Source: Marcus Oh
The command-line Runas utility is handy for launching programs under different accounts, but it’s not convenient if you’re a heavy Explorer user. ShellRunas provides functionality similar to that of Runas to launch programs as a different user via a convenient shell context-menu entry.
ShellRunas works on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008.
Source: Boris Yanushpolsky
Again has Boris developed a new tool for OpsMgr 2007. Maybe it's time to install Visual Studio and also try to create a new tool for OpsMgr ;-)
He wrote a small utility to provide some visibility into the library of modules and information about each module. The utility shows a tree of modules. At the top of the tree are the code based modules and the child nodes are the modules that use these code based modules.
This is the first version of the utility so it might not answer all the questions that one might have. He would really appreciate feedback as to how he can make this tool more useful.
Read more on source.
Update. Boris also published another new tool Run As profile configuration helper v1.
This is the first version of the utility. I would really appreciate feedback as to how I can make this utility more useful."
Source : Microsoft Download Center
Source: Microsoft Internal
Do you want to know to which agents report to a specific Management Server? Just execute the next code in your OpsMgr Command Shell.
Function GetSpecificAgents ([string]$managementserver)
{
write-host ""
write-host "The following servers have $managementserver as their primary management server:"
FOREACH ($i in get-agent)
IF ($i.PrimaryManagementServerName -eq $managementServer)
write-host $i.name
}
GetSpecificAgents "<FQDN of management server>"
Disclaimer
This sample is not supported under any Microsoft standard support program or service. This sample is provided AS IS without warranty of any kind. Microsoft further disclaims all implied warranties including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability or of fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk arising out of the use or performance of this sample and documentation remains with you. In no event shall Microsoft, its authors, or anyone else involved in the creation, production, or delivery of this sample be liable for any damages whatsoever (including, without limitation, damages for loss of business profits, business interruption, loss of business information, or other pecuniary loss) arising out of the use of or inability to use this sample or documentation, even if Microsoft has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
The Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool is a productivity tool that helps architects and system designers to generate models of an application that contribute to minimized TCO. These models include configuration, instrumentation, health, and performance information. The Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool also assists developers to implement the required instrumentation, and create management packs for monitoring systems such as Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007.
Maybe something for the developers but now we are also creating MPs why not go into Visual Studio and start developing apps with the monitoring knowledge we have ;-)
You can download the CTP from Microsoft Download Center.
Now your in the development area anyway you should take a look at the Patterns & Practices - Design for Operations page on Codeplex.
Since I started at Microsoft as a Premier Field Engineer I went to quite some customers still using MOM 2005, so for all of you already working with OpsMgr 2007 (SP1) here some "old school" info on Computer Groups and Computer Rules in MOM 2005.
What are Computer Groups? Computer Groups allow you to group together similar computers so that you can assign rules to group or computer and not individually to each computer.
Features of Computer Groups:
Are used for:
By default, the MOM server scans the network for all managed computers every 24 hours to detect changes or modifications in the network. During the scan process, the MOM server accesses the Active Directory service for the names of the computers, read certain registry keys or values, and identifies the type of computer. Then it places the computers in the appropriate computer groups and finally includes or excludes the computer.
What are Rule Groups? Rules help you specify the events, performances, and alerts that need to be monitored on the managed computers. Rules also enable you to set the actions that are to be taken in response to the monitored events, performances, and alerts.
Features of Rule Groups:
For ease of administration, you can group several rules to form a rule group. A rule group is a named set of processing rules that allows administrators to easily associate many processing rules with a computer group. Rule groups are provided by Management Packs, but you can also create your own.
All this got me triggered by a question of a customer about the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Discovery Computer Group. Have you ever take a look at that Computer Group? No? Follow me...
If we look at the Formula for the computer group (AttributeValue(Microsoft Windows Current Version)>="5.0") this means that all computers with an Operating System of Windows server 2000 and higher are members of this computer group. Why would you create this Computer Group? This is because Computer Groups are used to group together similar computers so that you can assign rules to group or computer and not individually to each computer.
Ok, now this is clear we have to find which Rule Groups are associated to this Computer Group. And guess what? It's the SQL Server 2005 Detection and Group Membership Rule Group.
That Rule Group only contains one Rule SQL Server Detection and Group Membership, which runs every 30 mins a script to discover installed instances of SQL Server and Reporting Services and add them to Discovered Groups. But why is this rule running on all Windows server 2000 and higher computers and not only running on computers running SQL, you might ask? This is due the fact that the MP could never detect SQL on 64 bit machines and you used to have to do work rounds by manually adding the server to computer groups.
