The Management Pack for monitoring virtual applications is here.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82b0397f-fac8-4c5a-b906-e87d0e57982a&DisplayLang=en

Overview

The Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (App-V) Management Pack enables IT professionals to use Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 to monitor App-V server systems. The Management Pack is designed to maximize Application Virtualization Server availability for handling Application Virtualization Client requests. This component delivers an enterprise-level solution to proactively monitor Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 server systems.
Feature Summary

• Monitor and detect Application Virtualization service failures.
• Monitor connectivity errors with external App-V dependent services such as SQL and Active Directory Domain Services.
• Monitor when the backlog of queued requests crosses thresholds.
• Monitor the general health state of the App-V Server.
• Monitor machine-wide health metrics as related to App-V Server components.
• Visually monitor trends in the backlog of queued requests on App-V Servers.
• Monitor the number and type of alerts across the App-V infrastructure.
• Monitor response time when communicating with external services.

In the next couple of blog posts I will focus on how you can create a Management Pack with the Authoring Console.

The authoring console was released with OpsMgr SP1 and is the recommended tool for creating your own Management packs

The creation of the Management pack will happen over 3-4 blog post, where we take one step at the time.

In this scenario we are creating a management pack for eTrust (CA) with the following

The Agenda:

• Discovering the application (Part 1)
• Registry discovery for a new type
• Attribute discovery for a new type
• Creating Views (Part 1)
• State View
• Creating Monitors for the Application (Part 2)
• Windows Service
• Performance Counter
• Creating Rules (Part 2)
• Event log
• Extending Views (Alert and events) (Part 3)
• Alert View
• Event
• Performance
• Extending rules (Reporting) (Part 3)
• Collection Rule
• How to seal a Management Pack (Part 3)
• Creating a Report (Part 4)
• How to create a report based on a collection rule
• Importing the Management Pack (Part 4)
• Importing Management Pack
• Testing Management Pack

Install Authoring Console

The Console can be downloaded from here:

 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6c8911c3-c495-4a03-96df-9731c37aa6d7&DisplayLang=en

Start Authoring Console

First blog post will be ready in the next couple of days.

Please don’t hesitate to give your comments or ideas to these blog posts.

Regards

Anders Ravnholt

In some cases Reporting Services may get corrupted when you install Operations Manager Reporting and the installation fails.

The reason why Reporting Services is not working is because Operations Manager has taken ownership of SRS Instance.

On the installation media there is a tool called ResetSRS which should be able to reset the SRS server for you.

In some cases I have had trouble getting this tool to work, so I had to reinstall SRS which takes a lot of time.

In this post I will give a step by step description on how you can reconfigure SRS without reinstalling SRS if ResetSRS.exe fails for some reason.

This guide should work for SQL 2005 SP2 on Win2k3 and Win2k8

Note:

• This guide is used at your own risk.
• This guide should only be used if Reporting Services is only being used by Operations Manager.

Resetting SQL 2005 Reporting Server

Deleting Reporting web sites

• Start Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
• Connect to the web server that is running the reporting web site

• Select Site > Default Web Site
• Right Click on Reports web site
• Select Remove
• Right Click on ReportServer web site
• Select Remove              

Deleting Reporting Databases

• Start Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio
• Connect to the SQL server that is running the reporting databases
• Select Databases
• Select Reports
• Right click on Reports
• Select Delete
• Select ReportsTempDB
• Right click on ReportsTempDB
• Select Delete

Reconfiguring Reporting Services

• Start > SQL 2005 Reporting Service Configuration Manager

Select Report Server Virtual Directory

• Click on New
• Select Default Web Site
• Write Reports in Virtual Directory
• Click Ok

• Click Apply
• The Server Status and Report Server Virtual Directory should now be green

Select Report Manager Virtual Directory

• Click on New
• Select Default Web Site
• Write ReportServer in Virtual Directory
• Click Ok

• Click Apply
• The Server Status Report Server Virtual Directory and Report Manager Virtual Directory should now be green

Select Windows Service Identity

• Write password for the user running the .NET Service
• Click Apply

• The Server Status Report Server Virtual Directory, Report Manager Virtual Directory and Windows Service Identity should now be green

Select Web Service Identity

• Select Report Server
  • If you are running Windows Server 2008 Select Classic .NET AppPool
  • If you are running Windows Server 2003 Select DefaultÁppPool

