Kevin Holman's OpsMgr Blog : R2

Dude. Got R2? Then go get this update!

kevinhol — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:17:23 GMT

Seriously.

Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Pack version 6.1.7533.0 from the MP CATALOG.

This is basically a set of the core MP’s in OpsMgr R2. You should expect to see these get updated on a fairly regular basis now. These are the MP’s that are built in to OpsMgr, that monitor the health of the Management group, from the server role, and agent role perspective. There should be a SP1 version of this update available soon to follow. These are a series of updates to OpsMgr, based on Community, Customer, and internal feedback…. and it’s good stuff.

Everyone running R2 should run these through your standard testing cycle and get these implemented. This is a simple MP import-update.

The MOMTEAM Blog has some more details here: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2009/10/07/opsmgr-2007-r2-mp-version-6-1-7553-0-is-released.aspx

This includes a long list of updates (available in the guide in the download)… but I will hit a few high points.

You might have seen some of my blog posts on agents restarting all the time, in SP1 and R2, and the significant impact that can have:

http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/archive/2009/06/22/health-service-and-monitoringhost-thresholds-in-r2-how-this-has-changed-and-what-you-should-know.aspx

Well, this is mostly resolved in this update…. as the default threshold for HealthService and MonitoringHost has been changed from 100MB to 300MB. This will stop the majority of your agents from hitting this limit, and restarting. Once you import this MP update – you should review any overrids you made on these Monitors… and make sure you dont have any conflicts. The only other override I like to recommend is to generate an alert on these monitors – so that you will know when there is a problem that will cause the agent to get restarted – specifically on HealthService or MonitoringHost, and PrivateBytes or HandleCount:

You might find that there are still some agents that need a much higher threshold…. but those should be fairly rare, and limited to very large servers with a very high instance count of objects (large SQL clusters, large Exchange servers, etc) and also possibly for agents that are a watcher node or proxy for a large number of devices (network, VMWare, etc…)

In THIS blog post I discussed adding a custom perf counter collection rule and creating a view to see how many consoles or SDK connections you have. This is now built-in:

Lots of Knowledge and descriptions added to help troubleshoot alerts. For instance – on the common “Script or Executable Failed to run”

Summary

The Health Service was attempting to run an executable and was unable to create the process. This may affect some monitoring or discovery.

Causes

This can be caused by:

The executable could not be found.

The computer does not have enough resources (for example; memory) to run the executable.

The antivirus software on the computer blocking Visual Basic scripts or Java scripts. The following link is a link to the KB article regarding this issue.

Antivirus software blocking script execution

Resolutions

The alert description and context has information indicating which rule or monitor failed. The following link will display all events indicating a failure to run the executable:

View Batch Response Events

After reviewing the error in the context, check:

That the path to the executable exists on the computer.

The antivirus software is not blocking scripts from running.

That the computer is not over utilized.

Check Task Manager to see if there is enough free memory.

Check Task Manager to see if there are any processes consuming all the CPU.

Check the error information in the event or alert context for the script path and name. There could be a problem with the script not handling an error correctly and exiting. If the script exits without outputting the data that is expected (e.g. property bag data), this error is raised.

Another error can be caused by the misconfiguration of the workflow executing this script. The configuration (script params, policy, timeout) could be wrong causing no output or timeout.

There is a big list of other enhancements or fixes in the MP guide. Don't take this lightly – this is good stuff…. get it updated.

Nice clean Alert descriptions have been added to R2. Ahem.

kevinhol — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:14:34 GMT

I didn't realize this feature got added – very nice.

In OpsMgr SP1 – we had to use some hacks to get the Alert Description formatted to be nicely readable. I wrote about this HERE. The problem was – we could add a </BR> to the alert description and get this to work in SP1 – but in the email subscriptions – it was not formatted the same way and showed the <BR /> in text. You you could have good readable emails or good readable alerts – but not both.

Now – in R2 – this is a much better story.

