ddillon's blog

MOM v3 (SCOM 2007) beta 2 is available for public download

ddillon — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 02:14:00 GMT

At MMS in April, we announced that the next version of MOM will be called System Center Operations Manager 2007.

One of the coolest things about this product is that it brings proactive monitoring to a whole new level - monitoring a solution as opposed to a server is now possible. This means you (for example) monitor an end to end messaging solution rather than a set of Exchange servers - basically a business-centric view on health as opposed to an IT-centric one. Inbuilt templates are provided for common solutions, and you can build your own for inhouse applications using Visual Studio - the Dynamic Systems Initiative is really coming to life with this wave of products.

You can download the beta and read more information from http://www.microsoft.com/mom/evaluation/beta/opsmgroverview.mspx. Have a play - this is good stuff, and it will RTM reasonably soon so it's not some far distant promise :-)

MOM Management Pack for DFS Replication

ddillon — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 13:31:00 GMT

If you're using the DFS Replication feature of Windows 2003 R2 then you will want to check out the newly released MOM MP for DFSR.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=651E7C4A-484B-4AA2-9FBF-F3538075B9E8&displaylang=en

NB: this is not a replacement for the FRS MP (based on Ultrasound) which you should use to monitor sysvol replication - the two components are totally separate features.

Updated SQL Management Pack is released to the web

ddillon — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 01:37:00 GMT

This update provides improved support for SQL running on x64 platforms, enhancements to the MP scripts and product knowledge, some bug fixes, and support for SQL 2005 SP1 and database mirroring.

You can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79F151C7-4D98-4C2B-BF72-EC2B4AE69191&displaylang=en

World Cup tracker download

ddillon — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 15:36:00 GMT

Keep track of schedules, results, tables, etc - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=df6a6e6e-21af-4786-ad1d-a38e8bfda82f&displaylang=en

Microsoft consulting positions in Ireland

ddillon — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 19:18:00 GMT

Our team is looking for two more members. If you have deep collaborative solutions or infrastructure skills and good consultancy experience and are interested in working for Microsoft in Ireland then check out the 'consulting' section of our careers page at http://members.microsoft.com/careers/international/default.asp?lang=EN&loc=IRE

Edit: relocation is included for the right candidates http://www.microsoft.com/ireland/careers/benefits/default.mspx

Second edit: we're now looking for application development consultants too - follow the first link for all the details

Handy tools

ddillon — Thu, 18 May 2006 17:37:00 GMT

I’ve came across a couple of handy tools recently that I didn’t know about before.

The first one is a free download utility that lets you view the output of MBSA as a Visio diagram (it colour codes servers based on security compliance, and lets you see the compliance details per server as you hover over its icon):

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/tools/mbsavisio.mspx

The second one adds an entry to the right-click menu in the AD users & computers MMC. When you right click on a computer and select remote control, it starts a terminal services session onto the box automatically. You need to copy the .exe to the path on your PC. Whilst it doesn’t sound like anything earth-shattering, it definitely saves time.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0A91D2E7-7594-4ABB-8239-7A7ECA6A6CB1&displaylang=en

I guess the third tool is Word 2007’s blogging feature (which I’m using for this post). No more losing what I’ve typed because of accidentally closing a browser window or doing start | run | <some website address>

MOM & SQL 2005

ddillon — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 07:20:00 GMT

Since the release of SQL 2005, many people have been asking about the official Microsoft support statement regarding using SQL 2005 to host the MOM database. This info is now available at the KB article 917615: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=917615

HP Storageworks Management Pack for MOM now available

ddillon — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 00:19:00 GMT

Download it from here

Scripting MOM

ddillon — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 10:13:00 GMT

The first in a four part series of articles describing how to exploit the use of scripts with MOM is now up on the Technet website.

