Words and Software : Operations Manager

SQL MP guide updated

Jeanie Decker — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:45:00 GMT

I recently mentioned that we're changing how MP guides are released. The SQL Server Management Pack is the first to take advantage of the new system by making an update to the guide without repackaging the management pack .msi. Just download the .doc to get the latest guide - no need to download the .msi again (the MP hasn't changed).

MP guides to be separate download

Jeanie Decker — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:12:00 GMT

A sharp-eyed blogger (Pete Zerger) noticed a change in our management pack download pages. Here's what's going on:

Guides will be available as a separate download, on the same download page as their respective management packs.
For a short period of time, guides will still be in the .msi as well. Eventually, the guide will only be available as a separate download and won't be in the .msi package at all. (Why not immediately? It's going to take time for us to communicate this to every team that does a management pack, and we don't want to delay any releases by making a team repackage the .msi just because it still has a guide in it.)

One benefit that we hope to achieve with this is to make it easier and faster for teams to make changes and fixes to the documentation. In our old method, a guide fix meant completely repackaging and retesting the .msi. Now, the .msi won't change so updating the guide will be much less effort.

R2: check for MP updates

Jeanie Decker — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:35:00 GMT

There hasn't been an easy way to check for management pack updates in Operations Manager 2007 until the R2 release. Once you're running R2, you can use the Import Management Packs wizard to determine if any of the MPs you are running have had an update released. Just follow the instructions on How to Import a Management Pack, and in step 4, be sure to select Updates available for management packs that are already imported on this computer.

Submit questions for the Operator's Manual

Jeanie Decker — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:14:00 GMT

There are two ways to approach content on using the Operations console and Web console for Operations Manager:

Explain what information is available in each section of the consoles.
Take examples of information that an operator would want to locate, and tell them how to find it in the consoles.

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:

I have added a Management Group in the console and I also added few computers, how do I know if these computers belong to the management group that I added?
How do I know if a management pack is applied or connected to the servers that I added in the console?

What other questions might an operator want to answer in the console? Submit your suggestions to jdecker AT microsoft DOT com!

MP Guide for Operations Manager 2007 R2

Jeanie Decker — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:46:00 GMT

The management pack guide for the Operations Manager Management Pack (Operations Manager 2007 R2 only) is available for download.

Usually, the guide is in the download with the management pack, but since the new Operations Manager Management Pack is included in the R2 product, we published the guide separately. We'll also be adding a link to the guide download to the System Center Pack Catalog, to make it easier for customer to find.

Note that if you are not running Ops Mgr R2, you do not want this guide!

What goes in product knowledge?

Jeanie Decker — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:53:00 GMT

When you create a component in a management pack, you have to provide a display name. You can also include a description and product knowledge. All three of those items are pretty much free-form, meaning you can put what you want in those fields (subject to character limitations, of course). That means that every MP developer has had to make decisions about when to use those fields and what to put in them.

That's just not a good use of a developer's time, and it also results in an inconsistent experience for customers using MPs from different developers. To help reduce that problem internally, we came up with guidelines for text in MPs: specifically, display names, descriptions, and product knowledge. One of our program managers suggested we provide similar guidance for developers and authors outside of Microsoft, so I cleaned it up (removed resources and links that are internal) and it's now available on OpsManJam: Guidelines for MP Text.

(edit: fixed typo)

Where did "Key Concepts" go?

Jeanie Decker — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:23:00 GMT

Back when Operations Manager 2007 was released, the content team posted an online version of a Key Concepts Guide and a download version. When you look at our documentation download page for Ops Mgr 2007 R2, Key Concepts isn't listed. Where did it go?

When the product was new, we wanted to highlight Key Concepts to clarify the differences between MOM 2005 and Ops Mgr 2007. With R2, we're not really a "new" product anymore. The explanations of model-based design, service modeling, and health modeling are primarily of value to the authoring experience. So, when we reorganized the content library in the R2 release, the Key Concepts content was added to the Management Pack Authoring Guide.

P.S. The links to the original content (first paragraph) still pull up the original content, but notice that the left navigation pane fails to resolve to a table of contents. Whenever you hit TechNet content and the navigation pane goes generic, you know you've reached deprecated content.

Product knowledge in management packs

Jeanie Decker — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:37:00 GMT

Some components of management packs include product knowledge, which is just information provided by the MP author (as compared to company knowledge which is information provided by the user in their own copy of the MP). We're working on internal guidelines to help MP authors provide effective knowledge, so I'd like to know what your thoughts are -- what would you expect (hope) to learn from the product knowledge for any or all of the following components?

Management pack (the properties of a management pack can include product knowledge)
Discoveries
Rules
Monitors
Reports

Please leave a comment here or send email to mpgfeed@microsoft.com!

Active Directory Management Pack: which ones to import

Jeanie Decker — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:40:00 GMT

The latest Active Directory Management Pack package includes management packs for monitoring Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. Each server version has a .Discovery management pack and a .Monitoring management pack. You may decide that, since you're only monitoring Windows Server 2003 (for example), you won't bother importing any of the other server version management packs, only to have a problem because Operations Manager tells you that you're missing some required management packs -- what's going on?

