Advanced Monitoring with System Center Operations Manager 2007 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager : Configuration

Adding a Pass-through Disk to a Highly Available Virtual Machine

walterch — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:59:51 GMT

Courtesy of the Windows Server Setup / Core Team: http://blogs.technet.com/askcore/archive/2009/02/20/adding-a-pass-through-disk-to-a-highly-available-virtual-machine.aspx

System Center Virtualization Reports 2008 – FQDN Required

walterch — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:55:20 GMT

When generating OpsMgr reports, most users have become comfortable simply specifying the host name when adding objects or groups. When generating System Center Virtualization Reports, you must specify the fully qualified domain name. The report instructs you to do this but this is very easy to overlook.

Working with Views

walterch — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:51:38 GMT

Once you complete the configuration for integration of SCVMM and OpsMgr, the first thing that jumps put is a set of new views: Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Views. What i quickly noticed is it is not that easy to readily identify and distinguish a server in OpsMgr that is a guest on a host or parked in the library. So I whipped up two simple views.

The first view shows all servers stored in the VMM library. It is a state view. When selecting a target type, select ‘Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Managed Virtual Machine’. There are two entries. Select the one whose description is ‘This virtual machine is stored in a library’. Of course you can further define the view based on any additional criteria. Also, be sure to personalize the view and definitely select ‘Name’ at the very minimum. You now have an OpsMgr view which shows all servers / templates stored in the VMM Library.

The second view shows all servers monitored by OpsMgr that are guests on host systems. It is a state view. When selecting a target type, select ‘Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Managed Virtual Machine’. There are two entries. Select the one whose description is ‘This virtual machine is hosted by a host. You can further define the view based on any additional criteria. You now have an OpsMgr view which shows all servers which are virtualized.

Opsmgr Service Level Dashboard for Exchange 2007

walterch — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:51:24 GMT

Courtesy of http://scug.be/blogs/scom/archive/2009/01/23/opsmgr-service-level-dashboard-for-exchange-2007.aspx

How to install the Web Console component of Operations Manager 2007 on a stand-alone server that is using Windows Authentication

walterch — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:54:57 GMT

Courtesy of Microsoft - http://kbalertz.com/957561/install-Console-component-Operations-Manager-server-using-Windows-Authentication.aspx

SNMP Queries

walterch — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:08:57 GMT

Courtesy of Brian Wren - http://blogs.technet.com/brianwren/archive/2009/01/21/snmp-queries.aspx

Identifying Gray (Uncommunicative Agents) in OpsMgr Directly from the OpsMgr Database

walterch — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:23:22 GMT

Courtesy of Pete Zerger - http://www.systemcenterforum.org/news/tipidentifying-gray-uncommunicative-agents-in-opsmgr-directly-from-the-opsdb/

Source: MS Newsgroups (AdamZ)

I posted a tip a few months ago about where to see which agents are not communicating with their management server (CLICK HERE) within the Operations Console. These appear as the checkmark icon that has turned gray (indicating agent is not longer communicating).

AdamZ thought that was a bit to involved, and instead offered up this query to retreive this data from the OperationsManager database. (Gave this a quick test, and seems to be accurate in my lab).

SELECT ManagedEntityGenericView.DisplayName,
ManagedEntityGenericView.AvailabilityLastModified
FROM ManagedEntityGenericView INNER JOIN
ManagedTypeView ON
ManagedEntityGenericView.MonitoringClassId = ManagedTypeView.IdWHERE (ManagedEntityGenericView.IsAvailable = ‘false’) AND
(ManagedTypeView.Name = ‘Microsoft.SystemCenter.Agent’)
ORDER BY ManagedEntityGenericView.AvailabilityLastModified

General Security Auditing - Group Membership Change Notification

walterch — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:34:31 GMT

I've had a few clients inquire on how to receive alerts when Security Group Membership changes in Windows Server 2008. For example when a user is added or removed from the Domain Administrators global security group. I thought I'd post a small "How-To" because the necessary security event numbers have changed in Windows 2008 from those in Windows 2003.

1. Navigate to Authoring / Management Pack Objects / Rules and in the 'Actions' pane click on 'Create a rule'

2. Select Alert Generating Rule / Event Based / 'NT Event Log (Alert)' and select an applicable Management Pack. Ideally, a dedicated management pack for security related rules.

