System Center Operations Manager

AEM ADMX File for OpsMgr 2007 R2

Last week I was at a customer to implement AEM.

The customer is fully on Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 and only want to use ADMX files and not ADM files to configure his GPO’s. And here is the issue….When running the AEM configuration wizard the settings are stored as an ADM file not an ADMX file.

Note that the ADM file format that the wizard provides will work on Windows 7 and W2K8 R2 but some companies have new policies in the place which require them to only use ADMX file types and so this is the stop gap solution for now.

Luckily the product team just release yesterday an ADMX file for OpsMgr 2007 R2!! http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2011/06/08/aem-admx-file-for-opsmgr-2007-r2.aspx  Notice that this has been through very limited testing but it worked like a charm in my customer environment!

So a big thank you to the product team and especially Satya to help me out with this.

Thanks,
Alexandre Verkinderen

The System Center Management service terminated with service-specific error %%-2147467259

I had the following issue on one of my servers

“The System Center Management service terminated with service-specific error %%-2147467259” when I wanted to start my Healthservice.

When searching the internet I found the following blogpost http://blogs.technet.com/b/smsandmom/archive/2008/04/30/opsmgr-2007-healthservice-service-fails-to-start-with-25362-warning.aspx  . The blogposts says that the State directory registry key can be corrupt but that was fine in my case.

But at the end of the blogpost I found my solution:

This error can be caused by the WindowsAccountLockDownSD Key in at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HealthService\Parameters\Management Group\<Management Group Name Here> being invalid or non-present.  And indeed, that was my issue: the WindowsAccountLockDownSD Key was missing on my server.

The easiest way to resolve the issue with the Windows AccountLockDownSD key is to export the registry key from a similar, working system and then import it in to the registry of the server experiencing the problem.  Once this is complete the HealthService should start successfully.

thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Best of MMS is coming: 15 june 2011

For our best of MMS on June 15 we will have a special guest! Chris Childers is coming to Belgium!

Chris Childers  has over 15 years of product management and business development experience in growth stage software companies. Chris joined Microsoft as a Senior Program Manager in the System Center team through the AVIcode acquisition. While at AVIcode, Chris held roles in Product Management and Business Development with a focus on building a partner eco-system. Prior to AVIcode, Chris co-founded Artifact Software where he managed the company's product development and was instrumental in building its first generation product, acquiring early adopter customers and securing funding. Chris also served as Director of Product Management at Sequoia Software and Senior Technical Evangelist at Citrix Systems. When Chris is not working he can be found cycling the back roads of Maryland.

This is our agenda of the day. For the very first time we now have two tracks:

thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Hp bladesystem enclosure monitoring manager requested registry access is not allowed

You need to open the HP bladesystem enclosure monitoring manager as an Administrator. Otherwise you will have the following error:

“hp bladesystem enclosure monitoring manager requested registry access is not allowed”

Special thanks to Shay Levy for pointing this out.

Alexandre Verkinderen

HP Blade System MP installer does not install the mp file

If you want to use the latest HP blade management pack 1.40 you need to install or upgrade your HP proliant MP first to the same version 1.40.

The documentation doesn’t really say but it’s crucial. If you don’t install the Proliant mp first the Blade System MP installer will not import the blade management pack or even install it locally.

thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

System Center Advisor Changing the upload frequency

Most of the configuration like changing upload frequency is done in the registry.

The registry keys for the gateway are stored in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\SystemCenterAdvisor\Gateway and the registry keys for the agent are stored in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\SystemCenterAdvisor\Agent. If you change anything in the registry keys you will have to restart the System Center Management services on the agent and the System Center Advisor Gateway services on the gateway server.

By default the gateway only uploads once a day to the Advisor cloud services. Now for demo purposes I’m going to change it to every 12hours.

Have a look at the following site http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/advisor/ff962521.aspx that describes all the registry keys.

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

System Center Advisor configuring data upload

By default, Advisor will enable the gateway to automatically upload collected data from your server to Advisor.

To disable automatic data upload, add the following registry entry:

Key = HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SystemCenterAdvisor\Gateway\
RegEntry name = BlockUpload
Entry type = REG_DWORD

To enable automatic data upload, remove the above registry entry (if present).

The collected data from agents can be accessed on the gateway machine in the folder located at: <GatewayDataRoot>\Mailboxes, where <GatewayDataRoot> is the value of the registry key located at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SystemCenterAdvisor\Gateway. The data is stored in a folder specific to each agent, and named after the ID of the agent. This data will be removed from the directory after upload to Advisor by default, or if specified, will be archived for a period of time as specified by in the Archive Period registry key in the same location. The agentID value for a given agent can be found in the following registry entry on the machine running the agent:

Key = HKLM\Software\Microsoft\SystemCenterAdvisor
RegEntry name = agentID
Entry type = REG_SZ

By default, Advisor will enable the agent to automatically transfer locally collected data to your gateway.

To disable automatic data upload, add the following registry entry:

Key = HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SystemCenterAdvisor\Agent\
RegEntry name = BlockUpload
Entry type = REG_DWORD

To enable automatic data upload, remove the above registry entry (if present).

thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Using System Center Advisor Management Packs in OpsMgr

System Center Advisor has some extra management packs that are not available for OpsMgr.

The full list of data points collected by the agent is available for download here, from the Microsoft Download Center, in an Excel spreadsheet.  For example, included in this list are properties about SQL Server like data from SERVERPROPERTY, sys.databases, and sys.configurations.

I think it’s a shame we don’t have those extra rules and monitors in the OpsMgr MP’s so I wanted to have those extra checks in my OpsMgr environment by importing the Advisor management packs! Let’s see if this will work!

You can find all Advisor management packs on the gateway in C:\Program Files\System Center Advisor\GatewayData\Content

Just copy those Advisor MP’s to your Opsmgr box and import them:

Once imported you will all those extra checks in your OpsMgr environment.

And alerts are starting coming in that you didn’t get before:

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

System Center Advisor Part 2 Installation

In the previous blogpost I gave you a short overview of System Center Advisor. Let’s have a look at the installation of System Center Advisor.

The installation is straight forward and easy.

