Recently I discussed some of the changes in the Base OS MP version 6.0.6958.0

OpsMgr- MP Update- New Base OS MP 6.0.6958.0 adds Cluster Shared Volume monitoring, BPA, new rep

One of the changes in this newer version of the MP is the addition of a new datasource module, which runs a script to output the Network Adapter Utilization.  The name of the datasource is “Microsoft.Windows.Server.2008.NetworkAdapter.BandwidthUsed.ModuleType”.   This datasource module uses the timed script property bag provider, along with a generic mapper condition detection.  The script name is:  “Microsoft.Windows.Server.NetwokAdapter.BandwidthUsed.ModuleType.vbs”

There are 3 rules, and 3 monitors for each OS (2003 and 2008), which utilize this datasource:

• Rules:
• 2008
• Microsoft.Windows.Server.2008.NetworkAdapter.PercentBandwidthUsedReads.Collection (Percent Bandwidth Used Read)
• Microsoft.Windows.Server.2008.NetworkAdapter.PercentBandwidthUsedWrites.Collection (Percent Bandwidth Used Write)
• Microsoft.Windows.Server.2008.NetworkAdapter.PercentBandwidthUsedTotal.Collection (Percent Bandwidth Used Total)
• 2003
• Microsoft.Windows.Server.2003.NetworkAdapter.PercentBandwidthUsedReads.Collection (Percent Bandwidth Used Read)
• Microsoft.Windows.Server.2003.NetworkAdapter.PercentBandwidthUsedWrites.Collection (Percent Bandwidth Used Write)
• Microsoft.Windows.Server.2003.NetworkAdapter.PercentBandwidthUsedTotal.Collection (Percent Bandwidth Used Total)
• Monitors:
• 2008
• Microsoft.Windows.Server.2008.NetworkAdapter.PercentBandwidthUsedReads (Percent Bandwidth Used Read)
• Microsoft.Windows.Server.2008.NetworkAdapter.PercentBandwidthUsedWrites (Percent Bandwidth Used Write)
• Microsoft.Windows.Server.2008.NetworkAdapter.PercentBandwidthUsedTotal (Percent Bandwidth Used Total)
• 2003
• Microsoft.Windows.Server.2003.NetworkAdapter.PercentBandwidthUsedReads (Percent Bandwidth Used Read)
• Microsoft.Windows.Server.2003.NetworkAdapter.PercentBandwidthUsedWrites (Percent Bandwidth Used Write)
• Microsoft.Windows.Server.2003.NetworkAdapter.PercentBandwidthUsedTotal (Percent Bandwidth Used Total)

Only the “Total” rules and monitors are enabled by default, the Read/Write workflows are disabled out of the box by design.

The good:

This new functionality is cool because it allows us to monitor the total utilization based on the network bandwidth as a percentage of the “total pipe”, report on this, and view the data in the console:

The issue:

Since there is no direct perfmon data to collect this, the information must be collected via script.  I wrote about how to write this yourself HERE.

There are 4 known issues with this script in the current Base OS MP, which can cause problems in some environments:

1.  When the script executes – it consumes a high amount of CPU (WMIPrvse.exe process) for a few seconds.

2.  The script does not support cookdown, so it runs a cscript.exe process and an instance of the script for EACH and every network adapter in your system (physical or virtual).  This makes the CPU consumption even higher, especially for systems with a large number of network adapters (such as Hyper-V servers).

3.  The script does not support teamed network adapters very well, as they are manufacturer/driver dependent, and are often missing the WMI classes expected by the script, so you will see errors on each script execution, about “invalid class”

4.  On some Windows 2003 servers, people have reported this script eventually causes a fault in netman.dll, and this can subsequently cause some additional critical services to fault/stop.

Event Type:        Error
Event Source:    Application Error
Event Category:                (100)
Event ID:              1000
Date:                     16/10/2011
Time:                     4:41:09 AM
User:                     N/A
Computer:          WSMSG7104C02
Description:
Faulting application svchost.exe, version 5.2.3790.3959, faulting module netman.dll, version 5.2.3790.3959, fault address 0x0000000000008d4f.

From a CPU perspective – below is an example Hyper-V server with multiple NIC’s.  I set the rule and monitor which use this script to run every 30 seconds for demonstration purposes (they run every 5 minutes by default).

You can see WMI (and the total CPU) spiking every 30 seconds.

After disabling all the rules and monitors which utilize this data source, we see the following from the same server:

Based on these issues, I’d probably recommend disabling these rules AND monitors for Windows 2003 and Windows 2008.  They seem to create a bit more impact than the usefulness of the data they provide.

To disable these monitor and rules:

Open the Authoring pane of the console.

Highlight “Monitors” in the left pane.

In the top line – click “Scope” until you see the “Scope Management Pack Object” pop up:

In the Look For box – type “Network”:

Tick the boxes next to “Windows Server 2003 Network Adapter” and “Windows Server 2008 Network Adapter” and click OK.

Now you will see a scoped view of only the monitors that target the windows server network adapter classes.  Expand Windows Server 2003 Network Adapter > Entity Health > Performance:

You can see that Read and Write monitors are already disabled out of the box.  You need to add a new override to disable the “Total” monitor.  Set enabled = false and save it to your Base OS Override MP for Windows 2003.

Now, repeat this for the Server 2008 monitor for “Percent Bandwidth Used Total”.

After disabling the two monitors that run this script – we also need to disable the rules that also share this script.  Highlight Rules in the left pane.

Again – the read/write rules are disabled out of the box, so you need to create two overrides for each rule, one for Server 2003 Percent Bandwidth Used Total, and then the same that targets Server 2008: