Some users may need to have reports that can be looked at regularly but they don't want to install the SCOM console on a bunch of machines and have all those connections to the SDK. So what can you do? One way around this is to create reports that can be viewed in IE. Below is an example I recently used to create a Disk Usage report for Exchange Servers that can be run by the Exchange Admins:
1. Go to Reporting in SCOM Admin Console.
2. Open the report you want to publish and fill in the parameters. When specifying the date, use Advanced and then Today Minus 7 (for weekly) etc.
3. Run the report. When finished select Publish.
4. Open SQL Management Studio and create a Reporting Services connection to the SRS box (In Server Type select Reporting Services instead of Database Engine).
5. Create a new folder for the reports (ie Exchange Admin Reports).
6. Expand the Home folder, then Users Folders, then the user who created the report.
7. In their My Reports folder, right click on the report file, select Move and browse to newly created folder. Do the same for the rpdl file.
8. Connect to the report in IE by typing /Reports">http://<machinename>/Reports.
9. Browse to the new folder, click on the report.
10. Copy the link from the report and email as link to the appropriate group of people.
Note: If you want to hide the parameters fields in the header area, right click on the reports in SQL Management Studio and select Properties. Click on Parameters and then check the box to Hide whichever fields you want hidden. Also, if you don't want the user to see the default tabs in the top of the report (which allows them to go to properties etc. in IE) browse to the report by going to /Reportserver">HTTP://<Machinename>/Reportserver then drill down to the report and use this link.
Hope this helps,
Sam Allen | Senior Support Escalation Engineer
At Microsoft we are continually receiving feedback from customers and improving our products, and as part of this process we review open issues and supply hotfixes as appropriate. In line with this approach, we just published a new Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 article which addresses the following issue:
Consider the following scenario:
- You import a language pack for a Management Pack on a computer that is running System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1).
- You use operations manager administration console or Web console to view rules or monitors contained in the Management Pack.
In this scenario, the Product Knowledge tab for rules and monitors is displayed as the Company Knowledge tab. The Product Knowledge tab is empty. Additionally, you cannot update the Company Knowledge tab for affected rules and monitors. For more information and to download the hotfix see the link below:
KB970533 - The Product Knowledge tab is displayed as the Company Knowledge tab after you import a Language Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1
Enjoy!
J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer
Here’s an issue I ran into when I was trying to import the Active Directory 2008 Management pack for MOM 2005 SP1, and since I didn’t see it documented anywhere I thought I’d post it here. I was trying to Import the Active Directory 2008 Management pack for MOM 2005 and it was failing with the following warning:
Warning: ComputerRule (ID:'{BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D}'): failed to update, error: Error information has 2 rows and 6 columns.Err 0: op = 0, HRESULT = 80040e2f, Description = The statement has been terminated., SQL native = 3621, SQL description = 01000, Method name = ComputerRuleUpdatePKAndTimeErr 1: op = 0, HRESULT = 80040e2f, Description = Cannot insert duplicate key row in object 'ComputerRule' with unique index 'UI_Name'., SQL native = 2601, SQL description = 23000, Method name = ComputerRuleUpdatePKAndTimeFound 2 errors, 0 were collisions.
Here’s what I did to troubleshoot the issue:
At the time of importing a Management Pack, if the import fails it should generate a log which is the first place you should be looking for any warnings or error messages. In my case I could see the following:
Detail Information
Operation: Backup Management Pack
Name: E:\allnew2009\Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Active Directory.akm
Status: Success
Description: Passed
*************************************************
Management Pack Description: The Microsoft Windows Active Directory Management Pack module monitors the events Active Directory places in the System and Application event logs. This Management Pack module includes several performance counters to monitor the overall performance of the Active Directory. Analyzing this performance information allows you to perform accurate load balancing and capacity planning, and alerts you to possible future problems.