Have fun learn MOM and OpsMgr!
Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 has Released-to-Manufacturing (RTM), and is now available for download!
Here you can download the upgrade.
Source: Aquilaweb
Did you know you could use Windows Authorization Manager (azman.exe) to view the user roles and how they are scoped in OpsMgr?
Source: NEXUS SC: The System Center Team Blog
Paul Ross announced that Service Manager will now not be released until the first half of 2010, with a beta refresh available towards the end of 2008.
Mean reasons of this delay are the requirements that came as feedback from the first beta. The feedback was summarized as:
To meet these requirements they decided to replace specific components of the Service Manager infrastructure.
For more info on the delay go to weblog and read the FAQ that explains the main points regarding the delay.
Source: Innovativ
INOVATIV, a Dutch based System Center solutions provider, has just launched their Scheduled Tasks management pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007. Completely free and without any restrictions you can download this native management pack, which is compatible with XP, Vista, W2003 and even W2008. The scheduled tasks management pack introduces two new classes in your System Center Operations Manager 2007 environment:
It provides the classes as a child to the Windows Computer class and marks it as "public", for use in a Distributed Application. Scheduled Tasks are monitored every 60 seconds for three potential problems:
Go download it here.
Source: Techlog
Savision B.V. announced its participation in Microsoft's System Center Alliance. Savision’s participation builds upon its strong relationship with the System Center Product Group and creates new opportunities to closely collaborate with other ISV partners. Savision’s inclusion in the System Center Alliance program highlights the substantial value that Live Maps for Operations Manager 2007 provides to customers.
The Microsoft System Center Alliance was launched in November 2007 and represents Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to open platforms and partner developed solutions. The purpose of the program is to provide a community to help partners more easily collaborate on the creation of solutions for System Center, as well as deliver a vehicle for providing information about those solutions to our mutual customers.
Read more on Savision's website.
Source: Secure Vantage Team Blog
Secure Vantage released a Windows Security Auditing Reference List that provides content on more than 1300 Windows security events and settings.
For System Center customers this is an excellent reference of the base Windows security events and settings managed via Operations Manager, ACS, Configuration Manager and the Secure Vantage Technologies Compliance Security Suite. Stay tuned as we add more content and scope to the list in 2008.
Check it out.
Source: Microsoft Download Center
As IT infrastructures grow in complexity, IT administrators continue to search for solutions that will help them effectively monitor and maintain these environments. But it is not enough to just monitor servers and applications. To achieve the most effective, efficient operations, IT departments need a holistic view of the entire infrastructure including the network. The integration of EMC Smarts and Microsoft® System Center Operations Manager 2007 delivers the capabilities IT departments need to enable network-aware service management. By integrating the network management and automated root-cause analysis information from EMC Smarts into System Center Operations Manager 2007, EMC and Microsoft have created a unique solution that addresses the need for network-aware, end-to-end service management.
Download white paper here.
Yesterday I've been busy finding out which Performance Thresholds are used for OpsMgr performance monitoring. The reason why, was because we got a Performance class training during my internal Microsoft training. Learned quite some new interesting stuff about Performance monitor and the Reliability and Performance Monitor from Vista.
If I've some more time I'll blog about the Performance Rules used by OpsMgr. But here is what I've found during the creation of a Performance Rule. There is German text in some of the screens. "Weniger Daten werden in der Datenbank"
Strange because I'm not using any German client or something else. Am I the only one?
Boris has released a new version of his already famous MPViewer. It's version 1.3.
Check out his website for more info.
Maybe I should try to contact Boris when I'm here during my internal Microsoft Services training so I can ask if he can implement an auto update feature in his MPViewer ;-)
Yesterday I arrived for my three weeks internal Microsoft Services Training in Redmond and today I still had some time to spent and so I emailed Justin Incarnato to ask if I could meet some of the OpsMgr team members. Luckily he had some time and together with my German Premier Field Engineer colleague Uwe Stuertz we visited the Microsoft Campus where the OpsMgr team is working.
Now I could finally see the faces of Justin Incarnato, Dhananjay Mahajan, Marius Sutara and many others who I only "speak" via email of conf calls. How cool is it to meet your heroes?
From left to right (Uwe, Justin and me ;-)
So for you MVP guys. This is the room of Justin where the MVP conf calls take place. It's a small room...
Have you ever wanted to send e-mail notifications with the high importance flag set?
