Now is your chance to have input into the features of the next version of Config Manager. Apply for the TAP now!
Today we are announcing the opening of the Technology Adoption Program nominations for the next release of System Center Configuration Manager.
The Technology Adoption Program is designed to provide a consistent experience for Microsoft customers to obtain real-world customer feedback on Microsoft pre-release products.
There are many benefits for our TAP customers, to name a few:
- Lead the market by adopting critical enabling technologies early
- Influence and shape the final product by providing early and deep feedback
- Connect with expertise to obtain a deep understanding of strategic emerging technologies
Entire Post here on the SCCM TEAM blog.
Taking orders! You too can own a copy of my first published fiction!* At only $5, it's gotta be worth it!
Who knows, someday it could be worth $6! Hit the Paypal link at the bottom of the posted link. If you like it, go back and buy the first edition too!
Her description of my story is perfect: "a pizza delivery guy who has an experience straight out of a pulp-horror magazine". Go buy it!
*Technically, I've been published online, but this is the first time for print fiction
Other than a short piece in the online webzine Aphelion years ago, my fiction writing efforts have languished in the drawer.
I am more than pleased that I’ve finally broken through into print. The start-up chapbook magazine TBR Tallboy has accepted my story “We Deliver” for it’s December issue. W00t!
I think it’s a fun, scary story about a pizza delivery gone horribly wrong, and TBR Tallboy’s YA slant is perfect for it.
You can read more about the magazine here, where you can also order issues. At only $5.00, it’s well worth it!
It all started with a call about poor performance when printing from a local server. Then it escalated to poor performance in other apps that run on that server. A quick look at the server confirmed constant 90-100% utilization. The culprit? LSASS.EXE.
Being that it occurred in the middle of the day, we first tried to get Server Performance Analyzer running on the box. This proved fruitless. The server was so bogged down that doing anything on it was en exercise in extreme patience. So running anything on the box was really out of the question.
Finally the day ended and I got into the server via Integrated Lights Out board (thank you, HP. How many times has this saved YOUR bacon??) The minute I disabled the NIC on the server utilization dropped to normal, and LSASS took a break. This indicated clearly an external cause – something on the local network was hammering the server with some form of AD query.
Since I couldn’t packet capture on the box, this had to wait until the next day, when our managed service provider for networks could port span the switch. Using good old Netmon and the Top Talkers Expert, I was able to pin the culprits down to several machines.
Here’s where I made the first mistake. We name machines for the user, so every time a user gets a new machine we image it up and put an A or other suffix at the end. Well, the machines showing up in the packet trace mostly had an A suffix. But when I looked in SMS, there were no machines of the same name there. There were machines with that name without the suffix. So I chalked it up to an error in naming on the part of the tech, and started investigating the machines I could see in SMS. 
Lesson 1: Trust the trace. I should have confirmed MAC addresses at least.
Around this time we started to see the issue on other servers in other parts of the country. Using traces from both offices we finally figured out that the issue seemed to be isolated to the new HP6930p laptops that we were deploying. Unplug all of the new ones in an office from the network, and the LSASS issue on the server goes away.
Simple, or so I thought. Load Netmon on one of them and let it tell us what’s going on. After some looking, it turns out that the process is hidden under a system process. So although Netmon can see the traffic, it can’t point to the app that is generating it.
Now we’re at the point of disabling and removing apps from the laptop. One of the first we try is the HP Protect Tools, because this is the first time we’ve deployed laptops with that installed. That turns out to be the culprit. Remove the Protect Tools, and the LSASS issue goes away.
Upgrading the Protect Tools from version 4.00.3.001 to the latest version also fixed the issue.
It appears, at least in my environment, that this is still an issue even with R2.
If you’re going to use SQL 08 with ConfigMgr and OSD, be aware that you may have to set SMS_XXX database to 2005 compatibility mode to make things happy.
