We are starting a new series: OpsMgr Answer This questions. These are questions that you probably have asked yourself (or others) more than once. In this series, the writers of the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed book will offer their opinions to some of those (sometimes rhetorical) questions. The first question we are discussing is, Why should one go to Operations Manager 2007? You may be using MOM 2005 and be perfectly happy with it. There is an adage: "if it works, don't break it" - so why go to Operations Manager 2007?(
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The people over at the Operations Manager Product Team Blog posted a video on Bad Situation-Good Results: OpsMgr 2007 High Availability and Disaster Recovery.
The video details how to cluster a Root Management Server and promote a Management Server to take the role of a Root Management Server.
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Jeanie Decker: Previously, I learned
what management packs version numbers mean, but that will be changing in the near future. Coming soon, the part of the version number that was previously tied to the version number of Operations Manager (6.0.
6278.22) will be the version number of the management pack, and the part that was the management pack version (6.0.6278.
22) will be incremented for updates to the management pack.
The details page for the download and the management pack guide will establish the required version of Operations Manager.
Jeanie Decker:I posted last month about the
"missing" management pack guides for the management packs that were included with SP1, and finally have progress to report. As I stated, our goals were to:
- Make the guides available online - and I hope to have an update post on that goal very soon!
- Update the guides with any changes made when the management packs were shipped with Operations Manager SP1 - done!
- Post the SP1 management packs with their updated guides on the download center.
We've packaged the individual management packs with their updated guides, and the first batch has appeared on the
Operations Manager 2007 Catalog:
More should be added to the catalog shortly!
Question:
Is there any possibility, or third party tools, that will make me sure that 100% of computers that I want it to install the client, has the SCCM client installed... and if they don't, is there any way to initiate installation and to be sure 100% that the SCCM Client is installed?
Answer:
To ensure that all systems that are intended and targeted for the ConfigMgr client installation. The best client deployment method I have used here at Microsoft is using AD GPO that will apply 3 settings.
1. the ccmsetup parameters are place in the registry
2. the WSUS URL is place in the registry.
3. applies the ADM Client Assignment template.
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Pete Zerger: Here’s a question from the newsgroups, the answer for which may be of interest to Operations Manager 2007 administrators.
Question: I need to report on Disk Time, and can’t see this counter even under Performance reports. I see Disk Reads/Writes, but not Disk Time on one series. Even Disk Performance Analysis doesn’t contain it.
Answer: While this data could included in the Performance Report in the Opsmgr Generic report library, the data is not present in the data warehouse by default for a couple of reasons. (
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We have the pleasure to announce you the release of the Connector for System Center Operations Manager 2007 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 !
Having developed the connector for MOM-CRM, we decided to upgrade the application for SCOM and CRM 4.0, in the aim to meet the strong demand for the product.
The connector will help you managing your infrastructure by generating cases in your CRM, regarding the SCOM alerts you want to treat, and sending information to SCOM about the resolution state of the cases. (
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Did you hear about Pro Packs or Pro Tips lately? And do you know what they are? I saw this question in an internal mail thread and I must say I didn’t knew much about it also. So here is some info about PRO which is a new feature of SCVMM 2008.
PRO or Performance and Resource Optimization is a new feature in VMM 2008 which leverages the monitoring and alerting capabilities of Operations Manager 2007 to surface Tips or recommendations within VMM which help administrators ensure a high performance and efficient virtualized environment. By leveraging OpsMgr’s MP framework partners and customers can create PRO enabled MPs which surface these Tips in VMM and have associated actions (Users can configure them to run manually or automatically) which implement the recommendations made to resolve issues or increase the efficiency of the environment. (
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We've been asked in the newsgroups:
How does database clustering require enterprise edition? I still don't understand ... You can cluster with standard, if so that's clustering, correct? Other than having more nodes than two, are there any benefits, as they relate to the OpsMgr database itself that you gain by going to Enterprise Edition over Standard? Does it do re-indexing and stuff that may take it offline while jobs run, etc that warrant paying more for Enterprise?
Okay, here's how it works:
* SQL Server Standard Edition supports up to two clustered nodes - and for the OpsMgr databases, those can be configured as active/passive
* SQL Server Enterprise Edition supports up to 8 clustered nodes
The operating system in either case MUST be Windows Server Enterprise (or Datacenter) Edition. (
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Based on some customer and partner feedback we put together a 1 page quick reference sheet for the Audit Collection Service (ACS) included with System Center Operations Manager 2007. This ACS 'cheat sheet' includes best practices, configuration and administrative facts for managing your ACS environment.
If you're new to ACS or it's something you don't administer often this doc is for you. Don't waste time hunting for information, print this doc and keep it close by.
Download ACS Administrators Quick Reference
Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) of System Center Operations Manager and System Center Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) are identical features with the only difference being that AEM is shipped with Operations Manager 2007 and DEM is shipped with Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) SKU’s. These features leverage the Microsoft Error Reporting (formerly known as Dr. Watson) or Windows Error Reporting client applications for reporting the crash or hang. These client applications are shipped with default settings to forward the Error reports to Microsoft Error Reporting Service. Using DEM, they can be configured to forward the Error reports to DEM or Operations Manager Server.
The attached document describes the steps you need to take to ensure that the Microsoft Error Reporting and Windows Error Reporting are configured correctly. I would like to thank Vishwa for spending time walking me through all the steps to troubleshoot the "DEM" thing :)
Troubleshooting Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) and Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) features
Richard Trusson: In this post I will talk about the method I use to force a reboot at the end of a ZTI task sequence; when running from OSD. This solution was put together with input from Richard Smith a fellow Deployment Guy and also with help from Avanade/Accenture - Chris Bird, Jonathan Goulding, Chris Urwin and Steven Westwell. We developed this to help us enable BitLocker as part of an OSD deployment. I'll post the scripts and steps for doing that a little later. This post covers some of the ground work that made enabling BitLocker possible, there is a whole lot more around drive partitioning - but that is for another post.