When authoring a rule against a test event, I can now hit “Enter” and start a new line, just like it should be:

In the console, this now formats exceptionally well – as expected:

However – the email is close – but not perfect. This works most of the time as designed – but occasionally the email subscription does not pick up on the carriage returns.

Note the blobs in yellow above – this is where the Carriage Return did not get picked up.

All is not lost!

One trick – is that this might be caused by ending the line with a variable – as is my example. What I did – was to simply end each variable statement with a real character – I simply added a “period” after each variable as shown:

Which now shows the email formatting as desired:

The XML:

What this does – behind the scenes – is adds the following to the Alert Message ID Display String: (Basically – you can just add carriage returns in the XML and it will be picked up correctly in R2):

        <DisplayString ElementID="MomUIGeneratedRule3407012ebced48c38440ed666eb0ae09.AlertMessage">
          <Name>Custom - Test alert on event 100 from rule</Name>
          <Description>A test event occurred.
The Event ID is: {0}.
The Logging Computer is: {1}.
The Event Source is: {2}.
The Event Level is: {3}.

Event Description = {4}</Description>
</DisplayString>

What do the {numbers} mean? Those are alert parameters. It gets those from the Alert params section in the Rule XML:

<WriteAction ID="Alert" TypeID="Health!System.Health.GenerateAlert">
<Priority>2</Priority>
<Severity>2</Severity>
<AlertOwner />
<AlertMessageId>$MPElement[Name="MomUIGeneratedRule3407012ebced48c38440ed666eb0ae09.AlertMessage"]$</AlertMessageId>
<AlertParameters>
    <AlertParameter1>$Data/EventNumber$</AlertParameter1>
    <AlertParameter2>$Data/LoggingComputer$</AlertParameter2>
    <AlertParameter3>$Data/EventSourceName$</AlertParameter3>
    <AlertParameter4>$Data/EventLevel$</AlertParameter4>
    <AlertParameter5>$Data/EventDescription$</AlertParameter5>
</AlertParameters>
<Suppression />
<Custom1 />
<Custom2 />
<Custom3 />
<Custom4 />
<Custom5 />
<Custom6 />
<Custom7 />
<Custom8 />
<Custom9 />
<Custom10 />
</WriteAction>

The R2 Connectors are HERE!

kevinhol — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 23:52:03 GMT

Announcing System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connectors

The Connectors are available for download at the following location:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=592e4143-c5c8-4270-9a7a-cd0a31ab3189

The following connectors are available in this initial RTM:

- Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connector for IBM Tivoli Enterprise Management Console

- Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connector for HP Operations Manager (formerly HP OpenView Operations)

- Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connector for BMC Remedy Action Request System (ARS)

- Operations Manager 2007 R2 Universal Connector

The Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connectors provide Operations Manager 2007 R2 alert forwarding to remote systems, such as an Enterprise Management System (EMS) or a help desk system. After Operations Manager 2007 R2 forwards an alert to a remote system, the alert data is synchronized throughout the lifetime of the alert. The result of that data synchronization is a robust and seamless systems management environment. Such an environment enables cross-organization support processes to take advantage of the resources and strengths of formerly independent support groups. The ultimate effect is improved enterprise systems health through improved organizational communication.

Sharing data between Operations Manager 2007 R2 and remote systems enables enterprise correlation of events from Windows-based systems, hardware, network, and UNIX systems. Correlating these events allows IT staff to determine the causes of issues and reduce the time to resolution of IT outages.

Synchronization of data between Operations Manager 2007 R2 and remote systems also enables operational groups to use familiar management interfaces. Users update an alert by using their management tool, and the data is updated in tools that are used by other operational groups.

For more information regarding the Connectors, you can review the following resources:

Download Details:

- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=592e4143-c5c8-4270-9a7a-cd0a31ab3189

TechNet Documentation:

- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd795265.aspx

TechNet Forums:

- General: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/interopgeneral/threads

- Connector for IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/interoptivoli/threads

- Connector for HP Operations Manager: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/interophpoperationsmanager/threads

- Connector for BMC Remedy ARS: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/interopremedy/threads/

- Universal Connector: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/interopuniversalconnector/threads

Web Application recorder R2 – the recorder bar missing in IE?

kevinhol — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:15:34 GMT

Sometimes getting the web application recorder to capture a web session can be a little tricky. I have blogged about some typical issues you might run into HERE

Something I noticed today, with R2:

When running the R2 console on an x64 machine – the web recorder bar is not coming up.