Detail Information
Operation: Import Management Pack
Name: E:\allnew2009\Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Active Directory.akm
Status: Warning
Description: Passed
Sub Operation: Importing Management Pack from 'E:\allnew2009\Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Active Directory.akm' to DB '<serverName>'
Sub Operation: Loading Management Pack from:'E:\allnew2009\Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Active Directory.akm'
Sub Operation: Loading Management Pack from DB, server:<serverName>'
Sub Operation: Saving Management Pack to DB, server:<serverName>'
Sub Operation: Loading Management Pack from DB, server:'<serverName>'
Sub Operation: Saving Management Pack to DB, server:'<serverName>'
Warning: ComputerRule (ID:'{BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D}'): failed to update, error: Error information has 2 rows and 6 columns.Err 0: op = 0, HRESULT = 80040e2f, Description = The statement has been terminated., SQL native = 3621, SQL description = 01000, Method name = ComputerRuleUpdatePKAndTimeErr 1: op = 0, HRESULT = 80040e2f, Description = Cannot insert duplicate key row in object 'ComputerRule' with unique index 'UI_Name'., SQL native = 2601, SQL description = 23000, Method name = ComputerRuleUpdatePKAndTimeFound 2 errors, 0 were collisions.
Sub Operation: Importing Management Pack from 'E:\allnew2009\Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Active Directory.akm' to DB '<serverName>'
From the warning above it is evident that there is a duplicate key row in the "ComputerRule" table with ID “BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D”
Now in order to figure out what object the ID “BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D” references, I did the following on my lab machine before making any changes with the MOM Server in the production environment.
Lab test
Since the ID “BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D” references the “ComputerRule” table in the OnePoint database, I ran the following query:
select * from computerrule where idComputerRule = 'BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D'
Output:
BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers 0 1 24 NULL 2 0 NULL 2 0 Any Domain Controllers running Windows Server 2003 AttributeValue(Windows Current Version)="5.2" 726D49EE-6F3A-11D2-A404-00A0C9AFE040 1 2009-06-16 09:06:24.670 2009-06-16 10:14:17.723 AB\Administrator 0x010000000000000000000000
This tells us that the ID references the "Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers" Computer group. This computer group gets created when you import the Active Directory 2008 Management Pack. I next tried deleting the row using the query:
delete from computerrule where idComputerRule = 'BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D'
I was unable to delete it because it had a reference to the "computerruletoprocessrulegroup" table so I then ran the following query:
select * from computerruletoprocessrulegroup where idcomputerrule = 'BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D'
Output:
B621A0FD-1870-4358-ACB1-D4AE207E9185 BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D 7E49D8FD-5186-4353-9AAE-14D646BAE54D 2009-06-16 10:14:17.710
36D82219-2B35-4B10-8C09-2C69644F9986 BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D AE2760FD-770D-45BA-9C04-3241E3DF1539 2009-06-16 09:06:25.977
E276EE36-7E57-47EA-977F-A983A73F3009 BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D 73A45127-F46E-4537-8F99-6301B49B3DB2 2009-06-16 09:06:25.943
C7CA7B0A-0B06-4922-8559-46945E712C60 BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D 2CFE6B6A-2A04-4E88-B663-A8C17C9C748D 2009-06-16 09:06:25.913
The output above returned even more GUID’s so again to find out what these GUIDS reference I ran the following query:
select * from processrule where idprocessRule in (select idprocessrule from computerruletoprocessrulegroup where idcomputerrule = 'BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D')
Output:
Returned four rule groups as follows