So why would we need a special way to force a reboot of a ZTI/OSD build? During the build process any reboots requested by the task sequence or applications, such as BitLocker install, are suppressed. Take a look in the log file of a build and you'll see the occasional entry saying that OSD has suppressed a reboot. You may have other things that you need a reboot for at the end of your build process.
It is important to point out that this forced reboot only occurs at the end of the OSD process. We can not force a reboot during that process and have OSD carry on. (
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Microsoft published a new 18-pages guide to setup virtual machines fail-over between two Hyper-V (now in Release Candidate 1) virtualization hosts.
Download the guide
Jeff Wettlaufer: Today we release Configuration Manager 2007 SP1!
It is amazing to see that this was not a release based in bug fix, quite the opposite, there are hardly any hotfixes included in this release. This is a reflection of changes such as the ship of Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1.
With some engineering cycles aligning, we have added some additional features that were ready to go at this time, details are as follows:<
As a recap SP1 specifically contains:
1. Complete support for management of Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008.
2. Support for Configuration Manager 2007 Server Site roles on Server 2008.
3. Integration with Intel VPro technologies.
4. Asset Intelligence 1.5
You can find additional details, and information for download on our product homepages, located here.
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/configmgr/default.mspx
Also, we will have a full Technical overview at the upcoming
Teched USA in Orlando June 10-13th. We have a full breakout session , and we will be running SP1 (and R2 previews ) at the Microsoft pavilion pod area. Also, we have a Technet webcast on Configuration Manager 2007 SP1, you can find that
here.
Michael Murgolo: In my
previous post on this topic, I mentioned that Windows XP Service Pack 2 will copy the Administrators settings to Default User (see sections B & C). The new profile copy is the default behavior in SP2 with no built-in way to disable it. To disable it you had to request the hotfix from
KB887816 from Microsoft Customer Support.
This has changed with Windows XP Service Pack 3. The fix from
KB887816 is included in SP3. (See
KB946480 for a list of fixes included in SP3.) Therefore, the behavior for SP3 is no profile copy by default. To enable the profile copy, you now have to add
UpdateServerProfileDirectory=1 to the
[Unattended] section of Sysprep.inf before running Sysprep. Unfortunately, due to an oversight you will not find this documented in the Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Reference (ref.chm) included with the
SP3 Deployment Tools.
KB887816 is currently one of the only references for this setting, as far as I know. (
KB908784 also references this setting with respect to a problem that the profile copy can cause on Windows Server 2003)
Overview of the Tool
The Service Level Dashboard for Operations Manager 2007 is designed to work with an existing Operations Manager infrastructure (it is assumed that Operations Manager is already configured to monitor the business-critical applications). Service Level Dashboard for Operations Manager 2007 uses the following components to gather and process additional data (see figure for reference):
The SLA agreement is identified and defined by the IT Manager for a given business-critical application or service.
Web application monitors and synthetic transactions. The IT administrator configures and deploys watcher nodes to perform the actions of a synthetic transaction, such as connecting to the Web site or querying the database. A Web application monitor runs on the watcher node and uses these synthetic transactions to perform actions to check availability and to measure performance of a Web page, Web site, or Web application. The IT administrator configures the thresholds for identifying an error or warning state during a synthetic transaction.
An Operations Manager Distributed Application (DA) model is used by the IT administrator uses to define the application or service. Using the DA model, the IT administrator groups Web application monitors and other monitors into applications and regions for the dashboard.
One can use the dashboard interface to analyze the SLA compliance data as soon as the Service Level Dashboard for Operations Manager 2007 components are configured and operating.
The Service Level Dashboard for Operations Manager 2007 evaluates each application over the defined reporting period, determines whether the application was in or out of compliance during that period (and for how long). The dashboard then lists the application as compliant or non-compliant, based on defined service level targets.
If you want to have a closer look at this beta on Microsoft Connect, go to:
https://connect.microsoft.com/programdetails.aspx?ProgramDetailsID=2198 (more)
Brian McDermott: I get asked about how to enable AD integration for an untrusted domain in Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 from time to time and since I didn’t see it documented anywhere I thought I’d post a step-by-step here.(
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Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) is designed to help you take backups and restore data easily. For a Microsoft SharePoint® farm, DPM understands the objects within the farm and backs up the most relevant data with least amount of user intervention.
DPM 2007 backs up:
1. Configuration database which stores most of the farm settings.
2. Administrator content database which stores the content of the central admin website.
3. Individual content DBs that store information about specific sites, their subsites, document libraries and documents.
Apart from this, DPM customers have highlighted a need to back up SharePoint Search service as well – both Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) Search and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 Search.(
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J.C. Hornbeck: This seems to be a relatively popular question so I thought I'd post a quick heads-up here in case you're thinking about trying this in the future. If you want to virtualize the ConfigMgr 2007 admin console then follow these steps. (
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Pete Zerger: Some of you may remember the Remote
Interactive Command Prompt Task I wrote about for MOM 2005 a couple of years ago. This sample MP does this one better for Opsmgr 2007 - it actually creates two console tasks which are targeted at the computer you select in a State view in the Monitoring space.(
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Greg Ramsey: If you attended Angie Stahl's presentation at
MMS, you caught a sneak peak of the
ConfigMgr Client Troubleshooter. The troubleshooter is an
html application, which makes it fairly portable, and all the code can be viewed using your favorite text editor. Use the troubleshooter to help you diagnose ConfigMgr client issues. This tool has become priceless at my company, where it is used by the Service Desk and OnSite teams (as well as my team on a daily basis). There are two modes currently avaible for the troubleshooter,
Single System mode and
Batch Mode.(
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Richard Smith: I have been doing some sizing work for a customer around System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and its use specifically for deployment (Windows Vista)– there seems to be some conflicting info in many different places – however the tables below gives some very rough guidelines pulled from different sources...thought it may be useful(
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Monitoring your Exchange Servers is an absolutely essential task in order to guarantee that the messaging environment is operating reliably. Depending on the complexity of your IT infrastructure, there may be a huge effort involved in monitoring and operations.
The Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack (MP) for Operations Manager 2007 contains rules to monitor a significant subset of server health indicators and create alerts when problems are detected, or when reasonable thresholds are exceeded.(
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Shitanshu: SCCM site server database is one of the only supported site role in clustered configuration in SCCM 2007. Though I have not configured clustered DB in production so far, as we did not have critical business requirement for having clustered SCCM site server DB and having extra hardware for the same, but since it is supported and may be needed for other customer so sharing some references and to do list for considering this in production which will increase high availability and reduce single point of failures.(
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Pete Zerger: We’d talked a few weeks ago about creating a
Top Alerts Report in Powershell to improve upon the Top Alerts Report. So here are variations on that provides an additional elements versus the
Top Alerts report (in the Microsoft ODR Report Library) by displaying based on the repeat count and the object for which the alert was logged. When I run the Top Alerts Report, the repeat count seems to be missing in the report logic.
After a bit of working with this, I think these meet the need. These should make it easy to determine which computers are logging the most errors and which rules or monitors are the most problematic.(
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J.C. Hornbeck: Below is a small utility I wrote that I think you may find helpful. This is a small utility that can be used to view Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 Server/Agent Event Logs on a remote computer. For example, this could be a computer at a remote location or one that does not have the OpsMgr 2007 Agent or Server Installed.
There have been a number of ways we've tried to get around this issue, such as opening the event logs on the computer which actually has the Sever or Agent installed, or if it’s a remote computer without any OpsMgr components installed we could install the agent, but one of the issues with that is once you install the OpsMgr Agent you might not be able to parse events related to below components:
* DataAccessLayer
* OpsMgr Config Service
* Opsmgr Root Connector
* Opsmgr SDK Client
* Opsmgr SDK Service
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Event Viewer Utility
Peter Fitzsimon: SCVMM 2008 is the next version of SCVMM that allows the management of multiple virtualization platforms including Hyper-V, Virtual Server and VMware ESX.
Microsoft have just released a beta version of SCVMM 2008 via
http://connect.microsoft.com
Grab it and have a play. I know a site that already has it in "production" side by side with their Virtual Center console to manage their VMware ESX environment.
Stefan Stranger: Operations Manager 2007 comes with several standard management pack templates. You can use these templates to create a new management pack and then customize that management pack to your requirements. This approach provides an alternative to creating a new management pack to store the overrides for a sealed management pack.
One of the available MP templates is the OLE DB Data Source Template. Use the connection string properties to specify the instance to which you want to connect. You can find more information on how to construct OLE DB connection strings, on MSDN
Connection String Syntax.
When we write rules and monitors to look at events in the event log.... typically the most common criteria are Event ID and Source. We also have a list of other common event properties to choose from.
However, this list doesn't always work. For instance - if we add someone to a Global Group in AD.... this might create a Event ID 632 in the security event log on a DC - but possibly we only want to alert on this when the group being modified is "Domain Admins". Somewhere in that event description is the word "Domain Admins". (
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Rory McCaw: All the MP guides used to be located at
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/opsmgr/bb498235.aspx and this will still take you to the Ops Mgr product documentation but you will not find the MP Guides any longer.
The guides have been removed from that page. The guides are typically available in the .msi for the MP, and are supposed to be available (soon!) online in the TechCenter at (
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb310604.aspx).
As you have likely noticed, only some of the guides were listed previously on
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/opsmgr/bb498235.aspx. You may have also noticed that the MPs released with SP1 did not have updated guides. This is something that Microsoft is aware and is working to fix.
Nils van Schaik: The last couple of days I’ve been playing around with the SCCM 2007 SP1/R2 beta. I wanted to try out the NAP (network access protection) features, which require Windows Server 2008 on the SCCM server. So I went ahead and created some virtual machines, a domain controller and a SCCM server. I wanted to do it right, so I decided to install Windows Server 2008 on the domain controller as well.(
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When you deploy a Windows XP client with Configuration Manager OSD, and the user hits CTRL+ALT+DELETE, the user gets the usual logon screen, but with the target set to the machine name, and not the domain the computer is joined to. This is not the biggest problem on the planet, but why deal with it the problem could go away?(
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Installing and configuring the new Beta Service Level Dashboard I first had to download and install the Microsoft .NET framework 3.5. In contrast to the .NET framework 3.0 it only takes a few minutes to install but it requires a reboot.
You need to run SCOM 2007 SP1 with reporting and the latest Management pack versions of:
* Microsoft.SystemCenter.Library Version 6.0.6278.0
* Microsoft.Windows.Library Version 6.0.6278.0
* System.Health.Library Version 6.0.6278.0
* System.Library Version 6.0.6278.0
A normal SP1 installation will already have these MP's with the correct version. (
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System Center Operations Manager 2007 enables the ability to create custom scripts to monitor a system for a specified value, and react accordingly based on your requirements. In order to successfully accomplish this goal, we need to complete three basic steps:
1. Create a .vbs script to monitor the values that we're interested in and return that data to System Center Operations Manager.
2. Create an appropriately scoped Monitor Management Pack Object to leverage the newly created script.
3. Test the Monitor Object for the desired results.
Creating a .vbs script that can interface with System Center Operations Manager 2007 requires adding only a couple of additional steps to your script :(
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A question that seems to popup from time to time, is how to import HDC Storage drivers in Configuration Manager.
When importing storage drivers into Configuration Manager 2007, not all types (Class), can be used (selected) from the Task Sequence wizard. This is a known bug. At the time ConfigMgr 07 shipped, Microsoft were not aware of any mass storage drivers that used the HDC class, so only SCSIAdapters were flagged as boot critical. To workaround this issue you need to do the following: (
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Steve Rachui: A question came up today regarding heartbeating in OpsMgr 2007 - specifically, whether we can easily group systems and deliver missing heartbeat notifications based on specific computers and teams that manage those computers. The answer is yes - but the process of heartbeating and setting this up is different in OpsMgr 2007.
