Momski does Service Management

Citrix XenApp Performance Monitoring/General "Server" Performance monitoring

2010-03-02T14:45:00.002+00:00

Hi All,

As part of the current project I have been working on I was asked to put together a list of performance counters which should be setup to monitor the performance of XenApp in depth. The contract which I am uses EdgeSight heavily but I wanted to make sure that all was covered in relation to performance. So in OpsMgr we set up the following and I though that this may be a useful reference for anyone wanting to monitor XenApp or a servers general performance...enjoy:

Kernel

Memory\Free System Page Table Entries

This will show the number of page table entries not currently used by the system. On a x32 Windows Server 2003, 4Gb RAM, this counter should not drop below 5000 Free System Page Table Entries as this would indicate that we are running low on kernel memory.

Logical Disk

% Disk Time

Gives an indication of how busy the disks are. The disk can become a bottleneck for a number of reasons:

- The server has too little physical memory so is “thrashing.” If thrashing is occurring, the pages/sec will also be high.

- A single user is running an application or process that makes extensive and rapid use of the disk. This can be investigated by running Current Process and Current User reports in the future.

- Many users are performing large amounts of disk activity. The speed of the disks may be the server’s bottleneck.

The metric % Disk Time is calculated using a number of factors and values above 100% are possible. If we see values of 100% disk time, the disk is in constant use. Values greater than 100% may indicate that the disk is too slow for the number of requests.

% Free Space

The server is running out of disk space. Several factors can cause this:

- A lack of remaining disk space after installing the operating system and applications.
- A large number of users are logged on (now or in the past) and their configuration data, settings, and files are taking up too much space.
- A rogue process or user is consuming a large amount of disk space.

Current Disk Queue Length and Average Disk Queue length

This counter shows the number of requests outstanding on the disk at the time that the performance data is collected. For this counter, lower values are better. Values above 2 per disk may indicate a bottleneck. This counter gives the queue length across all disks in use (so if they are allocated via LUN and this has 4 disks then a disk queue length of 8 might be ok). Bottlenecks can create a backlog that can spread beyond the current server that is accessing the disk, and result in long wait times for users.

Logical Disk: Avg. Disk sec/Read and Logical Disk: Avg. Disk sec/Write

These counters show the average time, in seconds, of a read or write operation to the disk. Typically these are used to monitor SQL performance but it may be useful to see what times are being produced. From a SQL perspective the following is a ruff guide to disk performance:

- Avg. Disk Sec/Read - Measure of disk latency. Avg. Disk sec/Read is the average time, in seconds, of a read of data from the disk. More Info:Reads Excellent <> 20 Msec ( .020 seconds )

- Avg. Disk sec/Write - Measure of disk latency. Avg. Disk sec/Write is the average time, in seconds, of a write of data to the disk.

Non cached Writes:Excellent <> 20 Msec ( .020 seconds )

Cached Writes OnlyExcellent <> 04 Msec ( .004 seconds)

Memory

Available Bytes

Informs you if too much memory is being used. This could be because:
- Too many users are logged on.
- The applications that users are running are too memory-hungry for the amount of memory available on the server.
- Some user or process is using a large amount of memory. Running a perfmon report focussing on Current Process report may help you track this down.

Being short on memory could result in “thrashing.”

Pages/sec (Hard Page Faults)

A large amount of paging indicates either:
- The system is low on physical memory and the disk is being used extensively as virtual memory. This can be caused by too many users being logged on, too many processes running, or a rogue process “stealing” virtual memory.

—or—

An active process or processes are making large and frequent memory accesses.

Too much paging degrades the performance of the server for all users logged on. The Available Bytes, Disk, and % Processor Time metrics may also enter warning or critical states when a large amount of paging occurs. Short bursts of heavy paging are normal, but long periods of heavy paging seriously affect server performance.

It is generally agreed that anything over 20 Pages/sec could be deemed as a bottleneck.

Page File: % Usage

While the Page File is less likely to be a bottleneck it is worth checking. Anything over 70% could indicate an issue.

Memory: Pool Non-paged Bytes

A good counter to detect an application memory leak. When the application is closed memory should be returned. If this counter begins to creep up at a rapid rate during the day then faulty application may be causing a memory leak.

Committed Bytes

If committed bytes are higher than the amount of physical RAM then this would indicate a server with not enough memory.

Network

Bytes Total/Sec

This metric gives a good indication of how much network activity this server is generating or receiving. Thresholds here are dependent on a number of variables such as network link, NIC hardware etc.

Processor

% Interrupt Time

The processor is spending a large amount of time responding to input and output rather than user processing. A large value for interrupt time usually indicates a hardware problem or a very busy server.

% Processor Time

A high processor time for a long period of time indicates that the processor is the bottleneck of the server, too many users are logged on, or there is a rogue user or process (use the Current Process perfmon counters to investigate). This is pure processor utilisation, not always a bad thing when it's 80-90%. User experience and helpdesk calls would need to correlate to this for this to be deemed the issue.

System

Context Switches/Sec

A large number of threads and/or processes are competing for processor time. There are a number of variables which could be used to determine thresholds such as number of processors and clock rate. Thresholds I have seen mentioned in the past are around 15000 per a CPU.
% Interrupt Time

Terminal Services

Active Sessions

A large number of users are logged on and running applications. The server may begin running out of memory or processor time and performance for users may deteriorate.