7E49D8FD-5186-4353-9AAE-14D646BAE54D NULL NULL 1 Active Directory Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 Container for rules that are common to Microsoft Windows 2000 Active Directory and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Active Directory. 1 0 726D49EC-6F3A-11D2-A404-00A0C9AFE040 0 EC69D354-7405-11D2-A6E8-00A0C97148B7 FAF785AB-0651-4D95-A34C-387F12330AE9 0 NULL NULL NULL 2009-06-16 06:16:38.070 2004-03-20 19:07:11.410 AB\Administrator
AE2760FD-770D-45BA-9C04-3241E3DF1539 NULL NULL 1 Replication Topology Discovery (Connection Objects) Discovers Active Directory replication connection object toplogy 1 0 726D49EC-6F3A-11D2-A404-00A0C9AFE040 0 EC69D354-7405-11D2-A6E8-00A0C97148B7 08419A8B-6E42-448E-B876-E1D043AD178B 0 NULL NULL NULL 2009-06-16 09:06:25.623 2004-04-02 17:38:42.737 AB\Administrator
73A45127-F46E-4537-8F99-6301B49B3DB2 NULL NULL 1 Active Directory Windows Server 2003 Container for Windows Server 2003 specific rules for monitoring Active Directory 1 0 726D49EC-6F3A-11D2-A404-00A0C9AFE040 0 EC69D354-7405-11D2-A6E8-00A0C97148B7 2DB4ACA7-DE49-4557-A247-9E983D79E2E9 0 NULL NULL NULL 2009-06-16 09:06:25.517 2003-10-25 19:08:02.453 AB\Administrator
2CFE6B6A-2A04-4E88-B663-A8C17C9C748D NULL NULL 1 Replication Latency Monitoring This rule group contains the rules required to monitor replication in Active Directory. 1 0 726D49EF-6F3A-11D2-A404-00A0C9AFE040 0 EC69D354-7405-11D2-A6E8-00A0C97148B7 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 0 NULL NULL NULL 2009-06-16 09:06:25.360 2004-04-02 17:39:17.073 AB\Administrator
All Rule groups that are associated with the "Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers" Computer group were returned as output as a result of running the above query, so now it make sense why it wasn't allowing the Computer group to be deleted as it is associated with the following rule groups:
a. Active Directory Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003
b. Replication Topology Discovery (Connection Objects)
c. Active Directory Windows Server 2003
d. Replication Latency Monitoring
So now I ran the following delete operation to disassociate the rule groups from the computer group "Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers":
delete from computerruletoprocessrulegroup where idcomputerrule = 'BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D'
After that, I ran the following query to delete the computer group "Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers":
delete from computerrule where idComputerRule = 'BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D'
This time I succeeded in deleting the computer rule with ID 'BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D'
To test whether I am able to now import the AD 2008 Management Pack now, I imported the Management Pack again and I got the MP imported without any problems. Also the Computer Group "Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers" and associated rule groups that I deleted earlier were recreated successfully.
Looking back, the cause was a duplicate Computer group “Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers” that was causing the AD 2008 MP import to fail. This computer group had no rule groups associated with it so I simply deleted this computer group using the following query:
delete from computerrule where idComputerRule = '2071E3CE-9D89-4542-8069-640E96372E8C'
Resolution: So now with the tests done in my lab, I had to import the AD 2008 MP in the production environment.
I deleted the "Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers" Computer group after disassociating the rule groups and then tried importing the Active Directory 2008 MP again. It succeeded this time but with a different warning message:
Detail Information
Operation: Backup Management Pack
Name: E:\allnew2009\Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Active Directory.akm
Status: Success
Description: Passed
*************************************************
Management Pack Description: The Microsoft Windows Active Directory Management Pack module monitors the events Active Directory places in the System and Application event logs. This Management Pack module includes several performance counters to monitor the overall performance of the Active Directory. Analyzing this performance information allows you to perform accurate load balancing and capacity planning, and alerts you to possible future problems.
