System Center Operations Manager

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

OpsMgr Webconsole Runtime error “Server Error in ‘/’ Application”

Just a little reminder that if you install the OpsMgr web console after the UI console has already been installed you will need to Copy the following files from the %Program Files%\System Center Operations Manager 2007 directory to the %Program Files%\System Center Operations Manager 2007\Web Console\Bin directory:

• Corgent.Diagramming.CommandResources.dll
• Corgent.Diagramming.CustomElements.dll
• Microsoft.ReportViewer.Common.dll
• Microsoft.ReportViewer.Webforms.dll

Otherwise you will get the following error when launching the webconsole:

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

TechNet Live meetings planning

Dutch:

Wat is er nieuw in System Center Operations Manager R2? (17 december)

Neem deel aan deze infosessie over de nieuwe features van OpsMgr 2007 R2, waarin we dieper ingaan op de verschillen tussen OpsMgr 2007 en OpsMgr 2007 R2.
Thema’s die we in deze sessie bespreken:
o Cross-platform
o Verbeteringen agents
o Verbeteringen management pack
o Verbeteringen authoring
o Installatie
o Reporting

Beste praktijken voor de installatie van OpsMgr R2, informatie uit de praktijk (12 januari)

Neem deel aan deze infosessie over de uitrolling van OpsMgr 2007 R2, waarin we bespreken wat er wel en niet werkte bij de uitrolling van OpsMgr 2007 R2 in verschillende omgevingen. U maakt kennis met de beste praktijken voor de setup, de beste praktijken voor de installatie van een SQL server voor uw System Center-omgeving enz.

Thema’s die we in deze sessie bespreken:
o Upgrade paths
o Cleaning db
o Gotha’s

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2: technisch overzicht (19 januari)

Volg deze sessie om meer te weten over System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. U verneemt alles over de features van Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, inclusief Live Migration support, Quick Storage Migration, Hot Add/Remove Storage, Maintenance Mode, Hyper-V en VMware ESX management en VDI management. Wilt u een Hyper-V en ESX-infrastructuur uitrollen of de nieuwste Microsoft System Center tool voor virtualisatiebeheer  leren kennen, dan mag u deze sessie beslist niet missen.

Beveiligingsverbeteringen in Windows 7 en Windows Server 2008 R2 (26 januari)

In deze sessie belicht Windows beveiligingsexpert Paul Loonen de essentiële beveiligingsfeatures van Windows 7 en het beheer ervan in een bedrijfsomgeving. Enkele van de vele verbeterde functies die in deze sessie aan bod komen, zijn de wijzigingen aan UAC, de Software Restriction Policies, de verbetering van Bitlocker, wat Managed Service Accounts zijn, welke verbeteringen er aan Kerberos werden aangebracht en hoe NTLM beperken.

French:

Quoi de neuf dans System Center Operations Manager R2? (17 décembre)

Participez à cette séance d’information  consacrée aux nouvelles fonctions d’OpsMgr 2007 R2. Vous y découvrirez les différences entre OpsMgr 2007 et OpsMgr 2007 R2.
Voici un aperçu des thèmes abordés au cours de cette session:
o fonctionnalité inter-plateforme
o améliorations au niveau des agents
o améliorations au niveau du Management Pack
o amélioration au niveau de la rédaction
o installation
o reporting

Les meilleures pratiques applicables à l’installation d’OpsMgr R2 – notes résultant d’expériences concrètes (12 janvier)

Joignez-vous à nous pour cette séance d’information sur le déploiement d’OpsMgr 2007 R2. Elle offre une vue détaillée de ce qui fonctionne et des problèmes rencontrés lorsqu’on déploie OpsMgr 2007 R2 dans des environnements différents. Cette session vous enseigne aussi les meilleures pratiques de configuration, y compris la configuration SQL server pour votre environnement System Center etc.

Voici un aperçu des thèmes abordés au cours de cette session :
o Voies de mise à niveau
o Nettoyage de la base de données
o Gotha’s

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2: aperçu technique (19 janvier)

Ne manquez pas cette session où vous découvrirez en détail System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.  Nous passerons en revue toutes les fonctions de Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, y compris : support Live Migration, Quick Storage Migration, Hot Add/Remove Storage et Maintenance Mode, ainsi que la gestion Hyper-V, VMware ESX et VDI. Un rendez-vous incontournable pour ceux qui déploient ou planifient le déploiement d’une infrastructure Hyper-V et ESX ou qui veulent en savoir plus sur le dernier outil de gestion de virtualisation Microsoft System Center.

Améliorations au plan de la sécurité dans Windows 7 et Windows Server 2008 R2 (26 janvier)

Au cours de cette session, Paul Loonen, expert de la sécurité Windows, débattra des principales fonctions de sécurité de Windows 7 et expliquera comment les gérer à l’échelle d’une entreprise. Vous découvrirez notamment les changements au niveau de l’UAC, l’évolution des  Software Restriction Policies, les perfectionnements apportés à Bitlocker, l’utilité des Managed Service Accounts, les modifications de Kerberos et comment limiter NTLM.

Installing and Configuring System Center Operations Manager 2007 (MOC50028)

Hi All,

I will be teaching the MOC50028 “Installing and configuring OpsMgr 2007” from 23 November until 27 November at RealDolmen in Belgium.

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? Want training from a consultant with plenty of real-life experience?

More information can be found here http://www.realdolmen.com/Commercial/Default.aspx?id=4052

Description

This five-day instructor-led course provides students with the knowledge and skills to managing a Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 management group. This course is intended to develop the necessary skills to install and manage Operations Manager 2007 management servers and supporting roles.

Target Audience

This course is intended for Windows Server 2003 or later administrators who have experience working within a Windows Active Directory domain environment and have a good understanding of Windows Server based network services. Familiarity with a support ticketing system is helpful.

Prerequisites

Before attending this course, students must have:

• A+ certification or equivalent knowledge.
• Network+ certification or equivalent knowledge.
• Completed Course 2274, or have equivalent knowledge.
• Completed Course 2275, or have equivalent knowledge.
• Completed Course 2277, or have equivalent knowledge.
• Completed Course 2278, or have equivalent knowledge.
• Completed Course 2279, or have equivalent knowledge

Objectives

After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Install and configure a management group.
• Install a clustered Root Management Server.
• Configure management group and agent settings.
• Install and configure reporting.
• Manage Agentless Exception Monitoring.
• Manage Audit Collection Services.
• Use Windows PowerShell to manage the management group.
• Configure a management group hierarchy.
• Migrate from Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 to System Center Operations Manager 2007.

Outline

Module 1: Installing System Center Operations Manager

This module explains how to install management servers and configure a clustered Root Management Server.

• Lessons
  • Identifying and Installing Prerequisites
  • Installing System Center Operations Manager 2007
  • Post Installation
• Lab : Installing System Center Operations Manager
  • Installing the Operations Manager Components
• Lab : Installing a Clustered RMS
  • Creating Cluster Resources
  • Installing the Operational Database
  • Installing the RMS Node
  • Installing the Secondary Management Server
  • Creating the Services
  • Creating the RMS Cluster Virtual Server

Module 2: Using the Operations Console

This module explains how to use the Operations Console, create Operator Accounts, use the Web Console and create Views.

