Andy Dominey's MOM Blog at myITforum.com

All quiet on the Andy front

adominey — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:58:29 GMT

Hey,

Just wanted you all to know that I haven’t abandoned this blog, I’ve just been really busy lately working with customers and doing MVP stuff. I’ll be speaking at MMS next week with Kerrie Meyler so hopefully some of you will attend our session and won’t be too hard on us….be gentle, it’s my first time! The session is on High Availability and Disaster Recovery in OpsMgr and is entitled ‘Don’t Flirt with Downtime’.

In addition, I’m going to be publishing content up to the new 1E blog which you can find here: http://www.1e.com/1eBlogs

Take it easy,

Andy

The Karate School is Open!

adominey — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 13:04:46 GMT

Today is the first class of my new Karate school in Hoboken, NJ. It's called the Hoboken Kyudokan Goju Ryu Karate school.

The class kicks off in about an hour and despite the fact that I have been teaching karate for years, I'm actually really nervous :)

If you want any more information, the website is http://www.hoboken-karate.com

Wish me luck!!

Andy

Savision LiveMaps v3 Released

adominey — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:53:21 GMT

From Techlog.org.

We are proud to announce the release of Live Maps v3 for Operations Manager 2007. This version opens many new doors to all the data collected by System Center Operations Manager 2007.
Business process availability monitoring or web enabled executive dashboards? Network topologies or live application diagrams? Live Maps v3 in combination with System Center Operations Manager 2007 brings you all that and more!

Key New Features:
Network and application topology maps
Business process maps
Executive dashboards
All maps are dynamic and change-aware
Network-link monitoring on any map
Wizard and template based map creation

Key Enhancements:
Enhanced scalability of the Web and Authoring console
Changed architecture for health state roll-up

Who Should You Do Next?
Request an evaluation or NFR key
Watch the new scenario based training videos
Build some new v3 maps and impress your customers!

If you are interested in a personal demo just send us an email

Deploying OpsMgr in Highly Available and Distributed Enterprise Environments Whitepaper Released

adominey — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:16:00 GMT

Hey All,

Finally I got around to compiling this whitepaper which gives advice and recommendations on planning, installing and configuring OpsMgr in enterprise environments. The document covers some advanced deployment tips such as the use of gateway servers to span WAN links and also covers some often overlooked best practices around High Availability and Business Continuity. This whitepaper has been a long time in the making and consolidates the experience I have gathered over the past year implementing some of the largest and most complex OpsMgr infrastructures to date.

Thanks to Pete Zerger and SystemCenterForum for serving as tech editor and or course hosting the document which can be downloaded HERE.

Andy

OpsMgr 2007 R2 Beta 1 Now Available!

adominey — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:41:09 GMT

The System Center Operations Manager team is excited to announce the availability of the Operations Manager 2007 R2 Beta, which is ready for you to download through Microsoft Connect today!

As announced and demonstrated by Brad Anderson at TechEd EMEA 2008 earlier this month, Operations Manager 2007 R2 will deliver key new capabilities including cross-platform monitoring, service-level tracking, new and updated monitor templates (including process, OLE DB, NT Service, and Unix/Linux log file), and much more! (continue at source)

New OpsMgr AD MP Released!

adominey — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:29:00 GMT

From the product team:

After a 10 month joint effort between the AD team and the OpsMgr team, we are proud to announce the latest release of the Active Directory Management Pack for Systems Center Operation Manager 2007. This MP has gone through two months of beta in NTDev, MSIT, and TAP Connect. There are 71 TAP customers who downloaded this MP during the beta period. The RTW release of this MP marks a significant milestone not only for our customers but also for us, as evidenced by the successful collaboration between the AD and OpsMgr teams.

Version 6.0.6452.0

This release includes:

Support for monitoring Windows Server 2008 operating systems on 32-bit and 64-bit servers.
Improved monitoring of replication, essential services, and time service.
Multi-forest discovery and improved topology display.

