Search

Search for words used in entries on this website

Enter the words[s] to search for here:

Sponsors

Tags

Affiliates

Microsoft MVP:

Featured on:

Should you use a Branch Distribution Point?

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 is a multitalented animal for distributing software, and with the branch distribution point option you may not need a secondary site server in branch offices

Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (ConfigMgr) introduces many site server roles. In this article, we look at the branch distribution point.(continue at source)

The case of the unexplained notification subscriptions "outage"

Imagine this: your SCOM operator groups call you to let you know that they are not receiving any notification anymore. You open up the SCOM console and see no strange behavior and double check the settings to conclude that they are configured correctly, but still notification subscriptions are not working anymore. How should you solve this? (more)

So, you installed System Center Operations Manager…what next?

So, you decided to install System Center Operations Manager in your environment in order to start monitoring your environment. Or someone else installed Operations Manager for you, and it’s your job to start working with it. What should you do next?

. (more)

Tuning tip – turning off some over-collection of events

Kevin Holman: We often think of tuning OpsMgr by way of tuning “Alert Noise”…. by disabling rules that generate alerts that we don't care about, or modifying thresholds on monitors to make the alert more actionable for our specific environment.

However – one area of OpsMgr that often goes overlooked, is event overcollection. This has a cost… because these events are collected and create LAN/WAN traffic, agent overhead, OpsDB size bloat, and especially, DataWarehouse size bloat. I have worked with customers who had a data warehouse that was over one third event data….. and they had ZERO requirement for this nor did they want it. They were paying for disk storage, and backup expense, plus added time and resources on the framework, all for data they cared nothing about.(continue at source)

Let's dive deeper in ConfigMgr R3

Jannes Alink: In the first week of September the ConfigMgr product team announced ConfigMgr R3. This release is delivered to introduce some new features which are also covered in the next version of ConfigMgr which is planned for the year 2011.

In this post I will discuss ConfigMgr R3 in more detail. One of the first announced new features is Power Management.(continue at source)

System Center Updates Publisher (SCUP) 4.5 now supports WSUS 3.0 SP2

We just released an updated version of SCUP 4.5 to support WSUS 3.0 SP2. You can download SCUP 4.5 here. With this released we also fixed a number of customer reported issues. (continue at source)

Understanding the MDT Configuration Database Part 1

Tim Mintner: The MDT Configuration Database has been around since MDT was called Business Desktop Deployment (BDD). Since that time there have been numerous blog posts and articles on how to customize the database, extend the database, or use the database in specific ways to solve specific problems. With all of those articles there doesn’t seem to be a single article that explains what the database is or why you would even want to use it. The MDT documentation even jumps right in and shows you all of the steps that you would do to configure the database and use it to do specific scenarios but the documentation doesn’t cover the basics of what it is or why use it? This is a first in series of blog posts that I will be writing to cover the details of the MDT Configuration Database. In this post, I will cover the basics of the database, why you would want to use it, some of the items that you can configure in the database, and how you will initially get the database installed.(continue at source)

Writing monitors to target Logical or Physical Disks

Kevin Holman: This is something a LOT of people make mistakes on – so I wanted to write a post on the correct way to do this properly, using a very common target as an example.

When we write a monitor for something like “Processor\% Processor Time\_Total” and target “Windows Server Operating System”…. everything is very simple. “Windows Server Operating System” is a single instance target…. meaning there is only ONE “Operating System” instance per agent. “Processor\% Processor Time\_Total” is also a single instance counter…. using ONLY the “_Total” instance for our measurement. Therefore – your performance unit monitors for this example work just like you’d think.

However – Logical Disk is very different. On a given agent – there will often be MULTIPLE instances of “Logical Disk” per agent, such as C:, D:, E:, F:, etc… We must write our monitors to take this into account. (continue at source)

Showing Web-based Content in a Custom View

In Travis Wright’s article on Creating Workspace (aka “Wunderbars”) in System Center Service Manager (SCSM) he talked about how partners and customers can extend SCSM to show a workspace for a custom developed SCSM solution. Now that you have that workspace set up, how can you show your own content? This article will walk you through a sample.(continue at source)

Service Manager: Beta 2 Update Now Available for Download!