Inactive Sessions

A large number of disconnected sessions are taking virtual memory. Remove some disconnected sessions or reduce the length of time for which disconnected sessions can persist until they are automatically removed.

Citrix Metaframe Presentation Server

Data Store Connection Failure

Thresholds here are dependent on WAN/LAN etc but this value should be low.

Operations Manager 2007 R2 ROI

2009-07-21T16:42:00.002+01:00

Hi All,

Recently I was asked to help a customer write a high level Return of Investment summary for the implmentation of Operations Manager 2007 R2. I had a look on the web and found many points for Config Mgr (which are useful) but not too much on Operations Manager 2007 R2 from a high level business perspective. So here is my take on why an organisation should look at Operations Manager 2007 and what the possible Return on Investment could be:

Operations Manager 2007 R2 Return on Investment

Return of Investment on system/service monitoring solutions can be based on tangible, usually financial benefits, or intangible, soft focused benefits such as increased infrastructure, application and service monitoring knowledge within an organisations support team. Usually tangible benefits in implementing Operations Manager 2007 R2 focus on cost savings in regards to the following areas:

License Cost – Operations Manager 2007 R2 with Microsoft’s flexible licensing suites including SMSE (System Center Enterprise Licensing) and sector focused pricing means that the cost to implement any product in the System Center family can be extremely cost effective as licensing is based on the host processor and not each individual O.S to be deployed. As System Center is usually part of an organisations existing volume license and/or software assurance agreement then considerable cost savings can be made when comparing to other enterprise management suites of IBM Tivoli TEC and HP OpenView etc.
License Savings – Operations Manager 2007 R2 has the capability of being an end to end service monitoring platform meaning that consolidation of current point system monitoring tools is probable resulting in possible license savings. This also means that centralisation of core service monitoring.
Service Outages – Failures to a core customer focused service can cause costs in terms of specialist knowledge from a third party required to fix the issue. Overall costs can be incurred by the organisation if the outage is for a sustained amount of time. Operations Manager 2007 R2 provides proactive monitoring meaning that potential issues which can cause a major service failure can be captured and addressed before a major issue that causes a service failure occurs. Each Management Pack (set of rules) which can be deployed with Operations Manager includes expert related knowledge directing a support operative to the potential cause and resolution of an issue.
Manual service checks – In many developing IT infrastructures a support member(s) role may be to do daily, weekly or monthly checks on core services. Operations Manager 2007 R2 allows for automation of these checks and remedial recovery if there is an issue.

The intangible benefits to an organisation implanting Operations Manager 2007 R2 can be numerous and include:

Knowledge based support – All Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Packs are inbuilt with expert knowledge from product vendors meaning that if an application issue was to occur, clear summary of the problem, cause and possible resolution information is presented to the operator thus empowering them to solve the issue in a guided manner.
Time To Resolve (TTR) – Time To Resolve refers to the point when an issue has occurred to when it is solved and the service can continue, in line with the service agreement, to the end customer or end user. As Operations Manager 2007 R2 provides knowledge based support this means that Time To Close of issues can be greatly reduced.
Simplifying complexity – As an organisations infrastructure to support its process and infrastructure it can become a complex mesh of systems which can make it difficult for an non IT professional to see the benefit of the infrastructure deployed in relation the business. Operations Manager 2007 R2 simplifies this complexity with the ability to create Line of Business (LOB) views which clearly show the relationship of various system components to a business process.
Real Time Service Level Objective (SLO) Monitoring – Operations Manager 2007 R2 allows the operator to easily link specific, percentage based service level objectives core Line of Business services or specific application components such as databases. This makes it easier to see the benefit of I.T systems to the organisation and can allow for information to be used in Business Process Improvement (BPI) or Business Process Restructuring (BPR) initiatives.

Hope these help. There are many more, espeically as there are many great features of Operations Manager 2007 R2 but these a quite a good high level summary of the potential return from an Operations Manager 2007 R2 deployment.

Thanks,

John

Operations Manager 2007 R2 180 day eval available for download

2009-05-27T09:03:00.006+01:00

Hey All,
Just to let you know that last Thursday, 21st May 2009, Operations Manager 2007 R2 180 day evaluation is available for download from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=93ddf25b-1ef0-4851-81b0-5fb9a2f76181&DisplayLang=en . At the time of writing there is no full version download available from MSDB subscriber downloads.

So what is all the fuss about? Well the new version (which requires new licensing unless you have Server Management Suite Enterprise Licensing with Software Assurance) has the following enhancements:

- Improved stability and performance primarily for the Operations Manager 2007 console.
- Native cross platform monitoring of Unix and Linux.
- Improved notfication configuration.
- Process monitoring.
- Wild card service monitoring.
- Intregrated service level monitoring and reporting.
- The console is now black.
- Power consumption for each computer or for a group of computers with the power consumption management pack.
- Service Level Dashboard v2.0 which integrates with Sharepoint Services or MOSS 2007.

There are many more enhancements and over the next couple of weeks I will be writing a review. Documentation can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/opsmgr/bb498235.aspx . Also some new marketing datasheets - http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/operationsmanager/en/us/datasheets.aspx .

Some screenshots I quickly :-) captured:

Thanks,

Momski

OpsMgr Health Service fails to start after applying new QFE 957123?

2009-05-12T23:35:00.001+01:00

This week I am doing an OpsMgr 2007 deployment with ACS including Virtual Machine Manager 2008, SecureVantages packs and hopefully BridgeWays Oracle Pack.