• Lessons
  • Overview of the Operations Console
  • Creating Operator Accounts
  • Using the Web Console
  • Working with Views
• Lab : Creating Operator Accounts and Views
  • Creating User Roles
  • Creating Views

Module 3: Configuring Management Group and Agent Settings

This module explains how to define the default management group and agent settings, override the default settings for a management server and agents, and create notifications to be sent when alerts appear.

• Lessons
  • Global Settings
  • Overriding Global Settings
  • Creating Notifications
• Lab : Creating Notification Settings
  • Setting Management Group Notification Options
  • Creating Notification Recipients
  • Creating Notification Subscriptions

Module 4: Agent Installation

This module explains how to install and configure the agent.

• Lessons
  • Configuring Active Directory
  • Automatic Installation
  • Manual Installation
  • Managing Agents
• Lab : Agent Installation
  • Manually Installing the Agent
  • Approving the Manually Installed

Module 5: Management Packs

This module explains how to import, export, and manage management packs.

• Lessons
  • Overview of Management Packs
  • Importing and Exporting Management Packs
  • Creating and Sealing Management Packs
• Lab : Creating Monitors
  • Creating a Self-Tuning Threshold Monitor
  • Creating a Correlated Windows Event Unit Monitor

Module 6: Reporting

This module explains how to install and configure Reporting Services and build the appropriate models for Operations Manager monitoring.

• Lessons
  • Installing and Configuring SQL Reporting Services
  • Installing Operations Manager Reporting
  • Creating and Viewing Reports
• Lab : Creating Reports
  • Creating a Model
  • Creating a Report

Module 7: Agentless Exception Monitoring

This module explains how to configure the settings and group policy options for Agentless Exception Monitoring.

• Lessons
  • Configuring Exception Monitoring
  • Managing Clients
• Lab : Configuring Agentless Exception Monitoring
  • Configuring Client Monitoring
  • Configuring Group Policy

Module 8: Audit Collection Services

This module explains how to configure Audit Collection Services so that security auditing can be centralized within the organization.

• Lessons
  • Audit Collection Services Overview
  • Installing Audit Collection Services
  • Configuring Forwarders and Collectors
• Lab : Configuring ACS Reports
  • Configuring ACS Reporting

Module 9: Using Operations Manager 2007 Command Shell

This module explains how to use the new Windows PowerShell-based commands to manage the management group.

• Lessons
  • Command Shell Overview
  • Using Command Shell with Operations Manager 2007
• Lab : Using the Command Shell
  • Running Individual Commands
  • Scripting Commands

Module 10: Complex Environments

This module explains how to multi-home agents, work with agents in untrusted domains and configure a hierarchy of management groups.

• Lessons
  • Multi-homing Agents
  • Untrusted Environments
  • Multi-tiered Environments
• Lab : Connecting Management Groups
  • Configure Subscriptions
  • Configure Operator Accounts

Module 11: Migrating from MOM 2005 to Operations Manager 2007

This module explains how to use the tools required to migrate the agents and setting from the MOM 2005 management group to the Operations Manager 2007 management group.

• Lessons
  • Migration Overview
  • Using the Migration Tool
  • Converting Management Packs
• Lab : Converting Management Packs
  • Using the Migration Tool

New management packs for OpsMgr in October

Microsoft is working very hard these days and is has released a whole bunch of updated and new management packs this month.

Here is an overview:

Server 2008 Network Load Balancing

10/22/2009
(6.0.6726.0)
Windows Server 2008 Network Load Balancing for System Center Operations Manager 2007
The Windows Server 2008 Network Load Balancing (NLB) Management Pack provides discoveries, monitors, alerts, and warnings to help the operator understand the state of NLB clusters and NLB servers running Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The Windows Server 2008 NLB Management Pack can provide early warnings that an operator can use to proactively monitor the state of the NLB servers in the computing environment.

Microsoft Windows Server Cluster

10/21/2009
(6.0.6720.0)
Windows Server Cluster Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007
The Windows Server Failover Cluster Management Pack provides both proactive and reactive monitoring of your Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 cluster deployments. It monitors Cluster services components (such as nodes, networks, and resource groups) to report issues that can cause downtime or poor performance.

DFS Replication

10/19/2009
(6.0.6321.0)
DFS Replication Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007
The DFS Replication Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 monitors the health of the DFS Replication service on Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Server 2008 computers. This management pack monitors events generated by the DFS Replication service. These events provide an insight into the health of the service and folders replicated on monitored computers. This management pack includes a dashboard view which can be used to monitor replication backlogs.

Forefront Security for Office Communications

10/16/2009
(10.2.0321.0)
Forefront Security for Office Communications Server Management Pack for System Center Operations Man
The Microsoft Forefront Security for Office Communications Server Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 provides real-time insight into the health and performance of key Forefront Security for Office Communications Server (Version 10) components and services. The Microsoft Forefront Security for Office Communications Server Management Pack alerts the administrator to critical events affecting the security of their OCS environment. Proactive management of the Microsoft Forefront Security for Office Communications Server environment is facilitated through management pack activity reports on IM scan performance.

Exchange Server 2007

10/12/2009
(6.0.6702.0)
Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2
The Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack is designed to monitor Exchange 2007 key health indicators, collect Exchange component-specific performance counters in one central location, and raise alerts for operator intervention as necessary. By detecting, sending alerts, and automatically responding to critical events, this Management Pack helps indicate, correct, and prevent possible service outages or configuration problems, allowing you to proactively manage Exchange servers and identify issues before they become critical. The Management Pack monitors and provides alerts for automatic notification of events indicating service outages, performance degradation, health monitoring, and centralized management.

Exchange Server 2003

10/12/2009
(6.0.6702.0)
Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007
The Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack monitors the performance and availability of Exchange Server 2003 systems. It can also issue alerts for possible configuration problems Availability and performance monitoring is done using synthetic transactions. In addition, the Management Pack collects Event Log alerts and provides associated knowledge articles with additional user details, possible causes, and suggested resolutions. The Management Pack discovers and monitors the individual server components and functional areas on an Exchange Server 2003 server.

Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Pack

10/8/2009
(6.1.7533.0)
Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Pack
The Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Pack alerts you to problems with components such as agents, management servers, the Operations Manager database, agents, modules used by workflows and services so that you can continue to monitor the servers and clients that your business depends on. The management pack includes tasks that you can automate to get easy access to common diagnostic tools, such as restarting a health service or reloading an agent configuration

Have fun,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Operations Manager 2007 R2 Authoring Resource Kit

Microsoft just released the OpsMgr 2007 R2 Resource kit. You can download it here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9104af8b-ff87-45a1-81cd-b73e6f6b51f0&displaylang=en

Feature Summary
The System Center Operation Manager 2007 Authoring Resource Kit provides the following features to aid in management pack (MP) development and customization:

· Authoring Console – Develop MPs within a GUI environment

· Management Pack Best Practices Analyzer (MPBPA)

o  MPBPA scans management packs for best practice compliance and provides automated resolution for numerous issues. This tool integrates with the Authoring Console.