It's possible but you have to start your favorite XML editor ;-)
Modifying Microsoft.SystemCenter.Notifications.Internal MP XML to Support Email Priority/Importance
Steps:
Once the new management pack is active, recipients should see subsequent email messages from subscriptions that use the modified write action modules display the new priority attribute.
You can also support priority levels for non-MS clients using the X-Priority header with a numeric value, e.g. <Headers><Header><Name>X-Priority</Name><Value>5</Value></Header></Headers>.
This is tested this in our lab using the SP1 RC and RTM builds of SCOM 2007. The mail clients used for testing were Outlook 2003 and Outlook Express 6.
Source: Notes on System Center Operations Manager
"As described in this KB article, OpsMgr2007 is using ETW/WPP tracing which was not very customer consumable. The conversion to readable text was required with the use of TMF files which did not ship with RTM version of the product. So decision was made and things changed with SP1 release (and such were also present with SP1 RC)."
Source: Bernardo Sanchez Blog
In this video you get a quick overview of how Xian Network Manager Io works with System Center Operations Manager 2007. Focus will be on: - Adding devices / servers - Adding monitoring rules - performance data and alerts in OpsMgr 2007 - Xian Io Reports within OpsMgr 2007
You can download the video here.
Source: Kevin Holman's OpsMgr Blog
"One step it seems people often overlooks when upgrading to OpsMgr 2007 RC1 SP1 - is to update their management packs.
The management packs that ship with the product are RTM version (6.0.5000.0)
Often, users will have updated many of their Management Packs to the latest version available on the web.... from the catalog:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/scp/catalog.aspx
However.... a step often overlooked when upgrading to the RC1-SP1 version of OpsMgr - is that you should update your MPs to the SP1 version. These are included in the SP1 media in the \ManagementPacks directory. The correct version is 6.0.6246.0 for RC1-SP1 MP's."
Read more at source.
Source: SCUG.nl Forum
One of our members of the SCUG.nl Forum found a solution for an issue when converting the MOM 2005 MP for Symantec Backup Exec 11d to OpsMgr 2007 MP.
During the import of the converted MP you see the next message "The client has been disconnected from the server. Please call ManagementGroup.Reconnect() to reestablish the connection. The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state."
If you look in the eventlog you see that the time notation is not correct. If you remove the next lines from the xml:
<TimeGenerated> <Range> <After>02/22/06 20:10:49</After> <Before></Before> </Range> </TimeGenerated>
It should work.
Thanks to Cor.
TechNet Magazine spend a great deal of time introducing you to what System Center can do for you. Whether it's managing your virtual machine environments to keep abreast of needs and performance, or using new Asset Inventory Service from Microsoft to keep an eye on the software you deploy inside your organization, System Center has you covered.
Check it out!
Today I stumbled on a great tool for documenting your database SqlSpec 3.7 from Elsasoft.
SqlSpec will generate easy-to-read database documentation for any of the following platforms:
You can read more about the many features of SqlSpec here.
But we as System Center specialists are probably mostly interested in our SQL Server 2005 OperationsManager, OperationsManagerDW and ReportServer databases;-)
So I connected SqlSpec to my OperationsManager database and let it run (for some time).
And when it's finished you can view you the complete OperationsManager database in a Compiled HTML file or in a Webbrowser. You even have a Dependency Graph for for instance the Alert Table. How cool is that!
If I find more interesting info with this tool about the OperationsManager databases I'll let you know.
Below is a link to a targeting poster that we have created to help select the proper targets when creating rules and monitors. The poster illustrates some of the most common scenarios and provides best practices on how to properly target rules and monitors.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/a/7/fa73e146-ab8a-4002-9311-bfe69a570d28/BestPractices_Rule_Monitor_REV_110607.pdf
Source: Operations Manager Product Team Blog
"Below is the complete list of all the command line parameters for OpsMgr 2007 server roles including Audit Collection. And the command line parameters for upgrading to Service Pack 1 (SP1) Release Candidate (RC)
Agent – (MOMAgent.msi) msiexec.exe /i \\path\Directory\MOMAgent.msi /qn /l*v \logs\MOMAgent_install.log USE_SETTINGS_FROM_AD=0 MANAGEMENT_GROUP=<MG_Name> MANAGEMENT_SERVER_DNS=<MSDNSName> ACTIONS_USE_COMPUTER_ACCOUNT=0 ACTIONSUSER=<AccountUser> ACTIONSDOMAIN=<AccountDomain> ACTIONSPASSWORD=<AccountPassword>"
Go for the complete list to source.