Everything appears to work fine until you get ready to add drivers, at which point you’ll notice the error above in the console. If you try to add a folder below “Drivers” you get the same error on it, and driver imports fail. Once you go through and set the SQL DB to 2005 compatability:
(Managment Studio --> right click SMS_sitecode database –> Properties –> Options --> Set Compability level to SQL Server 2005 (90)
I didn’t even have to restart the server for the changes to fix things, but I restarted anyway for good measure.
Get the full story and inside scoop on the conficker virus, how it was created, deployed, and ultimately defeated... and whether or not it was just all misdirection. This is a great article.
The Inside Story of the Conficker Worm
A HOTEL bar in Arlington, Virginia, 23 October 2008.
A group of computer security experts has spent the day holed up with
law enforcement agencies. It is an annual event that attracts the best
in the business, but one the participants like to keep low-key - and
under the radar of the cybercriminals they are discussing.
That
evening, conversation over drinks turned to a security update Microsoft
had just released. Its timing was suspicious: updates usually came once
a month, and the next was not due for two weeks. "I remember thinking I
should take a look at this," recalls Paul Ferguson, a researcher at Trend Micro, a web security company in Cupertino, California.
He
did. So did the rest of the computer security industry. In fact, they
talked, puzzled and worried about little else for months after. The
update heralded the birth of the Conficker worm - one of the most
sophisticated pieces of malignant software ever seen.
Despite an unprecedented collaboration
against them, Conficker's accomplished creators have been able to bluff
and dodge to gain control of machines inside homes, universities,
government offices and the armed forces of at least three nations,
establishing a powerful and lucrative network of "zombie" computers. New Scientist has pieced together the sobering details of that cat-and-mouse fight.
Read The Full Article
Here’s a great, great walk through of the R2 Upgrade process. A must read if the upgrade is on your horizon (and if it isn’t, why not??)
Want the behind the scenes skinny on the "win7 upgrade over the air" demo? Look no futher than here!
I downloaded the WIN7 RC with the intent of upgrading my production laptop. I’ve really had no issues with WIN7 in test, and thought that this would be a good opportunity to start testing what will eventually be our next OS. It might expire in March 2010, but I should have a new laptop by then anyway.
Plus, I haven’t had a chance to play with WIN7 in domain – joined scenario, and I feel confident enough in it to use it everyday.
So. Burn the ISO, insert the DVD and hit Setup with complete confidence. We go through some gyrations, look on the internet for updates… and WIN7 will not upgrade Vista Enterprise.
Bummer.
So I turn to my desktop, my trusty old XP machine. Insert DVD, go through some gyrations… WIN7 will not upgrade XP.
Bummer.
So what will WIN7 upgrade? Apparently Vista (not Enterprise) and the WIN7 Beta (but only if you tweak a config file). Now I have to answer the big question. Am I ready a complete wipe and new OS on my everyday laptop? Probably not.
Hopefully by now all of the planes have landed, bags have been unpacked, swag sorted, and brains are beginning to relax. Another MMS comes to a close.
My take – aways:
Venue : Once again, the folks at the Venetian deliver a fine conference venue. I’d quibble with having to walk past the casino to get anywhere, or with the length from my room to breakfast, but really it all is fine, air conditioned, and shorter than the walk in San Diego. The food was fine, and really better than it had any right to be considering how many people they were feeding. Coffee, pop, and snacks were good and promptly delivered when promised.
Expo: MUCH better than last year. Room to breathe! To sit and talk! To wait for your name to be called without feeling like the one more sardine stuffed in a can! While we’re on the subject of the Expo, let’s give out some meaningless awards:
Best Giveaway : Secure Vantage. Did you know they were giving away a pass to next year’s MMS? Second: Intel. An Xbox and an Asus Netbook, at least two days in a row. Yes, Dell gave away an AlienWare laptop, but just one. And did you even know the folks from Vreem were giving away their giant demo flatscreen?
Best SWAG: 1E. Love the mints, love the container when the mints are gone.
Worst SWAG: No award. Because really, did I need another pen? Or Intel Spaceman? Or T-shirt?
