Stefan Stranger's Weblog - Manage your IT Infrastructure

Webcast of Intro System Center Essentials

stefstr — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:30:00 GMT

It starts with an intro to the product and the core issues it's designed to address, and he then shows us the product interface and gives us a walkthrough of the main features and benefits.

OpsMgr Remote Maintenance Mode Scheduler

stefstr — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:27:49 GMT

Source: Everything System Center Operations Manager 2007

Tim McFadden has created a GUI based tool that lets administrators easily schedule maintenance mode for a server or group of servers inside System Center Operations Manager 2007.

I’ve updated my toolbox with this great tool.

Deleting OpsMgr Attributes

stefstr — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:35:58 GMT

Have you ever looked for a way to delete an Attribute you created (by accident)? I did today, when I was making some documentation about a Management Pack I created.

As you can see there is no Delete option in the Authoring Pane of the OpsMgr Console.

So what’s the easiest and fasted way to delete an OpsMgr Attribute?

Answer: Using the Authoring Console.

How?

Backup Management Pack where Attribute is saved in case you need to restore!
Open Authoring Console
Import Management Pack from Management Group where you saved the Attribute (in my case the Default MP)
Go to Health Model Pane
Select Discoveries Folder and delete (HowToRemoveAttributeDiscovery) Discovery.
Click Yes when asked.
Open Service Model Pane in Authoring Console and click on Class Folder
Select Class (Windows Server_Extended in this case) and Delete
And click yes again when asked.
Select Export Management Pack to Management Group
Select correct Management Group and click Connect.
Check if Attribute is gone ;-)

Cleanup Tool for Operations Manager 2007

stefstr — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:41:51 GMT

Source: Walter Chomak's System Center Operations Manager 2007 Landing Zone

I’ve updated the OpsMgr 2007 toolbox with Walter’s Cleanup Tool for Operations Manager 2007.

This is a command-line utility that enables you to remove all the components of Operations Manager 2007 from a local computer in cases where the typical method of removing applications through Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel fails.

Technet Magazine Nov. 2008: Monitoring Windows Server 2008 with OpsMgr 2007

stefstr — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:31:20 GMT

Source: Technet Magazine Blog

The November 2008 issue of TechNet Magazine is now available online.

FEATURE ARTICLES
Monitoring Windows Server 2008 with OpsMgr 2007
As you deploy Windows Server 2008 into your environment, you’ll need a way to manage and monitor its health, performance, and availability. Fortunately, you can use the existing System Center tools you are already familiar with. See how you can use OpsMgr 2007 to manage your Windows Server 2008 assets.
Using Configuration Manager with Windows Server 2008
Granular Targeting in Operations Manager 2007
Presentation Virtualization with Enhanced Terminal Services
Tracking Changes in Your Enterprise Database

System Center Desktop Wallpaper

stefstr — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:04:24 GMT

Source: internal

A colleague of mine (André) likes to have simple clean Desktop Wallpapers and he just found a System Center Desktop Wallpaper. And I like it.

Maybe you like it too. You can download it from my SkyDrive.

Creating a Business Intelligence framework for data collected by OpsMgr 2007

stefstr — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:14:58 GMT

Source: Operations Manager Product Team Blog

Yesterday the PerformancePoint team released a sample solution that shows how to build cubes from the Operations Manager DW and then build balanced IT scorecards using Office PerformancePoint server from these cubes.

Product Requirements:

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (database engine, Analysis Services, Integration Services) – system requirements here
Office SharePoint Server 2007 – system requirements here
OR Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 – system requirements here
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1) Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 – system requirements here
System Center Operations Manager 2007 – system requirements here
Windows Server® 2003

Components of the framework, and the flow of data from source data to the finished dashboards:

System Center Operations Manager managed servers collect monitor state and performance counter data saved in the Operations Manager operational database.
The Operations Manager data warehouse (OperationsManagerDW) collects data from the operational database. Data is pre-aggregated and stored in tables architected to support production reporting requirements.
Steps one and two are out-of-the box processes for Operations Manager. The Business Intelligence framework begins with the following step, the population of a new Business Intelligence database.
Collect the Source Data - A small subset of data in the Operations Manager data warehouse is transformed and loaded into the Business Intelligence framework database (OperationsManagerBusiness Intelligence). This database contains the star schemas for the Analysis Services OLAP cubes.
Build OLAP Cubes - Analysis Services OLAP cubes are built and processed from data stored in the OperationsManagerBI database.
Put it All Together - Create Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Dashboards, Scorecards, and Analytic Reports - Data from the OLAP cubes is used to populate PerformancePoint Server scorecards, dashboards, and analytic reports. These components are originally created using the Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Dashboard Designer.
Deploy Dashboards, Scorecards, and Analytic Reports in SharePoint - Scorecards, dashboards, and analytic reports are made available to the user community through SharePoint Server. Once the scorecards, dashboards, and analytic reports are initially created and deployed, they should not need to be deployed again – these components will be refreshed as new data becomes available in the OLAP cubes.

The solution can be found on www.microsoft.com/BI and www.microsoft.com/PerformancePoint

Xian Network Manager Io SP2 beta now available

stefstr — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 07:57:25 GMT

Source: Jalasoft

Jalasoft announced yesterday that soon it is going to be releasing service pack 2 for their monitoring solution Xian Network Manager Io for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. At this moment SP2 is undergoing heavy testing for large environment scalability in their labs. The most important new feature in addition to many smaller performance enhancements is that Xian no longer uses the SDK (root management server) of Operations Manager to forward alerts and performance data. Instead, it now connects directly to any OpsMgr2007 Management Server. Thanks to these enhancements, Xian is now able to send many more counters and alerts to Operations Manager without consuming valuable resources on your root management server. Also Xian can easily be scaled up by adding new management servers.