You can find the Active Directory Management Pack in the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Catalog (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=82105)

Changes in This Update

Scenario Improvement		Description
Windows Server 2008 discovery for full Domain Controllers (DC) and Read-Only Domain Controllers (RODC)		Discover the following objects for Windows Server 2008 DC: domains, forests, sites, site links, RODC, Primary Domain Controller (PDC) Emulator, Relative ID (RID) Master and Infrastructure Master and Connection objects.
Windows Server 2008 replication monitoring – multiple Service Level Agreements (SLA), enhanced workflow, and new essential services (NTFRS, DFSR and NTDS).		Multiple SLA feature is performed by creating a group and adding computers to it, then setting an override for the replication monitoring script that is pre-group.
Multiple forest topology discovery and views		Active Directory (AD) multiple forests Topology Discovery is a new feature in this management pack that was added to provide feature parity with the Active Directory Management Pack for Operations Manager 2005 with Service Pack 1 (SP1). In both Active Directory management packs for Operations Manager 2005 (SP1) and Operations Manager 2007 (SP1), to discover other forests, a trust relationship is required between the forest hosting the Operations Manager Root Management Server (RMS) and other forests. Forests that have a two-way transitive trust with the RMS forest will be discovered. The following objects will be created and displayed in the Topology views: Forest, Domain, Site, Site Link, and Replication Connection.
New essential services roll-up models for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003		The Essential Service health state roll-up was redesigned in Active Directory Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 SP1 for two reasons:  To add an Overall Essential Service state as the parent health state for all the Essential Services and to present a correct hierarchical entity relationship for DC Availability, Overall Essential Services, and individual Essential Services.  To accurately reflect the dependencies for four essential services: SysVol, Distributed File System (DFS) , NetLogon, and DCLocator.
Implement new reports		Domain Changes and Synchronous Access Mode (SAM) Account Changes for Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008.

New OpsMgr MP's Released (Oct 2008)

adominey — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:04:00 GMT

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I know I’m a little behind but here are the MP’s uploaded over the last month.

Microsoft Application Virtualization Management Pack for Systems Center Operations Manager 2007
The Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (App-V) Management Pack enables IT professionals to use Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 to monitor App-V server systems. The Management Pack is designed to maximize Application Virtualization Server availability for handling Application Virtualization Client requests. This component delivers an enterprise-level solution to proactively monitor Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 server systems.
(Chinese (Taiwan), German, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Chinese (PRC), Spanish)

Microsoft Biztalk Server 2006 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007
The BizTalk Server Management Pack for Operations Manager provides comprehensive discovery and monitoring of BizTalk Server components and applications. In addition to general support for BizTalk Server 2006, BizTalk Server 2006 R2, this management pack provides coverage for new BizTalk Server 2006 R2 features, such as the native EDI runtime and RFID.

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007
The Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Management Pack for SCOM 2007 monitors the health of computers running Office Communications Server 2007 on Windows Server 2003 and alerts IT administrators about critical health conditions that indicate degraded performance.

Service Level Dashboard Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007
The Service Level Dashboard Management Pack enables you to accurately measure and report on end-to-end system availability and performance of business critical applications. In addition to the .msi containing the management pack, a zip file containing only the documentation for this management pack is available as a download.

You've probably seen the Service Level Dashboard one before but this version has been updated to support snazzy looking dials in the reports.

Andy

New Level 5 Guide Published

adominey — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:50:38 GMT

Just a quick note to say that I have today uploaded a new Level 5 video to the BlogCast Repository entitled 'Advanced Management Pack Creation Part 2'. This guide covers creation of monitors and rules using the authoring console and then looks at the objects in more detail in the XML. More in this series are on the way.

The new video can be found here: http://www.blogcastrepository.com/level5/scom/archive/2008/10/08/advanced-management-pack-creation-part-2.aspx

Thanks,

Andy

Jalasoft Xian IO SP2 is coming!

adominey — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:34:10 GMT

I've just heard from Jalasoft that they are currently putting the finishing touches to SP2 of Xian Network Manager IO. Information about the new service pack is detailed below but the key point is that the product will be made much more scalable. For those of you who have used Xian IO, you'll know that the only thing that undermines the excellent user interface and brilliant OpsMgr integration is the current scalability limitations. According to the service pack notes, this has now been addressed. Can't wait for a demo copy!!!