· Management Pack Spell Checker (MP Spell Checker)

o  MP Spell Checker checks spelling in management packs to eliminate errors in display strings.

· Management Pack Visio Generator (MP Visio Generator)

o  MP Visio Generator allows you to generate a class inheritance and class relationship diagram using Microsoft Office Visio.

· Management Pack Diff (MP Diff)

o  MP Diff shows the differences between two management packs.

· Management Pack Cookdown Analyzer (MP Cookdown Analyzer)

o  MP Cookdown Analyzer identifies workflows which may break cookdown.  Suggestions are provided for how to fix the performance problems.

· All References Add-in

o  All References Add-in helps find all management pack elements that reference the specific element chosen. For example, the ability to right click a class and find all rules, monitors, overrides, as well as anything else that targets that class is provided. This tool works on most management pack elements.

· Workflow Analyzer

o  The Workflow Analyzer provides the ability to statically analyze all types of workflows.  It also allows users to trace workflows running on any Health Service.

· Workflow Simulator

o  The Workflow Simulator provides the ability to test certain types of workflows such as discoveries, rules, and monitors without a Management Server and Management Group. Key functionality includes the ability to test workflows as well as view and validate output prior to signing and importing the MP into a Management Group for additional testing.

· Management Packs

o  Three management packs which are frequently used as dependencies are provided as part of the tools installation.  These MPs are necessary to allow the Authoring Console to open most MPs available online in the System Center Operations Manager MP Catalog. The provided MPs are:

§ Microsoft.SystemCenter.DataWarehouse.Report.Library

§ Microsoft.SystemCenter.InstanceGroup.Library

§ Microsoft.SystemCenter.ServiceDesigner.Library

OpsMgr 2007 R2 MP version 6.1.7553.0 is Released

Just got an email from Microsoft saying that they just released their first out of band update to the Operations Manager Management Pack! Notice that this update mp is only available for OpsMgr 2007 R2 environment at the moment, for OpsMgr environment prior to R2 you will need to wait a couple of weeks.

Basicaly they improved the monitoring around excessive agent memory utilization based on customer and blogger feedback they have. 

You can read the full story here http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2009/10/07/opsmgr-2007-r2-mp-version-6-1-7553-0-is-released.aspx

Have fun,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Video Interview: Implementing SCOM in a large Belgium Hospital by Alexandre Verkinderen

Alexandre Verkinderen, System Center Operations Manager MVP, talks about the monitoring solution he implemented at AZ Sint Maarten, a large Belgium Hospital. Together with Sigurd Corluy, System Engineer from AZ Sint Maarten, who explains why they need a monitoring solution and why they chose for SCOM 2007. The hospital have several business critical applications, like patient registration or patient medical file etc that needed to be monitored and for which a custom made management pack was developed. In their NOC they use Savision LiveMaps to display diagrams about the datacenter and business processes resulting in an easy to understand graphical representation of the health of their racks and business applications.
Both are interviewed by Arlindo Alves, IT Pro evangelist from Microsoft.

Grtz,

Alexandre Verkinderen

New Connect site for the OM Community

Hello OM Community,

Today we launched a new connect portal that will allow YOU to provide feedback to the OM team as well as participate in surveys that have been traditionally reserved for our TAP programs.
All you need to do is be registered on connect and you'll be able to participate.
Check it out here, https://connect.microsoft.com/opsmgr

You can for example fill in the survey for the new SQL mp and give valuable feedback to the opsmgr product team.

Greetz,

Alexandre Verkinderne

Unique Opsmgr 2007 training event (Belgium) : Management Pack Development Course

Hi all,

I am very proud to be able to announce that we will be able to host a Unique Opsmgr 2007 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)? Here is your chance!

What is being delivered?

The  Management pack development course organized by Infront Consulting & RealDolmen

Description

This class is designed to provide attendees with the knowledge they require to create a custom Management Pack. The hands-on labs in this class will walk the attendees through the process of creating a custom Management Pack from the design and planning stages through to the creation of reports. This class will use a ‘popular’ application and step through the MP development process as an exercise that results in a production quality MP that can be used in a production environment. This class will use the Exchange Server 2007 MP developed by Microsoft as an example.

http://infrontconsulting.com/docs/SCOM2007-OpsMgr2007MPDevelopment.pdf

Who is delivering this?

Delivered by a very senior level MVP specializing in the System Center Suite of Products, experience gained with working with large enterprise customers giving them the ability to bring their real-life know-how to their training deliveries.

When will this take place?

This unique 4day training event will take place from Thuesday the 17th of November till Friday the 20th of November 2009 included.

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

Where Does it take place?

This event will take place at the training facilities of the "RealDolmen" http://www.realdolmen.com

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 tva.) for the 4 day training including a 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 and that there are currently no plans for repeating this event!

Windows Server Operating System Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

Microsoft just released an update for the windows server mp. They now support Windows 2008 R2 ! Another nice thing is that finaly you can also display the logical disk size in MB’s! It was so damn stupid of Microsoft to only dispplay  the size in Bytes.

You will need to persononalize the logical disk state view because it’s not enabled by default

 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3529D233-5E3E-4B51-8F66-5D6F27005EC3&amp;displaylang=en&displaylang=en

The September 2009 release (version 6.0.6667.0) of the Windows Server Operating System Management Pack includes the following changes:

· Support for Windows Server 2008 R2, including new classes to represent Windows Server 2008 R2 systems specifically.

· The intervals for some discoveries have been changed to reduce CPU usage. For details, see Objects the Windows Server Operating System Management Pack Discovers.

· Added Logical Disk Fragmentation Level monitors for Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

· Disabled the following rules and monitors for Windows Server 2008 because the events needed are in Windows Server 2003 only.

· Duplicate computer name was detected

· Windows Activation State

· Disk Group Failed

· Disk Group Auto Import Failed

· Volume Not Started

· Run WMIAdap

· Fixed the summary details for the Performance History (Percent Processor Time) report to indicate that the object type is Windows Server 2003 operating system rather than Windows Server 2003 processor.

· Fixed the Performance History (Percent Interrupt Time) report to use a rule that targets the operating system rather than the processor.

· Changed the data source for discoveries from System.Scheduler to System.Discovery.Scheduler to avoid performance issues.

· Changed the Logical Disk Availability monitor to use a Run As profile with administrative privileges to enable it to run in a low-provilege environment.

· Modified logical disk discovery to exclude mount points, because numerous rules use performance counters that are not applicable to mount points.

· Fixed an issue in which an alert could be generated for Windows Activation too early.

· Addressed an issue that was causing some discoveries to not show up correctly in the authoring section of the console.

· Improved the product knowledge for the alert generated by the A Service is Misconfigured rule.

· Fixed issue in which logical disk health check could have performance problems when run against clustered servers.

· Fixed links to views in product knowledge articles.

· Added Active Alerts views for Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

· Added retry logic to the "Probe Module: Is Feature Installed" module to avoid failures due to periodic time-outs.