The purpose of the series is to compare scripts in MOM to those written for Windows Script Host (WSH) so administrators can leverage the large amount of knowledge and materials already invested on scripts for Windows Script Host. While background information and references to supporting documentation will be provided as appropriate, the series does assume a working knowledge of MOM 2005 and basic script-writing using Windows Script Host.

See http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/mom/mom1.mspx for more information.

Extending MOM into non-Microsoft environments

ddillon — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 09:55:00 GMT

My colleague Dave recently presented a session on this topic using a Technet Flash article I wrote as guidance. He's had customer feedback that some people didn't get emailed the article, so I've posted a copy of it below.

A common misconception many people have about MOM 2005 is that it will only monitor Microsoft environments. This is not the case – and the good news is that it is really easy to configure MOM to monitor systems such as routers, firewalls, Unix servers plus any application running on a Windows server. Depending on your requirements, how much effort you want to invest, and your budget there are a number of approaches that can be taken. In this article, I give an overview of some of these approaches – this is based on a presentation I gave at the NIMTUG IT Pro inaugural event, you can download the slides from

http://nimtug.org/files/default.aspx.

A very simple method of being notified if a system is unavailable is to use some VBScript which pings the monitored device. If the ping times out, a MOM event is created. This script can be repetitively scheduled (e.g. to run once a minute) using a MOM timed event rule. Finally create a MOM alert rule to raise an alert on the MOM console (and optionally email an operator) should the MOM event be found. There are plenty of examples of this technique on the web, http://www.myitforum.com/articles/2/view.asp?id=8615 being one. This approach is useful in scenarios where you do not required detailed information on the health of a device, but do need to be made aware if it is not accessible on the network – such as an upstream router.

If you have devices that run a syslog service (which means pretty much all flavours of Unix as a minimum) then getting syslog information into MOM is easy. Configure the syslog daemon to forward messages to your MOM server (e.g. to forward all messages, add the line *.*@[IP Address of MOM server] to the syslog.conf file and restart the syslog process). Then create a new provider within MOM and select the provider type as syslog. Finally, create alert rules within MOM, using the syslog provider to raise alerts based on text within the syslog data being sent.

Another option is to use SNMP. By installing SNMP & the SNMP WMI Provider on your MOM server (do this by going into add/remove programs, then select add/remove Windows components) you have the capability to receive SNMP traps from other devices. Configure the appropriate SNMP community and trap settings on the MOM server and the SNMP clients, then create a new MOM WMI provider using the query “select * from from snmpnotification” and set the provider to use the root\snmp\localhost namespace. Once you have that in place, create alert rules to raise alerts based on text within the SNMP traps received. I’ve used this technique recently to get alerts when a datacentre UPS has reached a threshold of 20% battery life remaining – once the SNMP data flows into MOM, it is easy to review the text and build more complex rules and alerts based on specific strings within the data.

If you want to use MOM to monitor the health of an application running on a Windows server, a good approach is to create some rules which look for specific events in the eventlog. As an example, a backup application will generally log (as a minimum) if a backup has succeeded or failed. By looking at the event log and familiarising yourself with the information raised by the application, you can create an alert rule to look for events based on event ID, source, and description and then create appropriate responses if a match is found. A good walkthrough of how to do this is provided by Commvault for their QiNetix product - http://www.commvault.com/mk/get/QINETIX_INT_MOM - however the same rationale can be applied to any application which writes to the Windows event log. This approach can be augmented by monitoring the status of the application’s service. Each time the status of a service changes, MOM is notified. Using this information, you can build an alert to tell you if a specific service has been started, stopped, or had its startup type changed. More information on how to do this is available at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/mom/mom2005/Library/837041c6-fc3c-4f8b-a425-e2fde78b142b.mspx. It’s also worthwhile checking out the Management Pack Wizard, available within the MOM Resource Kit (http://www.microsoft.com/mom/downloads/2005/reskit/default.mspx) which can be used to automate the creation of a lot of these types of rules.