Advisor System Requirements

At this moment Advisor will analyzes only the following workloads:

• Windows Server 2008 and later:
  • Active Directory
  • Hyper-V Host
  • General operating system
• SQL Server 2008 and later
  • SQL Engine

For SQL Server, the following 32-bit and 64-bit editions are supported for analysis:

• SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 Enterprise
• SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 Standard
• SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 Workgroup
• SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 Web
• SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 Express

In addition, the 32-bit edition of SQL Server is supported when running in the WOW64 implementation.

Advisor Installation

First logon www.systemcenteradvisor.com with your LiveID.

If you haven’t already installed an Advisor gateway the webconsole will prompt you to install one.

Follow the steps as described below:

First download the certificate and remember the location where you saved it. We will need this later on.

Next download the sofware.

In the directory where you downloaded the on-premise software, double-click AdvisorSetup.exe to launch the setup.

1. Click Next on the Welcome page of the Setup wizard.

2. Accept the license agreement, and then click Next.

3. Enter the location where you want to install the on-premise software. By default, this location is %ProgramFiles%/System Center Advisor. Click Next.

4. Select Gateway to install the gateway on this computer. You can also select Agent to install both the gateway and the agent. Click Next.

5. A message is displayed about opening port 80 for communication with the agent. If you click Yes, the port is opened by the Setup program. If you click No, you are returned to the previous step. You cannot install the gateway without opening this port.

On the Gateway Settings page, browse to the location where you downloaded the security certificate. Select the security certificate (RegistrationCert.pfx), and then click OK

If needed you can specify a web proxy so that the gateway can communicate with the Cloud service./

The connection to Advisor is verified. If the connection can be verified, the gateway is registered with the Web service. If registering the gateway fails, you can continue with installation but will need to manually register the gateway.

A new service will be added on your Windows Server that will handle the communication with the Advisor Cloud service.

And a new EventLog as well that will help you debug any communication issues

If you already had a SCOM agent installed it will now be configured to operate multi-homed and talk to two management groups:

Once the gateway and the agents are installed they will show up in the webconsole but that can take some time:

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

System Center Advisor Part 1 Overview

Hi All,

I’m going to start posting a series of blogposts regarding System Center Advisor (formerly project Atlanta).  System Center Advisor is a new cloud based offering of Microsoft that will monitor your environment (at this point only Windows Server and SQL server). Advisor will be the connection between your servers and Microsoft support services.

It’s very important to know that Advisor is not a REAL TIME MONITORING solution!!     You don’ t have:

• real time monitoring
• Real time alerting
• real time notification
• Reporting
• Monitoring of LOB
• ETC

Once a day the alerts will be send from the gateway to the Cloud service where you will be able to analyze it with the webconsole.

Architecture:

When we look at the architecture of Advisor we have gateways and Agents. In your datacenter you will have to install an Advisor gateway that will upload once a day the collected data to the cloud, on your servers you want to monitor you need to install agents that will communicate with the gateway on port 80. By default each agent uploads CAB files to the gateway twice per day. The size of the CAB files depends on the configuration of the machine (such as number of SQL engines and number databases) and the health of the machine (e.g. the number of alerts generated). In most cases, the daily upload size is typically less than 100 KB.

Advisor leverages Operations Manager 2007 R2 Agent and Management Pack technology and can run side by side with OpsMgr. When you install an Advisor agent on a computer that has a System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 agent installed, the Health Service will be configured to run in multi-homing mode so that existing Operations Manager management groups are not impacted.

Once the data has been uploaded, the Advisor cloud service will analyze the data and make it visible in the Advisor webconsole to you and to Microsoft CSS. The collected data is uploaded and archived on-premise for 5 days by default.

Rules and monitors are finetuned and updated by Microsoft and periodically downloaded to the gateway.

RoadMap and Licensing

System Center Advisor will be free as a benefit for customer who has Software assurance.

In the next post I’m going to describe the installation process of System Center Advisor.

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

System Center Roadmap 2011

I’m so excited about the direction that Microsoft is taking with the new System Center products!

Below you find the roadmap of the System Center products and what is going to be released soon!

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

4 more speakers from the System Center Product Team at Techdays Belgium

We've secured 4 more speakers from the System Center Product Team for Techdays Belgium

• Jeff Wettlaufer (will be talking about SCCM 2012)
• Adam Hall (covering Orchestrator, the next version of Opalis)
• Sean Christensen (Service Manager 2012)
• Clare Henry (who will deliver the keynote).

Don’t miss this unique opportunity!

Alexandre Verkinderen

The OpsMgr Unleashed authors on Operations Manager 2012

Talk TechNet is about discussing topics and trends in the world of IT Professionals.  In our May 6th show we’ll have guests Kerrie Meyler , Cameron Fuller, and John Joyner. Kerrie, Cameron, and John are Operations Manager MVPs and authors of the System Center Operations Manager Unleashed series, and will be discussing System Center Operations Manager 2012. Call in and join us for what promises to be a lively 60 minute session. 

More information can be found here https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032484791&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Save the date! Teched Europe June 25-29 2012 in Amsterdam

Just got an email from Microsoft that Teched Europe will be in Amsterdam this time!

thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Installing a remote Operations Manager database with DBcreateWizard.exe

Hi all,

One of my customers was asking me if he could install the OpsMgr database remotely. This is perfectly possible with DBCreatewizard tool. The DBcreatewizard tool is a small tool that let you install the Opsmgr database and the datawarehouse without running the setupOM.exe wizard. Kevin Holman has blogpost on whether you should use the DBcreatewizard or just the good old setupOM.exe

By running the following command you can install the OperationsManager DB locally or remotely by specifying the severname:

DBCreateWizard.exe DBType:"Operations Manager Database" SQLInstance:OpsMgrSQserverL\infrontscomInstance DBName:OperationsManager ManagementGroup:OperationsManager UserGroup:Infrontscom\OpsMgrAdmins AutoErrorReport DBCreate DBSize:5000 DBPath:"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.INFRONTSCOM\DATA" LOGPath:"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.INFRONTSCOM\MSSQL\Log"

And for the Datawarehouse run the following command:

DBCreateWizard.exe DBType:"Operations Manager Data Warehouse Database" SQLInstance:OpsMgrSQLserver\infrontscomInstance DBName:OperationsManagerDW AutoErrorReport DBCreate DBSize:500 DBPath:"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA" LOGPath:"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Log"

In your local user temp folder C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Temp\1  you will find a log file each time you run the dbcreatewizard tool.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Starting Logging for Setup.exe 13:19:14 dinsdag 4 januari 2011
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13:19: GetlocalSQLServerPath: caught an exception: Invalid namespace
13:19: GetlocalSQLServerPath: caught an exception: Invalid namespace
13:19: GetlocalSQLServerPath: caught an exception: Invalid namespace
13:19: GetlocalSQLServerPath: caught an exception: Invalid namespace
13:19: Creating database...
13:21: Database created successfully.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finished Logging for Setup.exe 13:21:19 dinsdag 4 januari 2011
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Avicode now in the SMSE and SMDE suite!

It was announced a few weeks ago that Microsoft had acquired AVIcode and now they finaly released a trial version and give an update regarding the new licensing.

You can download and use this software only if you are a licensed holder of a qualifying Microsoft System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE), Microsoft System Center Server Management Suite Datacenter (SMSD).

http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/avicode.aspx

and if you want to read some documentation regarding Avicode you can find it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/confirmation.aspx?FamilyID=3aa9a2e1-2b99-4f80-b633-e2c3cd32a78d 

update Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Pack

Mircrosoft has released an update of the Operations Manager 2007 R2 management pack version 6.1.7695.0

Go get it here  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=61365290-3c38-4004-b717-e90bb0f6c148

Changes made:

• Added the “Agents by Health State” report
• Added the “An alert subscription has been automatically disabled due to invalid configuration” rule
• Added the “WMI Service Availability” aggregate monitor and the “Windows Management Instrumentation Service” unit monitor to monitor the state of the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service (winmgmt) on agents
• Added rules to that can be enabled in place of monitors that require manual reset of the health state
• Updated product knowledge for some workflows
• Changed the "Computer Verification: Verification Error" event collection rule to be disabled by default
• Change the “Collect Configuration Parse Error Events” rule to be disabled by defaul

And don’t forget to RTFM!

Thanks,

Alexandre verkinderen

TechEd BOF Session Proposal Voting

My BOF session has been selected for TechEd. Now it’s tome to vote!

ABSTRACT:

Come and join us during this BoF on System Center. Time to sit down with fellow System Center users, share your experiences and issues with System Center in the real world and got them solved!
If you have some System center related questions but never dared to ask or found no one to answer them this is a BoF you wouldn’t want to miss! Come join Simon Skinner, Maarten Goet and Alexandre Verkinderen to discuss lessons learned around System Center in general in an Open Forum discussion.

You can vote here:

http://bof2010.uservoice.com/forums/81011-teched-bof-session-proposals-voting/suggestions/1131839-shoot-your-system-center-questions-?ref=title

Belgium System Center Day

Scug.be is very excited to annouce our next event. For this occasion we have some top international speakers like Wally Mead, Travis Wright, Jason Buffington, 4 Belgium System Center MVP's and other System Center Experts and that's why the event will also be held in a special place http://events.livingtomorrow.be/

This event will also be your opportunity to socialize with fellow System Center administrators and consultants and exchange knowledge, meet with one of the most popular Microsoft speakers of all time and have a nice lunch with the 4 Belgian System Center MVP's and the System Center product managers!

More information can be found here: http://systemcenterday.eventbrite.com/

Have Fun,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Fix duplicate relationships for agents to server in Ops DB

Sometimes it can happen that agents are ending up with multiple primary management server relationships. Of course you can only have one primary server relationship! In the rare occasions that you end up with multiple primary relationships you can now repair the issue by running the new “Fix duplicate relationships for agents to server in Ops DB” task manually

or there is a recovery on this monitor (disabled by default) that you can turn on so that the issue will be fixed automatically:

You will need the latest OpsMgr 2007 R2 management pack that you can find here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61365290-3c38-4004-b717-e90bb0f6c148&displaylang=en

Thanks,
Alexandre Verkinderen

Tech Ed Europe: Vote For The Sessions You Want To See

You have the ability to influence what sessions will be shown at Tech Ed Europe.

Go to http://europe.msteched.com/sessionpreference. There you can see a list of sessions that have been shortlisted for possible inclusion into Tech Ed Europe.

One of my sessions has made the short-list.  Enter “Opalis” into the Keyword search box, and you’ll pull up the session “Opalis & System Center better together” or “System Center… Leveraging the suite”.  Check it out and see what you think.  If you think it would make a nice addition to Tech Ed Europe, please vote for it.  And make sure you check out some of the other great sessions that could potentially be available as well.

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Cumulative Update 2 for OpsMgr 2007 R2 Connectors

Microsoft just released Cumulative update 2 for the Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connectors.

We now support:

• HP Operations Manager for UNIX v9 running on
• HPUX 11i v3 Itanium
• Solaris 10 SPARC
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 x64
• BMC Remedy AR System 7.5

and some bug fixes as well:

• Potential high CPU usage of HP OVO Event Consumer for Windows (scinteropd.exe)
• Synchronization issue in HP OVO Connector
• Remedy connectors do not populate the Computer Name and Domain fields
• Unresponsiveness of the Interop provider when an Enterprise Management Service (EMS) API call returns an error
• Incorrect dates are passed to the remote system by the connector
• Product Knowledge is not forwarded when the locale is Canadian English

You can find more information or download the CU2 from here.

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Service Manager Management Pack

Microsoft released the Service Manager 2010 Management Pack. The Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2010 Management Pack helps you manage your Service Manager infrastructure by monitoring the health of the Service Manager management servers and services.

Features:

• Capturing critical events from Service Manager and creating corresponding alerts in System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.
• Monitoring the health of vital Service Manager services and providing users with a real-time health status.
• Providing Operations Manager integrated knowledge for events.
• Ensuring that the management pack provides clear health information, and that it is extendible, allowing users to add objects such as monitors, overrides, tasks, and knowledge.