On my x86 machine – it was working just fine, however. I notice – when I go into IE settings, Tools, Manage Add-ons….. I see this on a working machine:

However – these add-ons are missing on my x64 based consoles.

The problem turned out to be…. that when you install the console on an x64 machine, it registers the x64 version of these add-ons. However – the IE browser launched by default by hitting “Start Capture”, is the x86 version. You have to manually launch the x64 IE shortcut – in order to use the web recorder browser.

So here are some steps to make this work:

1. Open the web application editor

2. Hit “Start Capture”

3. This will launch Internet Explorer in 32 bit mode. Close this browser.

4. From the start menu, run Internet Explorer (64-bit)

5. The web recorder will appear. (If not – choose View > Explorer Bars > Web Recorder)

From there you can record your session, hit stop, and it will populate the web application tool as normal. Just a minor inconvenience of closing one browser, and opening another.

My experience upgrading to OpsMgr R2 RTM

kevinhol — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:01:23 GMT

I upgraded my test lab from SP1 to R2-RTM this weekend.

My current test lab consists of the following servers:

OMRMS – Server 2003 - RMS role

OMMS3 – Server 2008 - MS role, Web Console

OMMS – Server 2003 - MS role, ACS collector

OMDB – Server 2003/SQL 2005 - OperationsManager Database

OMDW – Server 2003/SQL 2005 - OperationsManagerDW database, Reporting, SRS, ACSDB roles

There are 18 agents reporting to this management group.

So – I start – with a little light reading.

I begin with the release notes. These are available from the R2 CD, and on the web at Operations Manager 2007 R2 Release Notes I dont see anything in there that is terribly applicable to me…. but these are good to commit to short term memory – in case we hit a snag during/after the upgrade.

Next – I move on to the Upgrade guide. This is available on the Technet Library – at Operations Manager 2007 Upgrade Guide I need to spend a little time on this one, mapping out the pre-upgrade steps, and then planning the order of my upgrade based on how my management group is deployed.

So – I start by running down the pre-upgrade checklist at: Preparing to Upgrade Operations Manager 2007

I record my service accounts, make sure my DB’s have plenty of free space, and my t-logs are sized big enough. I make sure the volume with TempDB has plenty of free disk space in case TempDB needs to auto-grow.

Next – I map out my plan – and order of operations, for my management group, and share the plan with my team:

Get most recent backup of Database, Encryption key and Export unsealed MP’s for safekeeping.
Go to pending actions – and reject/remove anything in there.
Verify free space on SQL database and validate log size is appropriate.
I need to uninstall the agent from OMTERM – my terminal server which has a console and an agent only. I decide to go ahead and uninstall the agent, the console, and the SP1 authoring console as well, since I will be replacing it with the R2 auth console. I will replace the agent and consoles when the upgrade is complete for the management group.
I need to disable all my notification subscriptions, and disabled my product connectors. I am running a custom internal product connector – which runs as a service and updates alert properties – so I will stop and disable that service for the duration of the upgrade.
I see a section on Improving Upgrade Performance so I will add that step here – right before I upgrade the first component.
I am now ready to establish the upgrade order for my management group – this is available at: Planning your Operations Manager 2007 Upgrade
RMS (OMRMS)
Reporting Server (OMDW)
Stand Alone Consoles (None – I uninstalled this already in my case)
Management Servers (OMMS3, OMMS)
Gateway Servers (None)
Agents
Web Console (on OMMS3 and OMMS)
Post-Upgrade validation steps

Ok – that's my plan. Time to get rolling.

