Best of System Center Bloggers

Blog: OpsMgr MP Authoring and Clarification on Cook Down and OnDemand Detection

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:53:32 -0800

WIth the various blog posts and forum discussions there has apparently been a bit of confusion since Raphael Burri and I did our presentation on Custom Workflows and Cook Down. I wanted to take a moment to provide some of the final conclusions reached on these topics through community discussion which included one of our friends on the product team.

The bottom line: Yes, Cook Down does work across rules and monitors.

In other words, you can run a single script to feed multiple rules and monitors. The very talent Daniele Grandini mentioned this might not be possible on his blog (in this post “ On Demand Detections”), but later set the record straight when he discovered that “ConfirmDelivery on monitors breaks Cook Down” as he recounts in “On Demands and Cookdown Corrige”. The fact that someone as talented as Daniele encountered these difficulties demonstrates the intricacies of the process.

About Cook Down During OnDemand Detection…

Cook Down during OnDemand Detection is another story. It is more difficult to achieve Cook Down during OnDemand Detection because you have less control. We had a very productive discussion about Cook Down during OnDemand Detection in the System Center Forums with Marius Sutara and Raphael Burri which can be found HERE.

The bottom line according to Marius:

“You do not have much control on how cookdown will be performed because on demand detection uses data source module (start module for on demand detection workflow) which is not cooked down across entity but only for instance (where entity is a type and instance is instance of such type). So regardless that your "trigger only" probe is cooked down (or would be cooked down), fork happened already with data source module which precedes this module in your monitor definition.

Having multi instance scenario, there might be cases I would try to avoid on demand detection. Such cases would include script base probe (where script is not instance dependant but could for example just read computer registry etc) because such script will be executed for each instance“.

The bottom line here is OnDemand Detection can be very expensive, so choose your battles here.

Blog: What does the MCT designation do for you?

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:49:00 -0800

Well for $400 US per year to renew, you get NO support from Microsoft… that’s one of the perks…

On July 8, 2009 a colleague of mine at Infront sent an email to the Microsoft Courseware Library Requests team and received a response yesterday November 20, 2009, that’s only a 4 month turn around.

=== Original Email ===

Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 4:11 PM
To: Courseware Library Requests
Subject: Courseware Library
Importance: High
Good afternoon,
I can’t log in to the courseware library. I’ve tried to use the Forgot logon button but it’s telling me that my email address is invalid. I’ve tried all the email addresses I can think of and it’s not working.

How can I get assistance with this? I need some courseware….

==== End of Original email ===

And the response which came in more than 4 MONTHS LATER!!!

We apologize but this email address is no longer monitored. The bad news is we have not honored our commitment to supporting you and have not addressed your needs and questions in a timely manner. This email address has been unmonitored for some time now and we’ve just recently recognized this lapse in our process.

We hope that your question has been answered or your issue resolved. If not, we have support through Microsoft’s Regional Support Centers now. You can find user guides, answers to the top 10 questions about the Courseware Library, as well as contact information for your region’s support center at http://cwlibrary.mslearn.net/page/support.aspx.

We realize this may have had a negative impact on you or your customers and for that we are truly sorry.

Sincerely,

Courseware Library Requests Team

It’s this type of quality that I see in both the MCT program as a whole and the courseware that is being developed by Microsoft that is really disturbing. The complexity of the Microsoft products is increasing but the quality of their training material is decreasing almost proportionally. To there credit, Microsoft is GREAT at making changes based on customer feedback so I am just hoping someone at Microsoft reads this post.

Rory McCaw, MCT

Technorati Tags: MCT,Courseware Library,Rory McCaw

Hyper-V and Domain Controllers – Demo Tips and Tricks

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:42:00 -0800

Ben Armstrong: In the past I have talked about the different configuration options when running Domain Controllers and Hyper-V. One of the more interesting configurations I discussed then was having a Hyper-V server joined to a domain where the domain controller was a virtual machine running on the same instance of Hyper-V.

This is actually a configuration I use all of the time when I am doing public demonstrations. The reason why I do this is because:

I do not like to ship hardware – as I have had hardware get damaged in shipping too many times.
I do not trust networking in a demo environment – so if I can keep it all on one computer, I will.
I often have to demonstrate software / configurations that need a domain controller.

This all means that I need to have a domain controller in a virtual machine on my laptop.

Over the course of many demos – I have gleaned a few interesting tips and tricks for this sort of configuration.