Santa Clara, September 11, 2008-- Jalasoft announced today that soon it is going to be releasing service pack 2 for their monitoring solution Xian Network Manager Io for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. At this moment SP2 is undergoing heavy testing for large environment scalability in their labs. The most important new feature in addition to many smaller performance enhancements is that Xian no longer uses the SDK (root management server) of Operations Manager to forward alerts and performance data. Instead, it now connects directly to any OpsMgr2007 Management Server. Thanks to these enhancements, Xian is now able to send many more counters and alerts to Operations Manager without consuming valuable resources on your root management server. Also Xian can easily be scaled up by adding new management servers. "Customers told us that they do not always want new visible features, they just want something that is stable, fast and scalable. The real power of SP2 is under the hood. Users will experience more than a 400% performance improvement" States Arnold Hagens, Product Marketing Manager at Jalasoft. Aside from the connection with OpsMgr2007, SP2 also runs improved management packs and a more robust SNMP module. All to guarantee a better user experience. In the next days a beta version is going to be available. Anyone who is interested can obtain this version by contacting Jalasoft. The RTM of SP2 is planned for end November 2008.

For more information contact:

Claudia Ricaldez, Claudia.Ricaldez@jalasoft.com, +1 888 402 6717

About Jalasoft

Jalasoft provides advanced systems management solutions for the heterogeneous computing environment. Xian Network Manager Io, in combination with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager or Microsoft System Center Essentials, is designed to proactively monitor and manage critical infrastructure components such as network devices and UNIX servers to increase availability and accelerate problem detection and resolution with the objective of improving the ROI customers realize from their infrastructure.

Press Release

Andy

OpsMgr BlogCasts for Free!!

adominey — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:33:34 GMT

Later today, my OpsMgr blogcasts on the Blogcast Repository site will be free for all to access so you can take a look and see if you like them.

I'll be adding at least 1 video a month starting this month so please check out the guides here: http://blogcastrepository.com/level5/scom/default.aspx

Enjoy!

Andy

Hotfix for OpsMgr on Windows Server 2008

adominey — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:44:15 GMT

From Techlog.org

This hotfix contains fixes for issues that can occur, either after installation of Operations Manager 2007 SP1 or Essentials 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008, or after the operating system in-place upgrade from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008.

This hotfix should be applied to the following Operations Manager 2007 SP1 roles:

* RMS
* Management Server
* Gateway Server
* Web Console Server
* SCE Server
* Manually installed Agent (This hotfix should be applied directly to manually installed agents. Automatically deployed agents will appear in the Pending Management view to be approved for upgrade after installing this hotfix on the RMS/Management Server/Gateway server roles)

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 & System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 Windows Server 2008 Support Hotfix.

New OpsMgr MP’s Released

adominey — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:42:53 GMT

From Techlog.org…why type when you can copy and paste J

Microsoft has released several new management packs for Operations Manager 2007:

Windows Key Management Service for System Center OpsMgr 2007
The KMS MP monitors core Key Management Service offered by Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 and Vista.

Exchange Server 2007 MP for SC Ops Mgr 2007
This management pack includes scripts and rules to effectively monitor Exchange 2007 and report on performance, availability, and reliability of its server roles.

Terminal Services MP for OpsMgr 2007
The Terminal Services Management Pack monitors the individual Terminal Services components on Windows Server 2000, 2003 and 2008.

Windows Server Operating System MP for OpsMgr 2007
The Windows Server Operating System Management Pack provides the fundamental monitoring basics for computers running the Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008 Operating System.

Windows Server 2008 Application Server MP for OpsMgr 2007
The Windows Server 2008 Application Server Management Pack provides fundamental monitoring for the Application Server role of Windows Server 2008 Operating System.

OpsMgr and Virtualization

adominey — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:38:21 GMT

Recently, an excellent post has appeared on the Manageability Team blog detailing Microsoft's support of hosting OpsMgr on virtual machines.

