Jonathan Almquist on Operations Manager

Moving to a new blog space

2012-02-02T16:24:00Z

Hi everyone. Just wanted to inform anyone that currently subscribes to this blog to add a new blog to your RSS reader. I will no longer be posting here. I’ve already added a couple of postings to the new blog, and have transferred some of the more popular posts to the new one. The new space is not exactly ready yet - still haven't a good title or anything. But it's live. Comments here will no longer be moderated here. Thanks for your readership here. Looking forward to writing some...(read more)

Management Group Performance Evaluation and Tuning Reports

2012-01-28T16:43:15Z

I created a small management pack a couple years ago to help identify performance bottlenecks in an Operations Manager 2007 R2 environment. It started with a couple collection rules targeting the core SCOM server roles. I would then query the database and paste results into an Excel spreadsheet. Evaluating all the data and formatting the spreadsheet was a big undertaking, but provided insightful information into the overall management group performance. Since then I included...(read more)

How to install Operations Manager 2012 single server configuration from the command prompt

2012-01-19T21:30:00Z

I was reading the Operations Manager 2012 RC documentation today and thought this was interesting enough to put up here. For those of you that might need to save some time building out a lab or two, this can be handy. 1. Log on to the server by using an account that has local administrative credentials. 2. Open the Command Prompt window by using the Run as Administrator option. Note: Setup.exe requires administrator privileges because the Setup process requires access to system processes...(read more)

Cookdown example - between two or more workflows

2011-11-17T09:03:30Z

Thought I would do something useful while sitting on the airplane today and write up a cookdown example expanding from my last post . This will be as straight forward as possible with mostly just screenshots of the steps I took to share a data source between more than one monitoring workflow. In this example, I’ll show how to share a data source between a monitor and a performance collection rule, as depicted in this workflow . The scenario is to count files in a directory. ...(read more)

Cookdown

2011-11-09T04:11:00Z

I recently did a presentation in which the scenario was cooking down a data source. I ended up created these visual aids in Visio on the plane. I hope they might help others out there understand cookdown. Other resources http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff381335.aspx http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/vdipippo/pages/workflow-cook-down-in-operations-manager-2007.aspx http://nocentdocent.wordpress.com/category/scom/cookdown/ #cookdown in system...(read more)

Pulling back groups for use in a report drop-down list (group picker)

2011-09-23T19:22:00Z

There are a couple different ways to include a group picker list in your custom report. One way is to use the built-in report controls included in the SCOM reporting framework. Personally, I have found these controls to be tricky to implement and not quite as flexible to use as a universal implementation for any type of object or monitoring data. This may just be due to my lack of experience with the built-in reporting controls, but I’ve found another way to create a group picker control that...(read more)

List of supported network devices in Operations Manager 2012

2011-08-11T20:30:46Z

This question came in today and Vishnu Nath, Program Manager at Microsoft, gave a very concise answer. This made for an excellent blog post! “In Operations Manager 2012 we support monitoring of network devices that support SNMP. Port monitoring is available for devices that have implemented the interface MIB ( RFC 2863 ) and MIB-II ( RFC 1213 ) standards. In addition, we support peripheral monitoring including Processor and Memory monitoring on a subset of devices, the exact devices...(read more)

Solving the problem of automated distribution of credentials (literal expression)

2011-08-06T03:37:00Z

This is a continuation of a previous post . The only difference is this accepts a literal expression, rather than a group system name. As with the other script example, there is no reverse action. If you specify a group that contains hundreds of windows computer objects and it was a mistake, you'll have to manually delete hundreds of health service instances from your secure distribution in the Run As Account. The script accepts the below parameters – all are required. First set of variables...(read more)

Solving the problem of automated distribution of credentials (group criteria)

2011-08-06T03:30:00Z

It’s possible to leverage a powershell script in a composite write action to distribute credentials to a health service. The following example will distribute the specified credentials to health services instances derived from a group of windows computer objects. Instance groups containing other types may not work as expected without modifying the code. Also, group system name must be used in this script. I decided to use group system name to foster accountability in the implemention, which...(read more)