Picture the scene.... the customer, OpsMgr console looking great with me evangelising how good it is, radio on (relaxed atmosphere) kicking out some great 80s music (Prince – Little Red Corvette if you must know) and I am as happy as can be as the mighty Blackburn Rovers have reached the magic 40 points so no relegation worry......I know, I know you all want my job....I would not swop it though for a million dollars*

And then it’s that time – time to import the IIS Management Pack. Well I am sure those of you who read the forums or have gone through the pain of trying to monitor IIS 7 using the new IIS Management Pack are aware of the “colourful” issues presented here – especially with the original release of QFE 957123, Config and SDK service failing to start anyone????? Now this was captured early by the IIS Management Pack team and a new version
released:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f82ef6b3-a08e-4295-b9e3-fb78a74aefa8&displaylang=en

So I thought no issues – great! Oh OpsMgr how you surprise me! I applied the hotfix to the RMS and guess what the OpsMgr Health Service failed to start – great and presented me with this nice error:

"The OpsMgr Health Service service terminated with service-specific error 3(0x3).

"Customer - “That will be an issue then?” Me – “Yes, don’t worry (%$#)”

So I decided to have a look at http://blogs.technet.com/smsandmom/archive/2008/04/30/opsmgr-2007-healthservice-service-fails-to-start-with-25362-warning.aspx

Sure enough this put me on the right track...so to cut a long story short , to fix:
(1) Open Registry Editor
(2) Navigate toHKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HealthService\Parameters
(3) In the State Directory (REG_SZ) key make that there is an entry to:

"drive"\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\Health ServiceState

Where drive is your install drive.

I hope that helps people out there!

Thanks,

Momski
http://www.mmsnews.info

* Disclaimer: If you do wish to offer Momski a million dollars then this site does not take any liability in him saying yes as he is not crazy!

Momski at MMS 2009

2009-04-26T18:55:00.003+01:00

Hey All,

Firstly....I might aswell get this over with. I have just slapped my hands as it has been ages since posting but my job role has changed in recent months and I am now Head of Service Management. Finding time to blog has been reall hard - sorry. This week I am at MMS 2009 and I have set up the following social group to keep track of events as they happen http://www.mmsnews.info sign up and contribute. I will be blogging on her during the week and will be putting up video interviews with some of the major vendors and getting their feedback and analysis. Also make sure you start following http://twitter.com/mmsnews for the latest gossip, news and update as they happen.

Regards,

John

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 beta

2008-11-20T19:43:00.004+00:00

The System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 beta is now available to download.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/opsmgr/dd239186.aspx

For those of you at TechEd this year you will have heard the announcement that instead of an SP2 next year there will be an R2 release because of basically the number of enhancements and features does not warrant just a rollup service pack.

First question is what does R2 mean in terms of licensing? i.e. can I upgrade from OpsMgr SP1 to R2. The answer is technically yes but it is my understanding that this will not be free upgrade unless, of course, you have purchased SA (Software Assurance) as an R2 release is viewed as a new version of the product.

So hopefully in the next couple of weeks I am going to try and set aside some time to do a test install and post back my findings but highlights of this release will be:

Cross Platform Monitoring

Extends Operations Manager to perform detailed monitoring of non-Microsoft operating systems, and workloads running on those systems.

Integrated experience for discovery of systems to be monitored; whether Windows, Unix, Linux or other.
Addition of Unix/Linux servers into the device management node of the administration pane.

Service Level Tracking

Presents a detailed report on performance and availability metrics of IT service levels for all monitored IT services.
Allows granular definition of how an IT service will be monitored; allowing definition of service level objectives that can be targeted against different objects that are to be monitored.
Delivers the capability to report and surface information through dashboards, such as Microsoft SharePoint.

New Monitoring Templates

Monitoring templates aid in the creation of monitoring capabilities by providing a predefined set of monitors.

New process monitoring template, enabling you to monitor for a minimum number of processes running on a system, set a threshold to identify when the number of processes exceeds a defined number, and define policy that can terminate an undesired process should it be identified on a monitored system.
Enhanced OLEDB template, allowing operators to identify the database and set thresholds for connection, query and fetch times, as well as run custom queries against a database.
Improved Windows Service template, enabling wildcard entry for selection of multiple, similarly-named services.
New templates for monitoring the existence of log files on Unix and Linux systems.

Enhanced Usability

New integrated import wizard for management packs (MPs) allows you to brows the MPs available on the MP catalog, and automatically download and install those MPs that you select.
Enhanced notification subscription wizard, simplifying the creation and maintenance of notifications. New features include allowing operators to create notifications directly from the alert view, and to more easily create targeted and condition-based notifications.
New overrides summary view, allowing you to view all overrides across both sealed and unsealed management packs.
New ability to view the health explorer via the web console.
One-click maintenance mode, ensuring that all necessary and related monitors suspend their respective monitoring at the same time.

Improved Performance

Enhanced console delivers significantly improved response times compared to earlier versions of the product.
Improved scalability of URL monitoring, delivering monitoring of over 1000 URLs per management server.
Adds full support to install on Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

It's beginning to feel a lot like..........

2008-11-20T19:21:00.005+00:00

.....the busiest time of the year!