· Added a new integer property named "Size (MBytes) (Numeric)" to the Logical Disk class and updated the existing property "Size (Bytes) (String)" to clarify that it is a string. The new property can now be used in formulas and views as expected.

Thanks,

ALexandre Verkinderen

Windows Key Management Service MP for Operations Manager 2007

Microsoft just released a new KMS mp for opmsgr 2007. Be carefull when importing it via the catalog with the OpsMgr 2007 R2 console. Before importing the mp you will need to uninstall any previous version of the mp AND you will also need to run a sql Clean up query to delete the previous KMS tables, KMS grooming jobs and any other KMS mp related stored procedure! This SQL cleanup query is not available when importing the management pack with the console. You will need to download and install the KMS mp from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A330D876-C965-4433-AFDF-7C61A9126FB3&amp;displaylang=en&displaylang=en

Changes in This Update

The 6.0.7234.0 version of the KMS Management Pack includes the following changes:

· Support for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2

· Decommissioning of KMS reports

· Support for non-Windows KMS applications

· Installation / un-installation changes

Supported Configurations

This management pack supports up to twenty KMS hosts. The following table details the supported configurations for the KMS Management Pack

Before you import the Key Management Service Management Pack, take the following actions:

· Remove any previous versions of the management pack at or below build # 6.0.6278.9

· If the previous version of the management pack utilized reports, follow these steps:

1. Open SQL Query Analyzer and select the OperationsManagerDW
2. From SQL Query analyzer, open the Uninstall.sql.txt (rename to uninstall.sql if desired) file attached with this management pack
3. Execute (F5)

Proliant Management pack RealtimeMonitors_SNMP.FailedComponent Auto Server Recovery 0

Just imported the HP Proliant management pack for SCOM 2007 and hade a lot of servers in warning state even if nothing was wrong in the Insight homepage.

So I opened the healthexplorer and found RealtimeMonitors_SNMP.FailedComponent Auto Server Recovery 0  in warning state.

After investigating I found that problem was that the ASR was not configured on some servers and needs to be enable.

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Live maps V4 for OpsMgr 2007 R2 is available

Savision has just released a major now version of Live Maps designed specifically for System Center Operations Manager R2!

You can download it here http://savision.com/download 

Besides some issues fixes they also release a bunch of very cool features:

Thanks,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Cleaning the Localizedtext Table after SCOM upgrade to SCOM 2007 R2

After upgrading your OpsMgr 2007 components and upgrading your SQL environment to SQL Server 2008, you will need to run some post installation steps. These post installation steps are only needed if you have done an upgrade from OpsMgr 2007 to OpsMgr 2007 R2.

OpsMgr 2007 SP 1 had an issue with the localized text table continuing to grow. The main cause of this was converted MOM 2005 management packs running a lot of backwards-compatibility scripts, such as the converted Exchange 2007 management pack. The issue was that each event wrote additional data to the localized text table, which is not groomed. Over time, the Operational database continued to grow, which had a tremendous impact on OpsMgr performance. Kevin Holman writes about this at http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/archive/2008/10/13/does-your-opsdb-keep-growing-is-your-localizedtext-table-using-all-the-space.aspx; it is also documented on the SCUG.BE blog at http://scug.be/blogs/scom/archive/2009/05/28/optimizing-the-performance-of-your-opsmgr-console-and-reducing-db-size.aspx .

I’ve just did an upgrade at a customer site and after completing the post-installation steps as mentioned here http://technet.microsoft.com/nl-nl/library/dd789073(en-us).aspx and I was very surprised by the results!!

I checked the database size and the localizedtext table before running the cleanup script.

• Database size before the cleanup script

28 gig of space!

• 12.700.000 records in the localizedtext table before running the cleanup script.

In OpsMgr 2007 R2, the localizedtext table issue is gone. The table still exists but Microsoft has resolved the growing issue. Even if the issue is gone you will need to run the following SQL query once after the upgade to initially clean up the localizedtext and publishermessage tables. You can copy/paste the script from here http://technet.microsoft.com/nl-nl/library/dd789073(en-us).aspx 

The script has run for about 4 hours!

Now the results! :-)

Disk space after the clean up script:

7 gig of disk space; So that’s a gain of 20 gig of disk space! That’s amazing!

780.000 records found in the localizedtext table after running the clean up script !! So that’s about 12 million records lesser!!

For completing the post-upgrade steps I did a reindex of the database.

And now my console is running very fast and I’ve less data to backup! So after upgrading to SCOM 2007 R2 you will definitely have to run the clean up script!!

Greetings,
Alexandre Verkinderen

Export SQL reports in PDF landscape

I had to create some reports for a customer this week and the layout of the report didn’t satisfied my client. The reports are exported in portrait format and not in landscape format.

First part of the report

and on the second page I got the rest of my report.

Very ugly……….

How to export a scom report in pdf landscape format?

 Only solution here is to render the pdf in landscape format, so I start googling and found this blog http://www.bictt.com/blogs/bictt.php/2009/03/17/sql-reporting-services-render-pdf-in-a4-1  and also some information msdn http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms156281.aspx 

So to resolve our problem we have to add some code in the Rsreportserver.config file that you can find under “Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.5\Reporting Services\ReportServer\”

You can specify rendering extension parameters in the RSReportServer configuration file to override default report rendering behavior for reports that run on a Reporting Services report server. You can modify rendering extension parameters to achieve the following objectives:

• Change how the rendering extension name appears in the Export list of the report toolbar (for example, to change "Web archive" to "MHTML"), or localize the name to a different language.
• Create multiple instances of the same rendering extension to support different report presentation options (for example, a portrait and landscape mode version of the Image rendering extension).
• Change the default rendering extension parameters to use different values (for example, the Image rendering extension uses TIFF as the default output format; you can modify the extension parameters to use EMF instead).

Locate the render section in the rsreportserver.config file

We are going to add two extra entries to the export list.

Below the pdf entry paste the following code:

<Extension Name="PDF (A4 Landscape)" Type="Microsoft.ReportingServices.Rendering.ImageRenderer.PdfReport,Microsoft.ReportingServices.ImageRendering">

        <OverrideNames>

            <Name Language="en-US">PDF in A4 Landscape</Name>

        </OverrideNames>

        <Configuration>

            <DeviceInfo>

                <OutputFormat>PDF</OutputFormat>

                <PageHeight>8.27in</PageHeight>

                <PageWidth>11.69in</PageWidth>

            </DeviceInfo>

        </Configuration>

</Extension>

<Extension Name="PDF (A4 Portrait)" Type="Microsoft.ReportingServices.Rendering.ImageRenderer.PdfReport,Microsoft.ReportingServices.ImageRendering">

        <OverrideNames>

            <Name Language="en-US">PDF in A4 Portrait</Name>

        </OverrideNames>

        <Configuration>

            <DeviceInfo>

                <OutputFormat>PDF</OutputFormat>

                <PageHeight>11.69in</PageHeight>

                <PageWidth>8.27in</PageWidth>

            </DeviceInfo>

        </Configuration>

</Extension>

Save the file and close it. I also did a IIsreset and a restart of my sql reporting services just to be sure.

