Dutch:
Summer Night
Op 24 juli 2009 organiseert de System Center User Group nederland de jaarlijkse System Center ‘Summer Night’. We starten de avond om 17.00 uur met pizza en vangen om 17.30 uur aan met het programma:
17.30 uur – 17.45 uur: SCUG NL, stand van zaken
17.45 uur – 18.45 uur: Windows 7 deployment met SCCM 2007
18.45 uur – 19.45 uur: DPM en Cloud Recovery
19.45 uur – 20.00 uur: Break
20.00 uur – 21.00 uur: SCOM 2007 R2, what’s new
21.00 uur – 22.00 uur: Borrel en afsluiting
Je kunt je kosteloos inschrijven door een email te sturen aan info@scug.nl met je naam en contactgegevens. De locatie is De Witte Bergen in Eemnes. Hier is een routebeschrijving te vinden: http://www.hoteldewittebergen.nl/route.aspx
Hopelijk tot de 24e,
Source: OpsManJam
This time in “Tech Talk”: “Managing noise with your management pack. A frequent complaint heard regarding management packs is that once it is deployed in an environment, it is too noisy! In this article, we cover all aspects of “noise” – what noise is, some common sources of noise, and how to make sure that your management pack is not noisy.”
Read more here.
Source: MOMTeam
Maybe you have missed the blog post from Chris Fox about The Partner Pack Newsletter on the MOMTeam blog.
What is The Partner Pack?
The Partner Pack is a bi-weekly newsletter that focuses on topical subjects related to Management Pack best practices.
Started by the System Center Operations Manager team at Microsoft, this newsletter has been a way of building awareness of and interest in management packs across many teams at Microsoft. It is part of a much larger effort across the company to bring focus to the concepts of manageability and management packs. What initially started out as a relatively small operation has rapidly grown into a wealth of knowledge available company-wide about the topic of MP authoring through technical guidance, best practices, one-on-one consulting, training sessions, and more.
As measures of the momentum that this program is gaining, we are excited to take what we have learned with internal MP development, and engage with our partner teams with the mission of growing our MP community as a whole to develop management packs that are beneficial for customers. This newsletter provides a glimpse into the world of management packs by providing in-depth technical content, happenings and highlights in the MP world, and more!
Take a look at the OpsManJam website for the latest Partner Pack Newsletters.
Source: Gerben’s Blog On Virtualization
“Veeam released a new version of it’s plug-in (Management Pack [StS]) for Operations Manager monitoring products from HP or Microsoft. The plug-in (Management Pack [StS]) is a significant add-on to the monitoring products in order to keep in touch with what happens in your virtual environment within a single monitoring solution.
What’s new in version 5:
Veeam released a short video at http://www.veeam.com/go/nworks5/ and offers a free trial for it’s new management pack.
When would this be interesting for your organization?
Read more at source.
Today I am at a customer who has installed the OpsMgr 2007 R2 Evaluation version and wanted to know when the evaluation periods ends. I thought the easiest way would be look at the install date of the RMS and add 180 days.
So I created a PowerShell script to do that for me.
$InstallDate = get-managementserver | where {$_.IsRootManagementServer -eq "True"} | select InstallTime Write-host "RMS is installed on: " $InstallDate.InstallTime $InstallDate2 = $InstallDate.InstallTime Write-host "OpsMgr Eval ends on: " $InstallDate2.AddDays(180)
Just copy the above lines and run them from the OpsMgr Command Shell.
Last week I was helping a customer with some OpsMgr certificate issues with their monitoring Agents in a non-trusted domain. More info on Monitoring an Agent in a non-trusted domain can be found here: http://blogs.technet.com/smsandmom/archive/2008/09/10/opsmgr-2007-monitoring-an-agent-in-a-non-trusted-domain.aspx
These were the events in the OperationsManager Eventlog:
Event Type: Warning Event Source: OpsMgr Connector Event Category: None Event ID: 20067 Date: 6/17/2009 Time: 3:33:31 PM User: N/A Computer: computername Description: A device at IP 192.168.1.1:5723 attempted to connect but the certificate presented by the device was invalid. The connection from the device has been rejected. The failure code on the certificate was 0x800B010A (A certificate chain could not be built to a trusted root authority.).