Supported Configurations

Service Manager Management Pack 7.0.5826.856 supports all configurations that are supported by Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2010.

Service Manager supports SQL Server clustering for the databases, and Network Load Balancing (NLB) for the Service Manager management servers and portals. In these topologies, the individual parts are monitored individually regardless of the existence of NLB.

Supported Configurations

The following table details the supported configurations for the Service Manager Management Pack.

You can download the mp here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=82a6cd07-85aa-4739-9829-f1e7cdea7fe7

Also have look at the blog post of Darko Vukovic he's posted a very useful accompanying set of best practices for getting started with the new management pack.

Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Pack 3rd quarterly update

Microsoft released a week ago the 3^rd quarterly update for the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 management pack. You can download it from here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61365290-3c38-4004-b717-e90bb0f6c148&displaylang=en

The localization issue with the System Center Core reports (as described here http://thoughtsonopsmgr.blogspot.com/2010/05/scom-r2-system-center-core-reporting.html ) is solved as well.

Feature Summary
The Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Packs includes the following features:

• Local and Remote Monitoring of an Agent’s Health
  • Operations Manager agents monitor themselves for events and performance indicators that signal an issue with the agent’s health.
  • Management servers also maintain an external perspective of an agent’s health via the Health Service Watcher.
  • The ‘Agent Health State’ view provides a side-by-side dashboard of both perspectives on the agent.
• Optional, Automatic Agent Remediation Capabilities
  • If the Health Service Watcher determines that an agent is unhealthy, a series of diagnostics and recoveries can be enabled to further diagnose the problem and event take actions to attempt to fix the problem (e.g. Ping the server to see if it is completely offline, start a stopped agent, trigger a reinstall, etc.). Refer to the management pack guide for more details.
  • Agents are monitoring their own process to ensure that memory utilization is not sustained at unacceptable levels. If this condition is detected then the agent will automatically restart itself to force the freeing up of memory.
• Detection of Problems and Misconfigurations with Run As Accounts and Profiles
  • Checks are run on a regular basis to detect if any of the management group’s “Windows” type Run As Accounts have credentials which are about to expire. Alerts will be raised, and where possible this will be done in advance of the credentials expiring to avoid outages.
  • Alerts will be raised if any errors are encountered during the distribution of Run As Accounts.
• Monitoring of problems with Running Workflows in Management Packs
  • Numerous rules are provided to detect if workflows within management packs are failing. Examples of workflows include discoveries, rules, monitors, etc. Failures can range from bad configurations on the workflows themselves, script failures, permissions problems, etc.
• Reports for identify drivers of data volumes in your environment
  • Introduced with the 6.1.7599.0 release of the management pack, these reports provide insight into the overall data volumes being processed by your environments. These reports can be used for gaining an understanding of current usage levels in order to establish a baseline and for identifying opportunities for tuning.
• Operational Data Reporting
  • Introduced in the 6.1.7599.0 release of the management pack, these reports gather information and sends reports to Microsoft on a weekly basis (if you select to send reports). Microsoft uses these reports to improve the quality of its management packs and Operations Manager 2007. Participation in the program is strictly voluntary. For more information, see the Management Pack Guide.

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Belgian Best of MMS: The top 20 “Must Have“ customizations in Operations Manager

This session will look at the 20 most common configuration changes or customizations that we implement in our consulting engagements. At the end of this session, attendees will leave with the knowledge of how to optimize their Operations Manager installation. This session will walk through the 'eureka' configurations that all customers love and utilize on a frequent basis within their environments. If you want to be much more efficient in your day to day work, you will not want to miss this session.

Slides: slides

Format: wmv
Duration: --:--

Registration for TechEd Europe is open!

Tech∙Ed Europe returns to Berlin this November 8 – 12, for a full week of deep technical education, hands-on-learning and opportunities to connect with Microsoft and Community experts one-on-one.  Register by 5 July and receive your conference pass for only €1,395 – a €500 savings.

Community Day 2010

Community Day is back with the Fourth Edition of this annual community event on Microsoft technologies!

Fourteen Microsoft User Groups combine their efforts to organize this unique networking and knowledge sharing
event. With so many new releases from Microsoft, the theme of Community Day 2010 is of course 2010: a new wave of products and technologies. This means that most sessions will be looking at Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4, Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, OCSR2…

Microsoft Community Day will take place on Thursday 24th June 2010 in Utopolis, Mechelen, where we will
bring together over 300 IT Pro’s and developers.

The Microsoft Community Day 2010 is supported by:

• AZUG
• BESUG
• BIWUG
• IT-Talks
• Pro-Exchange
• SCUG
• SQLUG
• ACCB.net/VBIB
• Visug
• WinSec
• XNA-BUG
• CLUG
• DotNetHub
• MyTIC

Practical event details
Location: Utopolis Mechelen (Map)
Address: Spuibeekstraat 5 2800 Mechelen
Event date: Thursday June 24th
Start & end time: 8.30 – 18.30

Social
Community Day on Twitter: #comday2010

Microsoft on What's Next for Managing Datacenters and the Cloud!

Microsoft is going to invest heavily in Dynamic IT / cloud capabilities that Virtual Machine Manager vNext and Operations Manager vNext will deliver.

Here is a small list of things that Microsoft wants to achieve:

System Center Virtual Machine Manager

· Service lifecycle management, including creation, deployment and updates to cloud apps/services - Leverages app virtualization technology and service modeling to perform image-based service composition, deployment and updates.

· Creation of private clouds - Enables “Infrastructure as a Service” for the enterprise datacenter and allows self-service scenarios; discovery and assignment of logical/virtualized network and storage pools to apps/services.

· Federation across clouds - Enables workload mobility between on-premises, service provider and public clouds (e.g. Windows Azure) in a secure manner .

· Policy-based dynamic resource optimization – Ensure optimal utilization of your datacenter resources (e.g. policy driven power management), deeper Operations Manager/PRO integration.

· Deeper Opalis Integration – Offers deeper integration with Opalis for enhanced orchestration and automation across multiple sub-systems.