Wow....time flies when you are really busy. Looks like I have been neglecting my blog! November seems to have just flown by! In the last month I have been deploying Operations Manager 2007 on Windows 2008 and also deploying VMM to work in conjunction with it. So far things are going ok but I have hit into issues with the DHCP and DNS management packs. Basically it seems that the monitoring/discovery scripts keep launching on the agent server causing memory to be eaten by the cscript process like it's going out of fashion! Any how Microsoft are aware of these issues and last week a new DHCP pack was released and this seems to have done the trick....just the DNS one now please Microsoft.

Yesterday Dilgenter had their annual Symposium event at the Science Museum In London. I did a keynote presentation in the afternoon on System Center Roadmap and overall it was a real success with over 40 people attending. I was really encouraged to see the interest in the System Center family and with success of an event it hopefully means more projects which is great so I am planning to follow up initially with a series of webinars over the next couple of months on OpsMgr, VMM 2008, OpsMgr 2007 R2 and ConfigMgr....oh yeah and maybe fit some Christmas shopping in at some point!!!

First look and review of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

2008-10-30T10:30:00.011+00:00

As you are probably all aware System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 got released last week and is available for evaluation although I can't see it on MSDN yet.

So here is my independent review....please note that this is based on my first thoughts as I have only used the product for a day!

In the adapted words of a Fast show sketch... “Today I have mostly been eating....SC VMM 2008” and does it taste good?

Firstly, in short SC VMM 2008, has been geared up to be THE centralised virtualisation management platform. Today many organisations rely on VMware but in the future you can expect to see a whole mix of virtualisation platforms (Hyper V, Xen etc) potentially in an organisation. All of these have their own management interfaces, some more mature than others but this means potentially ‘disjointed’ support of essentially the key base technology layer for many organisations. This is not good and it’s clear to see the problems that this could present in regards to both the support function and the business overall. SC VMM 2008 is designed to solve this and take it one step further with ‘VPRO’ (performance and resource optimisation) which basically means that through integration with OpsMgr and VPRO management packs i.e. Exchange 2007 MP with VPRO, your proactive virtualisation management will be service aware. SC VMM 2008 will be know that a server in a resource pool is actually a critical Exchange bridgehead server and will make recommendations on VM placement, resource optimisation based on the existing setup of the virtualisation farm. As of 1st November 2008 VMM 2008 will be formally released to manufacturing with support out of the box for VMware 3.x, Virtual Center 2.0.1 or above and of course Hyper V (no Xen yet).

Well here is my simple review:

VMM 2008 at the moment is a bit like walking into one of those many chain gastro pubs. The menu (product) on paper looks excellent; it potentially has everything and more. The descriptions of the dishes (features) leave you salivating and even though you only really want a main course (service monitoring of your virtualisation infrastructure) your now thinking about the appetisers, desserts and veritable feast of side orders. You call the waitress/waiter over....and then the problems begin and your culinary dream is brought down to reality (for now). Firstly, even though the menu (features) look good, your informed that they are waiting on suppliers (vpro partners will generate vpro enabled management packs, some new Microsoft management packs will be vpro enabled) but there does not seem to be a clear release date. So you are basically left sitting in a flashy restaurant (SC VMM 2008) with a good looking menu but can’t order anything so you might as well have gone to your local favourite takeaway (Virtual Center).

So in summary VMM 2008 stills looks good but the hype, marketing and road map is better than the product at the moment. The VPRO function is currently simple and does not do anything which Virtual Center can’t do currently. It will recommend that VMs are moved to hosts with more resources but do you really need a ~ £700 product to tell you that when you already have Virtual Center? Its integration with Virtual Center is good (yes you still need virtual center because VMM plugs in via the SDK) and VPRO utilises V-motion to move running VMs around on the fly (something Hyper V can’t do until Win2k8 R2). It also lets you create snapshots from the VMM 2008 console which is quite good and yes the console does look nice.

It’s integration with OpsMgr is seamless which is good because it’s in the System Center family and it WILL make use of the OpsMgr reporting element but I can't find no reports yet. Through OpsMgr 2007 you can now see the health of machines from the virtual perspective but this is basic availability and optimisation monitoring at the moment until more VPRO packs are released, you can though, run tasks such as creating snapshots etc...but products like Veeam nWorks seem to monitor more at the moment. The VMM console allows you to V2V VMware VMs to Hyper V and will let you (looks pretty good) P2V a machine quickly to a Hyper V platform. Another good feature is that you can create new VMs on a VMWare or Hyper V platform and the wizard for doing this is very good with a simple star rating for placement.

The other feature which I have not tried yet is the self service portal which basically lets users provision their own VMs and assigns quotas to user groups. When they create a new VM a ‘points’ charge is deducted from their quota. This does look good but chances are large organisations have this already with VMware and this portal is only for Hyper V provisioning. So in summary VMM 2008 is still a good product on paper but we are left waiting for its really tasty features. Here is my points break down at the moment:

Good

Great interface, probably the best virtualisation layer management interface I have seen (Citrix please take note). Makes the process of virtualisation (P2V etc) accessible to all IT professionals.
Create new VMware and Hyper V VMs all from one centralised platform.
Seems very stable for an RTM product (Good work Microsoft).
Hyper V with VMM 2008 looks like being the easiest to use virtualisation technology with user self service provisioning being easiy with a simple charging mechanism.
See your VMware farms and Hyper V farms from one console.
Setup is quite easy and Win2k8 aware in terms of its firewall ports etc.
Integration with OpsMgr 2007 is seamless which is the way it should be.
Makes great use of PowerShell and all cmdlets and scripts are shown.