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Event Type: Warning Event Source: OpsMgr Connector Event Category: None Event ID: 21002 Date: 6/17/2009 Time: 3:33:31 PM User: N/A Computer: computername Description: The OpsMgr Connector could not accept a connection from 192.168.1.1:5723 because mutual authentication failed.
Event Type: Error Event Source: OpsMgr Connector Event Category: None Event ID: 20070 Date: 6/17/2009 Time: 3:33:31 PM User: N/A Computer: computername Description: The OpsMgr Connector connected to MS01.support.local, but the connection was closed immediately after authentication occurred. The most likely cause of this error is that the agent is not authorized to communicate with the server, or the server has not received configuration. Check the event log on the server for the presence of 20000 events, indicating that agents which are not approved are attempting to connect.
Event Type: Error Event Source: OpsMgr Connector Event Category: None Event ID: 21016 Date: 6/17/2009 Time: 3:33:33 PM User: N/A Computer: computername Description: OpsMgr was unable to set up a communications channel to MS01.support.local and there are no failover hosts. Communication will resume when MS01.support.local is available and communication from this computer is allowed.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp
So it was clear the agent could not communicate with the Management Server in the un-trusted domain using certificates. So we needed to check if the certificates were ok. And in this case it turned out that Certutil was our friend ;-). Certutil.exe is a command-line program that is installed as part of Certificate Services in the Windows Server 2003 family (and higher). Here are the steps we took to verify that there was certificate issue and how we solved it.
Issue: Agent needing a certificate to communicate with Management Server are generating “A certificate chain could not be built to a trusted root authority” event ids (20067, 20070, 21016) errors in the Operations Manager eventlog.
Reason: Wrong proxy settings, so the (Intermediate) Root CA could not be contacted.
See next line in output from certutil -urlfetch -verify <cert.cer> tool:
Failed "AIA" Time: 0 Error retrieving URL: The server name or address could not be resolved 0x80072ee7 (WIN32: 12007) http://cert.domain.local/aia/SUPPORT.WEB%20ROOT%20CA.crt
Complete output from certutil see attachment certutil_output.txt
Steps to solve issue:
Source: Microsoft Technet
“Memory is often the source of performance problems, and you should always rule out memory problems before examining other areas of the system. Systems use both physical and virtual memory. To rule out memory problems with a system, you should configure application performance, memory usage, and data throughput settings, and then monitor the server’s memory usage to check for problems. Application performance and memory usage settings determine how system resources are allocated. In most cases you want to give the operating system and background applications the lion’s share of resources. This is especially true for Active Directory, file, print, and network and communications servers. On the other hand, for application, database, and streaming media servers, you’ll want to give the programs the server is running the most resources.
Here’s an overview of counters that you’ll want to track to uncover memory, caching, and virtual memory (paging) bottlenecks.”
Read more on source.
Source: Word and Software (Jeanie Decker)
Jeanie Decker want you to submit questions for the OpsMgr Operator’s Manual. Please help her!
“There are two ways to approach content on using the Operations console and Web console for Operations Manager:
I've decided to do it both ways, in a guide that I'm putting together for new Ops Mgr operators. Here are a few questions for #2 that I harvested from an email discussion:
What other questions might an operator want to answer in the console? Submit your suggestions to jdecker AT microsoft DOT com!”
Source: System Center Virtual Machine Manager
Alan Goodman: “Since the introduction of this feature we have gotten several questions/comments about integrating this new VMM feature with maintenance mode in System Center Operations Manager. Well check out the attached MP. This MP will monitor the VMM server and track when hosts are put into maintenance mode and then call into Operations Manager and put the respective host object into maintenance mode and vice versa, watch for hosts being removed from maintenance mode in VMM and then taking the respective host object in OpsMgr out of maintenance mode.”
For those of you familiar with management packs, you can see with a pretty simple and straight forward MP you can easily tie together the states of your hosts. While the MP has not been extensively tested it should give you a good idea on how to accomplish the task at hand.
Installation Note: This management pack is intended for use with Operations Manager 2007 or Operations Manager 2007 R2 with Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, and requires at least the beta version or later or the VMM 2008 R2 management pack.
Read more and get MP from source.