Best Booth : Most of the booths were well staffed with experts ready to answer questions and provide info, but after some thought I’ve got to hand this one to Microsoft. Every product that was represented always had an expert on hand, and generally another around somewhere and a project programmer lurking around as well. If perhaps that’s not fair because it is, after all, their event, I’d tie Intel and Citrix for second.
Most Forlorn Booth: No award, because I can’t bring myself to bash them.
Most Intriguing Demo: FreeMYIt. You did see this booth, tucked into the far back corner, yes? Saw the demo? Very cool.
Best Booth Girls: No award. My wife reads this.
Most Memorable Booth: You might not have dug what they were preaching, but how many of us are going to picture a red-headed Elvis and his Acolytes in White the next time we think imaging?
Sessions: All of the sessions I attended were exemplary, as noted in other posts. Even the Instructor Led Labs, where I usually decry the instructor just following the books, were great. Any three of the sessions were worth the price of admission to the event.
I didn’t spend as much time in the Hands-On-Labs as I would have liked, but that’s my fault.
Keynotes: Even the keynotes were just right, although I would like to see more real-world use of the products. We’re always hearing about how Microsoft uses it’s own products, why not take us inside?
I’m not going to discuss the closing party. I was only in the room long enough to make one circuit, nod to a couple of folks, try one little Chinese take-out carton, and that was enough. I hope it went well.
I will say that the party in the Blue Man theater I went to about three hours later was very cool.
Now I’ve got a bit over a week to prepare my “Cool stuff I learned at MMS” presentation. Does anyone else do this for their group?
I’m very interested in what other folks thought, particularly MMS Freshpersons. What did you like?
Building the Perfect Master Image
I have two pages of frantically scribbled notes from this session. The demos were a great step-by-step guide to preparing for image creation and deployment with SCCM and MDT. Great tips, pointers, and steps. The presenters were great, flat out knew their stuff, and were having fun. The only drawback was a slightly slow demo environment, but the presenters filled that time well.
Another definite deck download and keep.
It occurs to me someone should scan through all of the decks, grab all of the links, and create a master link page arranged by discipline. That would be cool.
If you’ve been putting off registering for the Win 7 beta exam, you’re out of luck. A friend of mine just tried and got a “Promotion Code has been used the Maximum Number of Times”.
Shame on you for not jumping on it the day it opened.
Man, I wish that there were two or three of me here. No, what I need is a Time – Turner (sorry for displaying a bit of my Harry Potter geekerie there) so that I can attend about three sessions per time-slot. The stuff I saw today was great, and there were other things I wanted to see just as badly but couldn’t. Such is life at MMS. And also why they make the DVD.
Config Manager Case Studies
This was my favorite session last year, and this year did not disappoint. Rodney Jackson gave a non-stop list of tools, utilities, and case scenarios. There’s nothing like a real-world scenario to drive a point home. It was problem – diagnoses – fix, with great lists of things to look out for in different scenarios.
Tools mentioned included BitsAdmin, Netmon 3.1 One Click, Log Parser 2.2, Wfetch, and the great SCCM Client Center.
This deck will be downloaded, printed, and kept until next year’s sessions. Well done.
SC07 – GP Updates in Win7 and 2008R2
Another great, great session. There’s a slew of new policy settings for Win7 and 2008R2, but what’s really cool are the new tools. Group Policy extensions for Powershell! Imagine the possibilities! How about backing up only policies that have been changed in the last X days? Or generating a quick list of policies changed today?
And you want to make a bunch of geeks swoon? Show them a window that they can resize now but couldn’t before. Magic! Wonder!
I’d be remiss here not to plug the Group Policy Team blog, which our fine presenter might have mentioned once. Or fourteen times.
Tonight: the big Closing Party. My hopes are not high.
SY32 – Native Mode Config
Considering Native Mode? Don’t do it without going through the decks for this session and the session below. My main takeaways:
1. PKI deployment can be completely separated from Native Mode deployment. You can stand up PKI, get everything configured correctly, make sure everything is working and happy and everyone is getting their certs, THEN click the Native Mode button.