Return all dirty aggregations in last X days

2011-08-05T17:04:24Z

/*Return all dirty aggregations in last X days*/ DECLARE @Days AS int SET @Days = 1 --number of days to go back SELECT DS.DatasetDefaultName, CASE SDAH.AggregationTypeId WHEN 0 THEN 'Raw' WHEN 20 THEN 'Hourly' WHEN 30 THEN 'Daily' ELSE 'Unknown' END AS Type, SDAH.AggregationDateTime, DATEADD(HH, (datediff(HH, getutcdate(), getdate())), SDAH.AggregationDateTime) AS [ LocalTime ], SDAH.DirtyInd, SDAH.AggregationCount ...(read more)

Count dirty aggregations in last X days

2011-08-05T17:03:33Z

/*Count dirty aggregations in last X days*/ DECLARE @Days AS int SET @Days = 1 --number of days to go back SELECT Count (*) AS [Failed], DS.DatasetDefaultName AS [Dataset], CASE SDAH.AggregationTypeId WHEN 0 THEN 'Raw' WHEN 20 THEN 'Hourly' WHEN 30 THEN 'Daily' ELSE 'Unknown' END AS [Type] FROM Dataset AS DS INNER JOIN StandardDatasetAggregationHistory AS SDAH ON SDAH.DatasetId = DS.DatasetId WHERE SDAH.DirtyInd <>...(read more)

Transport latency impacted - 99th percentile of messages not meeting SLA over last 30 min - Red(>90)

2011-08-04T21:45:48Z

New article in the Exchange 2010 MP online library recently. Read more about it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff360301(EXCHG.140).aspx Taken from the article: Explanation This Error event indicates that end-to-end e-mail message flow is taking longer than 90 seconds for more than percent of all messages that have been handled over the previous 30 minutes. This event may be triggered when one or more of the following conditions are true: A networking issue exists. The Microsoft...(read more)

Set management server list for agent

2011-08-03T15:16:31Z

Noticed I didn’t have an agent-specific one to reference – here it is. #Assign agents a management server failover list $primaryMS = Get -ManagementServer | where {$_.Name –eq '<MS1_FQDN>'} $failoverMS = Get -ManagementServer | where {$_.Name –eq '<MS2_FQDN>'} $agent = Get -Agent | where {<add some criteria here>} Set -ManagementServer -AgentManagedComputer: $agent -PrimaryManagementServer: $primaryMS -FailoverServer: $failoverMS...(read more)

Can the SCOM databases share a SQL instance with other databases?

2011-08-01T23:54:00Z

Just wanted to answer this question here as a pointer for later reference. But b efore I continue, I want to mention that this is from the perspective of SCOM. You’ll need to read documentation of your specific application before collocating your other database with the SCOM db’s. The biggest concern will be one of performance. There are many contributing factors to deciding whether this will provide acceptable performance – hardware, configuration of disks, configuration...(read more)

Why is my custom report displaying deleted objects or groups?

2011-07-16T15:23:23Z

Here’s a fairly common stumbling block when creating custom reports, so I wanted to share this quick tip. Discovered inventory will stay in the data warehouse for 400 days, by default, at which time these items will be deleted. In the interim, these objects will stick around and often times the report author doesn’t realize they need to filter out objects that have been marked for deletion. You'll need to make sure you're not selecting objects that are marked for deletion when creating...(read more)

Windows Service Monitoring (reduce false alerts…part 2)

2011-06-25T04:38:00Z

Shortly after posting the sample Windows service monitoring library , I realized a “short” follow-up article was in order to explain how to use the monitor types defined in the library. First and foremost, any management pack that includes discoveries, rules or monitors should be sealed. The reason behind sealing the types of management packs is to retain version control of the MP. Without version control, anyone with the privilege to modify these workflows in the Operations Console...(read more)

Microsoft.SystemCenter.WebApplication.WebApplicationData (URL Probe Runtime Output)

2011-06-23T01:33:51Z

I was recently working with the Microsoft.SystemCenter.WebApplication.UrlProbe module and wanted to know exactly what I could pass through an expression filter and potentially include in an alert description. It’s easy enough to get this after creating a monitor and simulating the workflow, but sometimes this information is needed while authoring new composites/types. Of course, this is before any opportunity to simulate the monitoring workflow. So, just as a reference, I am posting this...(read more)

