May 2008 - Posts
I finally updgraded to PrimalScript 2007. http://www.primalscript.com/
If I find any handy featrues I'll post them.
To keep up todate with what's going on with the Sapien folks, powershell developments and what scripting books they will be putting out check out the Sapien blog, at http://blog.sapien.com/ .
Have a good weekend!
I know its really early, but the web site is up for MMS 2009. There is a link to get added to a notification DL for the event.
http://mms-2009.com/
Prior to MMS 2008 we migrated our production MOM 2005 environment to a new SQL 2005 cluster. A week and a half after the migration we noticed that our nightly maintenance mode scripts were starting to fail. After a little investigation we noticed that our onepoint db had grown in size to over 30 gigs. We try and keep it around 10 to 12 gigs. A quick glance at the SQL report Disk Usage by top tables it was easy to see that the perf data was not getting groomed out of the onepoint database.
I checked the Scheduled task log and notice that the majority of the entries were marked as successful. I checked the event log for event id 80 and reviewed the complete dts job listing which showed everything as functioning properly too. Well now time to check the OnePoint DB ReportSettings table for the TimeDTSLastRan value. It was showing a date from when the db was still on the old cluster. We manually changed the date time value for TimeDTSLastRan, and then manually kicked off MOMX Partitioning and Grooming, which did its job of pruning out the old perf tables from the onepoint db.
The question remained, why isn’t the TimeDTSLastRan value getting updated? The stored procedure that is run to update the time date stamp on the TimeDTSLastRan field of the ReportSettings table in the onepoint db is:
p_UpdateDTSLastRunTime 'May 11 2008 3:13:30:284AM', 'SQLHOSTNAME\INSTANCE#'
The value 'SQLHOSTNAME\INSTANCE#' needs to match the same value in the onepoint db reportingsettings table column datawarehouseDataSource. For some reason our datawarehouseDataSource value was still the name of the old SQL server cluster. After updating this value to the current SQLHOSTNAME\INSTNACE# everything started working as expected.
Specail shout out to Steve on this one!
A new batch of Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack Guides have been released online. For the cool part select a MP guide you want to check out, scroll to the bottom of the page and there is community content area, to submit comments. To access that part you must have a passport logon, and select an alias to go by, when you leave comments.
Management Pack Guides for Server Products: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc540357(TechNet.10).aspx
Management Pack Guides for Windows Operating Systems and Technologies: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc540358(TechNet.10).aspx
I hope to see more of this from Microsoft.
If you use SCCM or SCOM you should join this Virtual User Group! You only have to go as far as your computer to get there. There are forums to post questions, and a contest for an XBOX! Get the word out!
System Center Virtual User Group web site: http://www.systemcenterusergroup.org/
Link to Contest information: http://www.systemcenterusergroup.org/blogs/administrator/archive/2008/05/23/system-center-user-group-updates.aspx
Once you've joined the community become a member of the linked in System Center Virtual User Group!
I encountered this when creating Alert Rules for Event log entries.
Enter a string of text in the alert description memo area.
Click the ... button to access the Target information.
Go to the middle of the text and try and insert Target information.
My target information gets added to the end of the string of text instead of where my cursor is located.
Not sure if this is a bug or a feature.
A SQL Admin I work with shared this Custom Report with me the other day. This custom report will show a taskpad similar to the one seen in SQL 2000. If you miss the taskpad view you will like this. Link to the authors blog entry with a download link.
http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/simons/archive/2007/03/28/Update-to-the-taskpad-custom-report.aspx
I love looking for stuff in the registry. In case you do not want to look for it here it is.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Mission Critical Software
New virtual users group:
http://www.systemcenterusergroup.org/
Brian Wren's Powershell Post from the MMS Command Shell presentation
http://blogs.technet.com/brianwren/default.aspx
Once again MMS for 2009 will be in Las Vegas, April 27 thru May 1 2009. Just waiting for the location.
I was awarded Best New Columnist at the MyITforum.com party at MMS this past Tuesday night. I was unaware that I was going to get an award and was at Microsoft party when the awards were handed out. Fortunately Rick Jones sent me an email letting me know I was getting an award. I picked up the award from Rod later that evening. Once again another scheduling nightmare from MMS, which session lab or which party to go to? Its hard to decide sometimes. Thanks Rod!
http://www.myitforum.com/mms2008awards/MMS_2008_Awards_files/frame.htm
I'll try to summarize a weeks worth of sessions, labs and meetings in a short entry. Things to look for in the near future. To be sure there were a boat load of other things that happened but these are the things that will be available in the near future.
Notification Testing Tool: Create alerts with specific criteria, where the alert is from, what server, what rule, etc. Release date TBD.
Connectors: It looks like Microsoft is putting some resources behind getting some connectors out the door. Connectors for Operations Manager 2007
Delivered in SP2 Time frame
IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console (TEC) (beta)
HP OpenView Operations for Unix (beta)
HP OpenView Operations for Windows (beta)
BMC Remedy ARS (not in beta)
Universal Connector
The new connectors when released are to support high availability and x64. The connectors will also have easy to configure control panels that are accessible on the windows side, very nice.
Resources: I was in a focus group discussing a new Microsoft Site on a topic which I'm looking forward to working with in the near future. When the site is ready I'll post a link to it.
Cross Platform: System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions Beta were introduced at the Microsoft Management Summit 2008.