Hyper-V pass-through disk performance vs. fixed size VHD files and dynamic VHD files in Windows Server 2008 R2

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:30:00 -0800

With the release of Windows Server 2008 R2, one of the enhancements was improving the performance of dynamic VHD files. Prior to R2, writes to dynamically expanding VHD files could be 3x slower than writes to a fixed size VHD file due to limited meta data caching. Overall, Microsoft is claiming the performance of dynamic VHD files vs. fixed size VHD files is almost identical.

Configure OpsMgr R2 Service Level Tracking on Live Maps views

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:47:00 -0800

This article will give a step-by-step instruction how to configure Service Level Tracking on a Live Maps view and show the results using the Service Level Tracking report in OpsMgr and the Service Level Dashboard in SharePoint.(continue at source)

ConfigMgr 2007 SP2 Status Message Documentation

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:45:00 -0800

John Nelson: This downloadable excel workbook lists all status messages that are generated by System Center Configuration Manager (CM) 2007 SP2. You can find specific status messages by using the filters in the spreadsheet. You can filter messages by message ID, by severity (such as error messages, warning messages), by message source (the component that generates the message, like site control manager), by message text or by symbolic name (a short and descriptive meaning for the message which is much easier to understand at a glance than the whole message text).(continue at source)

Booting Hyper-V R2 off a USB stick

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:40:00 -0800

Ben Armstrong: A while ago we announced that Microsoft Hyper-V Server R2 would support booting off of a USB flash device. We have now provided detailed documentation on how to set this up. Even cooler than booting Hyper-V off of a USB device – is the fact that what we are doing is booting a VHD with Hyper-V installed on it off of a USB device:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee731893(WS.10).aspx

If you are like me – you will probably think: “Cool! I have to check that out!” And then after looking over that page you will think: “Eh, that seems like a lot of work…”

Thankfully Paul Despe has made a little tool that makes this dead simple. You can grab it from here:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/BootHVSR2FromUSB

Running Domain Controllers in Hyper-V

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:37:00 -0800

OSD App Tree Bug Squashed

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:06:43 -0800

The nasty OSD App Tree bug has been squashed and version 2.5.1 is ready: http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jsandys/pages/osdapptree.aspx ....(read more)

Blog: How to Add a Hyper-V Cluster to System Center Essentials 2010

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:58:19 -0800

To add a Hyper-V server as a managed host in System Center Essentials 2010 basically means that through the Essentials Administrator Console you will add the host to the integrated SCVMM 2008 instance installed with Essentials. When trying to add a Hyper-V host as a managed host in SCE 2010, you may be prompted with a message that the host is a member of a cluster. The message will prompt you to use the Add-VMHostCluster cmdlet in the SCVMM Command Shell to add the Hyper-V Cluster to VMM so it can then be managed.

Here is a sample script you can use to add the Hyper-V cluster to the SCE-integrated instance of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.

Sample Script - Add Hyper-V Cluster as Managed Hosts for Essentials 2010

Cut-and-paste in Notepad and save with .ps1 extension. Run from the VMM Command Shell.

#Prompt for Admin Credentials
$Credential = Get-Credential #Replace FQDN with name of your SCVMM 2008 R2 Server
Get-VMMServer -ComputerName "host2.Contoso.msft"
$VMHostGroup = Get-VMHostGroup | where {$_.Path -eq "All Hosts"} #Replace Name with FQDN of your Hyper-V Cluster
Add-VMHostCluster -Name "labclstr.Contoso.msft" -VMHostGroup $VMHostGroup `
-RemoteConnectEnabled $TRUE -RemoteConnectPort 5900 -Cred $Credential

To fully manage the host, you do need to deploy an Essentials agent to the Hyper-V host, which will allow for monitoring and leveraging the PRO functionality in SCVMM, which is enabled and configured in Essentials 2010 by default.

RSS | TWITTER

Videos from TechEd Europe…. Part 2

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:33:31 -0800

As these are getting posted, I wanted to get them lit up in the blog for you guys. We are back from TechEd Berlin and on the PST time zone, and we had just such an awesome week, we wanted to get some videos posted of some interviews we did while at the event. This is the 2nd video of 3.

Here I spoke with a good friend and colleague Kim Johnson, Sr Product Planner, about Power Management. We hope you enjoy…..

Jeff Wettlaufer
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

Videos from TechEd Europe….Part 1

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:16:50 -0800

We are back from TechEd Berlin and we wanted to get some videos posted of some interviews we did while at the event. This is the 1st video of 3.

Here I spoke with a good friend and colleague Michael Niehaus, about Windows Deployment, MDT and System Center.

Jeff Wettlaufer
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

Service Level Dashboard for Operations Manager 2007 R2 (Videos)

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:02:16 -0800

Use the Service Level Dashboard to keep mission-critical, line of business applications up and running.