The SP1 to R2 steps are outlined here: Upgrading from Operations Manager 2007 SP1 to R2

I know from experience with customers – the success of your upgrade HINGES on how well you read AND follow the upgrade steps – VERBATIM. The majority of issues we see (especially on clustered RMS) are when a customer does not follow the steps exactly as written, in the correct order.

I complete steps 1-7 in the plan above, and then start the RMS upgrade at step 8. I run “SetupOM.exe” and kick off the pre-req checker before starting the install, where I hit my first snag. I need to install WS-Management v1.1, because I do plan on monitoring Unix/Linux machines in the future with this management group. (This was documented in the release notes, and in the upgrade guide – so I was expecting this… I should have added this to my plan) So I install WS-man from the link provided in the pre-req, which just takes a few minutes. Now – it looks much better in the pre-req checker:

The install instructions provided on TechNet are very straightforward. The install took about 20 minutes for my small environment. It waited the longest on “Loading Management Packs” on the screen in my environment. It finally ended with an error:

The guide has a note on this – about the fact you might get a warning that a service failed to start – and to hit OK. However – this is a different error – this is a service failing to stop… I click OK, and then a few minutes later – setup completes. I uncheck the box to start the console and to backup the encryption key.

I then ran the RMS upgrade validation steps – checking the registry and the services. Registry setup version shows me all is good.

***Note: We have changed the service display names for R2. See below:

I moved on to Reporting. My SRS, Reporting, and DataWarehouse are all shared on a single server – OMDW.

As I read the guide at Upgrading from Operations Manager 2007 SP1 to R2 I notice this little tidbit – which needs to be given STRONG attention before I kick off the upgrade:

Prior to running the upgrade on the Reporting server, you must remove the Operations Manager 2007 agent; the upgrade will fail if this is not done.

So – I kick off the uninstall of the agent on the Reporting/SRS server (OMDW in my case) from Add/Remove programs – before I start the upgrade. Missing little steps like this will drive you nuts if you aren't methodical.

After the agent uninstall – I pick back up on the guide – and kick off “SetupOM.exe”. Since I am a freak – I go ahead and run a pre-req check just to make sure all is good:

Moving on…. I start the install according to the guide. The install goes without a hitch, and took about 10 minutes to complete.

Next up – Management servers. I start with OMMS3. I hit the pre-req check – and I notice I already have WS-Man installed – so away I go. The installer immediately failed with a pre-req failure. I realized – I have the web console installed on this management server, and I forgot to add that when running the pre-req check manually. When I do – I see:

So – I need to grab the ASP.NET Ajax extensions…. this is to support the new cool health explorer in the Web Console. I click “More” on the pre-req check – which gives me a link to the download.

After this little hurdle – the management servers upgraded very quickly. Once again – I got an expected error about a failure to stop a service.

Click ok and setup completes. I repeat this upgrade on the other management server (OMMS) and these are done. A quick check of the registry – and the setup version is indeed 6.1.7221.0

I don't have any gateways in this lab – so next up is agents.

Lucky me – all 18 agents show up in pending actions for an update. I will approve them all – and let the management server push the update down and upgrade them.

***Note – do not upgrade more than 299 agents in this manner at a time. This is documented in the Upgrade Guide.

All my agents upgraded successfully except for two. BOTH that failed happened to be the two servers that I manually removed the SP1 agent from – OMTERM and OMDW. (I forgot to delete their “agent managed” object from the management group) Both have a different error. OMTERM is failing to install with a push failure for MOMAgentInstaller. I have had trouble with this agent before – possibly because of the TS role - so I just do a manual agent install here. OMDW is different – the console push said it was a success – however – the System Center Management Service (HealthService) will not start – it gives an error:

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    Service Control Manager
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    7024
Date:        5/23/2009
Time:        1:09:37 AM
User:        N/A
Computer:    OMDW
Description:
The System Center Management service terminated with service-specific error 2147500037 (0x80004005).

I ran a repair action from the console – but got the same error here. So – I manually uninstalled the broken agent – and deleted the agent from the Agent Managed section of the console – and re-pushed the agent. I had a little trouble getting these two to come into the management group… but eventually after a couple delete/reinstalls they finally appear to be working ok. I’d recommend uninstalling them from the console next time…. so this will remove both the agent and the computer object from the console.

Next on the list: Web Console

From the upgrade guide I see this note….

If your Web console server is on the same computer as a management server, the Web console server is upgraded when the management server is upgraded, rendering this upgrade procedure unnecessary. You can still run the verification procedure to ensure that the Web console server upgrade was successful.

Good – my web console is not a stand-alone – it was running on a management server (OMMS3) so that is already taken care of.

Aha – I found something we forgot on the plan…. the ACS Collector. This role is missing from the table at Planning your Operations Manager 2007 Upgrade so I completely missed this as a planning step. However the process is documented at Upgrading from Operations Manager 2007 SP1 to R2. So – we need to do this – I will assume last since it is last on the upgrade detailed steps. Following the guide…. I walked through the steps – no issues.

Looks like we are done! I will now start the post-upgrade validation steps to make sure my management group is actually working as it should without any major issues.

There is a list of post-upgrade checks at Completing the Post-Upgrade Tasks

I am going to walk through those here:

1. I open up discovered inventory – and change target to “Health Service Watcher” and compare this to the list I had before the upgrade. These are agents that have a problem from the management server perspective – which causes them to appear “grey” in all other views. My list is the same as before I started – I have 6 in this list as critical – 5 of them are agents that are VM’s that are currently down – so this is good. 1 of them is an old management server… for some reason we don't groom these out of the view/database – and these seem to stick around forever in this view.

2. I review the event logs on the RMS and all MS roles. I am seeing some errors like below:

Event Type:    Warning
Event Source:    HealthService
Event Category:    Health Service
Event ID:    2120
Date:        5/23/2009
Time:        10:02:15 AM
User:        N/A
Computer:    OMRMS
Description:
The Health Service has deleted one or more items for management group "OPS" which could not be sent in 1440 minutes.

This is normal – it happens when you have agents that are down in your environment.

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    Health Service Modules
Event Category:    Data Warehouse
Event ID:    31552
Date:        5/23/2009
Time:        10:03:38 AM
User:        N/A
Computer:    OMRMS
Description:
Failed to store data in the Data Warehouse.
Exception 'SqlException': Sql execution failed. Error 777971002, Level 16, State 1, Procedure StandardDatasetGroom, Line 303, Message: Sql execution failed. Error 2812, Level 16, State 62, Procedure StandardDatasetGroom, Line 145, Message: Could not find stored procedure 'KMS_EventGroom'.

One or more workflows were affected by this.

Workflow name: Microsoft.SystemCenter.DataWarehouse.StandardDataSetMaintenance
Instance name: KMS Activation Event Data Set
Instance ID: {800D8126-6F72-CA84-A76B-A94F7E3C93CF}
Management group: OPS

This is not normal – this looks like an issue with the KMS MP – and R2’s advanced logging is picking up on an error that's been there all along, I just didn't know it.

That is all from the RMS – pretty clean. On the Management servers…. I found a bit more – but they were all due to the problems I was having with a handful of agents. Once I removed and fixed those agents – the MS logs are clean.

3. No cluster in this lab – so nothing to test there.

4. Review alerts in the console. I sort by Repeat Count and LastModified (I add these to all my alert views) and look for anything that stands out as repeating a LOT, or something new that looks like a problem. I dont see anything here – so that is good!

5. DB server in perfmon looks good. I examine % Processor Time, and Logical Disk Avg disk sec/read and Avg disk sec/write. Those are both avg under 15ms (.015) on the DB and log volumes - so that looks good. CPU is avg under 25%.

6. Check all the console views. Much snappier than in SP1. Nice.

7. I opened up reporting – and ran the “Microsoft ODR Report Library > Most Common Alerts” report – to test out reporting. It ran with no issues. I test a few of my saved custom and favorite reports – no errors – all good.

8. Authoring pane looks good – I can see my groups, monitors, rules – and wow – they open a LOT faster than before. Very nice.