Sorry for not posting any new OpsMgr posts lately, but I’m just too busy right now. Hopefully I’ve some more time in the future, because I’ve quite some things to blog about. But today I was creating a Custom OpsMgr Report in Microsoft Visual Studio for a customer and needed to have some Default Parameters for this Report.
This Report has only two parameters Report Year and Report Month, because this Report only needs to show data for a whole month. So if you want some Default Year and Month values for your Report Parameters you need to do this in Visual Studio:
You could use those Report Year and Month Parameters in your SQL query like this example:
Off course in your Report query you would not declare the @ReportYear and @ReportMonth variables but use the (Default) Parameter values ;-)
The result of using Default Parameters in a Report is 2009 as ReportYear Parameter and 5 as ReportMonth Parameter (I changed it manually to 6 because in May I did not any data ;-))
Source: Notes on System Center Operations Manager
I’ve updated my OpsMgr toolbox collection with a new tool from Marius Sutara called RuntimeHealthExplorer. This tool helps someone with investigation of health state issues. This is what Marius tells about this new OpsMgr tool.
“Did you ever wonder what is the state of the instance as known to the runtime (health service) monitoring it? Did you believe that some state changes are unaccounted for? Did you see discrepancy in Health Explorer?
I believe many of you may answer yes to one of these questions.
Right now, there really is not a good guidance on how to troubleshoot state change problems, but since OpsMgr 2007 SP1 release, there was a way to at least display states of the monitors targeting the instance as recorded by runtime during state calculation. This led me to creation of the tool returning those states from runtime. It also provides visual comparison against “real” Health Explorer (states are returned from Ops DB) while integrated with OpsMgr console thru console task. This task targets instance of “HealthService” managed entity type. Tool uses Health Explorer like view of monitors for each active instance monitored by specific runtime. Following is a snapshot of the tool executed against my Root Management Server. Please observe that I created view listing all health service instances as well as console task associated with this type and accessible thru “Actions” pane.”
Please read disclaimer before using.
Source: @dehaaspeter
Microsoft has launched a new website Interoperability @ Microsoft.
The Interoperability Bridges and Labs Center is dedicated to technical collaborative work between Microsoft, customers, partners and open sources communities to improve interoperability between Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies.
The Center is run by the Microsoft Interoperability Strategy Group working with many other teams at Microsoft, with customers input and with the community at large to build technical bridges, labs and solutions to improve interoperability in mixed IT environments.
In this site, you will find a live directory of these technical and freely downloadable interoperability Bridges with related content such as demos, technical articles, helpful best practices from the projects leads and sharing technical guidance. You will also find Labs, which contain technical guidance explaining how to best achieve interoperability in specific product scenarios.
The vast majority of the projects are run as Open Source projects with third party and community members and released under a broad BSD license, or other licenses such as MS-PL or Apache, so that our customers, partners and the community can use them in many open and broad reaching scenarios.
Jeanie Decker Vlad Jonaovic have put together a mp template and guide for creating MP guides. Use this information to develop mp guides like Microsoft does.
Go to the OpsManJam website to download this guide.
Did you know that in PowerShell V2 using a Web service is very easy with the new Cmdlet New-WebServiceProxy?
This would become very handy if the ManagementPackCatalogWebservice had a WSDL ;-)
Then we could do some very cool stuff with the ManagementPack Catalog Webservice…
Now we have to wait if there will be a WSDL implemented. Let’s hope..
For more info on Using PowerShell to get info from the ManagementPack Catalog go to Daniele Muscetta’s weblog. He’s the OpsMgr PowerShell guru ;-)
Source: The Microsoft MVP Award Program Blog
Visio MVP David Parker recently developed visViewer as a shareware program to encourage the use of the Visio document format with non-Visio users.
visViewer is free for personal, non-commercial use. If you should like the product, then we invite you to donate just $19 / copy. This will ensure that the product is developed further, and encourage us to provide more tools to you.
The following prerequisites are required:
If you do not have Microsoft Outlook 2007, then you will need these:
Source: Gold Coast
If you are like me and want to be programmer there is a great free .NET / C# Tutorial On-Demand! from Pluralsight.
This tutorial is aimed at programmers who are already familiar with an object oriented language like Java or even C++. It is designed to take your existing knowledge and transfer that to the .NET Framework, teaching both C# syntax, .NET Framework, and Visual Studio features in a fast-paced introduction to the Microsoft .NET development platform
They even show how to use Red Gate's Reflector. Check those tutorials if you want to know more about .NET /C# programming!
Bob Kelly (Picture by Andre Pronk)
At the 10th annual Microsoft Management Summit this week in Las Vegas, Bob Kelly (Corporate Vice President, Server & Tools Business) outlined an infrastructure strategy to help IT customers understand their options as they incorporate “the cloud” into Microsoft’s future plans.
Two Cloud models
Bob talked about the Cloud, and Microsoft sees two models: The Public and a Private Cloud. According to Bob, Microsoft will be one of the few companies who delivers the Public Cloud with their Windows Azure platform.
And secondly there is the Private Cloud which you should see as your internal Data Center. Think about Virtualization to conceptionalize what this means. Microsoft invests across their portfolio, everything from Windows, Forefront, System Center across optimizing your infrastructure and application platform, SQL, Biztalk, dotNet and SharePoint so they all have consistent and coherent API’s in the Private Cloud to the Public Cloud. Windows Azure is that implementation of that Microsoft stack in the Public Cloud. Microsoft took all those investments made in the On-Premise world and have taken those to the Public Cloud. And what they have learned in the Public Cloud and bring that to the Private Cloud. That will give Microsoft a unique position, in the way that there are very view companies that have the capacity and toolset to offer a platform that is deep and raw from Private Cloud to Public Cloud. Microsoft will extend their investments, from the learning's they have in the Public Site to what they are doing on the Private site to ensure they have a platform that spans those two worlds and allows you to take advantages of thinks like AD, Security Infrastructure and Microsoft Management Infrastructure across both of that Public and Private Cloud build on Windows Server and System Center.
“Our goal is to give businesses the choice of running applications on-site, in the cloud or using a combination of the two,” says Kelly. “This hybrid model gives customers the best of both worlds — the scale and convenience of a public cloud and the control and reliability of on-premises software — and lets them move fluidly between the two based on their needs. It provides customers an on-ramp from their current IT environment to the cloud.” [Soundbite here 4:27 mins)
Announcements:
Building on its cloud computing strategy, Microsoft made several announcements yesterday:
More announcements can be found on System Center Central. Keynotes will be also be available for live and on-demand viewing here
Demo’s
During the keynote the next products where used to show how they support Microsoft’s Cloud strategy:
Source: Nexus SC
Yesterday there was a new announcement at MMS 2009. A new program for System Center Influencers. This is a new community program that will give influencers—user group leads, MVPs, popular bloggers, and others recognized as influential in the community around System Center—the technical training content, people connections, and general guidance they need to enhance their credibility and impact in the community.
Key Member Benefits
This invitation-only program has its online home on Microsoft Connect, and offers or links to several different tools intended to support influencer needs. As this is very much a work in progress that is just getting off the ground, we are asking participants to help us develop the program and shape it in ways that are most relevant to the community.
Who’s Eligible
This program is intended for influencers of all kinds, or simply those who are looking for tools to become more influential in their communities. Our intention is not to supplant any existing influencer programs, such as the MVP program, but merely to complement and extend them, focusing specifically on the needs of the System Center (and soon: Virtualization) community.
How to Find Out More
If you are interested in this program, or have any questions about our tools, resources, or mission, please contact us at scnetsup@microsoft.com.
Today was the first unofficial day of MMS 2009 in Las Vegas and here are some announcements:
Tomorrow is the first official day which starts with a keynote so there will more announcements tomorrow.
Source: MMS 2009 organization
I just got an email from the MMS 2009 organization that’s possible to become an MMS 2009 “Virtual Attendee”.
Maybe a could idea if your manager didn’t allow you to go to MMS 2009 this year.
Ok, it’s still costs you (or your manager) $350, but that’s the same as 25 days internet in the Planet Hollywood hotel in Las Vegas ;-)
“If you are unable to attend MMS 2009 in person this week, a new “MMS 2009 Online” registration option has been created which provides access to the valuable session content being presented at this year’s MMS 2009 event - right from your desktop.