In these three short screencasts, IT Pro Evangelist Matt Hester shows how you can use the Service Level Dashboard 2.0 for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 to keep mission-critical, line of business applications up and running. The dashboard automatically displays application or system availability and performance in near-real time. Using the dashboard, you can easily keep track of availability and performance trends, and head off problems before they occur. The dashboard also lets you easily create role-specific dashboards to support different departments, like HR, Finance, or Operations.

Part 1: SLD overview
Part 2: How to install SLD
Part 3: How to configure SLD

- Solution Accelerators Team

Blog: Connectors / Ticketing

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:57:39 -0800

Saw some posts about connectors and ticketing and thought you might be interested in this. I am getting ready to split and am going to be out all next week, but you can shoot any questions into the management-extensions.org forums. I would probably relay your questions to those smart guys anyway :) Hope it helps.

Here is the blurb that I posted on the Heterogeniuses blog:

Connect Operations Manager bi-directionally to other management systems like: BMC Patrol, CA UniCenter, HP OpenView, IBM Tivoli, Mercury BAC, Nagios, NetCool…more

System Center Operations Manager is the ideal solution for Windows infrastructure management and, in conjunction with QMC, can uni-directionally or bi-directionally integrate the event, alert and performance data being collected by other management system tools being leveraged by the IT team such as:
BMC Magic, BMC, Patrol, *BMC Remedy, *CA Service Desk, CA UniCenter, Generic (Universal), HP Insight Manager, HP OpenView, IBM Tivoli, Mercury BAC, Microsoft MOM-OpsMgr, Nagios, NetCool, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Quest Big Brother, Quest Foglight, SolarWinds, Spectrum and more.

* Uni-Directional: from Operations Manager/MOM to alternate management system

SCOM end users - check out SystemCenterCentral.com
Quest Software is a proud, gold sponsor

Nasty Bug in OSD App Tree 2.5

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:26:59 -0800

It has been brought to my attention that a nasty bug slipped by my rigorous QA process that pretty mush kills OSD App Tree 2.5. I will be sorting this out post-haste and posting an update ASAP....(read more)

How to remotely wipe a media card in a BlackBerry smartphone

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:19:12 -0800

I was very excited to see the KB17776 article released by Research In Motion today entitled How to remotely wipe an installed microSD media card in a BlackBerry smartphone. Just yesterday we had a Storm stolen, and I was wondering how to wipe the media card.

Unfortunately, this has to be the most useless KB article ever. I would assume any document with the words “How To” in the title would actually detail how to do something… Here’s the remainder of the document in it’s entirety:

An installed microSD media card cannot be wiped remotely.

This is a previously reported issue that has been escalated internally to our development team. No resolution time frame is currently available.

The New School of Information Security with Adam Shostack

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:33:08 -0800

Adam Shostack provides an overview of the New School of Information Management. Learn about the crisis of credibility in information security and the solution pathway.

.NET RIA (Rich Internet Application) Services: Behind the Scenes- Part 2 of 2

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:04:12 -0800

Brad Abrams and Dinesh Kulkarni provide a developer-centric in-depth view of .NET Rich Internet Application Services (RIA) fundamentals.

Is Microsoft Going Agile? Insights from Scott Guthrie

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:00:00 -0800

Scott Guthrie discusses Microsoft's relationship with Agile. Learn what Microsoft is doing to enable developers to adopt an agile strategy.

.NET RIA (Rich Internt Application) Services: An Introduction- Part 1 of 2

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:58:40 -0800

Brad Abrams and Dinesh Kulkarni provide an overview of the server, client, and tooling components of .NET Rich Internet Application Services. Learn about improved data validation and transitions in animations improve the rich-ness of applications.

Silverlight 4 with Scott Guthrie

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0800

Scott Guthrie provides an overview of his keynote at PDC 2009. Learn about Silverlight 4 new features. Get an inside developer perspective on Silverlight 4.

New Screencast Series: Service Level Dashboard 2.0

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:36:08 -0800

Part 1: SLD overview.

Part 2: How to install SLD.

Part 3: How to configure SLD.

To a look at the screencasts and download the Service Level Dashboard 2.0 today!

Projects on CodePlex

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:59:18 -0800

Jim Newkirk discusses CodePlex projects with Sara Ford and Jonathan Wanagel. Learn about some of the most popular open source projects posted on CodePlex.

Getting Involved with CodePlex

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:55:14 -0800

Jim Newkirk discusses CodePlex projects with Sara Ford and Jonathan Wanagel. Learn about some of the most popular open source projects posted on CodePlex.