If you need more monitoring capability than the above techniques provide, or if you need the benefit of inbuilt rules and product knowledge, then check out the offerings provided by our partners in this space. The management pack catalog (http://www.microsoft.com/management/mma/catalog.aspx) is an up to date list of all the available management packs for MOM. A lot of partners have developed management packs, agents and reports for a wide range of devices and applications, ranging from mainframes to firewalls to SANs and much more. Installing these packs is generally as simple as installing a Microsoft management pack, meaning you are up and running in minutes.

Exchange Management Pack and domain password policy

ddillon — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 23:09:00 GMT

I've been working with a customer on a MOM deployment, and this week we have rolled out the MOM 2005 Exchange management pack. Once the MP is installed on the MOM server, the next step is to run the MP configuration wizard, which installs test mailboxes and enables message tracking so that MOM can determine if mail flow between databases is not optimal.

After a few minutes we got alerts saying that rules were failing due to MAPI logon failures. On inspection, the user accounts for the test mailboxes were in the AD and disabled (as expected), but the mailboxes were not visible in Exchange system manager.

To begin troubleshooting, we tried to enable the AD accounts and got an error saying "the account cannot be enabled because its password does not match the complexity requirements". Sure enough, the customer's domain policy specified that complex passwords were required. Once we changed the passwords on the accounts to strong ones, the mailboxes were automatically created and the MAPI rules in the management pack worked as expected.

So basically if you are deploying the Exchange management pack in a domain where complex passwords are required, manually reset the passwords on the test accounts to something which matches the domain security policy settings. It is self-explanatory in hindsight I suppose, which is why they say hindsight is a wonderful thing :-)

MOM 2005 Resource Kit Update

ddillon — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 22:15:00 GMT

The latest Version of the MOM 2005 Resource Kit is now available for download. This resource kit has been updated to support MOM 2005 SP1 and a number of new tools have been added:

- Alert to RSS Utility – Enable subscriptions to alert information via RSS.
- DAS Role Update Utility – Tighten the security of MOM servers by removing the BUILTIN\Administrators group from the MOM Administrator role.
- Computer Group Hierarchy Utility – Export and import the Computer Group Hierarchy, including using AD containers and hierarchy to create Computer Groups
- Console Scope Utility – Automatically update Console Scope membership and mirror AD Security Group membership into console scopes.
- Management Group Utility – List and cleanup Management Group membership data on individual agents.
- MOM Remote Pre-requisite Checker – Verify the configuration of the services and ports required for agent installation and discovery.
- Response Test Utility – Quickly test response scripts for minor errors from the command line, before finally saving them to an MP.

I've been using the console scope and DAS role update utilities for a while at a number of customer implementations and they are pretty handy...

You can download the updated MOM 2005 resource kit at: http://www.microsoft.com/mom/downloads/2005/reskit/default.mspx

Integrating MOM reports with Sharepoint

ddillon — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 15:57:00 GMT

When I work on a new customer project, one of the first things I do (if it isn't already in place) is get Windows Sharepoint Services running. This helps a lot in terms of having all project documentation, tasks, contact details and announcements in one place. Plus customers like it because it is free :-)

If you're deploying MOM, you're also probably using SQL Reporting Services to host the reports provided with many of the management packs. SP2 of SQL Reporting Services comes with some in-built web parts that you can upload to a WSS site in a matter of minutes. I like the functionality provided in that you can access the reports directly within the WSS page, and also the navigation around the reports is (in my opinion) slicker.

Details on installing and configuring the web parts are provided here.

New Northern Ireland IT Pro user group

ddillon — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 15:48:00 GMT

This blog placeholder has been hanging around for a while but it eventually took someone else to coax me into posting some content - I presented a session at the first NIMTUG IT Pro event last week, discussing and demoing how MOM & SMS can be used to manage non-Microsoft products, hardware and operating systems.

The slide decks are now up on the NIMTUG site. Feel free to post any queries or comments on the forums...