2. I’m recommending we bring someone in to do it. I don’t want to be PKI master and figure this out. Even though the docs are likely great and easy to follow, there appear to be so many little things and steps and caveats that I would much rather bring in someone who has cracked this nut before.
SY23 – Demystifying Native Mode
A great session, full of detail about PKI and Native mode. A must have deck ( and watch on the DVD) for those of us thinking of Native Mode. Also, confirmed my thinking that we should bring in a big PKI gun to do this.
Yikes. Today is a blur. Sorry for the incomplete quality of this post, but for some reason this was not a good day for me – and I actually feel better.
Keynote: Funny Guy is funny today. Way to go! Audience participation bits helped.
Application Compatibility Toolkit : Soon to be (or already is?) a free add-on to SCCM. This will leverage knowledge from the community, Microsoft, and your internal information to determine if an app is “Win7 ready”.
SCCM Sp2 will ship within 90 days of Win7 ship date. We may have heard this yesterday as well, but here it is again.
Slick demo of Service Manager and integrations with SCCM and SCOM. Also looks like Service Manager will be bundled with E-CAL, thereby making many help-desk software vendors start to sweat.
System Center Online Desktop Manager : an extension of WUS that will track additional things like AV sigs, inventory, etc. Future versions promise software deployment. This makes your management tool for available anytime, with role-based views as you set them up. I see this having real value for SMBs, but question enterprise adoption.
Sessions: I sat with Wally Meade all day, literally, going through various SCCM deployment scenarios. If you have not deployed SCCM yet you’ll want to catch this slide deck (and the sessions on DVD). I don’t think there’s anything Wally doesn’t know about SCCM / SMS, and he shows it in these sessions, covering deployment scenarios for infrastructure and client in great detail. Great sessions from a great presenter.
So I would be remiss to come to MMS and not try to corner the Citrix guys, in their big corner booth, over the debacle that is the Citrix Management Pack for Ops Manager.
Their response, after going through three different folks to finally get to someone who “knew”: It’s a supported product, and if you call for support we’ll get it working for you.
Me: But I’ve run across numerous blog posts from folks that just can’t get it to work, and there are many many counters available in perfmon in Citrix that you don’t surface in the MP. Is the MP and orphan stepchild? Because it sure feels like you’d rather we use your tools than SCOM.
Them: It’s a supported product. There’s a new version out for Xen 5.
Me: Yeah. Been there.
Them: It’s a supported product. Anything not currently in the MP would be a feature request.
So there you have it. Sometime in the next couple of weeks I’ll be on the phone with the fine folks at Citrix support, talking about the MP. Stay tuned.
SY07 – Advanced Software Updates Management for SCCM
Great session for those of us that struggle with updates in SCCM. Slides include breakdown of log files to view for various break / fix scenarios. Also great knowledge on deploying Forefront updates with SCCM, and the importance of scanning and how to control that. Well done.
SP01 – HP Insight Control Suite
I’m reserving judgment until I see the product. While full of content and all the info needed, the session contained no demo, just instructions to stop by the HP booth for a demo. That’s either a great way to drive folks to the booth or a great way to get fifty people not to see your product. As a current RDP / Advanced iLO customer, this product will likely make sense for us in the long term.
Like the keynote, this is one you should try and catch on the DVD. Lots and lots of info here. Highlights of sccm.next:
No more MMC!
Role – Based access into the console!
Really, really robust set of client health tools, including some auto-remediation stuff and great monitoring ability.
OSD – how about scheduled updates of images? Pick you image, your updates, and schedule the time. SCCM mounts the image, updates it, saves it back. Too cool.
Auto download and deploy of updates – you can customize SCCM to auto download updates and auto-deploy them based on a number of criteria. Virus def files were demonstrated.
A great session. It’s clear the the SCCM team cares about the user experience, whether it’s an admin or a secretary. In the coming months we’ll begin to see more and more features talked about. This is a significant upgrade that you’ll certainly want to lab up in beta.