9. I check out my MP versions. The install upgraded all my core MP’s to 6.1.7221.0. I was already pretty current on my MP’s – so not much to do here now that needs my immediate attention.

10. Re-enable notification subscriptions and product connectors. I turn my subscriptions back on – and fire off a test event that I use to generate an alert and email me a notification. Works great. Next – I got to my custom product connector – and enable the service and start it back up again. I run some test alerts – to make sure my product connector is taking all the necessary actions on the alerts – and forwarding them as appropriately. All good.

11. Review My Workspace. Yep – all my old custom views are there.

12. Re-deploy agents. I already did this. Perhaps I should have waited on this step…. because I spent so much time troubleshooting those last few pesky agents that seem to have trouble.

13. Oh – the BIG ONE. This step is a bit odd – we tell you to go run this SQL query. LET ME WARN YOU – this is not a “quick job”. This is the script that is documented and discussed at my blog post: Does your OpsDB keep growing- Is your localizedtext table using all the space- Dont take this step lightly – running this script could take several hours – so plan accordingly. Read the link above for the details – and consider skipping this step for now…. until you are sure you are ready to execute it. Take some calculations based on the blog post above – how long it will take – how severely you are impacted (row count of your localizedtext table) and make sure you have a LOT of free space for the tempDB and tempDBlog to grow if needed. My LT table was already really small – so no issues for me running this – it completed in less than a minute.

Done! (with the “official” steps)

Now – I just have a couple cleanup steps I need to do – like go back and install the Ops Console and the Auth Console back on my terminal server. Did that without issue. All looks good.

And then I realized – we are missing another step in our plan – under the post-upgrade tasks – make sure the web console is working! I saw lots of items in the release notes about how this might break…. and I imagine someone will complain rather quickly if it isnt working – so we better go check that out.

Sweet! I hit up the web console and it is all good. I check out several of the new views – and run health explorer from the web console. I have tasks, maintenance mode, and health explorer. Very cool. I event execute some of my favorite reports under “My Workspace” just to make sure those are good – ouch – not working. I will have to look into that one.

Ok – that’s enough for today. All in all – a successful upgrade. A good plan written out at the beginning, based on the upgrade guide - makes all the difference.

New web based forums for OpsMgr – no more NNTP newsgroups

kevinhol — Sat, 23 May 2009 01:37:46 GMT

Getting help from the community for OpsMgr just got easier.

We released the new interface to OpsMgr forums – on the web. No more NNTP newsgroups to parse, with a hard to use web interface.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/systemcenteroperationsmanager

Check it out!

SCOM R2 hits RTM!

kevinhol — Fri, 22 May 2009 20:08:28 GMT

New Functionality - Operations Manager 2007 R2 introduces key new and enhanced functionality, including:

Enhanced application performance and availability across heterogeneous platforms

Delivers monitoring across Windows, Linux and UNIX servers–all through a single console.
Extends end to end monitoring of distributed applications to any workload running on Windows, UNIX and Linux platforms.
Maximize availability of virtual workloads with integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

Improved management of applications in the data center

Delivers on the scale requirements of URL monitoring of your business.
Meet agreed service levels with enhanced reporting showing application performance and availability.
More efficient problem identification and action to resolve issues.

Increased speed of access to information and functionality to drive management

Faster load times for views and results.
Improved and simplified management pack authoring experience

Where and when can I obtain the bits?

The RTM release is build 7221.

At General Availability (July 1)

Customers can obtain the bits from the MVLS website.
New customers can obtain the trial bits from the Operations Manager 2007 R2 website or directly @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=93ddf25b-1ef0-4851-81b0-5fb9a2f76181#tm

Where can I find collateral, training, and more on Operations Manager 2007 R2?

Released on the TechNet: Webcast Series on Operations Manager 2007 R2:

How else can I extend Operations Manager 2007 R2?

