Advanced Monitoring with System Center Operations Manager 2007 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager : R2

The RTM of Operations Manager 2007 Released Today

walterch — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:06:52 GMT

The RTM of Operations Manager 2007 released today. Congratulations to the System Center Operations Manager team on reaching this important milestone!

New Functionality

Operations Manager 2007 R2 introduces key new and enhanced functionality, including:

Enhanced application performance and availability across heterogeneous platforms

Delivers monitoring across Windows, Linux and UNIX servers–all through a single console.
Extends end to end monitoring of distributed applications to any workload running on Windows, UNIX and Linux platforms.
Maximize availability of virtual workloads with integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

Improved management of applications in the data center

Delivers on the scale requirements of URL monitoring of your business.
Meet agreed service levels with enhanced reporting showing application performance and availability.
More efficient problem identification and action to resolve issues.

Increased speed of access to information and functionality to drive management

Faster load times for views and results.
Improved and simplified management pack authoring experience

Where can I find collateral, training, and more on Operations Manager 2007 R2?

All links to training, labs and collateral for Operations Manager 2007 R2 can be found on Operations Manager 2007 R2 page on System Center Web

Newly released collateral includes the following:

Solution Summary: ACS Support for Unix and Linux Systems

walterch — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:04:02 GMT

Courtesy of Microsoft OpsMgr Team: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2009/05/11/solution-summary-acs-support-for-unix-and-linux-systems.aspx

Microsoft Targets Windows, Linux Management

walterch — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:14:02 GMT

Courtesy of Network World - http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/042809-microsoft-windows-linux-management.html?hpg1=bn

Microsoft Hyper-V Server R2 Limits

walterch — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:49:44 GMT

Clustering and High Availability – Windows Server 2008 R2

walterch — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:50:52 GMT

http://blogs.msdn.com/clustering/archive/2009/02/19/9433146.aspx

R2 – Improved Override Screens

walterch — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:40:45 GMT

Courtesy of Kevin Holman - http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/archive/2009/04/10/r2-improved-override-screens.aspx

Change of Topic

walterch — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:58:00 GMT

It’s been a terrific run and the community support for System Center Operations Manager has never been stronger. I've been fortunate to be engaged in much virtualization work including advanced monitoring with SCVMM and OpsMgr. Unfortunately I simply don’t have time to blog on both topics but don’t wish to abandon them either.

I've decided to merge the two topics and focus on advanced monitoring of physical and virtual environments using OpsMgr and SCVMM. There is no denying the data center space is rapidly becoming a healthy mix of both physical and virtual environments and clients are demanding a ubiquitous monitoring solution for both environments to ensure data center performance optimization. That a tall order for any monitoring solution but I know OpsMgr R2 and SCVMM R2, together, can deliver.

This blog will now focus on advanced monitoring of heterogeneous data centers. This includes traditional physical servers, both Microsoft and non-Microsoft platforms. It will also include the virtual space, both Hyper-V as well as VMware. Lastly, it absolutely will include networking components!

Interoperability - SP1 and R2 Consoles

walterch — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:27:07 GMT

The consoles are version specific and therefore you won't be able to connect to a R2 management group with your SP1 console unless......

The following information courtesy of Michael Pearson:

1. Create a folder for ManagementGroupSessionManager if there’s not already one there.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\Console\ManagementGroupSessionManager

2. Create a new DWORD called DisableServerVersionCheck

3. Set the value of that dword to 1

Programmatically Check for Management Pack Updates in OpsMgr R2

walterch — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 04:53:00 GMT

Courtesy of Daniele Muscetta - http://www.muscetta.com/2008/11/29/programmatically-check-for-management-pack-updates-in-opsmgr-2007-r2/

OpsMgr R2 - Process Monitoring

walterch — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:33:44 GMT

With the anticipated release of R2, the current beta has revealed some very simple, yet highly effective improvements. My favorite is the addition of the Process Monitoring Management Pack Template. Although the functionality is reproducible in SP1, it is far easier to configure. One particular problem I always encounter by end-users is the presence of the cscript.exe process. Sometimes 1 instance, sometimes 4. The variability, depending on deployed management packs, always has and still makes many server owners and security personnel nervous. We now can monitor it. Below I quickly demonstrate how fast and it easy to monitor a particular process and target all Windows Servers:

1. Launch the Operations Console and go to Authoring / Management Pack Templates / Process Monitoring:

2. Right-click and choose 'Add Monitoring Wizard' and choose 'Process Monitoring' then click Next:

3. Fill in all General Properties:

4. You can monitor expected processes or for the presence of process you don't want running. In this example we will monitor for a known process, cscript.exe:

5. Next you can define when an Alert is generated, either on the number of processes, maximum and minimums or for duration. The latter is excellent for diagnosing out favorite generic Alert that a script field :-) In the example below, we want an alert generated if any cscript.exe process runs for more than 120 seconds:

6. Next we can define what performance data is collected:

7. After reviewing the summary, click Create.

Simple, flexible and powerful! Excellent for monitoring non-Microsoft processes.