Negative (reluctant to say this because the roadmap is good)

VPRO features at the moment limited.
No OpsMgr reports out yet.
Need firm release dates for VPRO enabled Management Packs

In conclusion, would you buy this today if you have Virtual Center set up, configured and your support teams like using it?...I doubt it but this is a case of “watch this space” in relation to VPRO. Would you buy this today if you are adopting Hyper V? - Definitely yes. Would you buy this today if you have OpsMgr or looking to implement OpsMgr and one of your key monitoring areas is the virtualisation layer - I would, as the road map looks like bringing the feast which has been promised on the menu and until that time it gives your support teams chance to get used to VMM and its integration with OpsMgr!

Well that's me done for now...time for me to head down to my local gastro pub!

System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 support for Microsoft SQL Server 2008

2008-10-16T12:52:00.002+01:00

Well we know that Operations Manager 2007 SP1 is supported on Windows Server 2008 but what about whether it is supported on SQL Server 2008? Well official supportability can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb309428.aspx so no official support yet.....

BUT

the official response on when OpsMgr 2007 will support SQL 2008 can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958170 So official word is:

"Currently, it is not a supported scenario to run SQL Server 2008 together with System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1. Additionally, there is no planned support for scenarios where you run SQL Server 2008 together with the original release version of System Center Operations Manager 2007.We are investigating the merits of providing support for upgrading SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 for System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 database roles. A statement about this potential support will be forthcoming within 90 days of the SQL Server 2008 RTM date (August 6, 2008 plus 90 days)."

Currently under evaluation:

• Microsoft are currently evaluating support for performing a clean install of SQL Server 2008 on a system that is running System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1.

• Because the SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services infrastructure has changed to no longer include a dependency on Internet Information Services (IIS), support for the Operations Manager Reporting feature in SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services is also under evaluation.

A management pack for monitoring SQL Server 2008 is currently scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of the 2008 calendar year.

Installing Operations Manager 2007 on Windows Server 2008

2008-10-16T09:38:00.003+01:00

Over the last couple of days I have had a few queries in regards to installing Operations Manager 2007 on Windows Server 2008. As you may be are this is definitely possible and on a project which I am working on at the moment this is the configuration which they require. I found it straight forward but there are a number of gotchas:

Everything (as you would expect) is completely locked down in terms of security
You must be are of key ports that OpsMgr uses as these will need configuring on the Windows Server 2008 firewall
Remember that all Operations Manager 2007 web components require IIS 6.0 when you are installing the IIS server role

There is quite a bit of information on the forums at the moment in regards to installing Operations Manager 2007 on Windows Server 2008. Some of the best resources I have come across are:

Creating a Windows Server 2008 POC environment for OpsMgr 2007

(1) Creating a Windows Server 2008 domain - http://ops-mgr.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!3D3B8489FCAA9B51!695.entry

(2) Installing the Operations Manager 2007 databases component - http://ops-mgr.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!3D3B8489FCAA9B51!710.entry

(3) Installing the Root Management Server - http://ops-mgr.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!3D3B8489FCAA9B51!719.entry

(4) Installing the Data Warehouse - http://ops-mgr.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!3D3B8489FCAA9B51!728.entry

(5) Installing the OpsMgr Reporting Services Component - http://ops-mgr.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!3D3B8489FCAA9B51!768.entry

Installing the Reporting Services Component with Windows Server 2008

http://www.opsmanjam.com/default.aspx - Check the featured content.

OpsMgr 07 Remote Maintenance Mode Scheduler 2.0

2008-10-15T21:40:00.002+01:00

As you may be aware, one of the little annoyances with Operations Manager 2007 is that through the Operator console you can't schedule maintenance mode through the default menu. So when you want to put a component into maintenance then it is in this state as soon as you click ok. Now this is a problem if you work in support and have to leave at 6pm but the maintenance window is at 2am in the morning. Hopefully a future version of OpsMgr we may be able to set maintenance windows to groups by default.

In the meantime what can you ? Well there is lots of information on various forums about using a Powershell scrip to schedule a maintenance window but one of the best tools that I have come across which should be in your OpsMgr kit bag is the Remote Maintenance Mode Scheduler. Version 2 has just been released and can be downloaded from http://www.scom2k7.com/scom-remote-maintenance-mode-scheduler-20/. This really is a great tool by Tim McFadden - great work.

The Remote Maintenance Mode Scheduler is a GUI based tool that lets administrators easily schedule maintenance mode for a server or group of servers inside System Center Operations Manager 2007.