Detail Information
Operation: Import Management Pack
Name: E:\allnew2009\Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Active Directory.akm
Status: Warning
Description: Passed
Sub Operation: Importing Management Pack from 'E:\allnew2009\Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Active Directory.akm' to DB 'blr-ec-ms01'
Sub Operation: Loading Management Pack from:'E:\allnew2009\Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Active Directory.akm'
Sub Operation: Loading Management Pack from DB, server:'<serverName>'
Sub Operation: Saving Management Pack to DB, server:'<serverName>'
Sub Operation: Loading Management Pack from DB, server:'<serverName>'
Sub Operation: Saving Management Pack to DB, server:'<serverName>'
Warning: ComputerRule: found duplicate name 'Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers' and successfully renamed to 'Copy of Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers'
Sub Operation: Importing Management Pack from 'E:\allnew2009\Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Active Directory.akm' to DB '<serverName>'
*************************************************
From the MOM admin console I see two computer groups now:
a. Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers
b. Copy of Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers
From the Query Analyzer window I ran the following queries in the production environment:
select * from computerrule where name like '%2003 Domain Controllers'
Output:
Got two entries as follows
BE192596-4C5E-4B4E-8840-57A67FBDAB9D Copy of Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers 0 1 24 NULL 2 0 NULL 2 0 Any Domain Controllers running Windows Server 2003 AttributeValue(Windows Current Version)="5.2" 726D49EE-6F3A-11D2-A404-00A0C9AFE040 1 2009-06-16 09:39:11.593 2004-02-17 22:22:39.853 0x010000000000000000000000
2071E3CE-9D89-4542-8069-640E96372E8C Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers 1 1 24 NULL 2 0 NULL 2 0 NULL
(AttributeValue(DomainControllerService) AND (AttributeValue(Windows Current Version) = "5.2")) 726D49EE-6F3A-11D2-A404-00A0C9AFE040 12009-02-26 11:22:03.733 2009-02-26 12:27:40.797
0x010000005B0000000500000077006900700072006F0001000000020000000B00000062006C0072002D00650063002D006400630030003100010000000
20000000500000077006900700072006F0001000000020000000B00000062006C0072002D00650063002D006400630030003200010000000200000005000000770069
The "2071E3CE-9D89-4542-8069-640E96372E8C Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers" Computer group found was a duplicate entry. To find out if there are any rule groups associated with it I ran the following query:
select * from processrule where idprocessRule in (select idprocessrule from computerruletoprocessrulegroup where idcomputerrule = '2071E3CE-9D89-4542-8069-640E96372E8C')
Output:
No entries returned
The computer group with ID "2071E3CE-9D89-4542-8069-640E96372E8C” had no rule group association as the previous query did not return any rows. I deleted this duplicate Computer Group and once that was done I was able to successfully import the Active Directory 2008 Management Pack.
Chances are you won’t run into this exact problem, but if you run into something similar then you should be able to follow the same method I outlined here and be able to determine what may be causing your issue.
Hope this helps,
Adnan Ezzi | Support Engineer
We’ve seen a couple issues with the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Management Pack for Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 that we just released and found that the issues did not impact the operation of the management pack but were generating some non-actionable alerts. As a result, we wanted to make everyone aware of these so they wouldn’t cause any undue concern.
The following are some of the known issues in the Dynamics AX 2009 Management pack.
Issue : Alert “A GroupPopulator module unloaded due to an unrecoverable error” in operations manager console when importing the Dynamics AX 2009 Management Pack
Affected Version : 1.0.0.50
Description : This error is generated due to a race condition on the RMS where a group populator gets fired before the management pack gets loaded completely. This does not impact the performance or functionality of the management pack.
Resolution : There is no resolution for this problem since it’s due to a race condition. Just close the alert.
Issue : Alert “Script or Executable Failed to run” in operations manager console
Affected Version : 1.0.0.50
Description : Some placeholder scripts (myscript.vbs) in the Dynamics AX 2009 Management Pack cause SCOM to generate warnings because there is no code being executed.
Resolution : There is no resolution for this alert. Close the alert. The problem will be fixed in the next version of the management pack.
Raji Easwaran | Senior Program Manager
Just an FYI that last Friday we released the Windows Server Hyper-V Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007. I have a brief overview and a download link below:
Overview
This management pack supports monitoring of Windows Server Hyper-V systems. This includes monitoring coverage of Hyper-V host servers, including critical services and disks, and Hyper-V virtual machines, including virtual components and virtual hardware.
Feature Summary
This management pack provides the following functionality:
- Management of critical Hyper-V services that affect virtual machines and host server functionality
- Management of host server logical disks that affect virtual machine health
- Full representation of virtualization in a single Hyper-V host server, including virtual networks, virtual machines, and guest computers
- Monitoring of virtual machine hardware components that affect availability
For more information and to download the management pack see the Microsoft download site at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=502e7a26-2fea-4052-89fd-8f75142de4f2&displaylang=en.