CodePlex- Open Source Project Hosting

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:49:29 -0800

Jim Newkirk discusses CodePlex with Sara Ford and Jonathan Wanagel. Learn about Microsoft's Open Source Project Hosting solution.

How to monitor another management groups OpsMgr infrastructure.

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:00:19 -0800

With environments growing and monitoring take a bigger place in maintaining these environments it monitoring of management servers from an other management groups happening more often. Until a few weeks ago Forefront was based on opsmgr and due to it sizing the Forefront management group for endpoint protection could not be the same as the OpsMgr management group monitoring infrastructure. Agents should be multihomed and be reporting to the Forefront management group and the and monitoring management group. With Forefront moving to SCCM this problem is fixed but en new management group is coming in the next year. System Center service Manager will be a new management group and is running on a root management health service and that’s a server you want to monitor too.

To get started with the monitoring of a root management server or management server of an other management group you first need to make sure manual installed agents are accepted by the monitoring management group, automatically approved and pending on approval will work equally well. Now on the monitored RMS or MS you have to manual install the OpsMgr agent and point in to the correct management server and management group where you make the Health service of the RMS multihomed to itself and the monitoring management group. When the agent is installed and multihomed your not done, if the agent is approved on the monitoring management group the RMS or MS of the monitored management group is showing in the monitoring management group but not fully functional.

In most cases now, if you should look in the event log, events 6024, 6025 or 6026 will be logged about the health service restarting every 10 minutes just like Kevin Holman described in his articles on SCOM 2007 SP1 and SCOM 2007 R2. This time it’s not because of the issues describe in his articles but due to an other problem.

When the monitoring opsmgr looks at the health service of the RMS or MS from another management group it thinks its just an agent and is not aware that’s a health service of another opsmgr infrastructure. Normally the health service has an override for the recovery task restart at the Health Service State, like in the picture below, of the management servers (RMS and MS) within its own management groups and that's not the case now.

So if you want to make sure your monitored management group servers will be left alone you have to provide an override for the recovery task at the rollup monitor “Health Service State” for you RMS and MS otherwise it will be restarted, by the monitoring management group, when the following monitors will get in error state:

Health Service Handle Count Threshold
Health Service private Bytes Threshold

Just select the individual RMS and MS object in the monitored management group as targets so other agents are not effected by the override.

When that's in place it will works like a charm and the monitored OpsMgr management group will stay in business.

Regards,
Walter Eikenboom
http://weblogwally.spaces.live.com

Blog: Improvements in Scheduled Computer Discovery in System Center Essentials 2010

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:28:14 -0800

I've been working with the System Center Essentials 2010 beta quite a lot in recent months, and Microsoft have made UI improvements in many of the right places to increase the flexibility and granularly of Essentials configuration. Pretty frequently, we'd often resort to command line configuration to schedule computer discovery as we liked. And scoping scheduled discovery to a subset of computers was not something easily achievable in the last release.

In Essentials 2010, not only allows configuration of scheduled computer discovery multiple times per day, but they've now made it easy to scope discovery by target OU. This fulfills the very common scenario of automating workstation discovery in Essentials, while not automatically deploying to servers.

From the Computer Discovery wizard, you simply click the Add button, you can browse the OU tree in your Active Directory domain.

Try It Out

Currently in public Beta 1, you can download System Center Essentials 2010 from the MS website at http://www.microsoft.com/sce

Moving a Hyper-V virtual machine to Azure

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:06:00 -0800

Although not fully embracing the capability and scalability of the cloud, Ray Ozzie, chief software architect from Microsoft, talked about the ability to move a virtual machine to the cloud. I heard about it on Twitter and went on to look for the source. Apparently it was talked about during the PDC which is held in Los Angeles this week.

Creating Rules and Monitors with a Schedule/Understanding XML internals

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:57:00 -0800

Steve Rachui: The ability to build rules and monitors that have an associated schedule for operation was part of MOM 2005 and easy to implement. As several other blog posts have pointed out, it is also possible to introduce such a schedule for rules and monitors in OpsMgr 2007.

