Archive | SCOM

The Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB) Management Pack monitors the health of NLB on computers that are running Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 to improve the availability, performance, and security of your Windows environment. This Management Pack requires OpsMgr 2007 MOM 2005 Backward Compatibility MP Update) 6.0.5000.12 (or higher).

Release History
8/6/2007 – Version 6.0.5000.0, Initial release of the English version,
2/24/2009 – Version 6.0.6505.0, Minor update to the management pack to support
side by side import with the new Windows Server 2008 NLB MP.

System Requirements
Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2003 x64
editions

OpsMgr 2007 MOM 2005 Backward Compatibility MP Update) 6.0.5000.12 (or higher)

Release Date: 2/24/2009
Version: (6.0.6505.0)

Download

I needed to schedule a group of URLs into Maintenance Mode.  I already created a script to schedule one URL but setting up 30 would be a pain to manage.  So I created a new script to schedule a group of URLs.

URLGroupMM.zip

Usage: 
C:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe C:\URLGroupMM.ps1 -rootMS scomrms1 -group ‘AU 3AM Website Reboot Group’ -minutes 120 -comment ‘3AM AU Websites Reboot’ -reason ‘PlannedOther’

param($rootMS,$groupName,$minutes,$comment,$reason)

Add-PSSnapin “Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.OperationsManager.Client” -ErrorVariable errSnapin;

Set-Location “OperationsManagerMonitoring::” -ErrorVariable errSnapin;

new-managementGroupConnection -ConnectionString:$rootMS -ErrorVariable errSnapin;

set-location $rootMS -ErrorVariable errSnapin;

$groupObject = get-monitoringobject | where {$_.DisplayName -eq $groupName};

$groupagents = $groupObject.getrelatedmonitoringobjects()

foreach ($agent in $groupAgents)

{

$URLStuff = $agent.displayname

$URLStuff

$URLWatcher = (Get-MonitoringClass -name Microsoft.SystemCenter.WebApplication.Perspective) | Get-MonitoringObject | where {$_.DisplayName -eq $URLStuff}

$startTime = [System.DateTime]::Now

$endTime = $startTime.AddMinutes($minutes)

“Putting URL into maintenance mode”

New-MaintenanceWindow -startTime:$startTime -endTime:$endTime -monitoringObject:$URLWatcher -comment:$comment -Reason:$reason

}

Marius Sutara just released a tool that resets the state of a monitor that is closed. This is huge help for my environment. We have rolled out SCOM to many application teams and it is often difficult for them to understand which monitors they can close (rule based) and which will close automatically (state based monitors).

Before this tool if the application owner thought a problem was fixed they would close the alert. If the problem wasn’t really fixed the monitor would stay in error and would never re-fire. If they looked in the alerts view, the alert was closed so they would never think there was still an issue.

With Marius’s tool now if anyone closes an alert from a state based monitor is still in error, the state will be reset and the alert will re-fire.Nice work Marius

http://blogs.msdn.com/mariussutara/archive/2009/02/02/how-to-reset-monitor-when-closing-alert.aspx

Download: SubscriptionTool.zip

Source Code: SubscriptionTool Source Code.zip

Subscription Tool is a simple GUI based tool that lets you enable and disable all notification subscriptions.   This tool is useful if you need to do some major maintenance such as patches, upgrading hardware, redoing AD integration roles, or fixing a major problem. 

The real power of the tool is when you want to re-enable the subscriptions.    The tool will automatically re-enable all subscriptions using “Send notifications for alerts Generated after the subscription is enabled”.  This will save you from sending out huge alert storms your notification subscriptions.

If you are not familiar with this, disable and then re-enable a subscription inside the ops mgr console.  You will notice when you re-enable the subscription you get the dialog box below.

You could enable and disable all subscriptions with powershell using

“Get-NotificationSubscription | Disable-NotificationSubscription”

But powershell uses the default  “Send notifications for alerts Generated since the subscription is disabled  (potentially causing an Alert Storm).   There are no options inside powershell to do this unless you leverage the .net objects directly.

Veeam just announced 4.0 of the “Management Pack for VMware”, also known as NWorks:

Version 4.0 includes comprehensive end-to-end monitoring from ESX Cluster, to ESX Host, to Virtual Machine and to Applications inside the VM. The nworks/Veeam MP now provides integration of application and service data with the VI3 topology. This breakthrough functionality enables a fully integrated picture, with end-to-end monitoring from ESX Servers through to the enterprise applications, such as SQL Server, Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange running inside virtual machines.

Version 4.0 also includes new features such as CIM SMASH hardware sensor status and alerts, graphical representations of data stores, flexible collection intervals, VirtualCenter 2.5 performance counters, and more!

Included with the Management Pack are:

• A full set of customizable Rules/Monitors for monitoring performance and events
• An automatically created Topology Diagram to provide a visual overview of your virtual environment
• Integration with Microsoft alerting & notification mechanisms
• Integration with Microsoft Reporting Warehouse

The cool thing about this solution is that is doesn’t rquire agents on ESX or any kind of helper for that matter. Veeam “Management Pack for VMware” relies on the VMware API/SDK, which assures that 4.0 is also fully supported for ESXi.