Watcher node - In OpsMgr you have the agent node and the watcher node. The agent node is the system with the installed OpsMgr agent that performs data collection, evaluation, etc. The watcher node is a designated system external to the agent that can perform monitoring to ensure the actual agent of interest is healthy. A good example would be an IIS server. An agent running on the IIS server is fully able to monitor providing the IIS server is running. If the IIS server goes down there would be no way to continue monitoring web page availability, etc. Enter the watcher node. A system can be designated to 'watch' the IIS server to ensure it is up and running. The same can apply in other examples too - such as the Health Service (the agent). (
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Stefan Stranger: During some
commandline installation testing I accidentally installed the OpsMgr Data Warehouse in a wrong directory, so I wanted to uninstall the database and used the GUI setup in an effort to delete the Data Warehouse (OperationsManagerDW).
Luckily I did my testing on my demo systems because I saw some frightening screens during my uninstall of the Data Warehouse
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When creating a new operating system WIM image with MDT, one of the things that you should always examine is the new updates for Windows that you will include; my recommendation has always been to make sure that the image is as up-to-date as possible with all the released Windows updates for the operating system you are going to deploy. During the testing phase of the image you create, you will be able to identify and catch any possible problems that an update may cause. I believe that this is a better approach to patching rather than testing and then deploying each individual update as they are released because it requires less time and work from you, but still ensures that an update will not give problems.
With MDT you add the updates to the workbench (as you can see in the screenshot below) and MDT will install them at the correct point in the installation process, couldn't be simpler!(
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Below are some procedures for excluding SQL database engine instances, SQL databases and SQL Agent jobs from discovery and/or monitoring. To exclude these components from monitoring, we need to:
1. Override the Object Discoveries
2. Delete any existing discovery data
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If you want to automate the backup of sealed or unsealed MPs for disaster recovery, then this will help. This Powershell script will initiate the Ops Mgr Console to export all un-sealed Management Packs to the specified directory. You can run this from Ops Mgr 2007 or from the OS Scheduler.(
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The white paper in this download provides prescriptive guidance for using the script samples included to integrate System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and Virtual Machine Manager 2007 to set up an automated process for applying software updates to virtual machines stored offline in a VMM library. By automating the process of enumerating stored virtual machines and deploying the virtual machines to a maintenance host to apply updates, the IT Administrator can manage virtual machines with the same effort as managing physical machines.
Note: A separate tool is currently under development to further automate the process of updating offline virtual machines. For more information about the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool, go here http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=110333.
Automating Software Updates for Offline Virtual Machines Using Virtual Machine Manager 2007 and Configuration Manager 2007
Shitasnhu Verma: As we are aware that SCCM admin full access provide a lot of privilege to manage all desktop in an enterprise so it’s critical to manage the SCCM admin access with role based security model. And recently we have introduced the new security group model for managing SCCM operations and having least admin access on SCCM as role based which is very much align to SCCM out of box security classes.(
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More details for SCCM security planning are available on following link :
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680768.aspx
Description of the Data Protection Manager 2007 hotfix rollup 3.
Issues Resolved:
- Recovery of SSL Sites does not work
- Consistency Check on compressed volume results in full Initial Replication
- Deleting old Recovery Points is not freeing space on Recovery Point Volume
- Consistency check does not complete in reasonable time
- User intent for Max Duration of Consistency Check job is not honored
- Increase verbosity in default DPM error logs*
- Restore security option for item recovery on the Recovery User Interface sometimes fails
This article is not yet public,
contact Microsoft to receive this package.
Adam Meltzer: After my
original post on configuring ISA bridging with ConfigMgr 2007, I've had several conversations with both the ISA team and customers and have been able to work out a different way to configure bridging with ConfigMgr 2007. This is still a complicated solution with some overhead, but I think that folks will find this much more palatable than the original solution.(
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Will Kaiser: Event log monitoring is arguably the bread and butter of SCOM. There is plenty of flexibility in other directions, but from the customers I've dealt with most custom monitors that are needed deal with the event log. In this post I'll discussing Event Log properties.(
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J.C. Hornbeck: For a long time we've been trying to cover most System Center and WSUS related support news on the same blog (here) but since Windows Server Update Services is becoming such a large part of our business I think it's about time we spun it off on its own blog. My hope is that we can keep the ConfigMgr 2007, OpsMgr 2007, SMS 2003 and MOM 2005 stuff segregated here and keep all the WSUS stuff on
the new blog so if you use both it may be a little more work keeping up with two separate feeds, but in the long run I think it'll allow us to get more information out and help you find what you're looking for easier and faster.
Andrzej Lipka: There is a tab when you select Tools->Connect from Ops Console that is called "Registered Servers". It actually will go into your AD and query for CN=SDKServiceSCP, which is a container that stores information on your Management Groups and RMS servers.
It normally works well, but there are a few gotcha's.(
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In this article Shitasnhu Verma explains how Microsoft setup Windows Server Update Services and the Software Update Point role using Network Load Balancing.
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J.C. Hornbeck: We recently released the System Center Essentials 2007 Technical Walkthrough CD which is an interactive self-paced learning tool that explains the process of installing and operating Essentials 2007.
If you ever thought about System Center Essentials and whether it fit the needs of your organization, this is a great place to start.
Download the ISO for more information.
Stefan Stranger: Some time ago I
showed you can use PowerShell to create Events for OpsMgr 2007. And according to the comments quite some people
have questions about Event parameters. After creating the first version of the
PowerShell Create Events for OpsMgr 2007 script, Ken added some functionality and one was modifying the question to not only add a EventLog Description but also a
EventLog Parameter.
I found some info on MOM 2005 parameters on Rory McCaw’s weblog, but except that article I could not find much info on Event Log parameters. So hopefully this will explain what parameters are and how they can be used in OpsMgr 2007.