The Service Manager team is happy to announce that we have released an update to the Beta 2 called aptly ‘Beta 2 Update’. It is available to all of our public Beta customers on the Connect site. This build contains some important fixes we have done recently to support:

· our TAP customers going into production (we have quite a few in production already on this updated build!).

· the governance, risk, and compliance management pack which was recently announced and released.

· upgrade from beta 2 onwards. Important note: only TAP customers in production are supported in their attempts to upgrade! We won’t be supporting any other attempts to upgrade, but you can try it and provide feedback. We are always glad to find out about bugs, but we may not necessarily fix them for upgrade depending on the situation. We really recommend a fresh install unless you are a TAP customer in production already and therefore really need to upgrade to preserve data.

· An update to the documentation.

Note: Provance has also certified their current beta of their IT Asset Management MP with this Beta 2 Update build.

For any new installs of Service Manager, please use the Beta 2 Update build available from Connect. If you already have the original Beta 2 installed, you don’t necessarily need to uninstall and reinstall. The only difference between the builds is about 20-30 bug fixes.

Service Manager Beta Process Management Pack Now Available

Two weeks ago, at TechEd EMEA, Ryan O’Hara announced the Compliance and Risk Process Management Pack for System Center Service Manager.  I am excited to let you know the Beta of this process management pack is now available for evaluation and can be downloaded on MS Connect.  The high costs of managing IT compliance come largely from manual activities and processes.  The Compliance and Risk Process Management Pack, along with the System Center Suite of products allows you to simplify and automate the  end-to-end compliance process.  Take a look at the corresponding announcement and video and you will see how the System Center Solution translates complex regulations and standards into a harmonized set of control objectives and provides the platform for managing the associated activities and reporting infrastructure so your organization can implement continuous audit capability.(continue at source)

Session Recording Service Manager: From Re-active to Pro-active

In this session Maarten Goet, SCOM MVP and participant in the TAP-program for Service Manager, is going to show us what the possibilities are of Service Manager. First he will explain the architecture of Service Manager after which he will deep-dive into the possibilities of Incident-, Change Management and CMDB. With some real life examples Maarten will also show us the possibilities of the SCOM and SCCM connector.

For IT-pros who are working with ITIL, COBIT or the MOF framework, for IT-pros who are interested or searching for a helpdesk system with integration into the system center suite and for IT-decision takers that need to comply with several standards, this is a session you can't miss.(continue at source)

Configure OpsMgr R2 Service Level Tracking on Live Maps views

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

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)

Creating Rules and Monitors with a Schedule/Understanding XML internals

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

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)

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

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)

Your Windows 7 Deployment Guide

Depending on the size of your enterprise, the complexity of deploying Windows 7 ranges from fairly simple to insanely complex. For Microsoft's own deployments, the task has been falling closer to the latter description. However, using System

Center, Configuration Manager 2007's Operating System Deployment (OSD) feature and the soon-to-be-released Service Pack 2 (SP2) can greatly simplify the process. No matter where your enterprise falls on the complexity spectrum, you can use the Microsoft blueprint to move your enterprise to Windows 7 sooner rather than later.

This article describes how the Microsoft team approached deploying Windows 7 to our own enterprise. It covers how we developed our Windows 7 deployment solution and how you can apply these same tools to simplify yours(continue at source)

OSD App Tree

OSD App Tree is a configurable way to allow user interaction during a Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) Operating System Deployment (OSD) Task Sequence (TS). It presents a tree of applications to the interactive user allowing them to choose which ones to install during the TS. Configuration is based on an XML file that contains all possible applications, their settings, and their organization in the tree presented to the end user.

This is a rebranding of OSD App Chooser with a greatly updated look and feel, tooltips, added customization and branding abilities, along with a relatively major new feature: application dependencies.(continue at source)

Windows Power Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2

The Power Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 R2 enables you to monitor and manage the power consumption of computers running Windows Server 2008 R2.

