Matt Goedtel on Operations Management : ITIL

ITIL v3 Foundation Certification - Passed

mgoedtel — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:28:00 GMT

I forgot to mention a few weeks ago I had taken the ITIL v3 Foundation Certification exam and a couple of days later I received my results in the mail. I passed...

That is all - end transmission.

ITIL v3 Foundation Certification

mgoedtel — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:46:00 GMT

Back in June I attended an internal class to review Microsoft Operations Framework v4 (formerly known as Project Hanna) and attended a beta exam thereafter, which I fortunately passed. Now this week, I am going to update my ITIL Foundation Certification from v2 to v3.

I have a very strong opinion with respect to anyone in IT and the benefits of learning and adopting a process frameworks in an effort to improve the delivery and support of IT Services to the business. Not simply focusing on technology makes anyone in IT a well rounded person as long as they take it seriously and work towards improving the way IT functions. It makes us better IT stewards.

You can learn more about MOF here - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc506049.aspx

You can learn more about ITIL here - http://www.itil-officialsite.com/home/home.aspm and here - http://www.itlibrary.org/

I'll get off the soapbox now....:)

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.

Release Management 101

mgoedtel — Mon, 28 May 2007 03:48:00 GMT

Commonly I come across a scenario with customers where they focus on implementing MOM/OpsMgr, yet do not think about process in relation to the tools. A prime example with Operations Manager or MOM is with Management Packs and Release Management - Plan, Build, Test, Review and Deploy (simply speaking). You can't just simply download a Management Pack, import it into your management group, and then expect it to go off and begin monitor your environment (Lets face it, there will be some level of inaccurate alerting that will occur even though the developers have tuned it to minimize "noise"). And why? Because everyone implements technology differently out of the box - customizations, tightening security, etc. Therefore, some level of tuning needs to occur before you "release" it into production.

From a Release Management perspective, you need to:

Plan the release - identify who needs to be involved in the release (teams and roles), the schedule, the project plan (if necessary), what's affected, documentation, etc. Review the deployment guide that accompanies the Management Pack, and prepare to test it in a lab environment.
Build the release - Develop the process, tools, and technology required to release into production. Here you are going to determine how you are going to deploy the Management Pack into production, which typically is importing it on a Management Server in the management group or use an automated method from the command-line or SDK. This could be the default MP and/or custom MP (depending on the situation).
Test - Once you have the build package developed and accepted, you then need to test the Management Pack and tune it based upon your requirements. The changes you make to the defalut MP should be saved in a Custom Management Pack to avoid those changes being overwritten when you import a new version of the MP (for MOM 2005. For OpsMgr 2007, you need to save your changes in a custom MP because the MP's that are released by the vendor are sealed and cannot be modified). Document the customizations you make and implement a version control system as well. Make sure the changes return the expected results - alerts are raised for valid issues, thresholds are set to variances outside of expected performance characteristics, etc. Basically no ambiguous alerts and that you are seeing the results based upon how you have the service or application configured in your environment.
Review & Deploy - review with the necessary parties the results of the different phases of the process and if accepted, the MP can be deployed into production based upon the RFC submitted to the CAB (Change Advisory Board). If there are concerns or issues, it may not be approved and back to testing to rectify the concerns or issues. In addition, store the MP and documentation in a DSL (Distributed Software Library) - such as a share repository for all MP's or even something like Visual SourceSafe where it is logically structured per type of MP and version. Important for tracking and control of changes so that you maintain in a centralized manner. Don't forget to update your CMDB if you have one to follow the process for Configuration Management.

This may appear to be alot of unnecesary red-tape, but the point I am trying to make is do your due diligence in reviewing the MP and what it does, the requirements and caveats, and test it before you go ahead and implement in production. This is an enterprise monitoring product that should be controlled to ensure accurate notification of true health or reliability issues with services and applcations monitored in your datacenter. More importantly, the business will feel confident in IT meeting SLA's and the report data being reliable and that you are actually able to provide it.

ITIL = Process = Common Sense

mgoedtel — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 21:56:00 GMT

As you may or may not know, ITIL is all about best practices for IT Service Management with three key tenants:

Align IT Service with the current/future needs of the business or customer.
Improve quality of IT Service delivered
Reduce overall cost of services delivered

This is nothing more than sound practical judgement, hence my title ending with the word "Common Sense." It just amazes me that these concepts are foreign to individuals within Information Technology. Maybe that is viewed as a harsh comment, but by golly what I witness time and again are individuals who fail to recognize the fact that we are here to support the business and need to have that customer mindset in all we do. No longer is IT in the driver seat as it used to be (when I first started in IT back in the early 90's) controlling everything. Now IT is an enabler for the business and must support the business initatives or else the business will look elsewhere (such as outsourcing, which is why I consider it such a "fad" these days).

As a representative of your IT organization, I strongly recommend you open your mind and focus on being customer centric. In my opinion, you further mature and help to improve effectiveness and efficiency within IT. Not only that, but your chances for job security and promotion increase. :)

Check out the IT Foundation Certification or just start reading about ITIL here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL or here - http://www.itil.org.uk/.