3. Click Next. On the 'Rule Name and Description' window, name the rule and set the rule target to 'Windows Domain Controller' and uncheck 'Rule is enabled'

4. Click Next. Navigate to one of your domain controllers and select the 'Security' for 'Log name'

5. Build the Event Expression as the one in the image below. Use he same Event IDs.

6. Click Next. In the 'Configure Alerts' window: Give the Alert a name, and for the 'Alert description' enter '$Data/EventDescription$' this will populate the Alert's description field with the contents of the description of the actual security event.

7. Click 'Create'

8. Find the newly created rule. Easiest way is to paste its name into 'Search' Remember the rule was disabled by default? Now enable it with an override 'For all objects of type: Windows Domain Controller'

So now whenever a user is added to or removed from a global security group, an Alert will be generated:

You can adapt this to alert on pretty much anything that appears in the security log of a domain controller or server. Quite powerful and effective.

Enjoy.

Monitoring Hyper-V: 'Host Group State' Not Monitored

walterch — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:18:30 GMT

After configuring OpsMgr to monitor a Hyper-V environment one of the first things that pops out is in the 'Host Group State' state view displays as not monitored. Configuration, Performance, Security and Virtual Switch will not be monitored because there are no rules defined to monitor them . The only defined rule is for Availability and it comes from the Virtual Service services. Thanks to Francisco Sanchez for explaining this.

So What Is In Maintenance Mode?

walterch — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:38:56 GMT

Courtesy of Boris Yanushpolsky - http://blogs.msdn.com/boris_yanushpolsky/archive/2007/08/06/so-what-is-in-maintenance-mode.aspx

Grooming Process in the Operations Database

walterch — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:58:42 GMT

Courtesy of Kevin Holman - http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/archive/2008/02/13/grooming-process-in-the-operations-database.aspx

OpsMgr by Example: The Active Directory 2008 Management Pack

walterch — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:32:22 GMT

Courtesy of Kerrie Meyler, Cameron Fuller, John Joyner, and Andy Dominey - http://ops-mgr.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!3D3B8489FCAA9B51!1077.entry?sa=779630301

Run As Profile Configuration Helper v1

walterch — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:11:09 GMT

Courtesy of Boris Yanushpolsky - http://blogs.msdn.com/boris_yanushpolsky/archive/2008/02/28/run-as-profile-configuration-helper-v1.aspx

The SQL Server 2005 Setup Program May Take a Very Long Time to be Complete

walterch — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:43:10 GMT

For those of us who have the good fortune of deploying SQL 2005 into the OpsMgr environment they are also building...I wanted to draw your attention to this KB Article. Probably old news, but proved very relevant for me recently.

During the installation of SQL 2005, installation may hang when the message"Installing Local Groups" is displayed. In my particular instance, the cause was "the primary domain had many external trust relationships with other domains or many lookups were performed at the same time, the time that is required to look up domain group names may increase significantly. Therefore, the time that is required to install SQL Server 2005 may increase."

The resolution, disconnect the network card! I tried several other possible solutions which chewed up a few ours. With no success, I opted for the original resolution, I disconnected the network card and installed from the console. Success. Applied the same procedure to the Reporting Server. Just wanted to share this in case anyone lands in the same situation. Lesson learned: Just have the client ensure SQL is installed prior to your arrival on-site :-)

Monitoring Untrusted Servers over the Internet

walterch — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:43:12 GMT

As most people know, OpsMgr is uniquely suited to monitor a server over the public Internet. I wanted to quickly write a short post addressing one of the biggest pitfalls implementers experience, FQDN resolution and the Gateway server. When communicating over a network which requires DNS, such as the Internet, it is critical that the gateway server's FQDN matches the FQDN the agent is initiating communication with and of course that would be the name on the corresponding certificate. I recently discovered, that the agent resolves the gateway servers actual host name, regardless of what DNS its assigned.

During the agent installation on the untrusted server, a management server (Gateway) has to be specified in FQDN format. Lets say it is gateway.corp.com. The actual server hosting the gateway server role must be named gateway.corp.com. If it is named anything else, it will not work, even if DNS is modified to reflect gateway.corp.com because the agent resolves the server host name and is corresponding DNS suffix. Host files play a huge role in helping out if the servers are not configured correctly. If, for example, the gateway server is part of a workgroup and is named gateway01, then the untrusted agent has to communicate with gateway01. This is possible with a HOST file pointing gateway01 to the IP address of the actual gateway server. Not optimal, but a fix just in case the gateway was not configured correctly.