JIMMY HARPER'S OPERATIONS MANAGER BLOG : Service

Service Monitors – What does the “State” value mean?

jimmyharper — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:00:19 GMT

When you create a Service Monitor in OpsMgr 2007, we get an alert / state change when the service is not running, but this does not necessarily mean that the service is “stopped”. The monitor attempts to get the “State” of the service, and alerts when the State is not “Running”. So, what other states are there? Here is a list of possible service states, copied from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms685996(VS.85).aspx:

However, I recently ran into an issue where we got an alert from a Service Monitor and Health Explorer showed that State=9:

After checking with the OpsMgr product group, I found that State=9 means “Server not found”, and we get this when we fail to open SCManaged with “RPC_S_SERVER_UNAVAILABLE”. In this particular case, the problem was on a clustered server which had failed over to the second node, which did not have the OpsMgr Agent installed.

We also have two other states that are not listed in the above table. State=8 means “Service not found” (we’re trying to monitor a service that does not exist on the agent), and State=0 means “Unknown state”….not sure exactly when we would see this.

So, here’s the final list of State values that you may see on a service monitor:

0 = MOM_SERVICE_UNKNOWN_STATE
1 = MOM_SERVICE_STOPPED
2 = MOM_SERVICE_START_PENDING
3 = MOM_SERVICE_STOP_PENDING
4 = MOM_SERVICE_RUNNING
5 = MOM_SERVICE_CONTINUE_PENDING
6 = MOM_SERVICE_PAUSE_PENDING
7 = MOM_SERVICE_PAUSED
8 = MOM_SERVICE_NOT_FOUND
9 = MOM_SERVER_NOT_FOUND

SQL Server Full Text Search Service Monitor

jimmyharper — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:41:00 GMT

This issue is described in the SQL Server Management Pack Guide, but I wanted to blog it since I’ve seen a couple customers hit it.

In the current version of the SQL Server Management Pack (version 6.0.6559.0), we have a monitor for the SQL Server Full Text Search Service which is targeted at the SQL 2005/2008 DB Engine classes.

The problem is, this is an optional component in SQL Server and is not always installed. So, for servers where this service is not installed, we will see a lot of the following alerts:

Alert Name:

Service Check Probe Module Failed Execution

Service Check Data Source Module Failed Execution

Alert Description:

Error getting state of service Error: 0x8007007b Details: The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect. One or more workflows were affected by this. Workflow name: Microsoft.SQLServer.2005.DBEngine.FullTextSearchServiceMonitor Instance name: MSSQLSERVER Instance ID: {625091EA-A1D9-1857-802C-0D908C93A5BB} Management group: jimmyh_mg1

To fix this, all we need to do is disable this monitor on any SQL Server that does not have the Full Text Search Service installed. The easiest way to do this is to create a group for all of the SQL Instances that do not have the service installed. The Full Text Search Service name is one of the discovered properties for the DB Engine class and will be blank if the service is not installed:

To create a group of SQL instances that do not have it installed, we can just use the criteria “Does not match regular expression . (dot)”, like this:

Then, just set an “Enabled=False” override on the monitor, targeted at this group:

Repeat the same steps to create the group and override for SQL 2008 DB Engines.

One more thing that you’ll want to do with this monitor is set the “Alert only if startup type is automatic” override to False for clustered SQL Instances…..since the service will always be in a Manual startup mode.

To do this, I create a group of Cluster SQL Instances where Full Text Search Service IS Installed:

And target the override at this group:

Again, repeat for SQL 2008 DB Engines.

Attached is a sample MP that contains the above groups and overrides for SQL 2005 DB Engines.

UPDATED:

I've removed the original attachment and attached a .zip file that contains these MPs for both SQL 2005 and SQL 2008.

Monitoring a service for State and StartMode

jimmyharper — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 04:45:00 GMT

I recently had a customer that wants to get an alert when a specific service is not Disabled and/or not Stopped. I used the following steps to accomplish this using a "Timed Script Three State Monitor". Even if you do not have this specific need, these steps can be used as a template for creating a monitor that uses a script to query WMI and change state or generate alerts based on the results. If you don't have a need for three states (Critical, Warning, Healthy), there is a Two State Monitor that can be used for this.