Even if you are only planning to monitor one server version of Active Directory, you must still import all three .Discovery management packs. The monitoring management packs require all three discovery management packs to support the workflow for replication monitoring.

Authoring management packs

Jeanie Decker — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:13:00 GMT

Working on management pack guides, my attention is generally on how you can use the management packs we create at Microsoft. Next week, however, I'm attending a daylong workshop on authoring management packs. I'm hoping to learn a lot (unless it all goes over my head!).

But if I didn't have the opportunity of this workshop, how would I go about learning to create management packs? Well, first I would download the System Center Authoring Console. Next, I would download and read the Management Pack Authoring Guide. Finally, I would take advantage of all the great resources at the AuthorMPs site.

I'll let you know next week how the workshop goes!

ReadMe vs. Guide

Jeanie Decker — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:38:00 GMT

You might notice in the management pack guide library that some guides are quite extensive (like Active Directory) and some are a single webpage with "ReadMe" in the name (like FRS). You might also notice in the installation folder for some management packs that there are two documents: a guide and another that has MPAdd or ReadMe in the name.

What's going on with those? Last year and early this year, a number of MOM 2005 management packs were converted for Operations Manager 2007. When we released the converted management packs, we included the original documentation for the MOM 2005 management pack and added a supplementary document to provide any information that was unique to the converted management pack. Not rewriting the guides was primarily a resource decision, so we could make more management packs available more quickly.

What that means is if the supplementary document (which is specific to the Ops Mgr 2007 MP) says one thing and the guide (which was written for the original MP) says another, the supplementary document is correct. We just didn't explain that clearly enough in the supplementary documents.

MP guides online: a question for you

Jeanie Decker — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:20:00 GMT

This is a question about the root page for the two management pack guide libraries (operating system guides and server guides). All of the guides are listed in the left navigation pane, beneath the parent page:

In addition, when you click the parent page itself, the guides are listed and linked on that page:

The question is: does the list on the parent page ("Guides available in this section"), which mirrors the navigation pane, add any value for you? If we removed the links from the parent page and you had to use the navigation pane instead, would you care?

I'd really appreciate your opinions, either by leaving a comment here or emailing mpgfeed AT microsoft.com.

Correction to knowledge for SDK SPN Registration alert

Jeanie Decker — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:20:00 GMT

Thanks to a sharp-eyed customer, an error in the resolution procedure for alert "SDK SPN Registration" has been identified. The resolution is below, with the error and change in bold:

Current:

You can use SetSPN.exe to register the SPNs for the SDK service. Here are the commands that you need to execute using an account which has domain administrator rights:

Setspn.exe –A MSOMSDK/[RMS FQDN] domain\username (this is the SDK service account name)

Setspn.exe –A MSOMSDK/[RMS NETBIOS] domain\username

Corrected:

You can use SetSPN.exe to register the SPNs for the SDK service. Here are the commands that you need to execute using an account which has domain administrator rights:

Setspn.exe –A MSOMSdkSvc/[RMS FQDN] domain\username (this is the SDK service account name)

Setspn.exe –A MSOMSdkSvc/[RMS NETBIOS] domain\username

Update: edited the commands to replace the less-than and more-than signs with brackets, because they caused the commands to display incorrectly in html - sorry!

Change control: content preview

Jeanie Decker — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:56:00 GMT

The next revision of the Operations Guide for Ops Manager will include an expanded section on management packs. We've added some procedures (both GUI and script) and some conceptual information. Here's a preview from the management pack lifecycle topic:

Best Practices for Change Control

The following are some best practices to follow when managing Operations Manager management packs:

Maintain an archive of management pack versions to enable you to roll back changes when necessary. An efficient method for maintaining the archive is by using version control software, such as Microsoft SourceSafe or Windows SharePoint Services. Another method is to use a file share on the network with individual folders for each management pack version.
When you set overrides for a management pack, save them to a management pack that is named ManagementPack_Override, where ManagementPack is the name of the sealed management pack to which the overrides apply. For example, overrides to the management pack Microsoft.InformationWorker.Office.XP.mp would be saved to Microsoft.InformationWorker.Office.XP_Overrides.xml.
When a management pack is updated, update the corresponding _Overrides.xml file with the new version number. You must use an XML editor to update the version number of the _Overrides.xml file. If you make changes to an _Overrides.xml file but do not change the version attribute, you can import the file but the settings in the file will not be applied.
Document the overrides that you make to management packs. When you set an override, add an explanation of the action you are taking and the reason for it to the description field by clicking Edit in the Details pane of the Override Properties dialog box. You may also want to maintain a spreadsheet or other form to document changes that you make to management packs.

Support for Windows Server 2008

Jeanie Decker — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 23:30:00 GMT

I know many of you have been waiting ~~anxiously~~ eagerly for management packs for Windows Server 2008. The support statement has been released and now we can start publishing them to the Catalog. Be sure to read Clive's post carefully, he calls out some important information that you'll want to be aware of.