Download: Windows Power Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2

Final Beta of the MDT Web FrontEnd

Maik Koster: It has been very quiet around the MDT Web FrontEnd after releasing the first Beta on Codeplex a couple months ago. But a lot has happened in the background. After adding some really nice and useful features a lot of debugging and troubleshooting and some final cleanup I`m really proud to announce the (Final) Beta 2 of the MDT Web FrontEnd. It’s feature complete for now and I will only do some final bugfixing (if necessary) before the First Release will be published within the next few weeks also with a new kewl name. (continue at source)

Configuration Manager 2007 Help File Update Wizard

October Update: The Configuration Manager 2007 Help File Update Wizard can be used to update the locally installed help file used by the Configuration Manager console or to install a stand-alone version of the latest available Configuration Manager 2007 Documentation Library. After installing the documentation help update, the latest available help file can also be accessed through the Windows Start menu. If a Configuration Manager console is installed on the computer that the wizard is started on, the existing help documentation will be updated to the latest available version of the Configuration Manager 2007 Documentation Library. If a Configuration Manager 2007 console is not installed on the computer that the wizard is started on, the latest version of the Configuration Manager 2007 Documentation Library help file can be copied locally. In addition, options are available to run the help file update wizard from the command line. See the product read-me document for more details.

Download: Configuration Manager 2007 Help File Update Wizard

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007

The Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 management pack is designed to be used for monitoring Exchange 2010 events, collecting Exchange component-specific performance counters in one central location, and for raising alerts for operator intervention as necessary. By detecting, sending alerts, and automatically correlating critical events, this management pack helps indicate, correct, and prevent possible service outages or configuration problems, allowing you to proactively manage Exchange servers and identify issues before they become critical. The management pack monitors and provides alerts for automatic notification of events indicating service outages, performance degradation, and health monitoring.

Download:Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007

Configuration Manager Support Announcements for November 2009

Up until now we have released support announcements on the ConfigMgr Support Team blog from our very own Customer Support Services. Moving forward, we will be announcing support for new configuration via our Configuration Manager Team blog directly from our finger tips to your eyes. While we are on the topic, you might be wondering what to expect from our team when new versions of our dependencies release. First, let's establish some terminology. We consider our ‘externals' anything that our product is dependent on (or specific features are dependent on) that is not developed by our own development teams. We have dependencies on platforms like Windows or SQL, or components like .NET Framework or the Bandwidth Intelligent Throttling Service (BITS). We currently track over 26 external dependencies against our product.(continue at source)

SCCM: Forcing a Task Sequence to Rerun

Steve Rachui: There are well known methods to force an advertisement to rerun – including several add-on tools available for the SMS or SCCM console. To date, however, there are not equivalent methods to force a task sequence to rerun. Part of this may be because task sequences are typically thought of as focused on Operating System Deployment (OSD) and rerunning these types of distributions are not as common as rerunning advertisements.(continue at source)

System Center Operations Manager: Version Control

The current version of System Center Operations Manager 2007 doesn’t use version control for management packs. If you manage complex environments and use lot of custom monitoring, it would be nice to see when there is something changed and even better: easily fall back to your previous version in case an error slipped in. Another benefit of version control is you have exported management packs ready to import in other environments: i.e. between acceptance and production or between customers in case you are managing multiple customers like we do.(continue at source)

Importing data into SCSM (part 1) – the SCSM AD & SCCM connectors

The Service Manager database contains information about the environment. After a fresh installation, we have an empty database. This SCSM database can be easily populated with different entries (configuration items for SCSM) with the use of connectors. In the SCSM console, you have four different connectors that can be configured.(continue at source)

Overview of Problem Management in Service Manager

The objective of Problem Management is to resolve the underlying root cause of incidents and consequently prevent incidents from recurring [ITIL]. Proactive Problem Management aims to identifying and solving Problems and Known Errors before the incidents occur.

The Problem Management Process Management Pack provides basic capabilities to document problems, link incidents and research the problems through basic search capability. Though it does not provide any workflows but the partners could extend it to include automated workflows to automate aspects of problem management process.(continue at source)

OpsMgr R2 by Example: the SharePoint MP

The Office SharePoint Server 2007 management pack and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 management pack are separate management packs. This discussion focuses on the Office SharePoint Server 2007 management pack, as this is the more current version of the two. (continue at source)

Management Pack for Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 Release Candidate Now Available

We are happy to announce the availability of the Management Pack (MP) for the Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010 Release Candidate. As a response to your feedback, we enhanced the management pack, to increase its coverage and usability.

While the previous release monitored and managed some of Forefront TMG’s features, we are now monitoring and managing all Forefront TMG features. We added discoveries (automatic detection mechanisms) of the new features, their state and events in Forefront TMG 2010 and made significant improvements to increase the usability and productivity of the MP.(continue at source)