When I want to export a report I have two extra entries:

Now when I want to export a report in landscape format I just choose to export in pdf in A4 landscape format and this is the result:

Everything perfectly fits on one page and I have a happy client now :-) !!  Thanks to Bob Cornelissen for his blog.

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Dell 4.0 hardware MP is released for Opsmgr 2007 SP1 and R2

Early this week Dell released a major update to their OpsMgr management pack with their 4.0 version.  I strongly encourage you to check out this MP as there are some significant improvements that are worth checking out.

http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/format.aspx?releaseid=R237719

Feature highlights of this Dell Server Management Pack Suite v4.0 (A00) :
- Improvements in scalability and performance over the previous releases by including:
        * Server Scalable MP (for managing large enterprise environments) 
        * Server Detailed MP (addon MP that provides detailed instance level monitoring)
- Performance and Power monitoring and OpenManage 6.1 support for Dell Server MPs
- DRAC and CMC MPs to monitor Dell Remote Access Controllers and Chassis Management Controllers
- Override utility to enable Informational alerts for managed Dell Servers
Additional details are available in the User Guide inside the download

Technet Events

In the comming weeks Microsoft Belgium is hosting some very interesting Technet events.

Full details can be found on the links below :

Dutch Live Meetings :

• Live Meeting – Secure Web Access with TMG – 8 september 2009
• Live Meeting – Transitioning from Exchange 2003-Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 – 17 september 2009
• Live Meeting – What’s new in System Center Configuration Manager SP2? – 29 september 2009
• Live Meeting – Unified Communications – 6 oktober 2009
• Live Meeting – What’s new in Windows Server 2008 R2 Active Directory – 20 oktober 2009
• Live Meeting – Data Integration using SQL Server 2008 Integration Services: Overview – 29 oktober 2009
• Live Meeting – What’s new in System Center Configuration Managers SP2? – 19 november 2009

French Live Meetings :

• Live Meeting – Transitioning from Exchange 2003-Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 – Septembre 17, 2009
• Live Meeting – What’s new in System Center Configuration Manager SP2? – Septembre 29, 2009
• Live Meeting – Unified Communications – Octobre 6, 2009
• Live Meeting – What’s new in Windows Server 2008 R2 Active Directory – Octobre 20, 2009
• Live Meeting – Data Integration using SQL Server 2008 Integration Services: Overview – Octobre 29, 2009
• Live Meeting – What’s new in System Center Configuration Managers SP2? – Novembre 19, 2009

Have Fun,

Alexandre Verkinderen

SCUG.BE session on Service Manager

Service Manager: From Re-active to Pro-active

In this session Maarten Goet, SCOM MVP and participant in the TAP-program for Service Manager, is going to show us what the possibilities are of Service Manager. First he will explain the architecture of Service Manager after which he will deep-dive into the possibilities of Incident-, Change Management and CMDB. With some real life examples Maarten will also show us the possibilities of the SCOM and SCCM connector.

For IT-pros who are working with ITIL, COBIT or the MOF framework, for IT-pros who are interested or searching for a helpdesk system with integration into the system center suite and for IT-decision takers that need to comply with several standards, this is a session you can’t miss.

SPEAKER Mr.  Maarten  Goet , MVP, MCSE - Messaging & Security

Seats are limited so please register fast: Registration

System Center User Group Netherlands Summer Night

Our friends and colleagues from the Nederlands are organizing a System Center Summer Night! The Belgium System Center User Group will also be there to visit our dutch friends! :-)

Summer Night

Op 24 juli 2009 organiseert de System Center User Group nederland de jaarlijkse System Center ‘Summer Night’. We starten de avond om 17.00 uur met pizza en vangen om 17.30 uur aan met het programma:

17.30 uur – 17.45 uur:  SCUG NL, stand van zaken

17.45 uur – 18.45 uur:  Windows 7 deployment met SCCM 2007

18.45 uur – 19.45 uur:  DPM en Cloud Recovery

19.45 uur – 20.00 uur:  Break

20.00 uur – 21.00 uur:  SCOM 2007 R2, what’s new

21.00 uur – 22.00 uur:  Borrel en afsluiting

Je kunt je kosteloos inschrijven door een email te sturen aan info@scug.nl met je naam en contactgegevens. De locatie is De Witte Bergen in Eemnes. Hier is een routebeschrijving te vinden: http://www.hoteldewittebergen.nl/route.aspx

Hopelijk tot de 24^e,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Community Day Session: Setting up & Configuring SQL Server to support your SCCM & SCOM environment

Kim Oppalfens and I did a session at community day together:

Setting up & Configuring SQL Server to support your SCCM & SCOM environment

System Center Configuration Manager and Operations Manager both need SQL Server. In this session we will show you what the best practices are for having a smooth running SQL server for our System Center environment. Having a good initial setup and configuration is not the only important thing, doing regular health checks on your SQL server is even more important. In this session we will discuss just about anything you need to know about setting up SQL from the SCOM or SCCM admin perspective. In this session you will learn how to work with the SQL team and set up your scom or sccm to talk with their standard SQL setup. This includes setups with remote sql servers, sql server services running as domain users, and named instances. Additionally we will talk about some SQL related configuration topics, like network libraries, firewall configuration, SQL collations, database recovery models and authentication modes.

At the end of this session you will know everything you need to know about SQL setup to support your scom or sccm environment.

Speaker: Kim Oppalfens & Alexandre Verkinderen

Slide Deck: http://scug.be/media/p/1136.aspx 

Pictures:

See you next year!

Alexandre Verkinderen

System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise Transition to System Management Suite Datacenter

As mentioned in here the  System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise Licensing has changed since today. Microsoft has developed a transition path from the SCSMSE to the newly SMSD:

License Grant:

One-time License Grant of System Center Server Management Suite Datacenter (SMSD) to License Holders of System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE):

As a one-time exception in connection with the transition of SMSE* from a suite that allows for the management of any number of OSEs on a licensed device to a suite that allows for the management of up to four OSEs on a licensed device, we are granting Select, Enterprise, Open License, Open Value, and Campus and School customers with active Software Assurance on SMSE as of July 1, 2009 the following:

• Four complimentary SMSD licenses for each qualifying SMSE license with active Software Assurance the customer has as of July 1, 2009.
• Each set of four granted SMSD licenses must be assigned to a single device, and may not be separated for use on two or more devices.
• The management rights associated with the complimentary SMSD licenses are granted in place of the management rights associated with the qualifying SMSE license. Upon the assignment of the granted SMSD licenses, the customer forfeits its management rights under the corresponding SMSE license.

More info on Emma’s blog the ladylicensing!

Alexandre Verkinderen

Third MVP awarded in the User group

I’m very proud to announce that one of the co-founders of the user-group and friend Kenny Buntinx has been awarded with the prestigious MVP award System Center Configuration Manager!

Congratulations Kenny!

Alexandre Verkinderen

HP EVA performance management pack V2 for Opsmgr

In a previous blogpost I already mentioned that Alain Cote has developped a HP EVA performance management pack.