New Features in version 2.0 include:

Ability to schedule a daily maintenance mode.
New Show Scheduled Tasks Dialog.
Added feature to see all details for scheduled jobs.
Added feature to delete scheduled jobs

General diagnostics and tuning Management Pack

2008-10-09T22:46:00.004+01:00

I get a lot of questions similar to "I think my OpsMgr deployment is healthy but how do I make sure?". Well usually I would say start with the Operations Manager event log on the RMS for any obvious errors, check that no errors are showing in relation to database communication problems, on the agent side check that agent proxying is set for those agents which require it etc....but reading Ian Blyth's blog the other day http://ianblythmanagement.wordpress.com/ I came across a management pack from Walter Chomak which can be used to check an environment for general health and Management Pack Tuning. In summary it will check for

Agent Failover Events
Agent Proxying Needs to be Enabled
Data Warehouse Connectivity Issues
Database connectivity lost
Failed to connect to computer
Health Service Heartbeat Failure
Missed Heartbeats
Missing Perfmon Counters
Processing Backlogged Event Taking a Long Time
Script or Executable Failed to run
Services or Drivers failed to start
System Shutdown detected
Unexpected Service Terminations

Find out more and download at http://blogs.technet.com/wchomak/archive/2008/09/30/general-diagnostics-management-pack-1-0.aspx

Changing the data retention in the OpsMgr datawarehouse

2008-10-07T09:06:00.002+01:00

Ok, imagine the scenario, you are doing a POC of OpsMgr 07 for an organisation and because they only want to evaluate 'fit' of all OpsMgr components within their environment they do not want to provide you lots of space for the data warehouse. Well, what can you do? If it was the Operations Manager database then it would be possible to change retention days in the Administration section of the console but this is not possible with the data warehouse. So you could:

(1) Change the default data retention by altering the MaintenanceSetting table in the data warehouse. the table is split into two sections; "config space” (management packs, rules they contain,overrides created, etc) and “instance space” (objects discovered,their properties and relationships, etc.) The columns of interest are:

Instance Space settings

LastInstanceGroomingDateTime - the last time grooming operations were performed.
InstanceGroomingFrequencyMinutes - frequency of the grooming processstart (default: 480)
(most important) InstanceMaxAgeDays - maximum age (since the day instancewas deleted) for the instance space objects (default: 400)
InstanceMaxRowsToGroom - maximum number of objects to delete in one run(default: 5000).

Config space settings

LastConfigGroomingDateTime - the last time grooming operations were performed
ConfigGroomingFrequencyMinutes - frequency of the grooming process start(default: 60
ManagementPackMaxAgeDays - maximum age for the management pack (since theday MP was uninstalled) (default: 400)
NonSealedManagementPackMaxVersionCount - maximum # of non-sealed MPversions to preserve (independent of the age) (default: 3)

OR alternatively you could use the Data Warehouse Retention Policy tool (DWDATARP.exe) available from the Microsoft Operations Manager 2007 product team - http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2008/05/14/data-warehouse-data-retention-policy-dwdatarp-exe.aspx.

To use:

To view current Data Retention settings run:
dwdatarp.exe –s “dw servername” –d “dw databasename”
example: C:\dwdatarp>dwdatarp -s opsmgrsp1 -d OperationsManagerDW
To set Data Retention for a particular dataset run:
dwdatarp.exe –s “dw servername” –d “dw databasename” – ds “dataset name” –a “aggregation name” –m “days”
example: C:\dwdatarp>dwdatarp -s opsmgrsp1 -d OperationsManagerDW – ds “Performance data set” –a “Hourly aggregations” –m 399

Maybe with Operations Manager 2007 SP2 will see this functionality inbuilt within the Operations Manager 2007 console?

Managing file count with OpsMgr 2007

2008-10-06T09:08:00.003+01:00

Hello,

Sorry for the lack of updates during September but I was on holiday. This year I went to Vietnam and I have to say it was great. We did the whole of Vietnam from Halong Bay in north (near Hanoi) all the way to the Mekong Delta in the south. It is a great country and really up and coming with hotels being built every where. If you are thinking of going I highly recommend it as in a few years I fear it will be over run with tourists.

Anyway back to business. When I was away I had a question about how to manage a file count in a folder. I have been asked this a few times before and the answer is that it is easy because.........their is a file management pack available from systemcenterforum.org at http://www.systemcenterforum.org/updated-file-system-management-pack-v600134-now-available/ It can monitor file count and a whole lot more:

File Count Monitor
File Count by Extension Monitor
File Extension Modified Time Monitor
File Modified in X Time
File Size Monitor
Folder Size Monitor

Thanks for this great Management Pack can go to Jaime Correia.

Check it out!

Citrix XenApp Management Pack released but upgrade issues

2008-09-08T12:46:00.006+01:00

To coincide with the release of XenApp 5.0 (the new name for Presentation Server), Citrix have released a new version of the Presentation Server/XenApp Management pack. I know a lot of people out there who are finding issues with the original Citrix Presentation Server 4.0/4.5 Management Pack and have issues with it's scripts and functionality so I thought that I would try the new version out in a lab environment. In order to replicate the environment which many of you will have I decided to import the old version of the pack and then import the new version...........BUT although the Management Pack import wizard detects the new version, on import, I get this error:

It looks like the task LaunchAMCConsole is not upgrade compatible...whoops!

So at the moment to upgrade you need to remove the old MP which means that if you have any customisations these will also need to be removed. I am sure Citrix will fix this issue soon!