J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer
The System Center Operations Manager 2007 product team just posted a cool article on how to fix a couple Discovery related issues and if you haven’t already seen it then it’s worth a quick read. Here’s the scenario they work with:
In this post I shall discuss a scenario where we had the following problems:
- The right information was not discovered (accuracy problem)
- There was a big lag in discovering the information. (freshness problem)
- It had a performance hit on the machine. (performance problem)
To see how they approached these issues and resolved them, visit http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2009/06/15/case-study-fixing-a-discovery.aspx.
J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer
Last week we published five new Knowledge Base articles for System Center Operations Manager 2007. I won’t go into the details on each but I have the links and titles below:
========
KB972052 - Installation of an agent fails if you have System Center Operations Manager 2007 management server installed on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003, and you try to push the installation of an agent to a computer that is running IPv6 only
KB972051 - The DBCreateWizard tool of System Center Operations Manager 2007 fails on a Windows Server 2008-based computer that has the Windows Internal Database feature installed
KB959865 - Issues that are resolved by the Operations Manager Module rollup update for System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1: June 10, 2009
Enjoy!
J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer
Just an FYI that we published a new version of our System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 SCW Roles and Security Hardening Guide for Windows Server 2008 back on June 9th. I have a brief description and a download link below:
The Operations Manager 2007 Security Configuration Wizard (SCW) Roles and Security Hardening guide can be used to help further protect and harden your Operations Manager 2007 R2 environment in conjunction with the SCW on Windows Server 2008 by closing or disabling unnecessary ports and services reducing the overall attack surface.
Feature Bullet Summary:
The Operations Manager 2007 SCW Roles contain hardening definitions for:
- System Center Operations Manager 2007 Management Server
- System Center Operations Manager 2007 Root Management Server
- System Center Operations Manager 2007 Agent
It also contains additional hardening option for: - System Center Operations Manager 2007 Audit Collector
- System Center Operations Manager 2007 Audit Forwarder
- System Center Operations Manager 2007 SysLog Reader
- System Center Operations Manager 2007 Agent Push Install And Repair
- System Center Operations Manager 2007 Agentless Exception Monitoring
- System Center Operations Manager 2007 CEIP
- System Center Operations Manager 2007 Connector Framework
For more information and to download the guide visit http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c22c81eb-c6dc-4190-a4c9-2edbf5b528f1
J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer
If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time then you’re already familiar with the postings made by Steve Rachui over on his Manageability blog, but there’s been a flurry of activity over there in the past two days and it probably deserves a quick pointer here just in case you’re not a subscriber. He’s managed to crank out 4 posts in the past two days and I have a brief snippet and link for each below:
========
LocalizedText issues gone in R2?
Routine maintenance to keep the LocalizedText table trim has been a part of the OpsMgr administrators world for a while now. We have had a standardized query to clean this table that is posted on many blogs around the community – Kevin has a good article on the required cleanup posted here. I recently came across a problem where this cleanup script was not fully effective.
Continued here.
-----
Using a variable to query TOP N entries from SQL
I was recently building a SQL query for use in a report and was looking for a way to return the ''top N’ results from a table matching my query criteria. No big deal, right? We do this all the time with a simple statement similar to
Select TOP 10 <what you want to display> from <tablename>
Ah, but what if you want to use a variable to specify the value for TOP?
Continued here.
-----
Understanding ‘nested’ management pack discoveries and how they impact total discovery time
Most management packs require discoveries be run to figure out which systems are hosting the objects we wish to monitor with the management pack. Only after the discoveries find our target objects do processes kick in to deliver appropriate monitors/rules so that monitoring begins.
Continue reading here.
-----
Is your RMS updating configuration too frequently?
The RMS is responsible for maintaining a master list of agent configurations for the management group. As new information arrives from discoveries that are running on agents, that configuration becomes stale and needs to be updated. You can see this happening in the OpsMgr event log on the RMS – just look for an event 21025 or 21025 as shown below.
Continue reading here.
Enjoy!
