System Center Operations Manager

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

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