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Walter Chomak: This post is a slight divergence from the typical technical postings. I’d like to discuss OpsMgr and diagnostic practices, specifcally using the ‘Differential Diagnosis (DDx)’ method. Yes. I am a big fan of House, MD. No. This is not where I thought of this. I learned about using DDx in IT some time ago by one of my professors.
You would be surprised, or maybe not, at how many customers request assistance with diagnostics and troubleshooting. I use to think that after OpsMgr was deployed and working correctly my job was done. I could not have been any more incorrect. Some, well most, of my customers were overwhelmed with the type I alerts. (I refer to type I alerts as actionable alerts, a real condition that must be resolved. Examples include low disk, failed SQL job etc.) They did not have a sound method of troubleshooting or diagnosing situations where a solution was not readily apparent. I always took for granted that once they were ‘alerted’ to a problem they could simply assign it to the correct SME and be done with it.(
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Walter Chomak: A sample script that enables you to extract a list of computer names from your custom SQL Server database and add them to an Active Directory security group. The security group can then be referenced in the Agent Assignment and Failover Wizard to automate agent assignments to Management Servers.
1. Queries customer SQL asset database.
2. Populates custom security group with computer accounts of computers returned by the SQL query.
Download Active Directory Integration Sample Script
Today Savision announced Live Maps version 2.0.
After a successful launch of Live Maps 1.0 for Operations Manager 2007 we are proud to announce Live Maps version 2.0. Live Maps 2.0 comes with a number of new features that enable you to get even more out of your System Center Operations Manager investment.
So what's new in Live Maps 2.0?
• Web console - share your maps over the web
• Audible alarms - never miss a critical alert anymore
• Improved performance - solve your problems faster
• New editions and prices - more value for money
Live Maps 2.0 is available for
download today and will be on display at the Teched IT Pro in Orlando (booth 1530). The new features can also be watched in this
webcast.
When CPU and memory resource consumption are running at or near 100%, the first thing an administrator wants to check is what processes are running at the time the excess resource consumption took place. The problem is that by the time you can get to a machine and retrieve a list of running processes, the condition has improved and the evidence gone.
This problem can be easily overcome in Operations Manager or Essentials 2007 using a new feature called a diagnostic to automatically perform data collection tasks at the time a condition is encountered. However, you will not find the appropriate diagnostic in place out of the box.
The diagnostics in this sample Retrieve Running Processes MP (link provided at the end of this article) , which automatically retrieve a list of running process the moment the alert threshold is breached, ensure the offending process information is captured. Simply download and import into your environment to make immediate use of this feature (no configuration required).(
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Richard Smith: Recently, I have had to create a bigger scratch space (the MDT X: drive) in Windows PE to deal with the injection of a largish driver during a Windows Vista deployment. The driver in question is the NVidia driver for the Lenovo P60 and P61 and because of the limited scratch space under PE 2.0, this was causing an issue at injection time. There is a scratch file change (registry hack) that can be made to Windows PE 2.0 and below to change the scratch file space from the default 32 Mb - however this is unsupported.(
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Arlindo Alves from Microsoft Belgium posted two articles on how to install the just released System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Beta.
Installing System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Beta Part I
In the first part Arlindo explains how to install the server components of SCVMM 2008 Beta.
Installing System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Beta Part II
In the second part Arlindo describes the console installation.
On any Operations Manager administrators daily to-do list should be alert review and rule tuning.
Effective alert tuning means that every alert should ideally have its place. This does not always work out, but you definitely want to have a bucket for classifying most common possibilities. Generally this is done with custom alert resolution states (only NEW and CLOSED exist by default).
The underlying philosophy is that consistent evaluation of alerts, and appropriate disposition leads to 1) a higher percentage of actionable alerts over time, 2) remediation of lingering service issues in the environment and 3) greater respect for Operations Manager and the importance of the monitoring function by IT support staff and service owners 4) and theoretically, better tuned (and thus better performing) IT services.(
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Are you having a growing number of virtual machines that may not be patched on a regular basis because they are offline? Wouldn't it be nice to have a way to maintain them with the most up-to-date security patches? Now, you have a free solution! Yes - FREE!
Introducing Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool (Beta)
The
Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool manages the workflow of updating large numbers of offline virtual machines according to their individual needs. To do this, the tool works with Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 (VMM) and with software update management systems (at present, either Microsoft Windows Server® Update Services 3.0 (WSUS) or Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007).(
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In April 2008, Microsoft made available to selected testers (including the MOM MVPs) a pre-release version of the Windows 2008 Base OS and IIS management packs (MPs) for OpsMgr 2007. Having these MPs is important since without a MP designed to monitor Windows Server 2008 systems, those servers with Windows 2008 running an OpsMgr agent show a "not monitored" state in the Operations console, since the Windows 2003 and Windows Server libraries cannot monitor Windows 2008.
When these management packs are imported into an existing OpsMgr 2007 management group, you are able to enjoy accurate OS health state for those Windows 2008 servers with OpsMgr agents installed on them, rather than showing the not monitored status. (
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Justin Van Buren: At MMS, we had the opportunity to talk with Bill Anderson (a longtime program manager for System Center Configuration Manager) and Dave Randall (Microsoft Program Manager for System Center Configuration Manager) about some of the most powerful benefits of combining native Intel vPro technology support with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. Listen to the video and find out how Intel vPro Technology enhances Config Manager 2007 from Bill and Dave.(
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This download contains the following documentation for System Center Operations Manager 2007:
• Operations Manager 2007 Deployment Guide:
This guide steps you through the deployment process for System Center Operations Manager 2007.
• Active Directory Management Pack Guide for Operations Manager 2007:
This document includes a Management Pack overview, deployment procedures, and monitoring scenarios for the two Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Management Packs
• Exchange Management Pack Guide for Operations Manager 2007: This guide includes a Management Pack overview, deployment procedures, and monitoring scenarios for the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007.
• SQL Management Pack Guide for Operations Manager 2007:
The SQL Server Management Pack provides both proactive and reactive monitoring of SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 for an enterprise environment.
• Windows Server Operating System Management Pack Guide for Operations Manager 2007:
The Microsoft Windows Server Management Packs monitor the performance, health, and availability of Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Microsoft Windows Server 2003.
• Windows Client Operating System Management Pack Guide:
The Windows client operating system Management Packs are intended for use in gathering data on client computers or individually monitoring designated mission-critical client computers.
• Operations Manager 2007 Terminal Services Management Pack: This guide includes an overview of the Management Pack, deployment procedures, and monitoring scenarios for the Terminal Services Management Pack.
• Operations Manager 2007 Security Guide:
This guide provides you with security-related information as it pertains to Operations Manager 2007.
• Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack Guide:
This guide includes a Management Pack overview, deployment procedures, and monitoring scenarios for the Microsoft Windows Server Internet Information Services 2000 and 2003 Management Packs for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007.
• Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack Terminal Services:
This guide includes an overview of the Management Pack, deployment procedures, and monitoring scenarios for the Terminal Services Management Pack.
• The Operations Manager 2007 Design Guide:
This guide steps the reader through the steps necessary to develop a complete architectural plan for their OpsMgr2007 implementation.
• Operations Manager 2007 Backup and Recovery Guide:
This guide provides guidance in planning for backup and recovery of System Center Operations Manager 2007 server roles and components. The information in this guide will complement your existing recovery strategy to avoid service disruption.
• Operations Manager 2007 Operations Guide:
This guide s a comprehensive resource that can be used to understand and use your Operations Manager 2007 implementation to your best advantage. It teaches the Operations Manager administrator what to do after successfully deployed a Management Group for the first time.
• Operations Manager 2007 MigrationGuide:
This guide is intended to help you understand the migration process from Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM 2005) to Operations Manager 2007 and the tools that are used in the process.
• Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack Authoring Guide
The Microsoft Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack Authoring Guide provides detailed information on how to author management packs for System Center Operations Manager 2007. This guide includes detailed conceptual documentation, tutorials, and a reference section.
• Operations Manager 2007 Report Authoring Guide
This guide provides an overview of the Operations Manager reporting feature, including procedures for generating pre-populated reports and authoring custom reports. There is also reference information for users looking to create custom reports.
William Vambenepe: I was hoping that by the time MMS was over there would be more clarity about the
“Cross Platform Extension” to System Center that Microsoft announced there. But most of the comments I have seen have focused on two non-technical aspects:
Microsoft is interested in heterogeneous management and
Microsoft makes use of open source. That’s also the focus of
Coté’s coverage.
So what? Is it still that exciting, in 2008, to learn that Microsoft recognizes that Linux and OSS are major players in enterprise computing? If Steve Ballmer eventually gets hold of Yahoo, do you think his first priority will be to move all the servers to Windows or to build up its search and advertising audience? It’s been now 10 years since the
Halloween documents came out. They can be seen as the start of Microsoft’s realization that Linux/OSS are here for good. It is not surprising to see that one of their main authors is now the driving force behind WS-Management, an effort that illustrates the acceptance of heterogeneity and the need to deal with it (on Microsoft’s terms if possible, of course). The WS-Management effort started years ago and it was a clear sign that Microsoft knew it had to tackle heterogeneous management (despite the reassuring talk that “it’s all about making Windows the most manageable platform” to HP and others). Basically, Microsoft is using WS-Management to support heterogeneity without having to do too much work: by creating an industry standard that everyone writes to and that Microsoft uses internally. Heterogeneous management is intrinsic to DSI if DSI is to be anything more than a demo.(
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The OpsMgr team is working with the Windows team on getting the necessary hotfixes ready for release. Links for these hotfixes will be available on the KB article that will be published end of this month.
Here is a heads up on what we are tentatively planning on supporting (
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Walter Eikenboom: @ MMS 2008 there was a session about Licensing for the System Center Suite. Normally Licensing looks like University Math but they made it easier. When you are using SMS and MOM 2005 your would pay for each product and per managed client, were for MOM de clients could be Standard OML or Enterprise OML and for SMS the client and server license would vary as well. With this wide variety of possibilities the calculations for the complete license investment could take quite a while and some checking and cross check the different client and server roles.
But now with the Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE) licensing model things are made easy. Normally easier is more expansive and in this case it sometimes is. When your just going to buy SCOM or SCCM licenses and your using standard OML for SCOM you still have to make a good calculation before going to the SMSE license type. (
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The feature complete Beta of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM 2008, sometimes you read SCVMM 2008) is available for some days now. Microsoft’s new management tool for centralized deployment and management for Virtual Server 2005, Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX can be downloaded via Microsoft Connect. Today I had a quick look at it. This post will also give you some tips on how you can test VMM 2008 if you already work with Virtual Machine Manager 2007.
Considering the fact that VMM 2007 was released in September 2007, VMM 2008 has quite a few interesting new features. Most prominently are certainly Hyper-V and VMware ESX support. I will probably blog about the new features in another post. Today, I am just sharing some experiences I had when I played a little with VMM 2008.(
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Service Level Dashboard for System Center Operations Manager 2007 Executive Overview
IT departments have ever more sophisticated tools at their disposal to monitor the performance of applications that make the organization run. These tools, despite their sophistication, follow traditional monitoring, which is server-based. As long as the server is in good health, the assumption is that the service is good too.
The performance and availability attributes of the service cannot be measured in just one place, however. Differences in network speed and quality across the company can slow or break functionality for the end user. Furthermore, multiple server and client software components are often combined to provide a service and can each affect its quality. Thus a true picture of the performance and availability of an application can only come from evaluating these attributes from an end-to-end perspective.