MMS 2009 Online - Features “MMS 2009 Online” is an opportunity to access the MMS 2009 CommNet both during and after the event, just like attendees who are present at the event. This option provides access to key content including:
· Live Webcast of the MMS 2009 Keynotes*
· Video Recordings of Breakout session topics**
· Downloadable PowerPoint slide decks from the Breakout sessions
· Hands-on Lab Manuals
· Sample files shared by Speakers
· Access to the MessagePoint system for online discussions with other attendees
· Copy of the MMS 2009 Post-show DVD set mailed shortly after the event (a $275 value)
· Copy of the MMS 2009 Hands-on Lab Walkthrough DVD mailed after the event (a $125 value)
· Access to all MMS 2009 Online content for 3 months after the event closes
Registration as an “MMS 2009 Online” Attendee costs $350 and provides online access to over 140 breakout topics as recordings and PowerPoint slide decks as well as 76 Hands-on Lab manuals. The Post-show DVD set provides indexed recordings of all available Breakouts plus bonus materials and supplementary files from session speakers and Event Sponsors. The Hands-on Lab Walkthrough DVD provides video recordings of the most popular lab topics offered at the event with audio commentary providing step-by-step explanations of the key procedures covered.
*Note that the live webcasts of the MMS 2009 keynotes are not restricted to registered “MMS 2009 Online” Attendees. Access to all other content is restricted to in-person and on-line attendees up to 3 months post-event.
**Breakout session recordings for most topics will be posted within 24 hours of the live session.
Full Session Details Full details of the sessions being offered at MMS 2009 this week are provided on the event site Sessions Page and in a downloadable Session Details PDF.
“MMS 2009 Online” Registration The MMS 2009 Online registration package is available for only $350. If you would like to register as an attendee of “MMS 2009 Online” click on the following link:
· "MMS 2009 Online" Attendee Registration Site
The username and password you create during registration will give you immediate access to all the online content available to attendees at the event – and without leaving your desk!
Don’t miss out on the top IT Management event of 2009. Register now! www.mms-2009.com
Jonathan Almquist started a blog post about Operations Manager 2007 SQL Queries.
“I’m starting a new post here, similar to my Command Shell reference. This will include some useful SQL queries that I happen to need and direct my customers to on a daily basis. If you don’t see something here, check Kevin Holman’s blog. He’s already got a library of useful queries posted, in which I will not duplicate here.
I will continue to update this table periodically. If you subscribe to my blog, you will receive each new example as I post it.”
I also have some SQL queries I used at customers I want to share. Would be nice if we had some kind of Wiki where we could post all our OpsMgr SQL queries though ;-)
% Logical Disk Free Space on Windows Server 2003
Total Number of Servers per OS
Source: System Center Operations Manager blog
The Visio Add-in for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 combines the strengths of two applications widely used in enterprise IT to simplify the creation of customized graphical dashboards showing the health of an environment. Examples of such diagrams include showing objects by geography overlaid on a map, by location in a datacenter or building, by role in a logical view of an application or by topology for complex distributed applications such as Exchange or Active Directory.
The Visio Add-in has the following features:
Download the Visio add-in at https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?SiteID=446&DownloadID=17995. (To get access to this release, apply to participate in the "Operations Manager Public Beta" at https://connect.microsoft.com/SelfNomination.aspx?ProgramID=2249&pageType=1&SiteID=446.)
This looks quite like the solution Savision is offering with their Savision Live Maps.
There are new downloads available for OpsMgr 2007 R2 on Connect.
Go to Connect and download the new stuff.
MMS 2009 is very close now and I’m getting ready to leave on Sunday for Las Vegas. More and more people are getting exited including me for this great event to learn about the latest IT Management Solutions from Microsoft.
As you may know there is something new that’s called Twitter. If you still not know what Twitter is you are working too much ;-)
Ok, I’ll explain once more. Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People write short updates, often called "tweets" of 140 characters or fewer. These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.
Quite some people in working in IT Management are already using Twitter and some of them will also go to MMS 2009. To name some:
I also created a Twibe for MMS09.
What is a Twibe? A Twibe is a group of Twitter users interested in a common topic who would like to be able to communicate with each other. On each twibe's page, there is a list of twibe members. There is also a tweet stream that lists tweets from Twibe members which contain key word tags. Tags are set by the Twibe founder and are listed just above the tweet stream.
So if you are going to MMS 2009 join the Twibe and use the hashtag #mms209 for all tweets about MMS 2009.
Hope to see you all at MMS 2009 in Las Vegas.