System Center Operations Manager

· Unified on-premises and cloud monitoring - Enables hybrid cloud deployment scenarios with “single pane of glass” monitoring.

· Outside-in/end user experience monitoring for geo distributed cloud services (based on synthetic transactions).

· Service oriented network and storage monitoring (e.g. monitor and troubleshoot network and storage resource pools assigned to services).

You can find more information on the http://blogs.technet.com/ddcalliance blog.

Watch this video by Anant Sundaram, Senior Product Manager for System Center.

Anant explaines what Microsoft is thinking around improving data center management and managing cloud environments.

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Microsoft-on-Whats-Next-for-Managing-Datacenters-and-the-Cloud/

Not all of these will be realized and it will take some product cycles but it gives you a nice overview of what Microsoft is thinking and want to achieve.

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Diagram view not working in the webconsole OpsMgr 2007 R2: “missing permissions on the server allow the creation of the RenderBase and/or ImageCache folder”

Today I ran into the following problem: I was unable to access diagram views from the webconsole. Every other view like a state view, performance view, alert view etc was working but not the diagram view:

Likely this is due to missing permissions on the server allow the creation of the RenderBase and/or ImageCache folder or the ability to create files in these folders. Either add the permissions for the anonymous INET user to write to the root folder, or create the RenderBase and/or ImageCache folder and in the root of the web application and add write access to these folders.

As you can see the temp folder is empty

you need to give the group called IIS_IUSRS read and write permissions to the root folder of the webconsole

once done you will see the following files being created in the temp folder:

and now the final test!

woohoo it's working! :-)

And now you will see a PNG file in the temp folder for every diagram view you open. That’s why you need to modify the rights so that the group IIS_USRS can add those PNG files to the temp folder.

I don’t think this is very efficient. Image a NOC with 10 guys consulting the webconsole and each one of them opens 2 views and with 4 levels each then you will 80 PNG files in the temp folder!! But that’s a total different discussion :-)

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

New KB for OpsMgr Management servers or assigned agents unexpectedly appear as unavailable in the Operations Manager console in Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008

Microsoft just released a new hotfix to deal with ghost agents or agent that are grayed out for an unknown reason. Sometimes it can happen that an agent unexpectedly appear as unavailable without any real reason. We call this ghost agents

The workaround was to delete the health service state directory on the computer (root management server, management server, or agent) that is affected. That way the database will be rebuild.

But Microsoft has now identified this problem as this issue occurs because the database that is used by the health state is corrupted. This database corruption is caused by an issue in the storage engine of the jet database that is hosted on Windows. This is a problem in the Microsoft products and not in OpsMgr. So you need to apply the hotfix to fix the storage engine.

You can download the KB here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981263 

Notice that this hotfix applies to Windows Server 2008 but not Windows Server 2008 R2.

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Cumulative Update 2 for OpsMgr installation

High Level overview steps:

1. Root Management Server

2. Manual update of the Operations Manager database together with the included stored procedure file that is discussed later

3. Manual import of the Management Pack library that is discussed later

4. Secondary Management Servers

5. Gateway Servers

6. Deploy the agent update to the agents that used a discovery-based installation

7. Operations console role computers
Note Select the Run Server Update option from the Software Update dialog box.

8. Web Console server role computers

9. Audit Collection Services role computers

10. Apply the agent update to manually installed agents

Note To run this file on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008, you must use an elevated command prompt. An elevated command prompt is a command prompt that was started by using the Run as Administrator option. If you do not run this Windows-based installer file under an elevated command prompt, the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Software Update splash screen does not allow for the installation of the hotfix.

Download the corresponding CU2.MSI file http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61714687-668a-46e4-b127-ad8519594351&displaylang=en and launch it:

The only thing you can do here is to accept the license agreement. Don’t forget to read it….

This is the installation folder where the files will be stored that we will need for the manual operations that must be performed after you update the RMS

It’s going to start and stop the opsmgr services. Don’t worry about it

Also don’t panic if you see event ID’s 29104. That’s normal during the upgrade process.

It can take a while but finally my RMS is updated

Just like with the CU1 I chose to not restart the server automatically. When you click no you allow the hotfix installation to finish all his post-processes. Check if the file versions has been updated and only then reboot the server.

I can see that the files have been updated

Manual operations that must be performed after you update the Root Management Server

Note You do not have to repeat the DiscoveryEntitySProcs.SQL installation if you have previously installed Cumulative Update 1 for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.

As in my environment I already applied the CU 1 I can skip this step.

Import updated management packs

This updated management pack is located in the ManagementPacks folder of the package installation.

Microsoft.SystemCenter.DatawareHouse.Report.Library.mp

Now you need to upgrade the other opsmgr components as well. I don’t have other MS servers in my lab environment so I’m going to skip this step.

Remember to upgrade one MS server at a time.

Last step is to approve the pending agents

Manually installed agents should be upgraded manually. Or you can easily create a SCCM package and deploy that.

If you have not already done so, create a new view that shows the agent patch list as described on Kevin Holmans blog: http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/archive/2008/06/24/how-do-i-know-which-hotfixes-have-been-applied-to-which-agents.aspx

That’s it!

Pretty easy upgrade

Thanks,
Alexandre Verkinderen

Cumulative Update 2 Released for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 opsmgr

Microsoft has just released a second cumulative update for opsmgr! More information can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979257 

Make sure to download the correct language: SystemCenterOperationsManager2007-R2CU2-KB979257-X86-X64-IA64-ENU.MSI

Have fun,

Alexandre Verkinderen

MMS 2010 Keynotes

The MMS 2010 keynotes are available online!

KEY1 Managing Systems from the Datacenter to the Cloud

Bob Muglia, President of Microsoft Server and Tools Business, returns to speak at this year's event. Since MMS 2009, the buzz in the IT industry about cloud computing has continued to grow. There are many different perspectives on the cloud, its capabilities, its enablers and what it means to the world of IT operations and systems management. Get Bob Muglia's perspective on what cloud services mean for the datacenter, what you can do today with these services, and how your approach to cloud services can help you change your company's IT operations for the better.

Tuesday http://www.studiosevent.com/newscenter/?id=mms 

KEY2 User Centric Client Management

Unify. Simplify. Control. Get inspired as Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President of the Management and Services Division at Microsoft, returns to speak on user-centric client management. Listen in as Brad gives his perspectives on the rising need for a more user-centric approach to client management and discusses the technologies and roadmap Microsoft is delivering to help you get there. Learn what you can do today with the hottest technologies in client management like desktop virtualization and cloud computing to deliver user-centric services while lowering your overall TCO and improving your business processes. Hear how you can use these technologies to dramatically simplify client management while you unify your client environment to drive lower costs and improve services.

Wednesday: http://www.studiosevent.com/newscenter/?id=mms-2

Best of MMS 2010

Hi all,

The Belgium System Center User Group is pleased to announce his first Best of MMS! This is a full day online event as well as offline with all the Belgium System Center Experts. So if you cannot make it to Microsoft Belgium due to some Volcano’s you can attend via LiveMeeting as well!

Best of MMS 2010 will provide the opportunity to learn more about IT Management solutions from Microsoft and how you can adopt them in your datacenter.
 
In a year packed with new management product releases, MMS 2010 will provide the latest technical updates on Desktop, Datacenter, Device and Cloud management features and solutions from Microsoft. This year 5 of our Belgian Experts from the System Center User Group will attend this event and bring back all the valuable information and present them to the Belgian IT Professionals. You have the choice to either attend this event in person or follow it by using live meeting
 
For more information visit: http://technet.microsoft.com/nl-be/ff628215.aspx

Operations Manager 2007 Superflows

After the config mgr SuperFlows we now have the OpsMgr 2007 Superflows!

The Operator Basics SuperFlow is intended for operators who are new to Operations Manager 2007.This SuperFlow is written for the operator in a Tier I role. The information is useful for a new operator who is in an extended role, but that operator will also need to research additional documentation to learn additional skills, such as tuning, targeting, and troubleshooting.

Download here.

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Unleashed is now available for preorder!!

Finally,

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Unleashed can now be preordered on Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/OpsMgrR2Unleashed. The list price is $39.99, Amazon price is $27.57, and Amazon has availability April 26.

Here is the table of contents:

Chapter 1 - Introduction and What's New

Chapter 2 - Unix/Linux Management: Cross Platform Extensions

Chapter 3 - Operations Manager 2007 R2 and Windows Server 2008

Chapter 4 - Using SQL Server 2008 in OpsMgr 2007 R2

Chapter 5 - PowerShell Extensions for Operations Manager 2007

Chapter 6 - Management Solutions for Small and Midsize Business

Chapter 7 - Operations Manager and Virtualization

Chapter 8 - Management Pack Authoring

Chapter 9 - Unleashing Operations Manager 2007

Appendix A - OpsMgr R2 by Example

Appendix B - Reference URLs

Appendix C - Available Online

I’m very proud to be a contributor to this book and I would like to thank Kerrie Meyler for all the effort and all her work  she is putting into this new Unleashed book!

If you are attending MMS in Las Vegas this year we will have a meet and greet with the Authors and Contributors of the SCOM 2007 R2 Unleashed book so please step by and say hi.

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Infront TrendMicro Management Pack

The Infront TrendMicro Management Pack allows customers to proactively monitor their TrendMicro environment. This Management Pack allows for the monitoring of the end-to-end security and spam protection starting from the TrendMicro OfficeScan client to the OfficeScan server, your ScanMail environment and your Interscan Messaging Security Suite. The Management Pack supplies critical events and alerts on viruses and spam to Operations Manager, and also monitors the health, performance, security and availability of these products. Administrative tasks and reports are also included to simplify your daily protection and security administration.

Some screenshots:

Task for trendmicro webconsole.

Task for officescanclient

Patch information

Anti spam en viruses graphics

Recovery tasks

Monitor of IMSS

IMSS amount of sent and received e-mail.

But also extended reports:

• Get Virus Graph By Day
• Get Virus Graph By Week
• Get Virus Summary
• Get All Virus Count between
• Get Spam Graph By Day
• Get Spam Graph By Week
• Get Spam Summary
• Get Spam Count between
• Top Spam Recipients
• Top Virus Recipients
• Accepted Size
• Total Traffic

The Quest QMX VMware extension is now free via vCenter and vSphere

Quest has announced that the QMX VMware extension is now free via vCenter and vSphere.

The Quest Management Extensions (QMX) - Operations Manager 2007 Edition VMware solution supports all versions of VMware.

You can download it from here http://www.management-extensions.org/entry.jspa?externalID=100338&categoryID=252 

Have fun,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Unique OpsMgr 2007 R2 Bootcamp training event (Belgium) :

Hi all,

I am very proud to be able to announce that we will be able to host a Unique OpsMgr 2007 R2 training event in Belgium.

Is the average training not meeting the depth of technical content you need? Would you like the receive your training from someone that received the prestigious MVP Award? Wished you could receive training from someone that co-authored a book on the topic he is teaching? Are you looking for real 400 level training? Want training from a consultant with plenty of real-life experience? Ever wished you could receive training from the folks that gave those sessions at Teched (Us or Europe), MMS, Techdays ? Here is your chance!

What is being delivered?

The  System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 bootcamp organized by Infront Consulting & RealDolmen.

Description

This class begins with an introduction to Operations Manager 2007 R2 followed by a detailed architectural discussion that explains how to design your Operations Manager 2007 R2 environment details how all of the communication occurs between components. Next students will walk through an advanced installation of Operations Manager 2007 R2 and learn how to install the database, Root Management Server, additional Management servers, a gateway server and run through the deployment of agents. (both Windows and non-Windows) Once the setup is complete, the students will perform other critical post installation configurations. Attendees will also learn about the issues involved in migrating from SCOM 2007 SP1 to R2. The discovery of non-Windows devices and operating systems is also explored as are overrides, diagnostics and recoveries, notification configuration, and the Operations Manager Shell.

When will this take place?

This unique 4day training event will take place from Tuesday the 18th of May till Friday the 21th of May 2010 included.

Class will be from 9 AM till 5 PM, with a break before and after noon and lunch at 12:00 AM.

Where Does it take place?

This event will take place at the training facilities of RealDolmen.

RealDolmen
Industriezone Zenneveld
A. Vaucampslaan 42
1654 Huizingen

tel: +32 2 362 56 17

e-mail: education@realdolmen.com

What is it going to cost?

The course will cost 2150 € (Excl VAT.) for the 4 day training including lunch.

Where do I Sign up?

More info about the event, and details on how to signup for this event can be found here:

http://www.realdolmen.com/Commercial/Default.aspx?id=1776

Please be advised that seats are limited!

MOF 4.0 Foundation Course

Microsoft just announced the beta release of the MOF 4.0 Foundation Course.

This training course is intended primarily for those who deliver service management-focused training. It’s also designed to supplement existing materials utilized by those in the greater training community. These materials will help instructors teach IT pros how to think about system integration and dependencies, and will add value to a range of technical training courses.

The course is designed to introduce participants to the three phases of the MOF lifecycle—Plan, Deliver, and Operate—and the Manage Layer. It also covers the Service Management Functions (SMFs) and Management Reviews within each phase. The course provides a foundation for participants to begin leveraging service management concepts with Microsoft products and technologies.

Take an early look at the MOF 4.0 Foundation Course, and use this opportunity to provide feedback and influence its development. Download the beta materials on Microsoft Connect: https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=10313&SiteID=14

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

MMS 2010

MMS 2010 will be in Las Vegas April 19-23, and registration is now open. The list of planned sessions is available at http://www.mms-2010.com/public/sessions.aspx. There are 28 breakout sessions specific to OpsMgr 2007, and there are some very good ones you won’t want to miss. MVPs that will be presenting OpsMgr-related topics include John Joyner, Maarten Goet, Pete Zerger, Rory McCaw, and David Allen.

Many product managers will also be presenting on OpsMgr 2007 R2 topics. In addition, Brian Wren of Microsoft will be again presenting his sessions on Management Pack Authoring. These went over very well last year.

MMS generally has all the System Center breakout sessions you will find at Tech-Ed, and then some. There are also numerous labs with the opportunity to get hands-on training. In addition, it’s a great opportunity to network with other systems and operations management ITPros, MVPs, and Microsoft PMs. You’ll also find a number of the authors and contributors that worked on System Center Operations Manager R2 2007 Unleashed!

There is a discount for registering prior to March 24 – registration is currently $1,725 and goes up to $1,970 after March 24. For full information, go to http://www.mms-2010.com. Hope to see you there!

 --feed from ops-mgr.spaces.live.com

OpsMgr 2007 R2 Cumulative Update 1

Our first cumulative update has released for OpsMgr 2007 R2! Cumulative Update 1 contains a number of fixes for the Operations Manager 2007 R2 release. More information about what has been fixed can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974144 .

And as always RTFM! You will need to perform some additional steps:

• Update the DiscoveryEntitySPRocs.sql
• and import the Microsoft.SystemCenter.DatawareHouse.Report.Library.mp manually

Also notice that the issue with the SRSUpgradetool.exe, as described here, has been resolved now:

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

OpsMgr survey about Management Pack Authoring

Microsoft is conducting a survey about Management Pack Authoring. If you ever wanted to give feedback about the management pack authoring process now is the time!

You can find the survey here http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/mpauthoring

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

What’s new in System Center Operations Manager R2 LiveMeeting SlideDeck

Description

Join us for this informative session on the new features of OpsMgr 2007 R2., where you will learn about the differences between OpsMgr 2007 and OpsMgr 2007 R2 like support for cross-platform, management packs-, agent-, reporting improvements.

Slidedeck http://scug.be/media/p/1453.aspx

 Dutch

French

Have Fun,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Server Management Suite Licenses getting more expensive!

Today the System Center Team announced the new capabilities and price changes of the Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE) and Server Management Suite Datacenter (SMSD) licenses. You can read the whole article here.

Now with the SMSE and SMSD you will also get:

• System Center Service Manager Server ML as part of their active Software Assurance coverage when Service Manager will be generally available
• Opalis software will be granted to any new or existing SMSE or SMSD license with active Software Assurance coverage as of December 10, 2009

This has of course a downside on the price. The SMSE will move from $1,198* per license to $1,569* per license and the SMSD will move from $749* for each per processor license to $1,310* for each per processor license, effective July 1, 2010.

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

MVP RENEWAL and Happy New year

First of all I wish you all a happy new year!

And second,

I just received THE email saying that my MVP award got renewed this year :-)

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

OpsMgr Management pack APC ISX Central Integration Management Pack

This week I had to implement an APC management pack at a customer site and I will explain how to get it working. This customer is using APC to monitor and configure his Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) infrastructure.

“

The APC InfraStruXure (ISX) Central is a network appliance that collects data from, and monitors status of, devices that provide data-center-critical infrastructure.
The ISX Central Integration Management pack for Microsoft’s System Center Operations Manager 2007 provides a tight integration between the physical infrastructure space for whichISX Central provides unprecedented visibility and control and the systems infrastructure space for which OpsMgr provides the same type of solution.

“

The Management Pack integrates ISX Central through the new web services interface, available starting with version 5.1 of ISX Central. Make sure you install the ISX Central with a least version 5.1 that you can download from here http://www.apc.com/products/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=SFISXC511 

To install the Management Pack, install the .msi package downloaded from the APC Web site (http://www.apc.com/tools/download) into an appropriate directory. The installation package consists of four
files: this document, the sealed Management Pack (.mp), the optional Overrides Management Pack
(.xml), and the registration utility (.exe).

Steps to configure the APC management pack:

1. Configure your ISX Central
2. Import your APC ISX management pack
3. Run the ISX Central Registration tool
4. Configure the run-as account

The registration utility is a tool that provides a user interface to set certain registry keys that are used by the Management Pack to perform the initial discovery of the InfraStruXure Central servers.

Start the ISX Central Registration tool that you can find in the management pack download folder. To add a new ISX Central registration, click Add. You will be asked to provide a name and FQDN for the ISX Central. The name can be any descriptive name.

The FQDN should be the IP address or FQDN of the ISX Central. Do not use a full URL here. The registry is updated immediately.

Look in the registry.

All registry changes are made in the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\APC\ MsScOpsMgrMpForIsxc
• The registered names appear as the REG_SZ values Name0…Name<n>
• The registered FQDNs appear as the REG_SZ values

Create a run as account and associate it with the run-as profile. O

Click next

Click New which starts the Create Run As Account Wizard and opens the General Properties page

create a new run as account.

Click Next

The Run As account should be created as a Simple Authentication Run As Account. Simple Authentication - any generic user name and password combination, for example, Web form, SQL authentication, or anything else that accepts user name and password.

The username and password should have access to the ISX Central.

“More secure” means that when you associate the Run As account with a Run As profile, you have to provide the specific computer names that you want the Run As credentials distributed to. By positively identifying the destination computers, you can prevent the spoofing scenario that was described before.

In the This Run As Account will be used to manage the following objects area select All targeted objects

On the Distribution tab, in the Selected computers: area, click Add to open the Computer Search tool; Search by computer name (Default), then type in the computer name. The computer name is the computer name where you have run the ISX Central Registration tool.

Enable the “The InfraStruXure Central Registration discovery” discovery. This discovery targets computers running Windows Server (i.e. the Microsoft.Windows.Server.Computer Operations Manager class) and looks for the registry keys that are written by the registration utility. This rule is disabled by default, which renders the Management Pack dormant on import.

Enable the override for the computer object where the you have run the ISX Central Registration tool. Don’t forget to enable the “Agent Proxy” option under Agent Properties > Security.

After a while the ISX Central  will be discovered and you will be able to monitor your UPS infrastructure!!

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

OpsMgr : two new Novell Linux Management packs

Hi,

Novell just announced two new additions to the Novell Linux Management Pack or NLMP family:

SLES 11 and RHEL 5.x.

The Novell Linux Management Packs for OpsMgr expands the monitoring capabilities of Operations Manager by enabling monitoring of key Linux services that are not monitored now with the Cross platform management packs.

You can download the NLMP for OpsMgr from here:

http://download.novell.com/Download?buildid=QD-rc_brurs

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

OpsMgr : Certificate for this system is not valid when installing Linux agent

Today I ran into some Linux agent deployment issues. I needed to monitor about 20 Redhat Machines . In such an environment environment, Kerberos authentication is not possible. Therefore, certificates are used between the management server and the UNIX-based or Linux-based computers.

First if you have some Cross-platform agent deployment issues please have a look at the following blog posts:

• http://wmug.co.uk/blogs/aquilaweb/archive/2009/07/21/opsmgr-r2-xplat-agent-deployment-field-notes.aspx
• http://wmug.co.uk/blogs/aquilaweb/archive/2009/09/02/more-opsmgr-x-plat-notes.aspx
• http://wmug.co.uk/blogs/aquilaweb/archive/2009/07/22/enable-opsmgr-module-logging.aspx
• http://blog.xplatxperts.com/xplat-xperts/2009/08/opsmgr-cross-platform-discovery-errors.html

Ok, let’s start!

So after making sure I had all the pre-requisites needed to deploy an Linux agent I launched the discovery wizard

But my agent installation failed because the certificate could not be signed.

The certificate signing process does the following:

For an unknow reason my certifcate was not signed and trusted.

 I also got the following error in my event log:

Unexpected ScxCertLibException: Unable to open root store
; input data is: -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIDHjCCAgYCAQEwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEFBQAwZjEYMBYGA1UEAxMPU0NYLUNlcnRp
ZmljYXRlMTAwLgYDVQQMEydTQ1g2MzMzNzZEMi1FM0UyLTRmMzEtODQ2MS1EMDky

To solve this problem you need to sign the certificate on your OpsMgr server following this procedure:

 Download and install Winscp on your OpsMgr server.

 Start Winscp and connect to your Linux machine

Click yes

Browse to /etc/opt/microsoft/scx/ssl

Copy the key scx-host-<hostname>.pem  to your opsmgr server.

Open the command prompt on your OpsMgr server and change directories to the location where you copied the certificate. Type the command

“scxcertconfig -sign scx-host-<hostname>.pem scx_new.pem”

and then press ENTER. This command will self-sign your certificate (scx-host-<hostname>.pem) and then save the new certificate.

Rename your scx_new.pem file with scx-host-<hostname>.ad.pem and replace the original file on your linux server with this file.

Connect to your Linux server with putty

and type scxadmin –restart

This step is very important! If you don’t restart the scxadmin the discovery wizard will still complain about the certificate not being signed!!

Now close your discovery wizard and re launch it.

The Discovery Wizard discovers the computer and tests to see that the certificate is valid. If the Discovery Wizard verifies that the computer can be discovered and that the certificate is valid, the Discovery Wizard adds the newly discovered computer to the Operations Manager database.Almost immediately you will get a message saying the agent is successfully signed and installed:

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

OpsMgr bug : console crashing when creating an override on cluster resource group monitor

Be aware that there is a bug when you want to create an override on the resource group rollup monitor to change the maintenance mode behavior!

Let’s see:

In my example I have one cluster with 2 cluster nodes. I needed to do some maintenance on my nodes and they needed to be rebooted. So I put one node in maintenance mode so that my NOC team will not get alerted, do what I had to do and finally restarted my node and do the same for the other node.

Suddenly I had someone of the NOC team yelling at me that they did receive an alert saying that there was a problem with the cluster resource group!!

I opened the cluster resource group health explorer and indeed:

The underlying resources were in maintenance mode but not the availability rollup monitor! So I had a look at the monitor and apparently the monitor is configured to rollup maintenance mode as an error:

So I wanted to change the maintenance mode parameter so that when I put a node into maintenance mode the monitor will rollup the maintenance mode as maintenance  mode and not rollup the maintenance mode as an error:

And here is the catch:

When you want to save your override you will get this nice red error! So it’s impossible to change how the behavior of the rollup resource group monitor!

So now, when we need to put a cluster node in maintenance mode we also put the resource groups in maintenance mode.

Have fun,

Alexandre Verkinderen