Check it out here: http://blogs.technet.com/smsandmom/archive/2008/07/24/support-policy-for-operations-manager-2007-running-on-hardware-virtualization-software.aspx

OpsMgr 2007 SP1 KB951979 Hotfix Released

adominey — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:32:41 GMT

This fix is scheduled to hit the Microsoft support site over the next few days. Details below:

System Center Operations 2007 Service Pack 1

Hotfix Release Notes

SystemCenterOperationsManager2007-SP1-KB951979-X86-X64-ENU.MSI

May, 2008

The information in this article applies to:

 System Center Operations 2007 Service Pack 1

Note: This patch applies to System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 Only

Summary

Following problems have been identified with a number of System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 management packs:

 Unable to discover CSDVersion on Windows Vista machines

 Unable to discover operating system properties on Windows 2000 SP4

 Agent HandleCountThreshold monitor does not restart Health service on exchange agent if HandleCountThreshold is exceeded

 ACS Collection rule references a wrong EventID

 Performance collection raises erroneous alerts for disabled services due to unavailable perf counters

 A script bug prevents cluster discovery where Virtual Server Name is a subset of the Physical Server Name.

This hot-fix resolves these issues.

Symptoms

When affected by these issues, a number of System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 management packs will be unable to:

 Discover operating system properties on Windows 2000 SP4

 Discover CSDVersion on Windows Vista machines

 Restart Health service when HandleCountThreshold is exceeded

 Collect correct ACS event

 Discover cluster where Virtual Server Name is a subset of the Physical Server Name

 And additionally generates erroneous Alert for Performance Data Source Module when the services are disabled

After applying this fix, these issues should be resolved.

Installation

This hotfix contains four management packs. Install these management packs from an Operations Manager console.

To extract the management pack files contained in this hotfix:

1. Copy the file:

SystemCenterOperationsManager2007-SP1-KB951979-X86-X64-ENU.MSI

To either a local folder or accessible network shared folder.

2. Then run:

SystemCenterOperationsManager2007-SP1-KB951979-X86-X64-ENU.MSI locally on each applicable computer that meets the predefined criteria.

Note: The installation path is typically the following:

Program Files\System Center Hotfix Utility

You can run SystemCenterOperationsManager2007-SP1-KB951979-X86-X64-ENU.MSI from either Windows Explorer or from a command prompt.

For detailed instructions on the tasks described above, see the Knowledge Base article as referenced in the Additional Information section of this document.

This hotfix contains the following updated Management Packs which must be imported into Operations Manager. These management packs are located in the folder noted above.

Microsoft.SystemCenter.2007.mp (Version 6.0.6278.19)

Microsoft.SystemCenter.ACS.Internal.mp (Version 6.0.6278.19)

Microsoft.SystemCenter.Internal.mp (Version 6.0.6278.19)

Microsoft.Mom.BackwardCompatibility.mp (Version 6.0.6278.19)

Additional Information

For additional information about this issue, see KB article KB951979 at <http://support.microsoft.com/>. For additional information and downloads, see <http://www.microsoft.com/mom>.

Release Notes Copyright Information

Information in this document, including URL and other Internet Web site references, is subject to change without notice and is provided for informational purposes only. The entire risk of the use or results of the use of this document remains with the user, and Microsoft Corporation makes no warranties, either express or implied. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document might be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation.

Microsoft might have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.

Microsoft, MS-DOS, Windows, and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S.A. and/or other countries/regions.

Silect MP Implementation and Lifecycle Management Webinar

adominey — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:21:00 GMT

Randy Roffey of Silect asked me to make you all aware of the following Webinar to be held on Wednesday 28^th May 2008. Silect are experts on MP management and so this should be a good one.

Enjoy!

Join us for a Webinar on May 28

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/355396121

This presentation will focus on process considerations and how MP Studio features can function as the foundation for a repeatable process.

If you have multiple management packs, multiple management groups and multiple administrators working with Operations Manager, having a well defined process is critical to a successful implementation of Operations Manager 2007. Even with smaller implementations, having a defined process for handling change requests for management packs is critical to avoiding costly downtime and unnecessary errors.

If ITIL and MOF are important to you, if Change Management and Version control are important functions in your organization, if auditing changes in management packs is something you would like to be able to do, then this webcast could be the most important event you attend all year!

All participants who sign up for the presentation will receive a copy of the Implementation Guide v1.0 Quick Reference by email after the presentation.

Title:		MP Implementation and Lifecycle Management

Date:		Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Time:		11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT