 2007 activities:

22. System Center Service Manager activities:

23. System Center Data Protection Manager activities:

24. System Center Virtual Machine Manager activities:

That’s all for this first overview

Christopher KEYAERT

System Center Orchestrator 2012 : Installation step by step

Hi everyone,

Microsoft just released the beta of System Center Orchestrator 2012 (previously know as Opalis). http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/archive/2011/06/15/announcing-the-system-center-orchestrator-beta.aspx

This beta is public, could be downloaded and tested by everyone.

First, I invite you to read the Pre-requisites :
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh201965.aspx

But also the Release Notes :
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh204684.aspx

In these TechNet articles you will find useful information, like this one : Even if you are in a lab environment, don’t try to install System Center Orchestrator 2012 Beta on a Domain Controller, It will not pass the requirement check. (thank you to Adam and Ravi to notice that to me).

You will see that Microsoft did an awesome work on the installation process. It’s really easier than installing Opalis 6.3.

Basically, for installing this beta you will need a server with :

• Windows 2008 R2 Server (RTM or SP1, both supported)
• SQL 2008 R2
• IIS
• .Net Framework 4
• Silverlight
  

1. Download the System Center Orchestrator 2012 Beta file at the Microsoft Download Center : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26503 

2. Extract the content of the file.

3. Run the setupsco.exe file.

4. If you want to install all the features (Runbook Designer, Console/Web Service, Runbook server) on the same server, select Install Orchestrator. The installer also gives the possibility to install each features independently.

5. No product key required for the beta, just accept the license agreement.

6. Select all the features that you want to install. Select everything for this first install.

7. By expanding, you have information about each features and their prerequisites :

8. The installer has a prerequisites checker :

9. Two level in the prerequisites, Critical will block the installation process, warning could be pass.

10. Orchestrator requires a service account to run runbooks and access remote system resources.

11. Go to your Active Directory console, create a new account, and add it in the Local Administrator Group of the server.

12. You also have to authorize this account to "Log on as a service". Enable this right in Administrative Tools -> Local Security Policy -> Local Policies -> User Rights Assignment.

13. Open "Log on as a service" policy and enter the service account that you just created.

14. Back to the Orchestrator 2012 beta installer and click on the Test button.

15. Database connection, Go to your SQL server, open the management studio, and create manually the Orchestrator database.

16. Add your service account as Credentials for the SQL server.

17. Grant this account as db_owner of the Orchestrator DB.

18. Go back to the Orchestrator installer, select Existing database and chose the database that you just created.

19. Orchestrator use a group (local group or Active Group) for authorizing access to the Run Book Designer. Go to your Active Directory console, create a new security group, add your user account and the service account created above as group member.

20. Back to the Orchestrator installer and select the group just created :

21. Check the box Grant remote access for the Runbook Designer.

22. Configure the port for the web service and Orchestrator Console.

23. Select the installation folder.

24. Review the summary, note that you could change any parameter directly from there.

25. Installation in progress…

26. After a few minutes, the installation is finished.

27. You could now enjoy the new Runbook designer.

28. And also the new Web Console based on IIS, .Net and Silverlight.

As you could see, Microsoft really did an awesome work on the installation process. Next post will present all the new features of System Center Orchestrator 2012 in details.

Christopher KEYAERT

System Center Opalis : Monitor SNMP Trap activity

Hi all,

Today, another case that I had at one of my customer. The idea is simple, He wanted to generate an incident (Could be in SCSM, BMC Remedy) based on a SNMP Trap sent by a monitoring application. (SolarWinds, Tivoli, …)

In the default integration pack, System Center Opalis has a Monitoring SNMP Trap activity :

In the details of this activity, we could filter the host/server from which we accept to receive SNMP Trap, the Port, Enterprise identifier, ….

For publishing the data received from the SNMP Trap, we have to go in the Advanced part :

We have to add the object identifier of each data that we want to publish. we have to manually publish an data output for each OID that we want to use.

Once done, the Monitoring SNMP Trap activity will publish the data as Output-x variable that we could use in other Opalis activities.

Now that we have configured the data from the SNMP Trap, we will publish them to the Send Platform Event activity.

In the Send Platform Event activity, select published data from the Monitor SNMP Trap activity :

The variables that we are interested in are Output – x – Value and we could use them in any of our activities. Here we will just display them, but we could imagine to use them for an incident creation :

Configuration is now finished, run the Runbook and send an SNMP Trap to the System Center Opalis server. When the trap will be received, the Runbook will start automatically :

And the content of the Trap will be available in the Events :

The output result :

We could now use information from SNMP Trap in any of our activities.

Christopher KEYAERT

System Center Opalis : Query an Oracle DB

Hi,

For one of my customer, I had to retrieve some information from an Oracle DB with System Center Opalis. The DB Query object included in Opalis supports MS SQL, Oracle, Odbc connection ….

For querying an Oracle DB with Opalis, there is some requirements, that I will explain step by step below :

1. Install the Oracle client on your Opalis server. Opalis requires the x86 release of the Oracle Client even if the Opalis server is in x64.