They’ve invested a lot of time in usability studies to enhance the product. Bill Anderson always gives a great session, can’t wait for the keynote tomorrow where they’ll dig deeper. Stay tuned!
Walked into the giant keynote arena to the strains of “Sweet Child of Mine”, which made me long for the Guns and Roses of old, like it always does. I wondered if they were trying to say something about their management products with this song selection… but then “message in a bottle” came on, and it was clear they were just programming loud and fast to get us worked up.
In a minute, the Microsoft Funny Guy will come out to do his annual “show of hands” joke. I can’t wait.
Ok, Funny Guy starts out harsh, really struggles. No show of hands joke! Maybe tomorrow. Video is unfunny too. Too bad for him.
Right away we’re talking about the cloud with Bob Kelly, VP of Server & Business Tools. He tells us that clouds are delivered services that are reliable, predicable, and automated. The cloud is an operational expense, not a capitol one, which is something I hadn’t thought about before. It can shrink or grow to suit business needs.
Cloud Computing is not a massive revolution, but the next logical step in Dynamic IT.
Demo : VMM 2008 R2 Live Migration. Points out that a live migration can be automated based on any factor that Ops Manager can surface, including SLA’s and Distributed App models. A shot across VMWare’s bow.
Demo : Decoupling the app from the server in VMM. Applications get managed in the VMM library, and you can right-click for OS Upgrades that leave the App alone. Very cool.
Ops Manager 2007 R2 Releases within 30 days!
Tech Preview VMM Leveraging the Public Cloud: How about migrating your internal VM’s to a hosted cloud on the fly, all within the VMM console? Coming in VMM.next. An extremely compelling demo. And you can manage your public / private vm’s from within the same tool.
Launch of Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Hosters and Enterprises to leverage the above technology.
So for an overview, some of the best explanations of the cloud and how it might affect all of us that I’ve heard to date. At least three, maybe four direct shots at VMWare. Exciting stuff around public / private cloud federation. Great demos. Great Keynote!
You know who’s not here? IBM / Lenovo. Not a Platinum, Gold, or Silver sponsor, not even a booth in the expo. Granted it probably doesn’t mean anything other than the economy stinks for them, too, but I find it interesting that all of the other two of the “Big Three” (Dell, HP) managed to find the funds.
Anyone have any insight?
Thank <insert deity of your choice here> that they moved the Open Expo to the back hall. More room and you can actually walk three feet without either bumping someone or playing the waiting game. The food lines don’t completely snarl traffic, there are more spots to actually sit and eat and more buffet stations to be had. Well Done!
And the MyItForum Party Button line didn’t choke off the entire expo this year. W00t! As usual, I was not in enough of a hurry to score one.
Lots of new vendors this year, with a couple I’ve never heard of and a couple more I’ll be getting back to more in-depth later in the week (thereby upholding the second rule of geek conference-dom: Swag first, tech talk later).
I’ve got ask, though, what you think about Intrinsic’s show. Crazy, or crazy like a fox? They certainly caught your eye as you went by. The big thing for me is that if you are thinking of a massive desktop deployment, Intrinsic should be on your list of folks to talk to anyway. If you’ve never seen their Swimage product you are missing out on what may be the slickest imaging solution going.
And the poor folks at Novell. I walked by their booth and thought it was empty, unmanned and forlorn. Turns out you had to walk behind the booth to see any activity. I’ll stop by later in the week to see what’s up their sleeve this year, but mostly for old time’s sake. I occasionally dust of the old CNE cert and rail about NDS versus AD, but not so much anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I think they are doing what they’re doing well, and some of the Platespin acquisition stuff is pretty compelling. But we’re a M$oft shop and will be for the far foreseeable future.
A brief recap of today’s sessions.
IO14 – SCOM Advanced Concepts
Alert-based subscription now native in the console!
Override view now in the console!
Service – Level Monitoring built in, a bit easier to config.
And, BTW, if you haven’t played with it yet, R2 is a vast improvement.
