SCE 2010 Public Beta is HERE!

damills — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:07:00 GMT

Do you know what time it is? Yes, it’s THAT time…time for you to check out the next full release of System Center Essentials – SCE 2010! For those of you who were with us for the release of System Center Essentials 2007 a little over two years ago, you know that this is Microsoft’s IT management solution specifically designed for midsized businesses. From one console, SCE allows you to monitor and manage your servers, clients, hardware, software, and IT services.

Over the last two years, we’ve been getting some great feedback from customers using SCE 2007, investigating ways to improve on the existing features AND address a new trend we’ve been seeing with customers’ virtualizing server workloads. Based on all this input, the engineering team has invested a lot of work into making the following updates in this next release. We’ve -

Integrated server virtualization management support, built on VMM 2008 R2 technology, including easy template-based creation of new virtual servers and live migration
Adjusted licensing limits to allow for management of virtual servers
Rewritten setup for an easier, intuitive installation
Built-in automatic Microsoft Update subscription maintenance
Provided flexible computer grouping
Added additional software distribution target criteria

Plus a lot, lot more!So, what are you waiting for? Stop reading my blog entry and head to this URL to download the SCE 2010 trial! http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ee470677.aspx

David Mills

Sr. Product Manager

Why are my Performance Graphs Empty in Essentials?

Richard Rundle — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:20:12 GMT

Have you wondered why some of the performance views and dashboards in the Monitoring Space don’t have any data to display, yet others do?

You can see an example of this by going to the Monitoring Space, expanding the Microsoft Windows Server folder and then expanding the Performance sub Folder.

The "Disk Capacity", "Memory Utilization (Page File)" and "Processor Performance" dashboards all let you select performance counters for your servers and view pretty graphs.

The "Disk Performance", "Disk Utilization", "Memory Utilization (Physical)" and "Network Adapter Utilization" don’t show a list of performance counters to select. Why is this, and how do we get a list of performance counters to display?

The performance counters available for display are controlled by rules in management packs. Not all of the rules responsible for data collection are enabled by default and this is why we don’t see a list of counters to select from in the views listed above.

To get a list of counters for these views we need to enable data collection by setting overrides on performance collection rules, and this is done in the Authoring Space.

Note: Enabling performance collection rules will increase the size of the Essentials database. If you are using SQL Server Express, collecting additional performance data may reduce the number of days of historical data available for reporting.

Let’s work through an example and enable data collection to populate the Windows Server Performance graphs we listed above.

For the Disk Performance dashboard view we will need to override the following rules:

Collection Rule for the Average Disk Queue Length
Collection Rule for Current Disk Queue Length
Collection Rule for Average Disk Seconds Per Read
Collection Rule for Average Disk Seconds Per Write

For the Disk Utilization dashboard view we will need to override the following rules:

Collection Rule for Disk Bytes Per Second
Collection Rule for Disk Reads Per Second
Collection Rule for Disk Writes Per Second

For the Memory Utilization (Physical) dashboard view we will need to override the following rules:

Memory Pool Paged Bytes
Memory Pool Non-paged Bytes

For the Network Adapter Utilization dashboard view we will need to override the following rules:

Network Adapter Bytes Received per Second
Network Adapter Bytes Sent per Second

To override a rule to enable performance data collection:

Go to the Authoring Space
Expand Management Pack Objects
Select Rules
Click Change Scope
Click Clear All
Type Windows Server in the “Look for” box
Place a check mark next to all targets starting “Windows Server”
Click OK
Find the rule to Override
You can either scroll through, or use the “Look for” functionality to filter the list.
In this case, use one of the following words for each category: logical, memory, network
You can only use one of the filter words at a time
Select the rule, then from the Actions Menu, select Overrides -> Override the Rule -> For all objects of type: Windows Server 2003 Logical Disk
For the Memory and Network rules the type will be slightly different
Check the box in the Override Column next to Enabled.
Click Apply
The Effective Value for the Enabled Parameter will change from False to True
Click OK

You will have noticed at Step 9 that for each rule there is a copy of the in the rule in the Windows Server 2000 Operating System and Windows Server 2003 Operating System Management Packs. If you want to enable collection for both Operating Systems you will need to override both copies of the rule.

As a general guide, the title of the graph in the dashboard view identifies the performance counter being collected. The rule to collect this counter will also have the counter name in it. You can use this information to find the rules that you need to enable for a particular graph.

System Center Essentials Team Blog : Monitoring

SCE 2010 Public Beta is HERE!

Why are my Performance Graphs Empty in Essentials?