Creating overrides in Service Level Dashboard for OpsMgr 2007

stefstr — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:05:00 GMT

Today I started to dive into the Service Level Dashboard for System Center Operations Manager 2007. So I downloaded all the files and read the documentation and even watched the video about it.

I did all the steps and finally wanted to create some overrides for the Service Level Dashboard Template. Like change the default Performance and Availability Thresholds. And that turned out slightly difficult (at least for me).

These are the steps to take:

Go to Authoring Pane and select Object Discoveries under Management Pack Objects.
Check in the Scope if SLDBase as Target is selected.
Search for SLDBase in the Object Discoveries
Select Enterprise Service Monitoring Service Level Dashboard Discovery and create an Override for a specific object of type: Service Level Dashboard Application.
And select the SLD Distributed Application you created earlier.
Now you can change the default values from the SLD Template. You can also give the Dashboard group a friendlier name.

That’s all!

Linux Integration Components for Microsoft Hyper-V RTM

stefstr — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:19:00 GMT

Go to Microsoft Connect and download.

SCOPE = System Center OpsMgr PowerShell Extentions

stefstr — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:52:00 GMT

Source: Pavleck.Net

Jeremy (who is turning 32 on September 26 and is giving away presents) blogged about SCOPE. System Center OpsMgr Powershell Extentions is a collaborative operation between Jeremy, Marco Shaw, Cameron Fuller, Pete Zerger and - you, possibly. They are at the very early stages of SCOPE, and could definitely use people now and down the road - especially C# programmers and those familiar with creating PowerShell snapins. If you’d like to help, send Jeremy an email (jeremy@pavleck.net) and let him know what you can do.

They already created a project on Codeplex, but there is not any documentation yet.

To get you into the mood of writing your own Cmdlets check out this article on MSDN Magazine about writing your own Cmdlets.

My first suggestion for a new OpsMgr Cmdlet would be some edit Company Knowledge cmdlet.

Reporting issue: Loading reporting hierarchy failed

stefstr — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:02:00 GMT

After trying to open Reporting from the Ops Console I got the next error:

I checked if Reporting was configured correctly with the Configure Report Server tool.

Checked if SharePoint Integration was enabled. And that wasn’t the case.

Tried to open ReportServer in a Browser.

Restarted the SQL Server Reporting Services (MSSQLSERVER) service. But still no luck.

Opened Configure Report Server tool again and applied the Default Settings for the Report Server Virtual Directory and Report Manager Virtual Directory.

Re-entered the correct password for the Windows Service Identity and clicked Apply.

Now the Web Service Identity failed.

Changed the Web Service Identity for the Report Server and Report Manager from the DefaultAppPool to ReportServer. After the refresh the ASP.NET Service Account changed automatically from NT Authority\NetworkService to CONTOSO\OM_DRA.

Clicked Apply and did a Refresh and that solved it.

The Health of the Root Management Server is in a Gray “Not Monitored” State

stefstr — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:01:58 GMT

Source: SMS&MOM

J.C. Hornbeck published an article from Lenny Wile on the Health of the Root Management Server is in a Grey “Not Monitored” State a couple of days ago. And you know what? I was facing the same issue after migrating my VM’s to Hyper-V yesterday.

But I also saw the next eventlogs:

Resetted the passwords for above users and restarted the Health Service.

And the RMS was Healthy again.

Ok not completely Healthy, but not grey anymore ;-)

What’s in an Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack?

stefstr — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:20:00 GMT

I know this isn’t the first blog about what’s in a MP, but lately I often get asked what’s in MP from my fellow Premier Field Engineers. Often they want to know which rules and monitors are in a MP for a certain application and which thresholds are used.

There are several tools available for looking into a MP:

MPViewer from Boris Yanushpolsky
MP2XMLDumper from Clive Eastwood
Silect MP Studio Lite
For comparison Silect MP Studio Lite vs MPViewer look here.
OpsManJam Library (MP’s exported to html)
And there are several PowerShell scripts that can do similar things.

But they all have one drawback and that is you need to have the OpsMgr consoles and/or access to the RMS. Except for the OpsManJam Library off course ;-)

Clive tells us that you can get it working if you have the appropriate platform version of the SDK assemblies Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.OperationsManager.dll and Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.OperationsManager.Common.dll in the same folder as the tool. The SDK assemblies can be found and copied from the management server installation folder SDK Binaries. But you still need to have access to a RMS.

So what do I use to get the contents of a MP? That depends on what I want to know and from which MP I want the info.

If I want to have a kind of summary of a MP which I haven’t imported in my RMS I use the MPviewer from Boris and export it to Excel.
If I want to to search the MP for certain values and haven’t imported the MP in my RMS I use Silect MP Viewer Lite and save the MP as XML.
MP2XML dumper can do the same but you need to have access to a RMS.
If I want to have all the monitors, rules, monitor thresholds and perfrules imported in the RMS I use the next PowerShell scripts (download via attachment):

GetAllMonitors.ps1
GetAllRules.ps1
GetMonitorThresholds.ps1
GetPerfRules.ps1
(I am not sure where I got these scripts, one I could find an Brian Wren’s weblog, the others I don’t know anymore. I you are the author let me know)

I hope this helps you deciding which tools to use if you are looking for MP content.

Hyper-V Automatic Start Action

stefstr — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:00:14 GMT

I’m currently tweaking my demo environment and in this environment I’m using a Virtual Router Vyatta. For all my virtual machines on Hyper-V it’s important that this virtual router is running before they are started.

That’s when Automatic Start Action comes in handy.