Alain has continued to improve his management pack and wow we have an update with:

• better discovery
• a controller processor monitor
• and a report

You can get the HP EVA performance management pack V2 here.

Thanks Alain for sharing this with the community!

Have fun,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Known issues with the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Management Pack for Systems Center Operations Manager 2007

Microsoft just published a known issue with the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Management Pack for Systems Center Operations Manager 2007.

We’ve seen a couple issues with the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Management Pack for Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 that we just released and found that the issues did not impact the operation of the management pack but were generating some non-actionable alerts. As a result, we wanted to make everyone aware of these so they wouldn’t cause any undue concern.

The following are some of the known issues in the Dynamics AX 2009 Management pack.

Issue : Alert “A GroupPopulator module unloaded due to an unrecoverable error” in operations manager console when importing the Dynamics AX 2009 Management Pack

Affected Version : 1.0.0.50

Description : This error is generated due to a race condition on the RMS where a group populator gets fired before the management pack gets loaded completely. This does not impact the performance or functionality of the management pack.

Resolution : There is no resolution for this problem since it’s due to a race condition. Just close the alert.

Issue : Alert “Script or Executable Failed to run” in operations manager console

Affected Version : 1.0.0.50

Description : Some placeholder scripts (myscript.vbs) in the Dynamics AX 2009 Management Pack cause SCOM to generate warnings because there is no code being executed.

Resolution : There is no resolution for this alert. Close the alert. The problem will be fixed in the next version of the management pack.

Raji Easwaran | Senior Program Manager

Here is a screenshot of the alert of the group populated error:

Here is a screenshot of the empty scripts:

I want to thank Raji Easwaran for helping me with these issues. She was really helpfull and always available! Thank you Raji!

Alexandre Verkinderen

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 SCW Roles and Security Hardening Guide for Windows Server 2008

Microsoft released a Operations Manager 2007 R2 SCW Roles and Hardening guide help protect and harden your Operations Manager 2007 R2 environment.

The Microsoft Operations Manager 2007 R2 Security Hardening Guide for Windows Server 2008 is designed to provide you with essential information about how to further protect, or harden, your Operations Manager 2007 R2 environment by using the Security Configuration Wizard (SCW). SCW is now automatically installed with Windows Server 2008. SCW is an attack-surface reduction tool for computers running the Windows Server 2008 operating systems, including Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 2 (SP2), and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Grtz,

Alexandre Verkinderen

HP EVA management pack

Alain Côté has written his own HP EVA management pack!  This Management pack will monitor the performance of an HP EVA, the official HP Storage MP only does alerting. 

This Management pack is based on the evaperf.exe command and has several collection rules, diagnostic task and one monitor for the latency.

The management pack assumes evaperf.exe is in C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\EVA Performance Monitor and is configured properly.

Thanks to Alain Côté for sharing this with the communty !

Have fun,
Alexandre Verkinderen

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2

The new Exchange Server 2007 management pack for Opsmgr 2007 R2 is now RTM and available from the mp catalog!

New monitoring wizard for configuring the Exchange MP:

Feature Summary

• A number of synthetic transactions ensure the Exchange servers are available and responding in a timely manner. The synthetic transactions are maintenance-mode aware, so that if the target of a transaction is in maintenance mode, the source will not run the transaction, and not alert unnecessarily.
• This Management Pack includes a Management Pack template that provides a wizard-like interface for configuring synthetic transactions against Outlook Web Access (OWA), Exchange ActiveSync, Web Services, POP3, and IMAP.
• This Management Pack includes a Management Pack template that provides a wizard-like interface for configuring mail flow synthetic transactions between agent-managed Exchange 2007 Mailbox servers.
• This Management Pack provides 30+ reports specific to Exchange 2007 that track availability and performance compared to service level objectives. For the list of reports and for more information about the reports, see the Management Pack Guide.
• All the synthetic transactions in this Management Pack use an Operations Manager 2007 R2 hosting feature for Windows PowerShell technology that provides a performance improvement when running synthetic transactions.
• A significant number of rules and monitors that are not actionable or may be noisy are disabled. Note that many of these rules are still in the Management Pack so that you can enable them if necessary.
• Support for monitoring any number of Exchange organizations using a single Operations Manager 2007 management group.
• Full support for Microsoft clustered configurations. For more details, see the Management Pack Guide.
• Discovery of Exchange 2007 server roles is disabled by default, and no Exchange 2007 monitoring is applied by default. This allows you to discover and monitor your servers gradually, as well as tune the Management Pack as you bring more agent-managed Exchange 2007 servers into the Operations Manager environment.

Grtz,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Opsmgr Performance problems with healthservice on agents

On some occasions the scom agent can cause a lot of performance issues on the servers. Here I will describe some steps I take when I have performance problems and in most of the cases it works for me.

The first thing you should do is to configure the antivirus exclusions for opsmgr. Have a look at Kevin Holman’s blogpost Antivirus Exclusions for MOM and OpsMgr on how to do this. Configuring anti virus exlusions will help you gain some performance.

This is a screenshot of the performance of my cpu before the anti virus exclusions:

And this one is after the anti virus exclusions:

The second thing is to have a look at the healthservice.exe. We’ve created a collection performance rule in the previous post to collect the processor time % of the healthservice. If the healthservice is consuming more than 15 a 20 % of your cpu you have a problem . In my case I  had huge performance problems due to the healthservice.exe that was taking all the processor time. My healthservices.exe was taking about 50 to 60 % with peaks to 100% on my agents….You can imagine the reaction of my client….he was not very happy.

Performance view of my healthservice.exe on one of my agents:

So I did some tests, installed all the necessary hotfixes, deleted the healthservice cache, exception of programfiles\scom\ for the antivirus etc etc. But with no results.

So I tought it was WMI and did the following steps to rebuild the wmi:

· Net Stop WinMgmt

· Ren %WinDir%\System32\Wbem\Repository %WinDir%\System32\Wbem\OldRepository

· Net Start WinMgmt

Still no success, still had performance troubles. I contacted one of our company architects who send me a repairwmi.cmd “program” he developed . It will recompile all the mofiles, re-register all the dll’s, exe’s etc.

Steps to take:

1. Copy the content of the repairwmi.cmd to the %WinDir%\System32\Wbem\ folder

2. Run the repairwmi.cmd

3. Stop the opsmgr healthservice

4. Delete the healthservice cache

5. Start the opsmgr healthservice

And voila! All my performance problems where gone!!

As you can see this reduced drastically the processor time % of the healthservice!

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Collect Processor time % of the HealthService.exe of your agents

If you have performance problems on your agents it’s probably the healthservice.exe that’s taking a lot of processor time %. At the moment only the processor time of the healthservice of the management servers is collected. This mean you will need to create a new collection performance rule to collect the processor time of the healthservice on your agents.

To have an overview of the processor time % of the healthservice.exe of all your agents follow the following procedure.

Create a collection performance rule

Click next

Click next

Click next

Select use optimization and click create.

Now you can create a custom performance view to see the collected information:

This view shows you the processor time % of the healthservice.exe that’s running on your agents.