Create a new Monitor, select Scripting\Generic\Timed Script Three State Monitor

Technorati Tags: Operations Manager,monitor,Three-state,Two-state,service

Give it a name, target, etc. (I targeted the Windows Computer class, but Windows Operating System may be a better choice). I try to make a habit of unchecking "Monitor is enabled" and enabling it with an override later....at least while testing it:

Set the schedule...this just depends on how quickly you want to know if the service gets changed:

Next, I used a basic VB script which accepts a service name as a parameter, queries WMI for the service, and puts the Service Name, State (Running, Stopped, etc.), and StartMode (Disabled, Manual, Automatic) into property bag values. The full text of the script is below the screenshot:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dim oAPI, oBag,strComputer
Set oAPI = CreateObject("MOM.ScriptAPI")
Set oBag = oAPI.CreatePropertyBag()
set oArgs=wscript.arguments
strComputer="."
ServName=oArgs(0)

Set namespace=GetObject("winmgmts:\\"& strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
set servinfo=namespace.ExecQuery("select * from win32_service where name =" & """" & servname & """")

for each objservice in servinfo

Call oBag.AddValue("ServiceName",ServName)
Call oBag.AddValue("State",objservice.State)
Call oBag.AddValue("StartMode",objservice.StartMode)
Call oAPI.Return(oBag)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For the script parameter, I just enter "ServiceName"....this will be replaced by an override later, or you can just enter your service name here:

Next, I set the "Unhealthy", "Degraded", and "Healthy" expressions for the monitor. My goal is to set the state to Warning when the service is Stopped but NOT Disabled , Critical when it is NOT Stopped, and Healthy when it is Stopped AND Disabled. I used the following expressions:

Unhealthy Expression:

Parameter Name: Property[@Name='State']

Operator: Does not equal

Value: Stopped

Degraded Expression:

Parameter Name: Property[@Name='StartMode']

Operator: Does not equal

Value: Disabled

AND

Parameter Name: Property[@Name='State']

Operator: Equals

Value: Stopped

Healthy Expression:

Parameter Name: Property[@Name='StartMode']

Operator: Equals

Value: Disabled

AND

Parameter Name: Property[@Name='State']

Operator: Equals

Value: Stopped

Next, I used the default settings for Health State, since they already match what I want to do:

Next, I configure the alert settings. The settings in the screen shot below will generate a Warning alert when the monitor is in a Warning state (service is not Disabled), and a Critical alert when the monitor is in the Critical state (service is not Stopped). The Alert Description will have the service name (using the ServiceName property created by the script):

Now that I have the monitor created, I need to enable it and set the Override for the Service Name:

I'm using the Alerter service for my test:

To test the monitor, I first set the Alerter service to Manual Startup and leave it stopped:

Then I verify that I get the Warning alert:

Health Explorer correctly shows the "Degraded" Warning state:

Now I want to test the Critical state, so I start the Alerter Service:

Now the alert is changed to Critical:

And Health Explorer shows the "Unhealthy" Critical state:

When I stop the service and disable it, the alert is auto-resolved and the state is changed back to Healthy:

I've attached my sample MP which includes the following monitors:

Service disabled and stopped - two-state monitor:

If the specified service is not Stopped AND Disabled, the computer will be put in a Warning state and a Warning alert will be generated. When the service is stopped and disabled, the computer will be put in a Healthy state.

Service disabled and stopped - three-state monitor:

If the specified service is Stopped and is not Disabled, the computer will be put in a Warning state and a Warning alert will be generated. If the specified service is not Stopped, the computer will be put in a critical state and a Critical alert will be generated. When the service is stopped and disabled, the computer will be put in a Healthy state.

Usage:

Both monitors are targeted at the Windows Computer class and roll up to the Configuration Health. Both monitors are disabled by default. They are configured to check the service every 1 minute. To enable one of the monitors, add an Override for the Computer or Group you wish to monitor and set the following Override parameters:

Enabled=True

Script Arguments = <Service Name>

Enjoy!!