IO16 – Authoring Management Packs for SCOM – Advanced
Lots of “Follow these directions” without a real understanding of why. The session is more of a “Here’s what you can do” versus “Understanding How”. Appropriately, a new multi day course was announced: 50231 “SCOM 2007: Advanced Management Pack Authoring (L400)”. All said, an important lab to understand if you are even remotely related to MP authoring.
YY05 – Implementing Desired Configuration Management in SCCM
Great lab, great instructor. Nearly every step of the lab was accompanied by a note, explaining what you were doing and why, and what the options were that you weren’t doing. Best session so far.
Instructor highlighted Silect.com. Their CP Studio makes DC MP’s easier to create by importing config’s from known entities (servers, workstations).
(DISCLAIMER : This, as with all session reviews, is just my opinion. It may be affected by things completely outside the control of the instructor, things like how long it is before the next snack break, how much / little sleep I got the night before, how many urgent emails come in, and how long until I can take some more Dayquill(tm). So: YMMV, Not valid with any other coupon, Offer void in IN, KY, and AL, Do not duplicate without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, shipping not included)
After an uneventful flight I’ve arrived (complete with luggage!) in Vegas.
The Venetian continues in the “high-price hotel money-grab” by charging for internet. As I recall last year it was free: crappy, but free. Since my AT&T air card seems firm in it’s desire to blue-screen my laptop, I’ll be hanging in the alumni lounge or comm-net area A LOT more this year.
The Bag: a briefcase-style bag sponsored by Secure-Vantage. Not bad, but I won’t be retiring last years bag just yet.
The Swag: No Powershell book this year, just the usual assortment of propaganda, notebooks, and a pen or two. And the obligatory water bottle that my son will lose in less than two weeks.
Alumni Shirt: Just like last years, except for the date. One more and I’ll be able to go a full work week in black Microsoft polos that say something about System Center on them. That’s my goal.
After a breakfast of coffee and Dayquill (tm): working from the alumni lounge, finishing up some office stuff. Then off to the races!
Registration begins: April 27, 2009
You are invited to take beta exam 71-680: TS: Windows 7, Configuring. If you pass the beta exam, the exam credit will be added to your transcript and you will not need to take the exam in its released form. The 71-xxx identifier is used for registering for beta versions of MCP exams, when the exam is released in its final form the 70-xxx identifier is used for registration.
…
71-680: TS: Windows 7, Configuring counts as credit towards the following certification(s).
· MCTS: Windows 7, Configuration
Availability
Registration begins: April 27, 2009
Beta exam period runs: May 5, 2009– May 18, 2009
…
Registration Information
You must register at least 24 hours prior to taking the exam.
Please use the following promotional code when registering for the exam: WIN7J
Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately.
To register in North America, please call:
•
Prometric: (800) 755-EXAM (800-755-3926)
Outside the U.S./Canada, please contact:
•
Prometric: http://www.register.prometric.com/ClientInformation.asp
Citrix now has a hotfix that may assist with this issue : look for CTX120301, Hotfix PSE450R03W2K3049
This is for CPS 4.5 and XenApp 5 on W2k3R2 x86.
We're just starting testing, will post results.
Let me just begin by saying : AAAaaaaaarrgh!
Now I feel better.
If you’ve made any attempt at implementing the MP for Citrix you likely share my pain. The dreaded “WBEM_E_Failed” error or the “Received error: 0x800a138f: 'ZoneName' is null or not an object” has likely become your nemesis, if you haven’t given up on the MP entirely. 
I gave up on it for quite some time, until some new members came on board our Citrix team and said “You know, those counters in SCOM wouldn’t be so bad to have.” I expressed my earlier pain with the MP, and how we finally decided that it didn’t add much value over what was available natively in the Citrix tools. The response was, essentially, “No, really. We think we’d like this if it worked, and didn’t alert every thirty seconds for something trivial. You’re the SCOM guy, this is a SCOM thing. Make it work.”
woot.