Windows Service Monitoring (reduce false alerts with consecutive sample module)

2011-06-21T22:24:00Z

Sometimes customers need to create their own Windows service monitors. This usually leads them to the Windows Service wizard in the Operations Console . There is nothing wrong with using the wizard, but let me tell you about one of the drawbacks with using the wizard to create your service monitors. The resultant monitor will check if the service is running at an interval. If it is detected that the service is not running for a single sample, the monitor changes state and generates an alert...(read more)

Monitoring all services on all computers (service outage report)

2011-06-11T17:26:00Z

Occasionally customers will ask how we can monitor all services that are configured to automatically start on all agent-managed computers. This is a good question and one that does have some merit. I n reality, this can be a challenge coming up with the right solution. To get state of all services running on all monitored computers would increase the management group instance space significantly, because we would need to discover every service on every computer. This is something I would stay...(read more)

Heartbeat Failure and Failed to Connect Alerts with Duration

2011-05-14T02:35:19Z

I find this especially useful in determining out of box heartbeat settings, since the default 3 minutes is almost never an optimal setting. Without the information returned from this query, I generally suggest 9 minutes out of box (adjusting the agent interval from 60 to 180 seconds). /* Heartbeat Failure and Failed to Connect with Duration Jonathan Almquist (http://blogs.technet.com/b/jonathanalmquist/) 05-13-2011 */ DECLARE @MGID AS INT...(read more)

Powershell Scripts - Illegal Variable Name

2011-05-06T16:44:19Z

Just figured out this annoying issue I have seen come up many times while saving Powershell script workflows. For some reason, I would get management pack validation exceptions when trying to save workflows in the Authoring Console. Note: The following information was gathered when the operation was attempted . The information may appear cryptic but provides context for the error . The application will continue to run . : Verification failed with [1] errors: ------...(read more)

Now translated to 34 different languages!

2011-04-30T17:45:43Z

Since we migrated to a new platform in May, 2010, there are more options for us as bloggers to customize the readers’ experience. I was making some changes to my blog recently and noticed we now have a translator widget available. Not sure if this was an option from the start, but I didn’t notice it until a few days ago. I added the translator widget to all my pages, so almost everyone in the world will have access to these articles in their language. Just look for the “Translate...(read more)

The threshold for the Logical Disk\Avg. Disk sec/Transfer performance counter has been exceeded

2011-04-26T22:01:04Z

If you see these alerts generated by your Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 servers with unusually high values, this is due to an issue with the RegQueryValueEx function , which is used in the Average Disk Seconds Per Transfer monitor. For Windows 2008 R2, apply this hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2470949 For Windows 2008, apply this hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2495300 This is also referenced on Kevin Holman’s hotfix page (a must read for the SCOM administrator). I’m also...(read more)

Root Management Server Unavailable History with Reason

2011-04-19T14:59:00Z

/* RMS Unavailable History with Reason http://blogs.technet.com/b/jonathanalmquist/ 04-19-2011 Updated 04-20-2011 with outage durations dd:hh:mm */ SELECT ME. Path , HSO.StartDateTime AS OutageStartDateTime, CAST (DATEDIFF( SECOND , HSO.StartDateTime, HSO.EndDateTime)/86400 AS VARCHAR (5)) + ':' + CONVERT ( CHAR (5), DATEADD( SECOND , DATEDIFF( SECOND , HSO.StartDateTime, HSO.EndDateTime), '' ), 114) AS 'Duration (dd:hh:mm)' , HSO...(read more)

Inventory and Configuration Reports

2011-04-12T23:13:33Z

Someone asked today if there was a way to generate a report displaying inventory/configuration of SQL Server. Chris Harris, SCOM Program Manager, answered the question with one of our built-in configuration reports. He was so kind as to provide screenshots and everything, and indicated that someone should blog it. So, here you go. Thanks, Chris! Credits go to you… Of course, this can be done with any discovered inventory in SCOM – not just SQL databases. It’s a...(read more)