Microsoft Virtualisation Launch today for marketing/sales

2008-09-08T10:17:00.005+01:00

............but unfortunately for "techies" out there the release of both Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 and the product I am waiting for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 will be released within 30 days. More information on the launch can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/sep08/09-07GetVirtualNowPR.mspx

Service Level Dashboard for Operations Manager 2007

2008-09-05T13:23:00.005+01:00

As we know Operations Manager 2007 can really help an organisation proactively monitor their infrastructure from a service point of view. One Management Pack which I definitely recommend as part of a service focused Operations Manager 2007 deployment is the Service Level Dashboard Management Pack. It is simple to deploy and links into with your existing Line of Business designs which you will have created in the Distributed Application Designer (to show them is as easy as using an Override to include them...which is good if you have already designed a few). It then allows you to generate business orientated reports which clearly show from a dashboard point of view whether core services are meeting their SLAs and whether, maybe, Service Improvement Programs (SIPs) need to be initiated. Basic overview is:

As you can see this is a great Management Pack and should be definitely in your deployment toolkit :-)

The Management Pack was originally released a couple of months ago but a new version was released at the end of August which uses summary reports based on Dundas Gauges and really makes the reports look a lot better then the early version.

It can be downloaded at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=67EF9823-631B-49B7-9D7F-9F125BDF27AE&displaylang=en

Microsoft Virtualisation official launch

2008-08-26T15:20:00.002+01:00

A date has been set for the official launch of the Microsoft Virtualisation products! It will be on Monday 8th September 2008 and the following products will be officially launched:

Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V
Microsoft Desktop Virtualisation (Softgrid)

and.....

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

Hopefully it will be the full release of VMM 2008 and not a workgroup release or something similar.

Microsoft's official launch page can be found here https://www.getvirtualnow.com/Main.aspx?

At the moment there seems to be no official launch by Microsoft UK but watch this space for any updates. Also something that should be of interest to everyone involved technically in the virtualisation space, especially those interested in Microsoft's Virtualisation offerings, is the launch of the Microsoft Virtualisation user group in the UK http://www.mvug.co.uk/

Their first meet is on Wednesday 24th September 2008, 18:00 - 21:00. These meetings are free to attend and are great for networking, learning and talking to people with actual deployment experience. Agenda will be the following:

Location:
Microsoft, Victoria, London
100 Victoria Street
Auditorium No 1

Date and Time:
Wednesday 24th September 2008
1800 – 2100

Agenda:
As this is our first meeting the intention is to present a roadmap of Microsoft virtualization technologies, finally we will have a open discussion on what you would like out of this user group.

1800 - 1900
Desktop virtualisation
Application virtualisation

1900 – 1915
Food

1915 - 2100
Server virtualisation
Presentation virtualisation
Microsoft SCVMM

Final 10-15mins
Open discussion (ask the audience
what future subjects we should cover)

Registration is possible via http://www.mvug.co.uk/

Certificate Generation Wizard for Operations Manager 2007

2008-08-26T13:29:00.003+01:00

Hands up - Who has had 'fun' with certificates and monitoring agents in non trusted domains with Operations Manager 2007? I know I have....especially on some of the first deployments which I did.

Good news though as the Operations Manager product team have released a certificate generation wizard (CertGenWizard) which is really good especially when requesting multiple certificates.

CertGenWizard.exe is a wizard tool which will take your CA information as input (it isn't required if you are running the wizard on the box with the CA), take in the computer names (has to be FQDNs), and send out a request for the certificates you need. Now, you no longer have to fill out the Certificate Request form or enter parameters or connect to the web enrollment service. Once the certificates are approved, there is a Retrieve button in the CertGenWizard which will allow you to retrieve the certificates that you have requested. On top of the personal certificates, the wizard will retrieve the root CA certificate.

The biggest benefit to this tool is the added ability to request multiple certificates at once. If you have 100 non-domain joined agents that you need to set up cert auth for, you can simply request all 100 machine certificates at once, retrieve them all, and manually bring them over to your other machines.

Once you have brought them to your other machines, CertInstaller.exe is a second tool that will install the certificates into the local machine store of your computer and run MOMCertImport.exe for you. Note: Install OpsMgr Agent FIRST and then run the tool!

More information can be found at: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2008/08/22/obtaining-certificates-for-non-domain-joined-agents-made-easy.aspx

MPViewer 1.7 - View sealed Management Packs

2008-08-22T13:22:00.006+01:00

This week I have been delivering another Operations Manager 2007 course in London and as part of it we look at some of the tools which Operations Manager administrators could use to help them.

If you have not come across MPViewer 1.7 before it should be part of your Operations Manager 2007 tool kit as it allows you to view the various components of a sealed or unsealed management packs. So you can see its discoveries, monitors, rules etc etc. Another great thing is that we can see the actual xml code used by the management pack so it can help you trouble shoot why, for example, a discovery script is not working or even help you to start looking at designing management packs in xml. Another feature is that you can export the management pack to html so you have a ready made report of it's contents for documentation.

It can be found via Boris Yanushpolsky's blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/boris_yanushpolsky/archive/2008/06/25/mpviewer-1-7-now-works-with-latest-e12-mp.aspx

Update - Updated Dell Management Pack Version 3.1, A01 - New bug?!

2008-08-20T22:48:00.006+01:00

Last week I wrote about the update to the Dell Management Pack. Reading Kevin Holman's blog http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/archive/2008/08/11/updated-dell-mp-released-3-1-a01.aspx it looks he has had a bit of "fun" deploying it and this article is definitely worth a read before you deploy as it looks like he has discovered a new bug with Version 3.1, A01. The bug is in relation to the discovery scripts and it looks like this new version will only detect servers with Dell OpenManage 5.3 and not the newer version 5.4...so version 5.4 servers get dumped into the unknown group in the Monitoring view in the console. I am sure Dell will rectify this with an updated release in the coming days or I hope so ...in the mean time I will be checking Kevin's blog for updates.