Beta Download at Connect:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=110337
Announcing the Systems Management Server 2003 R2 support for Microsoft Update Standalone Package (MSU) Validation Program
Program Description
SMS 2003 R2 was created to enable authoring and scanning for custom-defined software updates. It was originally designed to support update files in exe, msi and msp extensions. Updates for Vista are in the new msu (Microsoft Update Standalone Package) format, which is currently not recognized in Systems Management Server 2003 R2. To provide customers the capability of deploying Vista security and critical updates through use of SMS 2003 R2 custom updates publishing tool, we are developing an update to provide .msu support. This program will provide an opportunity for validation by customers interested in this capability.(
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The System Center Solutions Contest officially begins Monday, May 5th, 2008! The aim of the "System Center Solutions" Contest is to spark community sharing and development of community developed solutions for any of the System Center family of products. The System Center Solutions Contest is designed to recognize valuable solutions submitted by community sources.
Click here to enter the website.
Prizes
Through the courtesy of some amazing sponsors, we’ll be giving out some great prizes for your effort, including:
Grand Prize: Xbox 360
Category Winners: Zune 4GB (2nd gen)
All Entrants: Random prize drawings amongst all participants
Rules and How to Enter
For complete rules, see the official contest rules and information on how you can enter, see official rules at the URL below:
http://www.systemcenterusergroup.com/content/SCVUGContest.aspx. Deadline to Enter:
June 20th, 2008.
The Operations Manager 2007 Security Configuration Wizard (SCW) Roles and Security Hardening guide can be used to help further protect and harden your Operations Manager 2007 environment in conjunction with the SCW on Windows Server 2003 by closing or disabling unnecessary ports and services reducing the overall attack surface.
Feature Bullet Summary:
The Operations Manager 2007 SCW Roles contain hardening definitions for:
* System Center Operations Manager 2007 Management Server
* System Center Operations Manager 2007 Root Management Server
* System Center Operations Manager 2007 Agent
It also contains additional hardening option for:
* System Center Operations Manager 2007 Audit Collector
* System Center Operations Manager 2007 Audit Forwarder
* System Center Operations Manager 2007 SysLog Reader
* System Center Operations Manager 2007 Agent Push Install And Repair
* System Center Operations Manager 2007 Agentless Exception Monitoring
* System Center Operations Manager 2007 CEIP
* System Center Operations Manager 2007 Connector Framework
Download:
System Center Operations Manager 2007 SCW Roles and Security Hardening Guide for Windows Server 2003
Satya from the Operations Manager Product Team: Last week the Operations Manager team attended the Microsoft Management Summit 2008 in Las Vegas and one of the big questions we got from almost all customers was when is the System Center Capacity tool going to be available? I glad to announce that the OpsMgr 2007 SCCP RTM model is now officially available today from the link below. The model covers Gateway Servers, Audit Collection and Client Monitoring scenarios as well as the complex enterprise deployment scenarios. A note of caution, please review the model with your technical account manager or your Microsoft consultant before doing a full blown deployment. It is also essential that all customers do a pre-production deployment before doing a final production deployment.
Download:
OpsMgr 2007 Capacity Planner Tool (Final Version)
Marius Sutara: Recently I saw some questions about why cluster infrastructure is only partially discovered and it is not monitored when all cluster services are healthy. I replied to some of those questions either internally or at the newsgroup, where I was trying to explain why such health model was possible (so this answer is not subject of this post, but I will explain again if needed; just ask thru comment and I will get back to you). Back to the original problem, I was never really able to provide information what was indeed wrong with cluster infrastructure discovery. In fact, this issue turned rather tricky to repro locally in order to investigate. Luckily, thanks to
Brian, one of the possible root causes was containing trailing spaces in cluster resource group name and/or containing such trailing spaces in cluster resource name.
This issue will be addressed in next web release of management packs responsible for monitoring of cluster infrastructure. Closest future release is Windows 2008 Failover cluster management pack, Right now I do not have enough information to provide and disclose detail release date, MP will be verified and deployed in MSIT and in TAP customers to get as much as possible verification of its functionality prior releasing to web. The date I’d say if had to guess is midsummer or early fall timeframe.
Raymond Chou: The following are some tips to consider when designing your Operations Manager 2007 infrastructure. These tips were based on my personal experience which was re-confirmed by several other MVPs who experienced similar, as well as discussions with the Ops Manager product team at Microsoft.(
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Raymond Chou: The first news to me is the rebranding of SoftGrid. I kinda thought it was a cool name but I guess when you acquire a product you'll always, if not necessary, to rename it. So what's the brand spanking new name?... Microsoft Application Virtualization!!. Funky? Well.. I'll let you thrive on your own opinions :)
The good news however is that the upcoming version 4.5 will be tightly integrated with System Center Configuration Manager 2007.
One of the primary goals of SCCM R2 is to be able to manage virtualized applications just like a physical application for example, asset inventory or deploying.
If you've used or tried SoftGrid 4.0 or 4.1, you'll know that in the application virtualization world, it doesn't really exist therefore SCCM or SMS could not perform inventory on those application. So 4.5 addresses this now.(
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Stefan Stranger modified the System Center Content Search Windows Gadget to include his own website and predefined macro's.
This gadget makes it easier to find help for Microsoft System Center products because it uses Live Search macros to search specific sites instead of the entire web. Search results are only returned from sites that are known to contain helpful information about System Center products.
But did you know you can easily extend this Gadget to have your own searches included? I’ve added my own website to the System Center Content Search Gadget (SCCSG).
But you can much more than that. What about creating your own Windows Live Search Macro and adding it to the SCCSG?
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Daniele Muscetta: I am testing the beta bits of the cross-platform extensions that were released on Microsoft Connect
This post wants to describe my limited testing so far - I hope this can benefit/help everyone testing the beta for some stuff that might currently not be incredibly clear - unless you attended the MMS class, at least
)
I started out with the
White Paper that has been posted on the web, which describes the architecture pretty well, but from a higher level (with diagrams and the like). Then I downloaded the beta bits, which contain another document about setting the thing up. It is pretty well done, to be honest (especially if you consider that it is beta documentation for a beta product!), but it does not really go all the way down to troubleshooting things a lot, yet. I will try to cover some of that here. (
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The Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access 2005 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 monitors the health of computers running Office Communicator Web Access server components on Windows Server 2003 and alerts IT administrators about critical health conditions that indicate degraded performance. The management pack monitors and provides alerts for:
• Automatic notification of events indicating service outages
• Performance degradation
• Health monitoring
• Centralized management
This management pack requires the Back Compatibility MP version 6.0.5000.12 (or higher).
