Scott Moss at myITforum.com

The Mother blog is looking to the community for feedback on what could be done to improve process monitoring with Operations Manager SP2 release. Feel free to drop them a note at this url.

http://blogs.msdn.com/incarnato/archive/2008/07/29/monitoring-processes-in-opsmgr.aspx

Slew of Operations Manager 2007 MP updates

Windows Server 2003 Group Policy Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

7/28/2008 (6.0.6278.22)

This Management Pack provides Group Policy health monitoring and knowledge base of useful information to help administrators resolve an issue when Group Policy fails to process. Requires OpsMgr 2007 MOM 2005 Backward Compatibility MP Update 6.0.5000.1 (or higher).
Required Management Pack Update: Requires OpsMgr 2007 MOM 2005 Backward Compatibility MP Update 6.0.5000.1 (or higher)

Windows Server 2008 Group Policy Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007
7/28/2008 (6.0.6278.22)

Windows Server 2008 Group Policy Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 monitors the health, availability, and performance of the Microsoft group policy client component of Microsoft Windows Server 2008.

Windows Server 2008 Application Server Management Pack for System Center OpsMgr 2007

7/27/2008 (6.0.6278.22)

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

Windows Server Operating System Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

7/27/2008 (6.0.6278.22)

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.

Terminal Services Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

7/27/2008 (6.0.6278.22)

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

Microsoft Windows Key Management Service Management Pack for Microsoft System Center OpsMgr 2007

7/25/2008 (6.0.6278.9)

The KMS MP monitors core Key Management Service offered by Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 and Vista.

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

7/25/2008 (6.0.6278.9)

This management pack includes scripts and rules to effectively monitor Exchange 2007 and report on performance, availability, and reliability of its server roles. Release version for Japanese: 6.0.5000.0 (Japanese)

This Management Pack requires Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1. This Management Pack requires the Operations Manager 2007 updates specified in Knowledge Base articles 950853, 951979 and 951380 (see the Management Pack Guide for details).

Mark your calendars!  SMUG is scheduled for July 28th.  We'll be meeting at the Microsoft Alpharetta location as usual.  We've got a really exciting line-up of technology, practices, and cool stuff.  Considering Powershell's prevalence in the Microsoft technology stack, we are going to try to have Hal Rottenberg as a guest speaker every quarter!  Hope you find that as exciting as we do.  Please make sure to attend if possible.  Hal says he has some GREAT giveaways!

Please register to attend so that we can get an accurate headcount for lunch:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/InviteOnly
.aspx?EventID=3A-EA-C8-93-06-AE-CC-67-36-57-D2-2D-85-B0-4C-57

Here's the agenda:

Contact Us:

To get the latest news on meeting times and places, please join the SMUG mailing list:

Subscribe: atlantasmug-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Unsubscribe: atlantasmug-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

For more information, contact one of your SMUG presidents.

• Marcus Oh, President - marcus.oh@gmail.com
• Scott Moss, Vice President - jscottmoss@gmail.com

The approve-agentpendingaction cmdlet approves the specified agent pending action.
The approve-agentpendingaction cmdlet is works much like the reject-agentpendingaction in that the cmdlet
is expecting to have data piped from the get-agentpendingaction cmdlet.
Again the example in help shows how to do approve all agent pending actions.

How to approve only the agents whose status is "RepairFailed".

>get-agentpendingaction | where-object {$_.AgentPendingActionType -eq "RepairFailed"} | Approve-AgentPendingAction -WhatIf

What if: Performing operation "Approve-AgentPendingAction" on Target "BIODTL.My.Company.Com".

Monitoring free disk space in a large Operations Manager environment can be difficult. Different support teams could have different threshold requirements, and server builds between teams can very. Each of these issues has their own unique challenges. To work with these challenges in MOM 2005 modifications were made to the MOM 2005 Script - Microsoft Windows Storage State Monitoring Script – from Version 2 to Version 3, which was changed to only use percentage free disk space as its threshold. The other Version 2 functionality, referring to the DiskThreshold.MOM and NoDiskAlerts.MOM files were kept.

Operations Manager 2007 free disk space script monitor had the same problem the original mom 2005 script had. It required a disk to cross both a percent free and free megabytes thresholds before an alert would be fired off. This script only works on logical disks, not mount points. Monitoring of mount points is done by another script/monitor.

What’s in the Management Pack?

This management pack contains one Monitor named Logical Disk Free Space – Customized that runs the modified Operations Manager 2007 free disk space script. The monitor is setup to run every 15 minutes on the hour. The monitor is disabled by default. There are four rules to catch possible errors that are written to the agents Operations Manager event log.

I've edited the original Operations Manager 2007 free disk space script and removed the megabytes free space threshold settings. I then added the two functions from the MOM 2005 version 3 script that allows administrators the ability to set their own thresholds on an individual disk using a percentage value using the DiskThreshold.MOM file, or disable alerting all together on a per disk basis using the NoDiskAlerts.MOM file. Script logging has been added, for both informational alerts as well as error conditions, to allow for auditing of what is going on with the script. Events are written to the agents Operations Manager event log.

Read this entire document in the zip file to fully understand what this management pack does. Test this Management Pack in a lab setting before deploying to production.

The MP in XML format and the associated document are in the attached Zip File.

The reject-agentpendingaction cmdlet rejects the specified agent pending action. Use the get-agentpendingaction cmdlet and pipe its results to the reject-agentpendingaction cmdlet to reject the specified agent pending action. The example in the reject-agentpendingaction help shows how to reject all agent pending actions. What if you only want to reject a specific type of agent pending action type?

When you run get-agentpendingaction cmdlet with no parameters a list like the following will be returned:

AgentName                              : NONAMI.My.Company.Com

ManagementServerName         : MYRMS.My.Company.Com

AgentPendingActionType         : UpdateFailed

LastModified                            : 7/3/2008 5:48:54 PM

ManagementGroup                   : MYMGTGROUP

ManagementGroupId                : 5c0861df-e72b-c777-7b16-45b88698echz

AgentName                              : BIODTL.My.Company.Com

ManagementServerName         : MYRMS.My.Company.Com

AgentPendingActionType         : RepairFailed

LastModified                            : 7/3/2008 5:48:52 PM

ManagementGroup                   : MYMGTGROUP

ManagementGroupId                : 6g0861df-e72b-c777-7b16-45b88698echz

Let’s find out the properties available to the get-agentpendingaction cmdlet, by piping the get-agentpendingaction cmdlet to the get-member cmdlet.

>get-agentpendingaction | get-member -membertype property

Name                                       MemberType Definition

----                                          ----------         ----------

AgentName                              Property   System.String AgentName {get;}

AgentPendingActionType         Property   Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Administratio

LastModified                            Property   System.DateTime LastModified {get;}

ManagementGroup                   Property   Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ManagementG

ManagementGroupId                Property   System.Guid ManagementGroupId {get;}

ManagementServerName         Property   System.String ManagementServerName {get;}

The AgentPendingActionType is the property we will want to filter by. I only want to reject AgentPendingActionType that equals RepairFailed. To verify that only the servers that have the AgentPendingActionType that equals RepairFailed are rejected, I will use the –WhatIf  parameter after the Reject-Agentpendingaction cmdlet.

>get-agentpendingaction | where-object {$_.AgentPendingActionType -eq "RepairFailed"} | Reject-AgentPendingAction -WhatIf

What if: Performing operation "Reject-AgentPendingAction" on Target "BIODTL.My.Company.Com".

To reject the agentpendingactions just remove the –WhatIf parameter.

>get-agentpendingaction | where-object {$_.AgentPendingActionType -eq "RepairFailed"} | Reject-AgentPendingAction

To get a list of server names and what they are pending about i.e. AgentPendingActionType (this can be long depending on how many agent pending actions are in your environement)

get-agentpendingaction | sort-object AgentName | Select-object AgentName, AgentPendingActionType | format-table -auto

AgentName                                                      AgentPendingActionType

---------                                                           ----------------------

AD01.My.Company.Com                                UpdateFailed

AD02.My.Company.Com                                RepairFailed

EXCH01.My.Company.Com                           PushInstallFailed

SMS01.My.Company.Com                              UpdateFailed

To get a list of servers whose status in AgentPendingActionType is ‘UpdateFailed’

get-agentpendingaction | where-object {$_.AgentPendingActionType -eq "UpdateFailed"} | sort-object AgentName | Select-object AgentName, AgentPendingActionType | format-table -auto

AgentName                                          AgentPendingActionType

---------                                               ----------------------

AD01.My.Company.Com                    UpdateFailed

AD02.My.Company.Com                    UpdateFailed

EXCH01.My.Company.Com              UpdateFailed

EXCH02.My.Company.Com              UpdateFailed

To get a mini-report with the count and type of the agentpendingactiontype

get-agentpendingaction | group-object AgentPendingActionType | Sort -desc Count | Select-object Count, Name | Format-table -auto

Count   Name

-----     ----

   90     UpdateFailed

    1      PushInstallFailed

    1      RepairFailed

Technet web now has an Exchange 2007 performance counter guidelines in-case your not going to monitor Exchange 2007 with System Center Operations Manager. The performance counter information is divided into sections based on the Exchange Server roles. This information will be an excellent resource to Operations Manager Admins helping support Exchange 2007 implementations.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201720(EXCHG.80).aspx

Mark your calendars!  SMUG is scheduled for July 28th.  We'll be meeting at the Microsoft alpharetta location as usual.  We've got a really exciting line-up of technology, practices, cool stuff.  Considering powershell's prevalence in the Microsoft technology stack, we are going to try to have Hal Rottenburg as a guest speaker every quarter!  Hope you find that as exciting as we do.  Please make sure to attend if possible.  Hal says he has some GREAT giveaways!