So away we go. The course of action seemed clear. Export the MPs to xml, edit the scripts to fix the errors and perhaps tweak some defaults to fit our environment, re-seal them and re-import them. Cake and Pie, right?
Not. So. Much. For me, anyway.
You’re going to need to read this thread on the Citrix Forums, it’s the definitive place that I’ve found that deals with the issue. Hats off to Guillaume LANDY, whoever you are. However I did find bits of the thread confusing at least and the layout of solution hard to parse.
This assumes you already have some half-working installation of the Citrix MP. If not, so much the better for you.
First, export Citrix MP’s to XML. I used the Powershell Script :
$serverName = "<Your_SCOM_Server>";
$fileDestination = "<YourBackupDir>";
add-pssnapin "Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.OperationsManager.Client";
set-location "OperationsManagerMonitoring::";
new-managementGroupConnection -ConnectionString:$serverName;
set-location $serverName;
$mps = Get-ManagementPack
foreach($mp in $mps) {export-managementpack -ManagementPack:$mp -Path:$fileDestination}
to export all MP’s to the specified folder.
Once the MP’s were exported I used MPViewer to ensure that there were no overrides present in the Default MP. Even though it insisted there were not, I still could not delete the Citrix.PresentationServer MP as it said the the Default MP depended on it. I exported the Default MP and sure enough there was a “Reference Alias” to the Citrix.PresentationServer MP. I manually deleted that, re-imported the MP, and was able to delete all of the Citrix MP’s.
Even though I had the latest and greatest Citrix MP, there still appeared to be errors in the discovery javascript according to the forum post. The issues in Post Aug 18, 2008 seemed to be fixed already in the MP, but the errors outline in post Feb 26, 2009 9:25 AM clearly still existed. So below is the xml from my exported and fixed MP, beginning with line 1212 and ending with line 1240:
// Is this server ZDC?
try
{
oWMIService.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Citrix_Zone");
var oZDCOutParams = oWMIService.Get("Citrix_Zone.ZoneName='" + strZone + "'");
var DCName = oWMIService.Get(oZDCOutParams.DataCollector);
if (DCName.ServerName.toLowerCase() == NetbiosComputerName.toLowerCase()) {
isZDC = true
}
}
catch (ex)
{
// if we failed to get ZDC through WMI, try now MFCOM
var ZDCName = MFCOM_GetZDCName(strZone);
if (ZDCName.toLowerCase() == NetbiosComputerName.toLowerCase()) {
isZDC = true
}
}
oInst.AddProperty("$MPElement[Name='Citrix.PresentationServer.ManagedServer']/IsFMS$", isFMS);
oInst.AddProperty("$MPElement[Name='Citrix.PresentationServer.ManagedServer']/IsZDC$", isZDC);
var loginsEnabled = false;
try
{
oWMIService.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Citrix_Zone");
var oCPSServer = oWMIService.Get("MetaFrame_Server.ServerName='" + NetbiosComputerName + "'");
var oCPSServer = oWMIService.Get("MetaFrame_Server.ServerName='" + NetbiosComputerName.toUpperCase() + "'");
loginsEnabled = oCPSServer.LoginsEnabled;
Sorry the formatting stinks. The key lines I’ve made red.
Now once our edits are complete it’s time to re-seal and import the MP. Although there are instructions in the Citrix Forum Post, I strongly urge you to head over to this great blog post and utilize his format for MP sealing. It will be invaluable in setting you up for future MP seals.
The key to successfully importing the Citrix MP’s is that they reference each other and you must change the /publickey info in the remaining MP’s after importing the previous ones. So:
Seal and Import Citrix.Library MP.
From the SCOM Management Console, go to Monitoring, select the Management Server, Right-Click and select “Open Command Shell” and run this command :
get-managementpack -name Citrix.Library
In the syntax returned look for “KeyToken: 5fc7f02f28591d82”. Copy whatever the hex number is on your system after the “Keytoken” and paste it into the Citrix.Library reference in line 47 of the Citrix.PresentationServer MP. Then paste it in the same spot in the Citrix.LicenseServer MP.