Rules - http://blogs.msdn.com/boris_yanushpolsky/archive/2008/09/19/configuring-rules-to-run-during-business-hours-only.aspx
Monitors - http://nocentdocent.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/running-a-monitor-during-business-hours/

The challenge with OpsMgr 2007 has been that it is not possible to introduce such a schedule directly on a rule or monitor in a sealed management pack and there is no UI component in the OpsMgr console that exposes this functionality. If there is a default rule or monitor where an operational schedule is desired the only option is to disable the rule or monitor and recreate it in a custom management pack with the desired schedule. (continue at source)

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager SP2 Wireless Support Overview

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:44:00 -0800

One of the new additions to Config Manager SP2 is native support of wireless access for managing clients with AMT. Microsoft has built in support for configuring enterprise level wireless profiles such as WPA2-Enterprise. These are wireless profiles that support RADIUS authentication using an authentication server to decide whether or not a given client is allowed to access the network. Config Manager SP2 does not support wireless profiles that use pre-shared keys (PSK). If you use security standards like WPA2-PSK/WPA2-Personal in your environment you will need to use the scripting framework tool to generate a script that can configure this option outside of Config Manager.(continue at source)

Inside Microsoft's Language Design Process with Luca Bolognese

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0800

Luca Bolognese provides an under-the-covers view of how programming languages are designed within Microsoft. Learn about how features are evaluated before being adopted into a language, and why sometimes excellent features are rejected.

Blog: Deploying the OpsMgr R2 console with SCCM

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:32:14 -0800

Yesterday I need to deploy around 10 OpsMgr R2 consoles, so I thought I would do this via SCCM, being a lover of the System Center range. So here is how I did it.

First we need to create the package;

Using the standard approach as any other deployment;

As I am only distributing the console my package only needs to contain the server files, note that I deployed to X86 Windows boxes so only used the i386 files.

With my data source set I used the ‘ConfigMgr package Share”

The rest of the setting as left as default.

So on to the Programs to be run and where the clever switches are added

This is the switch I have used to deploy JUST THE Console. Just add the name of your RMS and use the same switch

MOM.msi /qn /l*v %Temp%\MOMUI_install.log ADDLOCAL=MOMUI ROOT_MANAGEMENT_SERVER_DNS=YOUR RMS SERVER FQDN

Then distribute the package in the same way as any other package.

This worked like a charm for me and saved loads of time, have fun.

Hyper-V How To: Fix Hyper-V Top Issue: Unknown Devices

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:36:26 -0800

TONYSO: Some customers seem to be having trouble when they open up device manager in a VM and see that some devices are listed as “unknown device.” From the Troubleshooting Hyper-V topic on TechNet:

Cause: Device Manager does not recognize devices that are optimized for use in virtual machines and run using Hyper-V until integration services are installed. The unknown devices that are identified in Device Manager differ depending on the guest operating system and may include: VMBus, Microsoft VMBus HID Miniport, Microsoft VMBus Network Adapter, and storvsc miniport.

Some optimized devices are not available for certain guest operating systems. When a device is not supported on a guest operating system, the device will not work. You cannot install the device driver manually to try to make the device work. For a list of the devices that are available on each supported guest operating system, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=128037.

Solution: If the guest operating system is supported, integration services are available for that operating system. After you install the integration services, Device Manager will recognize the devices that are available for that guest operating system.

To install the guest operating system

Open Hyper-V Manager. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Hyper-V Manager.
Connect to the virtual machine. From the Virtual Machines section of the results pane, using one of the following methods:
- Right-click the name of the virtual machine and click Connect.
- Select name of the virtual machine. In the Action pane, click Connect.
The Virtual Machine Connection tool opens.
From the Action menu in the Virtual Machine Connection window, click Start.
The virtual machine starts, searches the startup devices, and loads the installation package.
Proceed through the installation.

Continue:

TONYSO Hyper-V How To Fix Hyper-V Top Issue Unknown Devices

Deleting a Hyper-V Virtual Switch using WMI and Powershell

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:33:17 -0800

HyperVizor.net: Last week, we performed upgrades on our Hyper-V Server 2008 hosts to R2 that serve our Test\Dev environments. The upgrades were very straight forward and uneventful, which is what anyone hopes for when performing any upgrade. However, after the upgrade was complete, it appeared that either a virtual switch had either lost its configuration or failed. It turned out that it was one of those problematic Broadcom NIC’s that we all love so much that failed. So, I unbound the virtual switch that was configured to use the NIC from all VM’s and attempted to delete the switch. I was complimented with a nice error message, informing me that it couldn’t be deleted. So, I did what any good admin would do when the GUI fails us and turned to my trusty command line.

So, when administering Hyper-V using powershell, I use the Hyper-V library that is available from codeplex. Unfortunately, the powershell library doesn’t provide a cmdlet for deleting a virtual switch, so I leveraged a WMI class called “MSVM_VirtualSwitchManagementService”. Then, I used the “Choose-VMSwitch” powershell cmdlet to select the virtual switch for deletion and then deleted the switch. I searched online and found plenty of info on creating a virtual switch using powershell, but nothing regarding how to delete it, so I will walk you through deleting a virtual switch I created called “Demo Virtual Switch”.