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Changes effective July 1st to System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise Licensing

FYi

Components of Server Management Suite Enterprise

Enterprise server management licences<Server MLs> for

• · System Center Operations Manager 2007,
• · System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2,
• · System Center Data Protection Manager 2007
• · System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
• · And System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Management Server License

Current licensing Rules: Rights to manage an unlimited number of operating system environments (OSEs) on a single physical server

Upcoming System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise Licensing Changes

Two System Center Server Management Suite licensing changes will become effective 1 July, 2009, with the release of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2*:

• · System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise <SMSE>will be switched from an unlimited operating system environment to a four operating system environment, limited licence with a corresponding 20 per cent price decrease.
• · A new suite offering, Microsoft System Center Server Management Suite Datacenter <SMSD> will be introduced and will include the same products as System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise, but, it will be licensed per processor and will provide for the management of an unlimited number of operating system environments.

*Licensing changes become effective when customers adopt System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 and subsequent releases of the other products included in the System Center Server Management Suite family.

I hope this will only affect new licenses bought after July 1 and that existing customers can still upgrade to Opsmgr R2 with an unlimited management of VM’s.

If you want to know more about licensing at Microsoft have a look at Emma’s blog: http://ladylicensing.spaces.live.com/

Grtz,
Alexandre Verkinderen

Session Recording Using System Center Operations Manager to monitor your SharePoint environment.

SESSION RECORDING Using System Center Operations Manager to monitor your SharePoint environment

System Center Operations Manager 2007 is THE end to end Monitoring Solution. In this session we will discuss what you, as SharePoint guys, find relevant to be monitored.
System Center Operations Manager uses a SharePoint Monitoring toolkit for monitoring the SharePoint Environment. This toolkit consists of a set of System Center Operations Manager 2007 management packs designed to help IT pros monitor their WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 and 2007 SP1 environments. These newly released packs were engineered to take advantage of SCOM 2007’s features, including new and improved reporting, additional actions, new views, and integrate IIS and SQL health rollup for a better understanding of the system-level dependencies of the SharePoint environments.
And last but not least: System Center Operations Manager can also emulate end user experience by monitoring a Web Application. We will show you how to monitor a Web Application, even if it is require credentials, and how to record a browser session.

VIDEO:

Dutch

SLIDE DECK:

Download Here

Have Fun,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Interview with Nigel Cain at Techdays 2009 in Antwerp on SCSM

At Techdays 2009 in Antwerp we interviewed Nigel Cain ( Program Manager - Operations and Service Management group) and asked him some questions on System Center Service Manager:

Have fun,

Scug.be Team

Opsmgr DB Create wizard System.InvalidOperationException

Today I wanted to install my OperationsmanagerDB on my SQL cluster 2005 SP2 actif-passive.

So I started the DBCreatewizard.exe and I got a very strange error mentioning something about

Severity: Error Message: Database creation failed. The database might have been incompletly created or modified. System.InvalidOperationException: An error occurred while trying to create the database on your SQL Server. Check your logs for more information. at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Setup.DBCreateWizard.Program.LaunchDBCreation() at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Setup.DBCreateWizard.SummaryPage.BackgroundThread()

To make a long story short:

We had a lab environment and production environment. Both environments are exact replicas: ip, users, servers, everything is the same. I did the install in the lab environment on my sql cluster and didn’t encounter any problems.

Now in production I had this strange error and asked my dba (that installed the sql cluster in lab and production) to confirm that everything was ok and that everything was the exact replica of the lab….

Now here comes the catch….and also the moment I wanted to kill my DBA….

I analyzed the dbcreatewizard error log that you can find here:

C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Temp\1

And found the following sentence

10:31: CreateDB:  Attempting to create OperationsManager on ELSQL3E\WSSCOM threw the following sql exception Cannot use file 'J:\SCOMOPLOG\OperationsManager.ldf' for clustered server. Only formatted files on which the cluster resource of the server has a dependency can be used. Either the disk resource containing the file is not present in the cluster group or the cluster resource of the Sql Server does not have a dependency on it.

I checked on my cluster resource and indeed: the Log disk was missing as a dependency!!

So my production environment was not the exact replica as my lab environment. I had to add the Log file disk as a dependency for my sql resource group:

And now I was able to run the dbcreatewizard.exe succesfully!

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Optimizing the performance of your Opsmgr Console and reducing DB size

I had troubles with the Opmsgr Console performance at serveral clients.

One of the most important things to boost your console performance is to reduce the Opsmgr DB size.

If you want to know which tabel is taking most of your DB size run the following query:

Simple query to display large tables, to determine what is taking up space in the database:

SELECT so.name,
8 * Sum(CASE WHEN si.indid IN (0, 1) THEN si.reserved END) AS data_kb,
Coalesce(8 * Sum(CASE WHEN si.indid NOT IN (0, 1, 255) THEN si.reserved END), 0) AS index_kb,
Coalesce(8 * Sum(CASE WHEN si.indid IN (255) THEN si.reserved END), 0) AS blob_kb
FROM dbo.sysobjects AS so JOIN dbo.sysindexes AS si ON (si.id = so.id)
WHERE 'U' = so.type GROUP BY so.name  ORDER BY data_kb DESC

In my case the localizedtable was taking most of the disk space. Kevin Holman already blogged about this: http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/archive/2008/10/13/does-your-opsdb-keep-growing-is-your-localizedtext-table-using-all-the-space.aspx 

I followed his procedure, I will describe all the steps I did and has to say I was really suprise by the results! :-)

• Count the rows in the localizedtable

select count(*) from localizedtext

In a normal environment with the typical management packs imported the total count of rows should be around the million. In one of my environments it was 22 milion!! So I defenitely needed to clean up this localizedtable!

• Look at the most common events in the localized table

select messageid, ltvalue, count(*) as Count from publishermessages with(nolock)
inner join localizedtext with(nolock)
on messagestringId = localizedtext.ltstringid
group by messageid, ltvalue
order by Count DESC

In my case it was the exchange management pack that produced the most ammount of events.

• Run the clean up script

Kevin Holman has provided a script to clean up the localized table. You can download it from his blog DeletePublisherMessages.zip .

Notice that this script is NOT supported by Microsoft, as it has not been thoroughly tested!  I’ve run the script in several environments now and didn’t run into issues but as a good Sys admin be carefull and take a backup of your opsmgr DB before running the script. Also make sure that your TEMPDB has enough space. And with enough space I really mean ENOUGH SPACE! Also the transaction logs of the TEMPDB will need a huge amount of free space. Also don’t run this scripts during the day when you have several operators running the opsmgr console. My CPU went crazy to 100 % processor time so my advice is to run the query at night or during the weekend.

• Reindex the DB

USE OperationsManager
go
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
SET ANSI_PADDING ON
SET ANSI_WARNINGS ON
SET ARITHABORT ON
SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL ON
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
SET NUMERIC_ROUNDABORT OFF
EXEC SP_MSForEachTable "Print 'Reindexing '+'?' DBCC DBREINDEX ('?')"