• Select Report Manager
  • If you are running Windows Server 2008 Select Classic .NET AppPool
  • If you are running Windows Server 2003 Select DefaultÁppPool
• Click Apply
• The Server Status Report, Server Virtual Directory, Report Manager Virtual Directory, Windows Identity and Wed Service Identity should now be green

Select Database Setup

• Select Connect
• Write the SQL Server Name
• Select Current User for Credentials Type (assumes you are logged on with a SQL Admin user)
• Write ReportServer in Database Name
• Select English for Language
• Click Ok

• Click Apply

• Select Windows Credentials for Credentials Type
• Write a user with SQL Admin rights
• Write password for user
• Click Apply

• Click Apply

• The Server Status Report, Server Virtual Directory, Report Manager Virtual Directory, Windows Identity Wed Service Identity and Database Setup should now be green

Select Initialization

• Select Initialization

• The Server Status Report, Server Virtual Directory, Report Manager Virtual Directory, Windows Identity Wed Service Identity Database Setup and Initialization should now be green

• Close the SQL 2005 Reporting Service Configuration Manager .

Verifying if Reporting Services works

• Start a browser
• Write http://localhost/Reports
• Verify that Reporting Services is showing as below.

• You should now be ready to Install Operations Manager reporting.

Regards

Anders Ravnholt

I just read this article on Kevin Holman’s blog about hotfixes for Operations Manager 2007.

I think it’s a great summary of hotfixes and where and when they should be applied.

Read this blog post if you would like to know which hotfixes you should apply to your environment.

http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/archive/2008/09/12/what-hotfixes-should-i-apply.aspx

Thanks for a great article Kevin

Anders

Many of you are probably checking the System Center Management Pack Catalog every now and then to see if any new MPs have shown up.

Wouldn't it be cool if you could subscribe to an RSS feed and get notified there about new downloads?

With some help from Stefan Stranger I have created two RSS feeds which will tell you about new downloads from System Center MP Catalog.

 The first RSS feed will check for new updates in relations to Operations Manager 2007

Operations Manager 2007 Download List

RSS Feed: http://www.feed43.com/opsmgr2007list.xml

Equals this link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?DisplayLang=en&nr=20&freetext=Operations+Manager+2007&sortCriteria=date

 The second link is for new updates in relations to MOM 2005

Operations Manager 2005 Download list

RSS Feed: http://www.feed43.com/mom2005list.xml

Equals this link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?DisplayLang=en&nr=20&freetext=Operations+Manager+2005&sortCriteria=date

If you find this useful please let me know.

Regards

Anders 

Many of you are probably having a hard time, just like me, to try to keep up with all the new things that are coming out about Operations Manager.

There are so many blogs, and System Center Download Catalogue that you should check to keep yourself up to date.

In this blog post I will try to explain how I keep up with the information flow without browsing the Internet all night long.

The most simple way of keeping you self up to date is via RSS feeds. With RSS feeds you can collect all information in one place from many different sources. I like to keep myself up to date “real time”, so I use an RSS Ticker.

This is mostly known from banks where they are used to give the latest stock quotes.

I will recommend one RSS tickers that I used myself.

 RSS Crawler: http://www.mirabyte.com/en/products/rsscrawler.html

With the RSS Crawler you can have two tickers at the same time and put different RSS into each one of them.

In my case I have Operations Manager related info in the upper ticker bar and News in the bottom ticker bar.

So which RSS feeds am I watching for?

OpsMgr Team Blog

This is the Operations Manager Team Blog. This is where you should look for communications from the Product Group.

xmlUrl=http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/rss.xml

OpsMgr++

Boris Yanushpolsky is a product manager at Microsoft and works with Operations Manager SDK and integration to Operations Manager.

Boris have created many nice tools which helps you do nice little things that you can’t normally do out of the box. Tools like MP Viewer and Override Explorer are some of the nice tools that really helps me on a daily basis.

xmlUrl=http://blogs.msdn.com/boris_yanushpolsky/rss.xml

OpsMgr, SCE And MOM Blog

This blog is run by Clive Eastwood who is as a Supportability Program Manager for MOM. Cleve postes many interisting articles about tweaks and “issues” with Operations Manager. If you are having an issue with Operations Manager, a good place to start could be Clives blog.

 xmlUrl=http://blogs.technet.com/cliveeastwood/rss.xml

Stefan Stranger's Weblog - Manage your IT Infrastructure

Stefan Stranger is a Premier Field Engineer working for Microsoft. Stefan has great thoughts and views on Operations Manager and have posted many interesting artichles on how to make better use Operations Manager. A good blog if you need inspirations for your Operations Manager infrastructure.