Service Level Dashboard v2 from the Solution Accelerators team lets you measure and report application or system performance & availability in near real time across your organization. Using the Dashboard, you can easily spot trends and head off problems—before they occur. The Dashboard also lets you create role-specific dashboards to support different departments, like HR, Finance, or Operations. Download it today from Microsoft Connect.
Operations Manager 2007 R2 Interoperability Connectors provide the ability to synchronize alerts and status between Operations Manager 2007 R2 and other management systems. Beta connectors for Tivoli Enterprise Console, HP OpenView Operations, and the new Universal Connector can be obtained from the Operations Manager R2 download on Connect. Download the Interop Connectors from the System Center Catalog.
Operations Manager 2007 R2 Visio Add-in delivers the ability to link status and health information gathered by Operations Manager 2007 R2 into normally-static Visio diagrams, adding life and interaction to those diagrams. Download it today from Microsoft Connect.
New Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack (MP) Beta, which provides enhancements over the current Exchange MP such as reducing alert noise and enhanced performance. Download it today from Microsoft Connect.
BridgeWays MP Beta Program, providing beta MPs for MySQL, Apache, and Oracle running on Windows, Linux or Solaris. For more information, and to register into the BridgeWays MP Beta Program, visit http://www.bridgeways.ca/bw_management-pack-beta-program-signup_form.php

R2 – Improved override screens

kevinhol — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:55:57 GMT

Here are some changes in R2 that make Overrides a bit more intuitive, and help a LOT in understanding what has been done:

First up: We used to have a lot of names for “Class”. We used “Target”, “Instance Type”, “Object Type” and “Type” before… among others. In the Override screens previously – we called it “All Objects of Type”. Now – it is named “For all objects of class” (see image below) This make a lot more sense.

Unfortunately – in other screens – we still refer to the “Class” as a “Target”… so it still isnt 100% consistent. :-(

Next up – we have a Default Value added! So now – in any override – we can see the MP default, The override value, and (once applied) the effective value.

And now – in the same console – we immediately see all our overrides,

Whats REALLY cool about this? You can scope this new view – based on just about any criteria you would want:

This will really help, and reduce some of the dependency on external tools like Override Explorer.

R2 – Improved Agent Proxy Alerts

kevinhol — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:46:17 GMT

Here is a nice add in R2: When we give you the old “agent proxy alert”, we now tell you the name of the Agent that needs agent proxy enabled, and resolve the name of the object type that it was bringing in:

Nice improvement. I enable agent proxy for SQL1CLN2 and get on with my day.

OpsMgr R2 Release Candidate is available

kevinhol — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 08:25:18 GMT

The download is available on Connect

Operations Manager 2007 R2 introduces key new and enhanced functionality, including:

Enhanced application performance and availability across heterogeneous platforms

Delivers monitoring across Windows, Linux and Unix servers-all through a single console
Extends end to end monitoring of distributed applications to any workload running on Windows, Unix and Linux platforms
Maximize availability of virtual workloads with integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

Improved management of applications in the data center

Delivers on the scale requirements of URL monitoring of your business
Meet agreed service levels with enhanced reporting showing application performance and availability
More efficient problem identification and action to resolve issues

Increased speed of access to information and functionality to drive management

Faster load times for views and results
Improved and simplified management pack authoring experience

For those who are evaluating the Beta release, this Release Candidate offers a number of enhancements over the Operations Manager R2 Beta, including:

-New Power Management MP template (Monitored system must be Windows Server 2008 R2 or Win7)
-Updated branding across all User Interfaces
-Improved trace configuration tools on the CD to help support issues escalated to Customer Support (where applicable)
-Improved Run As Account Distribution Configuration
-Ability to run inline tasks for non-Microsoft servers
-Support for upgrade from Beta deployments to the Release Candidate
-New and updated documentation, including the Usage Guide, Design Guide, Deployment Guide, Upgrade Guide, Security Guide and Operations Guide

Apply - to participate in the "Operations Manager Public Beta" - https://connect.microsoft.com/SelfNomination.aspx?ProgramID=2249&pageType=1&SiteID=446

Get it - System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 (RC) - http://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?SiteID=446&DownloadID=17271

Tell us what you think! - Give us your feedback - https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/default.aspx?SiteID=446