Download:
Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access Management Pack for Microsoft System Center OpsMgr 2007
Kevin Holman: There has always been a bit of confusion on when to run the DBCreateWizard.exe tool, or when to just use SetupOM.exe to create the Operational DB or Data Warehouse DB.
Historically.... in MOM 2005, we used the DBcreate Wizard in order to create the Onepoint database on Active/Active clusters..... or when SQL DBA teams refused to run a MSI based setup on one of their SQL servers. The DB create wizard was a better option for them.... since it did not have to install any binaries on a SQL server. In practice.... it was pretty rare to see this in widespread use.(
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Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions Beta enables organizations to achieve service level goals and gain visibility across their cross-platform environments, including Unix and Linux operating systems as well as Microsoft platforms. With centralized management and monitoring of the IT infrastructure, organizations can maximize uptime and performance while reaping the efficiencies of a single monitoring solution rather than disparate tools for each environment.
This paper discusses how Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions can help data centers and large IT organizations:
* More easily identify and resolve issues in a cross-platform environment
* Manage both Microsoft and non-Microsoft environments as simply and efficiently as possible
* Improve service levels and visibility across Microsoft, Unix, and Linux platforms
Download Whitepaper:
Managing Unix/Linux with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions Beta
Matt Goedtel: When you launch the Operations Console on your workstation or even on the management server (or RMS for that matter), the data from the Operations Manager database is cached locally in the file "momcache.mdb." By default, the console will poll the SDK Service on the RMS every 15 seconds to update the local cache. Depending on the number of agent managed systems that are in the management group, potential size of the database will be (as indicated by the Product Group):
* 100 server deployment = 300 MB
* 1000 server deployment = 600 MB
* 5000 server deployment = 1 GB
The database file is located in %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\MIcrosoft\Microsoft.Mom.UI.Console.
For my small lab environment with only 12 servers being actively monitored by Operations Manager with many core and custom management packs, the file size is 34 MB (as an example).
So if you are intending or are already hosting the console on a Terminal Server or Citrix Server, you will need to factor this in to ensure you don't impact the volume supporting other shared applications.
During MMS 2008, VMM 2008 was announced, here are some of the key architectual characteristics:
On the top-left corner, notice that the UIs (admin console and self-service portal) are all 100% built on top of Powershell. What does this mean? It means that..
- Everything you do on the UI can be done through powershell. All actions/jobs are 100% scriptable.
- In addition, if you are a "script-junkie",
, you can do more via our powershell interface than what's made available on the UI. Yes, power to Powershell!
Notice the "Connector" sitting between VMM and SCOM, which is part of the new PRO (Performance and Resource Optimization) feature, and that allows a faster message/information sharing between VMM and SCOM.
In the mid of the picture, notice the horizontal single layer of "Management Interfaces". What is so interesting about that?
- We have abstracted different virtualization platforms and their APIs, and present a set of consistent and platform-agnostic cmdlets and UI interfaces to perform your heterogeneous host and VM management operations.
- It's totally transparent (I mean "no op" here) to you, no matter you are sending an instruction to a Windows Hyper-V host, a VMware ESX host or a Virtual Server host. This is what we call simplified management experience.
On the lower-right corner, it shows how we're managing VMware ESX hosts via VCS (VirtualCenter Server). Most of the host and VM operations are done directly with VCS from VMM server. Note that VMM server may still need to communicate with ESX hosts directly when there is need for file-level enumeration (for example, Save State or Clone VM, etc.).
VMM 2008 Architecture
From our guest writer, André Kager: At the Microsoft Management Summit in beautiful Las Vegas,
version 4 of the Operations Framework was announced. So let's talk about what is new, and what is Microsoft’s intention. If you look to the overview you will find new names to all quadrants. The old support and operating are now bonded together in "operate", the old optimizing is now called "plan" and change is now named "manage".
Also, a new name is introduced to split all tasks, called "Service Management Functions". A good example is the Service Level Management, which is now called Business IT Alignment. The new model is more focussed on the business instead of IT itself and the “circle” is now truly round. It manages the whole IT Life Cycle from concept to development, operation, maintenance, and—ultimately—its retirement. The set can be used standalone but together they make a strong portfolio in ensuring service delivery at the desired quality versus cost.
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This afternoon at the Microsoft Management Summit 2008 we attended a session by Jeff Woolsey and Mike Sterling. The session explained the architecture and management of the Hyper-V server.
Hyper-V server is Microsoft’s implementation of a hypervisor-based server virtualization technology. The Hyper-V can be installed on a Windows server 2008 machine as a service. Microsoft recommends that you use the core server installation as platform for your Hyper-V service.
Although the product is still in Beta the expectations are high. Hyper-V will be available 180 days after the launch of Windows server 2008. According to Jeff Woolsey the development of the product is on schedule and ready in time.
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My good friend and fellow SCOM-MVP,
Raymond Chou,
wrote a blogpost about the new connectors & interop strategy for System Center Operations Manager that Microsoft announced at the Microsoft Management Summit.
"The reality of the industry is most companies are heterogenous. So the first step of Interop for System Center addresses the forwarding of alerting data into any other Operations Workflow as well.
The next area that you would see Interop is to be able to receive event data and discover relationships from other systems into Operations Manager. Even to the extend of generating service manager tickets from other systems.
The core architecture that Interop uses is WS-Man to securely send data across to other systems. On the other side, WS-MAN receives it then passes it to CIMOM (Open Pegasus) which will then kick off a provider with Native APIs to talk to systems like Tivoli, Openview and Remedy. There is also a Universal Connector that can be customized."
Continue to read the full article..
| 29 May '08 - 07:24 | kenneth van surksum | 
no comments | news source ~ Operations Manager Product Team Blog 