As I always say, however much you think reading the management pack guides is as exciting as watching paint dry you should do it as they do contain useful information in the marketing fluff which can save you a lot of scratching your head! :-)

Please display Management Packs in the System Center Catalog

2008-08-20T09:29:00.005+01:00

This is note to vendors who are producing their own Management Pack's. Please, please, please can you list them via the Management Pack Catalog -http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/scp/opsmgr07.aspx?SCPProdID=3

This week I have come across two which are not listed:

The Sun Servers Integration 1.0 for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 provides the tools and utilities needed to completely integrate Sun servers into the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 environment.

The systems it can manage are:

Sun Fire
X2100 M2, X2200 M2
Sun Fire X4100, X4100 M2, X4200, X4200 M2
Sun Fire X4500, X4600, X4600 M2
Sun Blade X6220, X6250 Server Modules
Sun Blade X8400, X8420, X8440 Server Modules

More info at: http://www.sun.com/systemmanagement/tools.jsp#Microsoft_SCOM

Also I came across the SolarWinds Management pack for integrating SolarWinds Orion with OpsMgr 2007:

The Orion Management Pack works with Microsoft System Center to pull detailed network fault and performance data from Orion, including network device utilisation and precise traffic analysis data, directly into Microsoft System Center.

More information can be found at: https://www.solarwinds.com/company/PressReleases/release.aspx?id=1078

Download at:

http://www.solarwinds.com/register/index.aspx?Program=846&c=70150000000Dlc6

Please, please, please list on the System Center Catalog.

Great posts on Cross Platform (Xplat) extensions

2008-08-16T10:48:00.004+01:00

Anyone who attended MMS 2008 this year and keeps up to date with OpsMgr news will have seen all the info about Cross Platform extensions or Xplat which will mean it will be possible to monitor non microsoft systems easier such as Linux, Solaris etc. Ian Blyth who I met recently at the WMUG event in July has done some great work with the beta versions of this product. Have a read - http://ianblythmanagement.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/xplat-part-2-the-install/

Regards,

Momski

Good deployment guides for Operations Manager 2007

2008-08-16T09:42:00.006+01:00

Having been slightly disappointed with the release of System Center Capacity Planner models for OpsMgr this year, Microsoft have a released a good infrastructure and design document for planning Operations Manager 2007 deployments. The deployment guidelines and concepts are similar to what I cover in the Operations Manager 2007 course and the planning/deployment workshops which I deliver. The Infrastructure and Design documents can be downloaded here - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AD3921FB-8224-4681-9064-075FDF042B0C&displaylang=en.

I really like the powerpoint slide deck which could be used to aid architects in writing a High Level Design document or help out in a Project Initiation Meeting. It's really good to see that in the project scope there is focus on service monitoring as that is a key element of any good Operations Manager 2007 deployment.

It's easy to say :-) but for a good Operations Manager 2007 deployment adequate time must be spent on defining project scope so that all stakeholders know both the business and technical deliverables as that will change how you deploy Operations Manager 2007 and how you define the success criteria. Good project management and understanding of Operations Manager 2007 or any service monitoring technology really is key.

Deploying Operations Manager 2007 means that you "touch" every key service the organisation is currently running and it can't be deployed in isolation. Your stakeholder list is likely to be quite large depending on the organisation i.e. Active Directory teams, Solaris teams, network teams, messaging teams. Depending on this list other key questions arise such as what is the change management procedure for these teams? If you are going to produce Line of Business service views using the distributed application designer (every good deployment should make use of this) then who is the audience? To what level of detail does monitoring information need to be provided? For example if you create a Line of Business view for key website ordering service then if the end user is the audience then the level of detail needed in the view may just be synthetic transaction and availability monitors i.e. is the website up, can a user log on in under 20 seconds etc. If the audience is a technical team then other information will probably need to be provided i.e. website security information, server performance information etc.

Before you even decide on these views the key question is whether the organisation understands its key services and how the various components function. End to end service monitoring means that you should be looking to model all components within the Line of Business views but that is easier said than done....can Operations Manager 2007 really replace existing network management tools such as Cisco Works? Well, technically maybe yes with a lot of effort and development but feasibly the answer should be no and the question is how to we integrate Operations Manager 2007 with these tools and manage the change so that the support teams know how to use Operations Manager 2007 in conjunction with network management tools.

Anyway that's enough for now...sorry another long post but I hope you understand what I am trying to say :-) Scope, planning and management is key in a successful Operations Manager 2007 deployment!

Updated Dell Management Packs - Version 3.1, A01

2008-08-14T10:41:00.003+01:00

Dell last week released updated versions of their hardware management packs with seperate packs now available for:

Dell Server and Printers
Dell Clients including Optiplex, Precision and Latitude
Dell Storage Array

Please remember that the managment packs effectively "plug-in" via the Dell OpenManage (v5.4 and above) software via SNMP and so this must be configured correctly or you might not get the correct alert information.

Updated MP's can be found here - http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R194919&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=269302

IMPORTANT - There have been issues with the Dell Management Pack and the native SNMP modules withing Operations Manager 2007 SP1. The Dell Management Pack uses SNMP discovery and so before you deploy these management pack(s) you must install the latest SNMP related hotfix for Operations Manager 2007 SP1 or Essentials 2007 SP1 or you might find that your RMS becomes unstable. This hotfix can be found here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951526