J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer
The System Center Operations Manager 2007 product team just announced the introduction of two new complex deployment scenarios we did not support in OpsMgr 2007 SP1:
Clustering the RMS:
In OpsMgr 2007 SP1, clustering a Root Management Server (RMS) was only supported during the initial deployment of a management group. If you were to install a clustered RMS you needed to do this as the very first thing after deploying the first management server. If you later decided to cluster RMS (after you have deployed agents) the ManagementServerConfigTool would detect every Health Service in the management group and add them to the RMS cluster in the Operational Database. Basically, leaving your management group in a broken state. At this point,you would be forced to restore from backup.
In OpsMgr 2007 R2 we have made some changes to the ManagementServerConfigTool to support adding a new RMS cluster to an existing management group.
Upgrading to SQL 2008:
In OpsMgr 2007 R2 we are supporting a new installation of OpsMgr 2007 on SQL 2008 as well as upgrading your SQL 2005 Server to SQL Server 2008.
For more information on each of these see New R2 Deployment Complex Scenarios (Adding Clustered RMS and Upgrading to SQL 2008)
J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer
Using System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1), you may notice that some reports folders are missing from the Reporting pane under Operations console.
For example: You have imported SQL 2005 Management Pack and its working fine, it monitors SQL servers fine, alerts, health state and everything for SQL monitoring works fine. But when try to see Reports for SQL under Reporting, you don't see the SQL Server 2005 folder itself listed to see its reports.
You may also notice below behavior:
You check http://SRSservername/reportserver and find ALL reports folders listed here, including the missing reports folders in console.
You check http://SRSservername/reports and find some reports folders missing here. (In our example SQL Server 2005 is missing)
If you check Operations Manager event log on RMS server, you don't see any error or warning event related to Data Warehouse reports deployment.
Cause: This can happen if the Report folder is configured with "Hide in list view" check box in its properties settings.
Resolution: To resolve this take the steps below:
1. Go to http://SRSservername/reports site, here click on Show Details button and it will list ALL reports, including the missing ones.
2. Then click on properties icon for one of the reports folder which is missing in console and you will find that, it has a check box selected which reads "Hide in list view".
3, Uncheck this checkbox, and apply it.
4. Now it should start showing under http://servername/reports even when Hide Details is selected.
5. It also starts showing under Operations Console in Reporting view. (You have to right and click refresh to see them)
Uncheck this checkbox “Hide in list view” for all the Reports which are Hidden for you, and all the Reports will start showing under Reporting.
Milan Jajal | Manageability Support Engineer
Steve Rachui just posted a great article on how grooming works in System Center Operations Manager 2007, so if you missed this and was ever curious how all this came together then you’ll definitely want to check this out. I have his intro and a link below:
========
A while back I wrote up a blog post on how grooming works for the OpsMgr DB and the warehouse http://blogs.msdn.com/steverac/archive/2007/12/13/scom-2007-operational-and-datawarehouse-grooming.aspx
Recently I put the detailed grooming steps for the OpsMgr DB into a graphical form that I share here. Please note – even though there are specific tables shown here don’t consider this posting sanction to modify these tables. Doing so is unsupported and the tables are included here as information only and to show the total snapshot of the grooming process. Further, the diagram below shows the detail around grooming the OpsMgr DB for partition objects (event/perf) but leaves detail about grooming other data types, such as self-tuning threshold data, alerts, state changes, job status, etc. Information about ACS grooming, discovery data grooming, data warehoulse grooming, etc., is also absent. All that to say, grooming is a multi-step process and, while many of the moving parts are shown below, many are also not detailed.
For more information see OpsMgr DB Grooming – How it works.
J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer
Looks like they just announced the availability of the HP Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center over on the System Center product team blog. In case you’re not familiar with this, I have a brief intro and a link to the source below:
========
HP Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center enables Microsoft System Center customers to deploy, monitor, control, and optimize their HP ProLiant and HP BladeSystem platforms directly from Microsoft System Center products. This enhanced visibility into the health of HP servers and server blades enables faster response to server failures, reducing the risk of downtime for both physical and virtual environments. It also reduces deployment and update times and delivers greater control of server power to help IT organizations increase staff productivity and optimize use of power and cooling capacity.
• Deploy servers quickly: Quickly and reliably configure, deploy and update HP ProLiant servers through Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, including pre-OS server configuration and firmware and driver update.