Now the results! :-)

Before running the script:

After running the script:

Gain in diskspace:

OperationsManager free space in %:

OperationsManager free space in MB:

I was really suprised by the ammount of free space I had now. With cleaning up the localizetable I won about 60 % of space!

My Opsmgr console is running really smootly now!

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Upgrading Opsmgr 2007 R2 RC consoles to Opsmgr 2007 R2 RTM

When you want to start upgrading your consoles from the opmsgr 2007 R2 RC version to the Opsmgr 2007 R2 RTM version be carefull with:

• third party extensions like the Savision live maps for example. You will first need to uninstall the extensions and reinstall them afterwarts. You can download the extensions from http://savision.com/download
• Also check that no opmsgr 2007 agents are installed on the same box. You will need to uninstall the agents prior to be able to upgrade the console

Next, There is no upgrade path from the opsmgr authoring console 2007 RC to the R2 version:

Oringal authoring console verions:

Upgrade:

Did an uninstall of the old one and install of the new authoring console:

Why provide an upgrade path for the Operations console but not for the authoring console???

grtz,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Upgrade Opsmgr 2007 R2 RC to Opsmgr 2007 R2 RTM

I’ve several production environmnets running the Opmsgr 2007 R2 Release Candidate version. Now that the Opsmgr 2007 R2 Rtm is available I wanted to test the upgrade from RC to RTM in my lab environment before upgrading my production environments.

Start the SetupOM.exe

the setup will detect that you run on “older” version of opsmgr2007

The prerequisiter check failed because of the savision livemaps RC extensions:

Uninstall the savision rc extensions and your ready to go:

After upgrading backup your encription key.

Don’t forget to approve the agent pending update

After the upgrade from SCOM R2 RC to R2 RTM you can  reinstall the Savision Livemaps RC extensions from http://www.savision.com/download . Savision confirms that the Livemaps RC extensions works on SCOM 2007 R2 RTM and that they will release an update within a few weeks to fully support the new SCOM 2007 R2 and add some new functionalities.

Now that I’m sure the upgrade from RC to R2 works like a charm I can upgrade my other RC environments at customers sites!

Grtz,

Alexandre Verkinderen

Opsmgr on Social Forum!

We just moved from the old news servers to the new social forum platform!

So start asking your questions, issues, share your knowledge etc on the new platform and make it as good as the old NNTP groups!

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

grtz,

ALexandre Verkinderen

http://scug.be

SCOM 2007 R2 is RTM!

SCOM 2007 R2 is RTM!

Download the scom 2007 R2 here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=93ddf25b-1ef0-4851-81b0-5fb9a2f76181

Brief Description

System Requirements

Opsmgr Data Warehouse failed to enumerate database components to be deployed

Today I ran into this issue:

Data Warehouse failed to enumerate database components to be deployed. Failed to enumerate Data Warehouse components for deployment. The operation will be retried. Exception 'SqlException': Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding. One or more workflows were affected by this. Workflow name: Microsoft.SystemCenter.DataWarehouse.Deployment.Component Instance name: scom.be Instance ID: {AC6FACD9-

Issue:This error appears immediately after a management pack is imported. The installaion of the reports in the MP is failing.

Resolution:Run exec sp_updatestats on the OperationsManagerDW db (the data warehouse).

When running the exec sp_updatestats doesn’t help follow these steps:

Download and extract the following hotfix:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=954643

Run the SQL query Managementpackinstall.sp.sql

And directly after running the query I got the following event:

Everything is fine now and I have green management server:

Hope this help,

Alexandre Verkinderen

http://scug.be

Third Edition of Microsoft Community Day !!

Community Day is back again, are you ready for our Third Edition of Microsoft Community Day?

Eleven Microsoft User Groups combine their efforts to organize this unique networking and knowledge sharing
event. A unique opportunity to learn about Microsoft’s latest developments and technologies like Exchange
2010, Silverlight 3, Visual Studio 2010, SQL Server 2008, Windows 2008R2, Powershell V2, Forefront
Identity Manager 2010, XNA 3.1. and OCS R2.
 
Microsoft Community Day will take place on Thursday 25th June 2009 in Utopolis, Mechelen, where we will
bring together 300 IT Pro’s and developers.
 
The Microsoft Community Day 2009 is supported by BESUG, BIWUG, IT-Talks, MVUG, Pro-Exchange, SCUG, SQLUG, VBIB, Visug, WinSec, XNA-BUG“
 
Register now for free for this all day event!

http://www.communityday.be/CD/

The System Center User Belgium will have two slots! We will speak about "Setting up & Configuring SQL Server to support your SCCM & SCOM environment" and "Thin, thick or hybrid imaging in sccm - Notes from the field".

Hope to see you there!

Grtz,

Alexandre Verkinderen

SystemCenterCentral.com Launch

Guys,

You definitely have to check this out!!

PRESS RELEASE

We are proud to announce SystemCenterCentral.com, the site to visit for “Everything System Center”.

SystemCenterCentral.com was founded by three System Center community members; Pete Zerger, Rory McCaw and Maarten Goet. SystemCenterCentral.com is a community initiative that will combine a number of existing Internet properties under a single community site and strive to become the leading community landing page for all System Center technologies.

As Microsoft continues to invest in its System Center brand, we feel that there is a need for a community site that focuses exclusively on the technologies included in this suite of products. Unlike other community sites, the motivation behind this site is to continue to give back to the community at large, one of the reasons why each of the founders have been awarded the Microsoft MVP title.

The official launch of SystemCenterCentral.com will be at the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) in Las Vegas, NV, the week of April 27 to May 2, 2009. SystemCenterCentral.com has a dedicated community area where you can check out the site, get more information or become a member!

At this time you will find blogs, where well-known MVPs will start blogging in the coming days, a download area, a community “pack catalog” and forums. Later in May, we will be launching a wiki and a ‘community feedback’ platform and other exciting features.

SystemCenterCentral.com is a strong supporter of user groups. We have the commitment of the following user groups to user SystemCenterCentral.com as the main landing page to find their user group and some of these groups will transfer their internet presence to SystemCenterCentral.com in the following weeks:

Atlanta Systems Management User Group, Microsoft Enterprise Management User Group (Denver), System Center Professional’s User Group of Jax (Florida), New York System Center User Group, Portland EPG System Center User Group, Northwest System Center User Group (Seattle), Windows Management User Group (UK), System Center User Group (Netherlands), System Center User Group (Belgium), System Center User Group (Malaysia), System Center Virtual User Group and the Powershell Virtual User Group.

We would like to thank our sponsors for making this possible. Both Quest Software and Microsoft are supporting SystemCenterCentral.com as Gold Sponsors and will be active participant in this new online community. By having them as gold sponsors, we are confident this will become the go-to, online community for all things System Center..

Also, we would like to thank Bridgeways and SecureVantage, who are supporting SystemCenterCentral.com as Silver Sponsors.

Not going to MMS, but still want to check out this new System Center community site? Go to www.systemcentercentral.com now and join!

Best regards,

Peter Zerger, Rory McCaw and Maarten Goet