2. Oracle client is available at the following page : http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/downloads/112010-win32soft-098987.html

3. Download this version : Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Client (11.2.0.1.0) for Microsoft Windows (32-bit).

win32_11gR2_client.zip (684,581,290 bytes)

4. When downloaded, and uncompressed, just execute the setup.exe file.

5. During the installation process, select Runtime as installation type, and continue the next /next setup.

6. Once the setup finished, we need new to edit the tnsnames.ora configuration file.

7. Go to InstallationFolder\product\11.2.0\client_1\network\admin\ and edit the tnsnames.ora file.

8. ARSDVL is the name of the Oracle DB on which we want to connect, this name is used at two places in the file. line 4  as service name and also in the Connect_Data field. Host contqins is the name of the Oracle DB server.

9. Once the file edited and saved, for testing the connection, open a CMD prompt and type : 
SQLPLUS LOGIN@TNSNAME

10. If the SQL> prompt appears, we now than everything is ok and we could go back to our Opalis policy.

11. Here, a simple Opalis policy which will query the Oracle DB and return the result in an event.

12. Query Database object - Connection configuration : Add the name used in the tnsnames.ora file in the Service Name field, set the connection credentials.

13. Query Database object – Query : Here a simple Select query (Tips : Don’t add the ‘;’ at the end of the query or you will get an error message).

14. Send Platform Event – Configuration :

15. Run the policy.

16. Check the result

Christopher KEYAERT

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2012: Setup and Config

The TechEd 2011 is now finished, for the one who didn't get the chance to be there, the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2012: Setup and Config session is now available online. (Speaker : Maarten Goet, Rob Kuehfus)

How to start, stop and delay an Opalis Policy

Hi all,

Today, I will present a little case that I need to deal with at one of my customer. My case Study is quite simple, I’ve got a Monitor Policy which creates an Incident/Ticket each time that a critical alert is raised in Operations Manager.

I will simplify this policy to the one below :

The scenario, a maintenance is planned on my Incident management platform, so at the convenience time I need to stop my Monitor Policy, wait the end of the maintenance window and after start my Monitor Policy again. As Opalis allows us to orchestrate our activities, I want to automate that task.

No object presents in the default integration packs allow us to do these actions easily.

· How could I stop an Opalis policy through another policy ?
· How could I schedule the start of an Opalis policy ?
· How could I pause my policy for some minutes ?

So we just have to create it with the Opalis Quick Integration Kit (QIK). J

Basically, I need to schedule an action, stop a policy, wait the end of the maintenance window and start my policy.

I invite you to read carefully the post of Adam Hall, Snr. Technical Product Manager for System Center Opalis/Orchestrator : Migrating a PowerShell script to an Opalis Activity

Thanks to this article and some PowerShell command I’ve been able to create three 3 new Opalis objects :

1. Sleep object: As input it simply takes a number of seconds and your policy will pause for the define time.
2. Start At: Specify a date and time for starting/continuing your policy.

3. Stop Policy: This object allows you to stop an Opalis policy from another one. It uses the sp_StopAllRequestsForPolicy SQL store procedure. As input it needs the Opalis Sql server name, database name, and the name of the policy that you want to stop.

Be carefull, the policy name that you specified must be unique, because this object will stop all the policies that are using the specified policy name. For example, if you’ve go more than one policy that is named “1.Monitor”, this object will stop all of them, and that certainly not what you want because that impact directly the others running policies. So be careful with it and always use an unique name for the policy that you want to top.
Now, we will use these news objects for stopping the Monitor Policy below during a maintenance window and restart it after, for that we created a Maintenance Window Policy.

Let’s configuring it

Monitor policy (Policy that we want to plan the stop)


Maintenance window policy

Start At: We decided to plan the stop of the Monitor policy the 05/17/2011 at 04:28 PM.

Stop Policy: We want to stop the Monitor policy (which is my OEA-IncidentCreation).

Sleep: Here we defined a maintenance window of 5 minutes.

Start Policy: Simply use the Trigger Policy object provided in the default integration pack for starting the Monitor Policy.

Let’s testing it

1. Now, we just have to start the Maintenance Window policy and go on weekend, Opalis will orchestrate the maintenance for us.

2. The Start At object will wait the specified date/time for releasing/continuing the rest of the policy.

3. At the defined date/time, the policy is released and our Monitor Policy well is stopped by the Maintenance Policy.

4. Our monitor policy is stopped

5. The sleep object will now pause the policy for the duration of your maintenance window.

6. When the maintenance window is ended, the monitor policy will start automatically.

7. Our Monitor Policy has been well started.

You can directly download the integration pack which is containing these news objects and the source code: Download.

Remember, this is provided “As is” without any support and/or guarantee.

Feel free to contact me through the blog comments for any questions and/or remarks.

Christopher KEYAERT

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2012: Overview

The first of four sessions on Operations Manager 2012 has been presented at the Tech Ed North America 2011. This session provides you with an overview of the capabilities in Operations Manager 2012.

ACS Part III : Forwarder deployment

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 Part II : ACS Reports Deployment & Access

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