In the steps that follow I will show you how to create the WMI object reference, select the virtual switch and finally deleted the selected switch. For this demo

I am running the scripts local to the host with the virtual switch that I want to delete.

Continue: Hypervizor.net Deleting a Hyper-V Virtual Switch using WMI and Powershell

Blog: Steve Rachui’s blog post on Creating Rules and Monitors with a Schedule/Understanding XML internals

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:22:31 -0800

Thought the group might be interested in this. Enjoy!

http://blogs.msdn.com/steverac/archive/2009/11/17/creating-rules-and-monitors-with-a-schedule-understanding-xml-internals.aspx

Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC)

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:42:55 -0800

Pearson's very own Brandon Prebynski is on hand at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in LA with author interviews, news events, and more.

The Co-Evolution of C# and Visual Basic .NET

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:22:51 -0800

Luca Bolognese discusses the future and co-evolution of C# and VB .NET with Ted Neward.

The Renaissance of Functional Languages: New Trends in C# and Visual Basic .NET

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:12:20 -0800

Luca Bolognese, Lead Program Manager for the C#, VB and F# languages/compilers and the DLR framework, discusses his presentation at PDC 2009. Learn about functional trends in C# and VB .NET

LiveMeeting on Microsoft’s Integrated Virtualization Strategy: Thursday, Nov. 19, 8:00 AM PST

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:47:32 -0800

Join us Thursday, November 19, 8:00 AM PST for a LiveMeeting session on “Microsoft’s Integrated Virtualization Strategy, Products and Solutions” presented by Kenon Owens, Technical Product Manager.

This LiveMeeting is exclusive to members of the System Center Influencers Program (which is also open to virtualization enthusiasts). Not a member? Visit the program overview on TechNet to learn more about the program and how to join.

Join Information Available on Influencer Portal. Members of the program will need to log into the Connect site to access the LiveMeeting join information.

Abstract: Through this 200 Level presentation, learn about the Microsoft virtualization strategy from the client, to the datacenter, to the cloud--and how it will help you cut costs and build value. In this session we review Microsoft virtualization products and discuss how you can use them to solve today's IT issues (cost cutting, consolidation, business continuity, green IT), develop new computing solutions (VDI) and build a foundation for a more dynamic IT environment, including cloud computing. This session reviews all of the latest Microsoft virtualization products, including Application Virtualization (App-V), Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, and Microsoft Hyper-V Server, as well as the System Center management platform (including Virtual Machine Manager 2008). Learn about the innovative pricing and licensing structure that allows further savings to lower both acquisition and ongoing ownership costs. Learn how you can enable IT to become a cost cutting mechanism with Microsoft virtualization and management technologies.

- dave //

Blog: Weekly Live Technical Demos: Extending Operations Manager to non-Windows

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:11:54 -0800

Tech Demo: How to Extend System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to non-Windows environments.

When: Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1 PM ET.

Presented by: Quest Software

Register:http://www.quest.com/events/listdetails.aspx?contentid=7422&searchoff=true&technology=&prod=367&prodfamily=&loc=

Check out the new Heterogeniuses Blog:

http://blogs.inside.quest.com/management-extensions/

Quest Software is a proud SystemCenterCentral gold sponsor

Blog: Using PowerShell for System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) sizing

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:44:25 -0800

Presenter: Gary Broadwater, Software Developer | Quest Software
Storage is pretty cheap these days, but you still have to plan for growth when sizing. This affects not only storage size, but disk IO and database performance and how to set up maintenance, grooming, etc...... This video will show you a quick way to help you determine what your back end infrastructure may require to accommodate x number of nodes for monitoring, when using Quest Management Xtensions (QMX) – Operations Manager 2007 Edition.

View the Video

Check out the new Heterogeniuses blog: http://blogs.inside.quest.com/management-extensions/

Quest Software is a proud SystemCenterCentral gold sponsor

Monitoring Hyper-V performance and utilizing System Center VMM

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:50:00 -0800

In any IT infrastructure, performance of the servers is expected to meet specific thresholds. The same is true for virtual machines. How can you monitor the performance of your virtual infrastructure and use the information you obtain to help troubleshoot any issues you may be facing?

Understanding High-End Video Performance Issues with Hyper-V

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:39:00 -0800

Ben Armstrong:A while ago I wrote a relatively short blog post high-lighting the fact that there are performance issues with Hyper-V when used with a high-end graphics adapter. Since then I have been inundated with people asking questions and trying to get their heads around this issue. Today I would like to take a chance to drill in on this

Blog: SCC Contest Winner for week ending October 26th is Unleashed!

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:06:44 -0800

Another winner in the Unleashed drawing...We'll be drawing winners in our SCC Contest every two weeks from mid-August through mid-November for a copy of OpsMgr 2007 or ConfigMgr 2007 Unleashed from SAMS Publishing. The winner for week ending October 26th is David P. All thanks go to members and sponsors who make community happen! (see below)

August 31 – William H.
September 14 – Angel A.
September 28 – Marty W.
October 12 - Justin L.
October 26 – David P.
November 9 -
November 23 -

We'll be drawing for 3 more winners to be "Unleashed" so stay tuned!

Special Thanks to our Sponsors

Certainly everything happening at System Center Central would be possible without the great participation from experts in the System Center community or our generous sponsors.

Special thanks to Quest, Microsoft, BridgeWays and SecureVantage!

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Blog: ReSearch This! KB - DHCP Scope Addresses Available Monitor

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:00:14 -0800

Alert: DHCP Scope Addresses Available Monitor

Issue: In an environment with two DHCP servers with the scope split we had one of the DHCP scopes that were completely empty while the other scope had only three addresses in use. We determined that the IP helper information was incorrect for the second DHCP server.

Resolution: In the network environment, re-configured the iphelper configuration to point to both DHCP servers with the correct IP addresses.

Blog: ReSearch This! KB - DHCP Scope Addresses Available Monitor

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:00:14 -0800

Alert: DHCP Scope Addresses Available Monitor

Resolution: In the network environment, re-configured the iphelper configuration to point to both DHCP servers with the correct IP addresses.

HP BladeSystem reference architecture for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 virtualization (Hyper-V)

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:25:00 -0800

HP has just released "HP BladeSystem reference architecture for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 virtualization (Hyper-V)". This document describes reference architectures validated by HP for the deployment of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V (Hyper-V R2) on an HP BladeSystem infrastructure.

The specification provides an outline of Hyper-V R2 and explains how an entire IT infrastructure can be created from HP BladeSystem c-Class components, HP LeftHand or StorageWorks SAN storage, and HP ProCurve switches.

Also oo help you plan your own Hyper-V R2 deployment on HP BladeSystem, the reference architecture provides a bill of materials (BOM) for Small, Medium, and Large configurations.

The document can be downloaded from http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA0-2391ENW.pdf.

Deploying Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 on USB Flash Drive

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:13:00 -0800

Microsoft(R) Hyper-V™ Server 2008 R2 supports the ability to boot from a USB flash device (UFD). This document describes the policy requirements, hardware requirements, and steps to create and deploy a Hyper-V Server image on an embedded USB flash device (UFD). A Hyper-V Server UFD can provide virtualization capability for servers that ship with no local hard disks, and it offers the same functionality and flexibility as a Hyper-V Server installation on a physical hard-drive. The UFD must be properly formatted, prepared with a generalized Hyper-V Server image, and must have boot files copied onto it to provide an out-of-box virtualization experience for customers. The UFD can then be used to boot Hyper-V Server on any computer which has hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities and is capable of booting from USB.

Importing data into SCSM (part2) the SCSM OpsMgr Alert connector

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:06:00 -0800

Part 1 blog post (Importing data into SCSM (part 1) the SCSM AD & SCCM connectors) of the importing data into SCSM blog series is handling the AD and ConfigMgr connector. This second part will provide some more information about the OpsMgr connectors in SCSM.

Two connectors are available in Service Manager:

* Operations Manager Alert connector: The OpsMgr alert connector is used to automatically generate incidents that are based on Operations Manager alerts.
* Operations Manager CI connector: This connector will import objects that were discovered by Operations Manager into the Service Manager database.

In this post we will handle the Operations Manager Alert Connector.(continue at source)

Script to find and email files in a directory

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:49:29 -0800

I needed to write a batch file that would email some files, and could be run as a scheduled task. I chose to use Blat as my email program, you can download it for free from SourceForge.

The batch file requirements were:

1. Had to email all the .xls files in one directory from the current date. Luckily for me the date was in the file name, so I just had to find all files in the format *MMDDYY*.xls

2. The emails had to be sent “To” some users, then “CC”d to others

3. I could only use free software (no shareware) but could use our internal smtp replay server to send the mail through.

4. The Scheduled task that executes the script must run on a Windows 2003 server.

The following script is what I came up with. I’ll go through it line by line, then post the entire thing at the end.

