System Center Operations Manager 2007: Tools

Scheduled Task MP

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:48:03 GMT

This MP has been released by MVP Maarten Goet, Inovativ and it is worth looking at even if you do not think you are using scheduled tasks on your Windows servers. I installed it at one company as they had one server that did a number of scheduled tasks and they wanted that monitoring. What they found was a large number of tasks on a number of servers. Some of those had not been run for a while and some failed as the account used for the task had a different password now. So a bit of housekeeping was in order.

I am impressed as I have been looking at how to do MP discovery and it is a lot more complex than just picking up a registry key and creating a group as in 2005!

The MP uses schtasks.exe which means it will not run on Windows 2000. Although the document says it will run on XP, Vista, 2003 and 2008 it does not explicitly mention that it does not run on 2000. So if you have 2000 servers then be sure to exclude them from the discovery rule otherwise you will constantly get script errors. If you want it to run on Windows 2000 there are a few web sites that show that by using a hex editor to change one location it can be run with Windows 2000. Totally unsupported by Microsoft I would suspect. Here are 2 examples.

http://www.jsifaq.com/SF/Tips/Tip.aspx?id=5335

http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/25186/how-can-i-use-windows-xps-schtasksexe-tool-under-windows-2000.html

There is an object discovery and a monitor that fires off a script. Both run every 60 seconds with a 20 seconds timeout. This is a bit aggressive and I saw lot of script errors as it hit busy servers. These timings are great for demos but unless you really need to know quickly I suggest changing the monitors to run every 3600 seconds (1 hour) or longer for the discovery. If you need to know the state of the job use eventcreate.exe to create events at errors in the batch file run by the tasks and create rules to monitor those. I also created an override for the 20 second script timeout on the discovery rule but there was not an override option for the monitor.

There are two views created. The first is a general overview listed by server.

The second shows the list of tasks from all servers and although the server name is in the next column the task name comes up as the source so you may want to think about a standard naming convention across all the servers! Have a task just called Monday on 50 servers may not be a good thing!

You can also do Health Explorer to find the broken task.

This is a great little MP with the caveats of not doing Windows 2000 and the rules/monitors running too frequently. Most of this can be changed with overrides. Highly recommended.

System Center Authoring Console (Release Candidate)

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 14:04:02 GMT

Source : Microsoft Download Center: Download the System Center Authoring Console Release Candidate.

Run As Profile Configuration Helper v1

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:11:46 GMT

Courtesy of: Boris Yanushpolsky

When you deploy a management pack and the action account is configured as a low priv account, some workflows (monitors/rules/discoveries/tasks/diagnostics/recoveries) may not be able to execute because by default they will run under the low priv account and may not have sufficient rights to access the instrumentation they need in order to function properly. The solution for this problem is for the MP author to use a RunAs profile. This allows the customer which is deploying the management pack to specify a particular account which will be used to execute the set of workflows that are configured to use the RunAs profile. One of the difficulties today is that when you configure a RunAs profile in the UI, you can only configure it for one agent at a time. We have posted several powershell scripts to allow doing this in bulk. To simplify things a bit more, I wrote a small utility that will allow you to configure a RunAs profile for agents in bulk.

In order to configure a RunAs profile, you need to right click on it on the left hand side on the RunAs profile that you wish to configure, and click on the "Add Computer(s)" menu item. In order to remove computers from a RunAs profile, you need to multi-select the computers in the right hand side, right click and select the "Remove Computer(s)" menu item.

This is the first version of the utility. I would really appreciate feedback as to how I can make this utility more useful.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Use of included utilities are subject to the terms specified at
http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm

ModuleExplorer v1

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:03:54 GMT

Courtesy of: Boris Yanushpolsky

One of the core concepts in OpsMgr is modules. There are four modules types in OpsMgr: DataSource, Condition Detection, Probe, and Write Action. When you write any workflow such as rule/monitor/discovery/task/diagnostic/recovery you are using one or more module type that are already defined in system management packs. One of the hard things sometimes is to actually figure out what modules exist and what are their properties such as:

1 - What parameters need to be passed to a module?

2 - What is the input and output type of a module?

3 - Which parameters are mandatory and which are optional?

4 - What are the data types of the parameters?

To try to simplify this a bit, I wrote a small utility last night to provide some visibility into the library of modules and information about each module. The utility shows a tree of modules. At the top of the tree are the code based modules and the child nodes are the modules that use these code based modules.

This is the first version of the utility so it might not answer all the questions that one might have. I would really appreciate feedback as to how I can make this tool more useful.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Use of included utilities are subject to the terms specified at
http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm

Resolve Alerts Older Than X Days in Operations Manager 2007

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:19:51 GMT

http://www.systemcenterforum.org/resolve-alerts-older-than-x-days-in-operations-manager-2007/

This Powershell script retrieves open alerts and makes a date comparison based on the LastModified property of the alert and a user-defined alert age threshold. It contains the standard connection string, so the script can run as a scheduled task to maintain a rolling set of only X days open alerts. Get it HERE. Related...

System Center Capacity Planner 2007 Release Candidate

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:12:55 GMT

System Center Capacity Planner (SCCP) 2007 Release Candidate is now available. SCCP 2007 helps size and plan deployments of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, with capacity planning models for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 coming soon. It provides you with the tools and guidance to help deploy while planning for the future by predicting the impact of change. SCCP 2007 includes the following new capabilities:

• Plan for new server roles in Exchange 2007

• Select how you’ll cluster Exchange servers

• Add Disk IO background load for mailbox servers

• Model 64-bit processors

Unlike the prior version, SCCP 2007 is not exclusively available as a part of a TechNet Premium subscription. Anyone can now download SCCP 2007. The SCCP 2007 Release Candidate download is available on Microsoft Connect (https://connect.microsoft.com/programdetails.aspx?ProgramDetailsID=1265). Also, the beta models for capacity planning of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 may also be downloaded from Microsoft Connect (http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7660773).

The RTM version of SCCP 2007 will be available before the end of 2007.

New version of PowerGUI (with PowerShell debugger built into the script editor)

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:27:36 GMT

Courtesy of Stefan Stranger:

Source: Dmitry???s PowerBlog: PowerShell and beyond. Yesterday evening I downloaded the latest PowerGUI version with a debugger built in the editor. And I really loved using the debugger ;-) Have not had time to check out all the other new features yet, but you should just go and download this great new free tool from Quest. Check out Dmitry's PowerBlog for more info on the latest PowerGUI version.

Use MPViewer - Find default disabled rules & monitors:

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 17:58:01 GMT

Boris Yanushpolsky has created tools for OpsMgr 2007. With the MPViewer you can open up Management Packs and look at the rules and monitors. If you sort on Disabled then you have the rules and monitors not enabled by Default. By comparing this information with the rules in the MOM 2005 Administrator Console you can identify the exact alerts in MOM 2005 that you want in OpsMgr 2007. (Download)