• Proactively monitor health: Enable System Center Operations Manager and System Center Virtual Machine Manager to respond intelligently to hardware events, including automating virtual machine evacuation from distressed hardware.
• Control from anywhere: Take control of servers regardless of location, reduce travel time, and accelerate server recovery by launching iLO Advanced directly from System Center Operations Manager.
• Optimize power confidently: Up to triple data center capacity by safely capping power usage to fit more servers within existing power envelopes – without putting the electrical infrastructure at risk – with Insight Control power management.
• Unmatched service levels: With HP Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center, customers can take advantage of Insight Remote Support, advanced server monitoring built on HP Systems Insight Manager, that automatically forwards HP ProLiant and BladeSystem service events to HP call centers and tracks server warranty and support contract status.
For more information on the HP Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center check out the guest blog post on the System Center blog from Scott Farrand of HP.
J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer
If you have installed the MOM 2005 Reliability Analysis Reporting pack and found over time the task has taken longer and longer to complete, then it may be time to groom some of the older data from the database. The pack does have a grooming stored procedure built in, but it does not run automatically. This stored procedure is MRAS_pcDataDeleteByDate and it takes a single parameter which is a string representing the cut-off point you wish the data to groomed up to. So if you are going to remove this data then you first need to identify how old the data is, as it is also a good idea to remove the data in relatively small chunks and to monitor the impact this has on the DB.
So first get a value for the oldest data collection by running the following SQL.
USE SystemCenterReporting
select min(dtEnd) as OldestMRASData
from MRAS_Collection mc join mras_sojourn ms
on mc.uidCollectionPeriod = ms.CollectionPeriod
Then run the grooming SP, adding a month to the date you have found, and monitor the impact on the system in terms of performance, disk usage, tempdb growth, etc, and note how long it takes to complete. You can then decide to adjust the interval you delete with successive runs of the procedure, increasing or decreasing the interval accordingly. For example, if the oldest datetime returned from the previous query was '2007-02-13 00:00:53.000' then you should run the stored procedure as follows:
EXEC MRAS_pcDataDeleteByDate '2007-03-13 00:00:53.000'
If this goes through quickly with no big impact on the server performance, you may decide the next run will remove 2 months’ worth and run:
EXEC MRAS_pcDataDeleteByDate '2007-05-13 00:00:53.000'
Again you should monitor and increase/decrease the grooming interval as desired, re-running the procedure until you have groomed back the data to the retention period you desire. Once you have groomed the MRAS data back to an acceptable date you may wish to automate this process in future to save you from continual manual intervention. You can do this by creating a SQL Agent job to run once a day/week/month, at a time when it won’t clash with other SQL maintenance jobs to run this automatically. You will need to automatically calculate the datetime for the SQL job and I would recommend something like the following T-SQL:
DECLARE @CutOffDate datetime
Set @CutOffDate = DATEADD(year,-1,GETUTCDATE())
EXEC MRAS_pcDataDeleteByDate @CutOffDate
This line Set @CutOffDate = DATEADD(year,-1,GETUTCDATE()) sets the cut off date to be one year, but if you wished to make this shorter longer then you could do something like this:
Set @CutOffDate = DATEADD(month,-6,GETUTCDATE()) would make it 6 months
or
Set @CutOffDate = DATEADD(month,-18,GETUTCDATE()) would make it 18 months, etc....
Brian McDermott | Escalation Engineer
The Operations Manager product team blog just posted some great information on what you need to know about upgrading and deploying System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. Some of the big changes include:
Operations Manager R2 now supports OM database roles running on SQL 2008 with SP1. Please be sure install SP1 of SQL 2008 before beginning your R2 install or upgrade. Our Prerequisite checker detects for SQL 2008 SP1and will block until it is found. Note: We still continue to support SQL 2005 with SP1 or higher. Operations Manager R2 also supports upgrading from SQL 2005 to SQL 2008. Only the Operations Manager Reporting role require special instructions. Detailed instructions can be found in the upgrade guide. Upgrading SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 Link
Upgrade Support
Operations Manager supports the following upgrade paths:
To continue reading see What’s new in R2 Deployment and Upgrade.
J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer
