Matt Goedtel on Operations Management : Operations Manager 2007, Management Packs

Extended SQL Server MP Released on OpsManJam

mgoedtel — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:39:00 GMT

As promised, I finally finished and submitted the Extended SQL Server 2005/2008 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 and it is now available for download on OpsManJam.

This management pack augments the existing Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 management pack by monitoring for the following change in your environment:

A database mirroring event has been detected on the principal server, affecting replication of the database transaction logs between principal and its mirroring partner based on user-defined performance thresholds for that mirrored database instance.
Performance collection of key database mirroring performance counters for viewing in performance views inculded with this management pack, or referencing in a performance report.

This management pack was developed referencing the latest version of the Operations Manager 2007 SQL Server Management Pack, version 6.0.6569.0.

After my short break, I'll begin working on the next version of this management pack, which will include a health model and monitoring of the health of a mirrored database. Hopefully I can turn this around withina reasonable timeframe. As always, I encourage and appreciate your feedback.

New MP's on OpsManJam

mgoedtel — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:04:00 GMT

It has been quite some time since I have posted anything of relevance on my blog. I have been focused on updating some of the management packs that I published a few months ago, such as:

Extended Windows Server Active Directory
Extended Windows Server
System Center Configuration Manager OSD

In addition, I was developing some new custom management packs, such as:

Extended Windows Server Internet Information Services 2003
Extended SQL Server 2005/2008
Alachisoft NCache 3.x

All of these MP's, with exception of the Alachisoft and Extended SQL Server MP's, have been published on OpsManJam Library, under Management Packs. The Alachisoft NCache MP is undergoing an internal review and should be published this week or next. I am currently putting the finishing touches on the custom Extended SQL Server 2005/2008, which will provide the following features:

Provides basic monitoring of specific events when you have database mirroring enabled on specific databases hosted on your SQL 2005/2008 server.
Collects specific performance data related to database mirroring to view in the Console.
Monitors for an event condition when a database filegroup runs out of disk space (such as when AUTOGROW is not enabled, insufficient disk space, etc.)

So I have this first version complete and am currently drafting the deployment guide. I should have it completed by the weekend and submitted for publishing on OpsManJam next week. The next version of this MP that I am preparing to develop, will look to provide more advanced health monitoring for database mirroring.

From now on, all custom MP's that I develop will be published on OpsManJam and not on my blog.

ADMP and Tuning for Performance Reports

mgoedtel — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 04:27:00 GMT

The latest Active Directory management pack deployment guide has a small section entitled "Enabling or Disabling Performance Data for Reports" and it was generating some good dialog internally between some colleagues and the product group. This section recommends that you disable the Performance monitor for the class "Active Directory Domain Controller Server 200x Computer Role" in order to minimize performance data collection for reports. However, this is a base aggregate monitor that is basically responsible for reflecting the best/worse case of health relative to the state of the child monitors. It has no direct impact on controlling the behavior of the child monitors, nor performance collection in general.

If you really want to disable performance data collection because reporting is not important to you, then you should be focusing on the performance collection rules. They are denoted as such with the words "performance collection" in the name of the respective rule. Examples in the ADMP are:

AD Global Catalog Search Time Response Performance Collection
AD DC Performance Collection - Metric Memory Committed Bytes

If you want to disable performance alerts because you are not concerned with certain performance issues with your DC's (as you may already know these facts and don't want to be constantly reminded), then you should be disabling the respective performance unit monitor. Examples in the ADMP are:

AD DC Last Bind Monitor
AD DC Op Master Domain Naming Last Bind Monitor

Run As Profiles in Operations Manager 2007 R2

mgoedtel — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:36:00 GMT

One of the new features of R2 that hasn't received any attention yet (at least to my knowledge) is how we changed the functionality of Run As Profiles. Today in Operations Manager 2007, you associate a RunAs Account for a particular RunAs Profile on a specific computer. Pretty straight forward and if I remember correctly, the same as MOM 2005 (haven't touched it in some time so my memory is vague). When I was testing my custom ADMP (my lab environment is running on R2), I was caught off guard because I needed to associate a RunAs account with a RunAs profile as part of my testing, and it took me some time to figure out how to configure it correctly (since the on-line documentation for R2 was not updated to provide an appropriate level of guidance).

In Operations Manager 2007 R2, when associating a RunAs Account for a particular RunAs Profile, you can now target the the profile to any class available in Operations Manager and see the logical relationship between the two. Take for example a script that we run as a response to a monitor or a script that performs some level of monitoring against a SQL Server database. Instead of associating the profile with the agent, you can associate the profile with the database instance or the SQL Server Database Engine for that agent. So any workflow that requires running under a specific set of privileges in order to access the instrumentation correctly, you will be able to target the profile by group, object, and instance class. This follows the same logic as targeting a workflow today (monitors, rules, discoveries, tasks, etc.).

While today's management packs for Operations Manager aren't developed with this strategy in mind, by the time R2 comes out I would expect to see them supporting this.

Operations Manager 2007 Performance Monitoring Management Pack

mgoedtel — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:24:00 GMT

I just completed the deployment guide for this custom management pack that Walter and I have been working on. It is now ready for you to download and evaluate.

Description: This management pack provides performance views and dashboards to present key performance data from the SQL Server(s) hosting one or all of the Operations Manager databases.

What this management pack does not do is proactively monitor and alert/change health state if the SQL Servers are not operating reliably. This is something that I am currently evaluating as a possibility for the next version, in addition to supporting dynamic membership so that we can automatically discover the Windows Server(s) hosting SQL Server 2005 and the Operations Manager (operational, data warehouse, and audit) databases. If time can be found, I'll look to devote some effort towards developing the next version. One of the things I wished I had more time to focus on was the discovery and targeting of views/rules dynamically for the operational database, due to the way discovery and targeting is configured in Operations Manager today. That is a topic I don't have time to discuss further right now, sadly.

Limited testing of this management pack has been conducted by myself and Walter.

Feedback is encouraged.

Up Next - OpsMgr Performance Monitoring MP

mgoedtel — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 04:24:00 GMT

This has been on my list of things to do - release the custom Operations Manager Performance Monitoring MP that Walter Chomak and myself co-developed. I am in the process of getting the deployment guide authored and hope to have it released shortly. This was something Walter and I wanted to release to the public several months ago, but time has not been on our side. It compliments the guidance Walter has blogged about and I have been preaching to customers while engaged with them (no need to duplicate guidance if Walter has blogged about it already) :)

I almost published it this evening without the deployment guide, which goes against the standards I follow. Then I came to my senses... I'll get that guide done before the end of next week and submit to Chris Fox for posting on the OpsManJam Site (with a little bit of luck).

Thanks for hanging in there!

What's New These Days?

mgoedtel — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:20:00 GMT

I realize that it has been some time since I have posted a blog entry, as trying to find time has been a challenge for me these days. Some things I have been working on and plan on sharing shortly on my blog are:

Custom management pack that focuses on performance monitoring of the SQL Servers that host the Operations Manager databases.
Whitepaper on how to reconfigure Operations Manager if the service accounts need to be renamed after installation (No really, I had this situation come up with a recent customer).
Whitepaper on installing and configuring Operations Manager Reporting on Windows Server 2008.
Whitepaper on configuring SQL Server Log Shipping for the Operations Manager operational database (a more detailed whitepaper than exists in the community today).

I should have items #3 and #4 published before the end of the week on my blog. For item #1, I have the custom MP done, but the deployment guide is not completed yet as I just started to draft it. With item #2, I need to run through the steps in my VM environment to validate before I publish them.

Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience.

Updated MP Lifecycle Templates

mgoedtel — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:10:00 GMT

I have finally found the time to update the templates and include a project plan template in support of the MP Lifecycle Management process. I updated the test plan spreadsheet because I thought it didn't look professional enough (yes I am picky) and created a project plan template as a foundation in support of your process.

This can be leveraged in either scenario - tuning a vendor management pack or if you are developing your own management packs in support of monitoring specific services in your organization where a vendor provided MP may not exists.

Follow-up from my MP Lifecycle Management TechNet Webcast

mgoedtel — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 05:33:00 GMT

Today I had the pleasure of presenting about System Center Operations Manager 2007 MP Lifecycle Management via TechNet Webcast. After I completed the presentation I shortly realized I failed to mention some important facts/recommendations that I had notated yet overlooked due to time and a bit of nervousness. I digress. Anyway, here are a few things I would like to elaborate on or just highlight.

The tools to augment your "toolkit" with respect to managing overrides, reviewing overrides in your management group, etc. can be downloaded off of Boris Yanushpolsky's Blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/boris_yanushpolsky/default.aspx. Those tools I mentioned were Override Explorer and Override Creator.
Another tool to augment your "toolkit" with respect to viewing the configuration of a management pack can be downloaded off of Boris Yanushpolsky's Blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/boris_yanushpolsky/default.aspx. This tool is called MP Viewer.
Silect MP Studio provides many features with respect to viewing the configuration of a management pack, performing overrides, test and tune the MP by running the feature "Resultant Set of Alerts", opening a management pack and printing out the default rules and monitors that are enabled so the SME/SO (Subject Matter Expert/Service Owner) can understand the scope of what is monitored and what default thresholds may be defined. The Resultant Set of Alerts feature is valuable when verifying the management pack as part of your test phase. Also their MPStuidoLite tool should be considered if you don't decide to purchase the MPStuido product. I should also note that the folks at Silect are also working towards ensuring that the tool compliments the ITIL processes with respect to Change, Release, and Config. You can find out more about it here - http://www.silect.com/solutions/opsmgr_Sol/opsmgr_Sol_studio.html.
When conducting the pilot of your management pack, leverage the built-in reports Operations Manager - Microsoft Generic Report Library\Most Common Alerts and Microsoft ODR Report Library\Most Common Alerts. These reports will help you in identifying the top offenders that may require additional tuning, adjusting the configuration of rule/monitor. or a logic error in a rule script.
For the pilot phase I recommended multi-homing the agent managed system in production against the QA management group. This allows you to narrow the scope of your pilot without having to deal with overrides for controlling the discovery rules that would identify systems that match the criteria required for the MP to begin monitoring the application or service. Multi-homing allows you to distribute the monitoring between one or more management groups and the processing of rules is managed independently. Meaning if I have my production management group monitoring the server/service/application using x version of a management pack and in the QA management group I have version y of the same management pack, the processing is independent. It is like having two agents running on the same system (even though with MOM/OpsMgr 2007, it is one agent and the configuration information in the Registry dictates it reports to two separate management groups). The multi-homed agent processes the workflows from the different configuration groups independently and there is no conflict of rules.
The goal of the alert tuning process is to minimize the alert "noise" or the barrage of false alerts that have been generated and overshadow the relevant alerts that are actionable. Sometimes the source of alert noise can be attributed to false positives, false negatives, and multiple alerts with the same root cause. This is an on-going process and may not be resolved in a short period of time. For further guidance, please review the MOM 2005 Alert Tuning Solution Accelerator found here - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/solutionaccelerators/cits/mo/smc/sts05.mspx. The prescriptive guidance provided in this SA is still very relevant and helpful, so please take a moment and check it out.
When developing a custom management pack to monitor an in-house developed application or service, one recommendation I can make is consider disabling the performance collection monitors or rules by default. This approach allows you to enable them via override one at a time to verify their configuration and avoid impacting the agent, management server, and the SQL Servers hosting the OperationsManager or the OperationsManagerDW databases (if you are leveraging the performance data for reports).

I think this is a good start and I'll continue this topic tomorrow. So stay tuned and for those of you who attended today's session, I hope you found it of value and I thank you for attending. For those of you who were unable to, it will be available for on-demand viewing shortly, so you can access it here - https://www106.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032379751&role=attend&pw=4611BEDB. If there is a particular topic you would like me to go into greater detail on, please let me know and I'll will be happy to expand and post it here on my blog.

Thanks!

Join the TechNet Webcast on 6/11 for MP Lifecycle Management

mgoedtel — Sat, 31 May 2008 02:13:00 GMT

On June 11th at 1 PM, I'll be hosting a TechNet Webcast on Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack Lifecycle Management.

Join this webcast to learn how people, process, and technology can help you manage the life cycle of developing or tuning management packs in support of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. In this webcast, we discuss the consideration of roles and responsibilities, the approach to managing overrides, developing custom management packs, version control, and much more. We also discuss how Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes play an important part in ensuring a consistent, repeatable approach to managing the life cycle of management packs.

Here is the link to register - http://www.microsoft.com/events/EventDetails.aspx?CMTYSvcSource=MSCOMMedia&Params=%7eCMTYDataSvcParams%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ID%22+Value%3d%221032379751%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ProviderID%22+Value%3d%22A6B43178-497C-4225-BA42-DF595171F04C%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22lang%22+Value%3d%22en%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22cr%22+Value%3d%22US%22%2f%5e%7esParams%5e%7e%2fsParams%5e%7e%2fCMTYDataSvcParams%5e

I look forward to presenting on this topic and hope that you can attend.

Verify MP Workflow on Agent - Part 2

mgoedtel — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 04:53:00 GMT

In continuation of my prior blog post a couple of weeks ago (see - http://blogs.technet.com/mgoedtel/archive/2008/03/18/verifying-mp-workflow-on-agent.aspx), I realized this evening there is another method that is much easier and more straight forward. While Walter Chomak recommended checking the Operations Manager Event Log on the agent managed system, by looking for Event ID 1201 specific to the Management Pack itself (See here to read Walter's Blog Post - http://wchomak.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F56EFE25599555EC!896.entry) most customers that I engage with are looking for a more centralized approach.

My initial thought was that the Event Collection Rule - Collect Health Service Configuration Updated Events from the System Center Core Monitoring MP would have captured this particular event, but after inspecting it I was wrong. It only looks for Event ID 1210 from the Health Service and not any of the ones we are more interested in. I uncovered this particular Event Collection rule by reviewing the Dashboard View - Operations Manager\Health Service Configuration\Config Update Events and reviewing the "Received and Activated New Config."