****************************************************

Here I’m getting the current date in the month month day day year year format, and saving it to a variable named search. This can obviously be changed to meet your particular need

REM set search date variable in MMDDYY format for file search

REM set search to month-date-year for date formatting

for /f “Tokens=1-4 Delims=/ ” %%i in (‘date /t’) do set search=%%j%%k%%l

Adding a blank line to the log file ReportLog.txt since I like my logs nice and neat. Makes them easy to read.

echo. >> ReportLog.txt

Writing the date and time the script starts to the log file ReportLog.txt

echo %date% %time% Starting script >> ReportLog.txt

Using the variable search, which contains the current date, I’m getting a list of all .xls files from today and saving it in FileNames.txt

dir /b “\\server\share\%search%*.xls” > FileNames.txt

If there’s a problem retrieving the names of the files, write a message to the log file

IF ERRORLEVEL 1 (echo %date% %time% problem with retrieving file names >> ReportLog.txt)

Using find /c to count how many files are in filenames.txt, and saving that number in the variable NUMFILES

for /f “tokens=3″ %%i in (‘find /v /c “SomeStringNotToBeFound” filenames.txt’) do set NUMFILES=%%i

If the variable NumFiles equals zero, there were no files found for today. Skip to ZEROFILES to send an email alert

If %NUMFILES% EQU 0 GOTO ZEROFILES

If NUMFILES isn’t zero, then files exist that need to be emailed. There may be more than one file, so we’re going to use a loop to process all the files listed in FileNames.txt

For /F “tokens=1-2* delims=” %%B IN (FileNames.txt) DO (

write the name of the file to the log file

echo file to email is %%B >> ReportLog.txt

Use blat.exe to send the email to addresses specified in tolist.txt

Use blat.exe to send emails as CC to addresses specified in cclist.txt

Attached file is listed at the end of the command

This command is all one line, it may wrap on the page

blat.exe -tf tolist.txt -cf cclist.txt -subject “Report %%B” -body “Here is the current report.” -server smtp.yourdomain.com -f sender@yourdomain.com -attach “\\server\share\%%B”

)

We’re done emailing the files, so skip over to WRITELOG

goto WRITELOG

Zero files were found, so we need to send an email alert

:ZEROFILES

write the name of the file to the log file, along with the date and time

echo %date% %time% problem with retrieving number of current files >> ReportLog.txt

Use blat.exe to send an email alert to addresses specified in problist.txt

This command is all one line, it may wrap on the page

blat.exe -tf problist.txt -subject “Problem with Report” -body “Problem sending the current report.” -server smtp.yourdomain.com -f sender@yourdomain.com

Writing the date and time the script starts to the log file ReportLog.txt

:WRITELOG

echo %date% %time% Ending Script >> ReportLog.txt

****************************************************

The script in it’s entirely:

REM set search date variable in MMDDYY format for file search

REM set search to month-date-year for date formatting

for /f “Tokens=1-4 Delims=/ ” %%i in (‘date /t’) do set search=%%j%%k%%l

REM format ReportLog.txt

echo. >> ReportLog.txt

echo %date% %time% Starting script >> ReportLog.txt

REM Get the names of all log files for specified date, save to FileNames.txt

dir /b “\\server\share\%search%*.xls” > FileNames.txt

IF ERRORLEVEL 1 (echo %date% %time% problem with retrieving file names >> ReportLog.txt)

REM Count how many files are in filenames.txt, put into %NUMFILES%

for /f “tokens=3″ %%i in (‘find /v /c “SomeStringNotToBeFound” filenames.txt’) do set NUMFILES=%%i

If %NUMFILES% EQU 0 GOTO ZEROFILES

REM loop when more than one file to be emailed

For /F “tokens=1-2* delims=” %%B IN (FileNames.txt) DO (

echo file to email is %%B >> ReportLog.txt

blat.exe -tf tolist.txt -cf cclist.txt -subject “Report %%B” -body “Here is the current report.” -server smtp.yourdomain.com -f sender@yourdomain.com -attach “\\server\share\%%B”

)

goto WRITELOG

:ZEROFILES

echo %date% %time% problem with retrieving number of current files >> ReportLog.txt

blat.exe -tf problist.txt -subject “Problem with Hold Report” -body “Problem emailing the current hold report.” -server smtp.yourdomain.com -f sender@yourdomain.com

:WRITELOG

REM format ReportLog.txt

echo %date% %time% Ending Script >> ReportLog.txt

****************************************************

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And to the people who make it happen….YOU

Blog: ReSearch This! KB - DHCP Scope Addresses Available Monitor

Blog: ReSearch This! KB - DHCP Scope Addresses Available Monitor

HP BladeSystem reference architecture for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 virtualization (Hyper-V)

Deploying Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 on USB Flash Drive

Importing data into SCSM (part2)  the SCSM OpsMgr Alert connector

Script to find and email files in a directory

Importing data into SCSM (part2) the SCSM OpsMgr Alert connector