Here's the agenda so far.  Please note this is not completely firm.

Powershell Tips and Tricks  - Hal Rottenburg
IMX Solution    - iVision
Vision Connectors for SCOM  - (likely to be removed)
InstallShield demonstration  - Acresso Software
SC Virtual Machine Manager v2  - ?

As soon as the registration link is up, it will be posted here.

Also, in order to help us better manage the user mailing list and give you all the option to opt in, we're moving over to yahoo groups.  We don't want to presume that you want to continue to receive these emails, so if you do, please sign up.  You can subscribe or unsubscribe by sending an email to one of the following:

subscribe: atlantasmug-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
unsubscribe: atlantasmug-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

Finally the new web page for the user group is located here:    http://www.systemcenterusergroup.org/blogs/smug

Video downloads of the presentations given at the first System Center Virtual User Group meeting are now available for download.

Anders - Cross-Platform monitoring in Operations Manager 2007 SP 2

Ryan - ACS Planning, configuration and tuning 

Marco - Powershell in Operations Manager 2007

http://www.systemcenterusergroup.org/blogs/administrator/archive/2008/06/30/session-downloads-from-system-center-virtual-user-group-meeting-1.aspx

Pete Zerger has a good example of a mini-report http://www.systemcenterforum.org/powershell-tip-operations-manager-2007-top-alerts-report-part-1/ . From his report I got the idea for these other mini-reports

To get a report of Top closed alerts.

>get-alert -criteria `ResolutionState = "255"' | Group-Object Name |Sort -desc Count | select-Object -first 5 Count, Name |Format-Table -auto

Count  Name
-----      ----
  105   Microsoft Windows Internet Information Services 2003 SMTP Virtual Server...
   91    Monitor Health Service Heartbeat
   80    WMI Probe Module Failed Execution
   71    Service Check Data Source Module Failed Execution
   52    MAPI Logon Monitor reported a problem

Top 5 computers with new alerts.

>get-alert -criteria 'ResolutionState = ''0''' | Group-Object PrincipalName |Sort -desc Count | select-Object -first 5 Count, Name | Format-table -auto

Count  Name
-----      ----
   14    SOTM.My.Company.Com
   12    BIODTL.My.Company.Com
   11    NONAMI.My.Company.Com
   11    BLOWEDUPSRV.My.Company.Com
   11    BIGSERVER.My.Company.Com

Top 5 computers with resolved alerts.

>get-alert -criteria 'ResolutionState = ''255''' | Group-Object PrincipalName |Sort -desc Count | select-Object -first 5 Count, Name | Format-table -auto

Count  Name
-----      ----
 4933   BLOWEDUPSRV.My.Company.Com
  152    NONAMI.My.Company.Com
  140    BIODTL.My.Company.Com
  130    SOTM.My.Company.Com
  105    BIGSERVER.My.Company.Com

A few more examples of the Get-Alert cmdlet for Operations Manager 2007. These were inspired from the Virtual User group meeting. Something Marco Shaw showed in his Operations Manager powershell demo.

To get a count of all Informational alerts
>(get-alert -criteria 'Severity = ''0''').count
1150

To get a count of all Warning alerts
>(get-alert -criteria 'Severity = ''1''').count
3767

To get a count of all Critical alerts
>(get-alert -criteria 'Severity = ''2''').count
1944

To get a count of all new information alerts
>(get-alert -criteria 'ResolutionState = ''0'' AND Severity = ''0''').count
65

To get a count of all new Warning Alerts:
>(get-alert -criteria 'ResolutionState = ''0'' AND Severity = ''1''').count
344

To get a count of all new Critical Alerts:
>(get-alert -criteria 'ResolutionState = ''0'' AND Severity = ''2''').count
144

Example of criteria being case sensitive error:
>(get-alert -criteria 'Resolutionstate = ''0'' AND Severity = ''1''').count
Get-Alert : A property name in the 'Criteria' parameter is unknown.
At line:1 char:11
+ (get-alert  <<<< -criteria 'Resolutionstate = ''0'' AND Severity = ''1''').count