Since this Event Collection Rule does not look for Event ID 1201, I figured I would create a custom rule and view to be able to monitor this from the Operations Console. So in order to do this, perform the following:

Create an Event Collection Rule and call it "Collect Health Service MP Update Events" with a Rule Category of "EventCollection" and the Rule target being "Health Service."
The Log name is "Operations Manager" and the Expression is Event Source "HealthService" with EventID 1201.
Save this in a custom Management Pack and not the Default Management Pack.
Under the Monitoring view, create a Event View and call it "Config Update Events (Agent) - Management Packs" or something logical that meets your needs.
The Criteria for the view is the following: "with a specific event number 1201" and from a specific source "HealthService." The target should be "Agent" under the Show data related to drop down list.

Once you carry out those steps, from the console you can view when an agent receives a new Management Pack.

Updated Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack (6.0.6278.5) Available

mgoedtel — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 04:24:00 GMT

The Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 has been updated (version 6.0.6278.5) and is now available for download - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9FF454F4-6D34-4FB9-9E0B-F5B68C6EDC4F&displaylang=en&displaylang=en

The minor update includes:

Fixed an issue with OWA monitoring using custom URLs so that the Management Pack now looks for the CustomUrls registry key instead of the CustomOwaUrls registry key (consistent with previous versions of the Management Pack)
Fixed an issue with data collection rules for mailbox or public folder size in MB. On monitored servers running Exchange 2003 and using regional settings that are not English (United States) an issue can occur where the size of the mailbox or public folder is reported incorrectly. This will also affect the associated reports.

Exchange 2007 SP1 Management Pack for MOM 2005 Released

mgoedtel — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:38:00 GMT

Today we released the Exchange 2007 SP1 management pack for MOM 2005 to MS downloads:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=30EEBC7C-A35A-41AE-9CD1-2047847FDE85&displaylang=en

In this MP, you’ll find:

· Renamed some event rules to better reflect their purpose

· Improved some report descriptions

· Updated for performance counter name changes

· Fixed PowerShell issue when one or more necessary parameters are not passed to a cmdlet

· Updated many reports to use a 90%-100% scale rather than dynamic scale to gain visual fidelity in that range. Affected reports are as follows:

o ActiveSync Internal Service Availability

o Mailbox Service Availability

o Mailflow Local Service Availability

o Mailflow Remote Service Availability

o Outlook Web Access External Service Availability

o Outlook Web Access Internal Service Availability

o Unified Messaging Local Fax Service Availability

o Unified Messaging Local Voice Service Availability

o Unified Messaging Remote Voice Service Availability

· Added/Modified Event Rules:

o Added: Transport message rejection because of lack of disk space

o Added: Transport message rejection because of memory consumption exceeding the configured threshold

o Added: 10 error level event rules for Active Directory directory server Rights Management Server (RMS) in the Bridgehead Agents Messaging Policies health manifest

o Added: 3 error level event rules for the Transport receive connector in the Bridgehead Transport common health manifest

o Modified: Escalated “The STARTTLS certificate will expire soon” from warning to error alert

· Removed many miscellaneous outdated event rules

· Enabled collection of performance data for reporting in Test-WebServiceConnectivity ScriptResponseRule

· Added support for Test-ReplicationHealth cmdlet; removed numerous event rules made redundant by this addition

· Added support for Test-POPConnectivity cmdlet execution through the management pack and monitoring service

· Added support for Test-IMAPConnectivity cmdlet execution through the management pack and monitoring service

· Changed all outdated references from “Bridgehead” to “Hub Transport”

· Added ‘From’ and ‘MediaSecured’ property support for Test-UMConnectivity for the monitoring service

· Added ‘LightMode’ property support for Test-ActiveSyncConnectivity, Test-WebServicesConnectivity and Test-OWAConnectivity

· Added ‘LightMode’ property support for Test-POPConnectivity and Test-IMAPConnectivity

· Updated all reports to use provided client language for localized dates

Updated Windows Server 2003 Cluster MP Available

mgoedtel — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 06:15:00 GMT

Just posted is an updated version of the Windows 2003 Cluster Management Pack. This update resolves several customer initiated issues. This update also includes some changes in order to prepare for the Windows 2008 Cluster MP.

Here is a link to the download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AC7F42F5-33E9-453D-A923-171C8E1E8E55&displaylang=en&displaylang=en

Due to the nature of the changes you will need to first uninstall the previous version of the cluster management pack. The steps are documented in the MP Guide which is part of the download package. The MP guide also has a complete list of changes.

Operations Manager 2007 Authoring Guide Now Available

mgoedtel — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 18:30:00 GMT

The new Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack Authoring Guide is now publicly available for download. The complete document in Microsoft Word format is available here:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/4/d/74deff5e-449f-4a6b-91dd-ffbc117869a2/OM2007_AuthGuide.doc

We hope you find the new authoring guide useful! Please keep in mind that it is a living document and will be updated frequently