The nworks MP supports the following integrations:

Microsoft Integrations

• MOM 2005 SP1
• Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1

VMware Solutions

• ESX Server 2.X and 3.X, including ESXi
• VirtualCenter 2.0.X and 2.5

I recently ran across and issue where our notification subscriptions were getting disabled every 30 minutes.  The strange thing was that only about half of our subscriptions were being disabled and they were the same subscriptions every time.  I tried re-enabling them with both with Powshell as well as the GUI and had the same result, subscriptions kept being disabled.  After digging through event logs I found this warning.
 

Log Name:      Operations Manager
Source:        Health Service Modules
Event ID:      11452
Task Category: None
Level:         Warning
 

Validate alert subscription data source module encountered an alert subscription data source with configuration that has gone out of scope. Disabling the alert subscription data source module.

Alert subscription name: Subscriptionaca6a276_e5a9_446b_9751_0ea539168e41

One or more workflows were affected by this. 
Workflow name: Microsoft.SystemCenter.ValidateAlertSubscription

The problem turned out to be that we recently cleaned up the SCOM Admins user group.  One of the users removed from the group had created half of the subscriptions.  By putting the user back in the SCOM Admins group and re-enabling the subscriptions the problem was solved.  But we really didn’t want this user in the SCOM Admins group as he had moved on to a different role. 

So why was this happening?    When a subscription is created the user who created the subscriptions SID is associated with that subscription.  There is a workflow that checks every half hour for SIDs no longer valid.  They could be invalid because their accounts access that had been removed, or possibly because the account has been disabled or deleted.

To fix it long term I had to export the “Microsoft.SystemCenter.Notifications.Internal” management pack.  This management pack is unsealed and contains all subscriptions.

Inside the management pack I searched for one of the subscriptions that were being disabled and one that was wasn’t.  I then replaced the SID of the bad subscription with the SID of the good subscription.

After doing replacing the SIDs I re-imported the management pack and re-enabled all subscriptions and the problem was solved for good.

Here is an example of one of the SIDs I had to replace.

Features Include

Enhanced application performance and availability across heterogeneous platforms
. Delivers monitoring across Windows, Linux and Unix servers-all through a single console.
. Extends end to end monitoring of distributed applications to any workload running on Windows, Unix and Linux platforms.
. Maximize availability of virtual workloads with integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

Improved management of applications in the data center
. Delivers on the scale requirements of URL monitoring of your business.
. Meet agreed service levels with enhanced reporting showing application performance and availability.
. More efficient problem identification and action to resolve issues.

Increased speed of access to information and functionality to drive management
. Faster load times for views and results.
. Improved and simplified management pack authoring experience

Download from MS Connect LINK

I needed to schedule a URL into Maintenance Mode this week and couldn’t find any scripts or examples so I created my own.

param($rootMS,$urlName,$minutes,$comment,$reason)

Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.OperationsManager.Client" -ErrorVariable errSnapin;

Set-Location "OperationsManagerMonitoring::" -ErrorVariable errSnapin;
new-managementGroupConnection -ConnectionString:$rootMS -ErrorVariable errSnapin;
set-location $rootMS -ErrorVariable errSnapin;

$URLWatcher = (Get-MonitoringClass -name Microsoft.SystemCenter.WebApplication.Perspective) | Get-MonitoringObject | where {$_.DisplayName -eq $urlName}

$startTime = [System.DateTime]::Now
$endTime = $startTime.AddMinutes($minutes)

"Putting URL into maintenance mode"
New-MaintenanceWindow -startTime:$startTime -endTime:$endTime -monitoringObject:$URLWatcher -comment:$comment -Reason:$reason

 
Usage:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe URLMaintenanceModeV4.ps1 -rootMS: `SCOMRMS1′ -urlName: ‘MSN Website Checker’ -minutes:45 -comment: ‘My Comment’ -reason: ‘PlannedOther’

Download: URLMaintenanceModeV4.zip

SCOM Remote Maintenance Mode Scheduler is a GUI based tool that lets administrators easily schedule maintenance mode for a server or group of servers inside System Center Operations Manager 2012

Download for 2012: SCOMRemoteScheduler2.0_R2.zip

Instructions:  SCOMRemoteMaintenanceModeScheduler2.0.pdf

New Features in version 2.0 include

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

Here is what the new Show Scheduled Tasks Dialog looks like

I just noticed this today that Vmware Workstation 6.5 was released on Tuesday this week. 

My Vista Media Center is running 24 x 7 recording HD and SD TV shows.  The core 2 duo procs sit at pretty low utilization so earlier this year I installed Vmware Workstation as well as put an extra 2 gigs of RAM and a second SATA drive in the desktop.  This makes for a great SCOM test environment without slowing down my laptop or having a dedicated server.

Some of the more notable new feature in Workstation 6.5 are

Unity mode — Integrate your favorite guest applications with your host. Open the application window, enter Unity mode, and the Workstation window is automatically minimized. The guest application windows look just like host application windows, but with color-coded borders.

More powerful record/replay of VM execution activity — Easily enable this powerful debugging tool, which records full system behavior, including all CPU and device activity. You can now insert markers while creating or playing back a recording and quickly navigate to these markers during replay. You can also browse a recording to replay from any spot.

Folder sharing and dragging, dropping, copying, and pasting text and files — Transferring files between virtual machines or between host and guests using these features is up to 25 percent faster.

Networking performance using NAT — You will see significant improvements in networking performance if a virtual machine is configured to use NAT. Performance is ten times better than in the previous release in some cases.

I/O performance — A new asynchronous I/O manager boosts performance on Windows hosts under heavy I/O loads.

http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/