"Stefan Stranger's Weblog - Manage your IT Infrastructure" xmlUrl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/myiti

System Center Forum

This is probably the biggest forum for Operations Manager. This is a good blog if you need help or if you just started with Operations Manager.

There are self-made MPs and articles that discusses different topics about Operations Manager.

"System Center Forum » News" xmlUrl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/systemcenterforum#

Kevin Holman’s OpsMgr Blog

Kevin Holman is a Premier Field Engineer for Microsoft and like Stefan he also blogs about bleeding edge topics on Operations Manager. If you need guidance on how to configure something in Operations Manager this is a good blog to visit.

"Kevin Holman's OpsMgr Blog" xmlUrl=http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/rss.xml

Operations Manager 2007 Download List

This is an RSS feed I have created so you can track if any new Management Packs have been released for Operations Manager 2007.

I will create a separate blog where I will describe a list of RSS feeds I have created to keep track on Operations Manager Management Pack Releases.

"Operations Manager 2007 Download List" xmlUrl=http://www.feed43.com/opsmgr2007list.xml

If you have an RSS feeder that supports OMPL you can download the complete list below:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<opml version="1.0">
  <head>
    <title>RSScrawler 2.0 - News-Feeds</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <outline text="OpsMgr Team Blog" xmlUrl="http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/rss.xml" />
    <outline text="OpsMgr++" xmlUrl="http://blogs.msdn.com/boris_yanushpolsky/rss.xml" />
    <outline text="OpsMgr, SCE And MOM Blog" xmlUrl="http://blogs.technet.com/cliveeastwood/rss.xml" />
    <outline text="Stefan Stranger&apos;s Weblog - Manage your IT Infrastructure" xmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/myiti" />
    <outline text="System Center Forum » News" xmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/systemcenterforum#" />
    <outline text="WChomak" xmlUrl="http://wchomak.spaces.live.com/feed.rss#" />
    <outline text="Kevin Holman&apos;s OpsMgr Blog" xmlUrl="http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/rss.xml" />
    <outline text="Operations Manager 2007 Download List" xmlUrl="http://www.feed43.com/opsmgr2007list.xml" />
  </body>
</opml>

If you believe that I’m messing any blogs in this list, please let me know about it.

Thanks

Anders Ravnholt

As of 25th of July Windows Server 2008 is now supported for Operstions Manager 2007.

Windows Server 2008 Hotfixes 

The follwoing patches should be applied on any windows server 2008 where Operations Manager is running. This includes Operations manager Servers, Gateways and Agents:

KB952664: The Event Log service may stop responding because of a deadlock on a Windows Server 2008-based computer

KB953290: An application may crash when it uses legacy methods to query performance counter values in Windows Vista or in Windows Server 2008

KB951327: The System Center Operations Manager 2007 console may crash in Windows Server 2008 or in Windows Vista when you open the Health Explorer window

KB951116: A memory leak occurs in performance counters that are used to monitor Windows Server 2008-based computers

Operations Manager 2007 SP1 Hotfixes

Requires fixes above are installed.

Should be installed before you installe Operations Manager 2007 SP1 Roles

KB953141: Support for running System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 and System Center Essentials 2007 Service Pack 1 on a Windows Server 2008-based computer

KB954049: Description of the hotfix rollup package for System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 and for System Center Essentials 2007 Service Pack 1

Note: Please read the hotfix guide for KB954049 (Installation notes) carfully since there are many important messages you want to  consider. eg. Installation order, Windows Server 2008 UI settings, Known issues.

Management Packs for Windows Server 2008

Windows Server Operating System Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 

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

Microsoft Windows Key Management Service MP for SC OpsMgr 2007

Terminal Services Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

What is supported?

Note: Hyper-V should be supported + 90 days of RTM of Hyper-V please see Manageability Team CSS blog for more details.