You can now seal and import the Citrix.PresentationServer MP. In the command prompt we opened earlier, run:
get-managementpack -name Citrix.PresentationServer
This time copy the “KeyToken” to the Citrix.LicenseServer.xml file in the Citrix.PresentationServer PublicKeyToken field. Then you can seal and import the Citrix.LicenseServer MP.
Now we’re all exported, deleted, edited, and re-imported, Everything should be happy, yes?
Well, perhaps. There may still be lingering WMI issues on the Citrix farm, particularly in the Zone Data Collectors. I’ve found these two cmd files fix most of the WMI problems on servers I encountered:
First, run this one to fix all general WMI errors (Note to change the “M:” to your system drive):
net stop winmgmt
M:
cd %systemroot%\system32\wbem
rd /S /Q repository
regsvr32 /s %systemroot%\system32\scecli.dll
regsvr32 /s %systemroot%\system32\userenv.dll
mofcomp cimwin32.mof
mofcomp cimwin32.mfl
mofcomp rsop.mof
mofcomp rsop.mfl
for /f %%s in ('dir /b /s *.dll') do regsvr32 /s %%s
for /f %%s in ('dir /b *.mof') do mofcomp %%s
for /f %%s in ('dir /b *.mfl') do mofcomp %%s
Then when that’s complete, open a command window to:
\Program Files\Citrix\System32\Citrix\WMI
and run
for /f %%s in ('dir /b *.mof *.mfl') do mofcomp %%s
I’ve only had luck running that as a cmd file, not directly from the command prompt as I’ve seen elsewhere instructed.
Wait about ten minutes and check the App log for WMI errors. There should be none. ScriptoMatic v2 is a great quick tool for checking WMI across a number of servers.
So finally, after all of that, I removed and reinstalled the SCOM agent from my Citrix Farm Zone Collectors and License server. Not that I needed to or that you should need to, but for reasons of my own. After giving SCOM some time to percolate, I now have entries under License Server and Farm Metric Server State Views, but still nothing under “Citrix Farms” or “Citrix Zones”. We’ve also identified many, many servers in the farm with WMI issues that have been repaired.
Next up will be to step to dive into the script itself and figure out where the failure is. Since my strengths do NOT include Java programming, this should be fun. Stay tuned!
Documentation is a necessary evil. The vast majority of it is bland, boring, and largely without use.
Occasionally a doc will come along that rises above, that strives to be something more than a list of largely useless arcania.
After using Scriptomatic 2.0 for months I finally decided to read the doc file. It is brilliant. It is sublime in it’s excellence, droll in it’s delivery. It is both entertaining and informative, something you almost never see in a doc.
I knew I was in for something special when it began this way:
Throughout most of history people were much easier to please than they are now. For example, it’s unlikely that anyone ever went up to Luke the evangelist and said, “One Gospel? Come on, Luke. I mean, Matthew, Mark, John – anybody can write one Gospel.” Upon being introduced to someone at a cocktail party Neil Armstrong probably never had to hear, “Oh, first man on the moon? I see ….” Did anyone ever say to the Pharaoh Cheops, “Well, it’s a good pyramid, Cheops, but I don’t know about a great pyramid ….” Of course they didn’t.
So, since you’re reading this on MYITForum, you likely need ScriptoMatic anyway. Go get it, and read the whole doc.
System Center Community Lounge at MMS 2009
Are you an active member of the IT systems management community, or want to find out how to become more active?
Are you interested in System Center products and solutions?
Find out more at the System Center Community Lounge at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas April 27th – May 1st 2009, where we will be presenting community programs and resources offered or supported by the Microsoft System Center team, and introducing some important new ones.
The Community Lounge will be located in the registration area. Stop on by and find out what types of resources we are developing to support user groups, influencers, and the community at large.
For more information on the Community Lounge at this year’s MMS—or any of our community initiatives—please contact us at scnetsup@microsoft.com
Startling facts in the Internet Age. Now you know.
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