System Center Operations Manager 2007

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This is the second of a five part series discussing lessons learned when installing System Center Operations Manager onto a fully Windows 2008 environment (DC, RMS, SQL, and Reporting servers). Since we now have a functional Windows 2008 domain controller (see Part 1 of this series at http://ops-mgr.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!3D3B8489FCAA9B51!695.entry), our next step is installing and configuring the Operations Manager database server.

SQL Installation

Installation prerequisites for the Operations Manager database components included first performing a standard SQL 2005 installation, and then installing SQL 2005 SP2. 

Windows Server 2008 adds the Web Server as a role. If you have not the Web Server and the asp.net option, this shows as a warning during the SQL Server installation. Since this server will not provide reporting services or other web based features, we can ignore those warnings during our installation process. We installed SQL Server using default configurations, with the exception of choosing a domain user account to be the SQL Server service account.

Hotfixes for OpsMgr 20007 – Windows 2008 Servers with Agents

Each of the servers in this configuration needed to have three hotfixes applied:

• 951327
• 952664
• 953290

After applying these hotfixes, you will need to reboot the system.

Additional OpsMgr Prerequisites

The database server for this environment will host both the Operations Manager database and the Data Warehouse functions. After installing SQL 2005 and patching it with SQL 2005 SP2, a prerequisites check indicated the server was ready for installing both the Operational Database and Data Warehouse OpsMgr components.

The next step was installation of the Operations Manager database. We used the default configurations, as shown in the video below.

Firewall change

To allow the SQL Server to communicate on the default port we need to create a new inbound rule to allow SQL Server port TCP port 1433. This assumes of course that you are using the default port, if you use a different port (such as installing a second instance), you will need to change the firewall to allow that port to communicate.

After installing this rule, log into another system in your environment and validate that telnet can connect to the SQL server on port 1433. Windows Server 2008 does not install the telnet client by default in Windows Server 2008, so you must add that feature prior to testing the ability to connect to the SQL Server.

Lessons Learned

Installing the Operations Manager database components is straightforward as long as you remember to install the appropriate hotfixes and create a firewall rule to allow inbound communication to port 1433.

Some great blogs have been covering information on Windows 2008. Definitely look into:

• http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/archive/2008/08/05/my-experience-installing-a-scom-management-server-on-windows-server-2008.aspx - a great write-up on installing OpsMgr on Windows Server 2008
• http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/archive/2008/07/29/how-do-i-know-if-i-have-all-the-required-hotfixes-on-windows-server-2008-to-be-supported-for-a-opsmgr-agent.aspx - write-up on required hotfixes

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Derek Harkin writes: Sometimes you need access to some information from Opsmgr in a hurry and you really do not want to open up the Ops Console and wait for it to load. Here is a powershell script that extracts information from OpsMgr and drops it into several HTML files so it can be added to a website. Download Script


The pages created are the following:

·  AgentsCounts.html - This gives give you a count of the number of agents per management group and breaks this down also by per management server

·  MonitoredServers.html - This page gives a complete list of all the agents being monitored by Opsmgr.

·  ServersDown.html - This gives a list of servers that may be down. It is actaully a list of servers where the heatlth service watcher is in an "Error" state.

·  AgentsLast7days.html - This is a list of all agents installed in the last 7 days, when they were installed and includes their health state

The script does require some configuration before it can be used:

1) At the very start of the script you have to enter the name of the Root Management Server. You can uncomment the next lines lines and define multiple RMS's if you want to pull the information from more than 1 management group.
2) $outpath = "c:\" - Change this to where you want the script to write the html files.
3) If connecting to more than one managemet group you need to comment out line 17 an uncomment Line 19

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Page 390 of System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed discusses modifying the Registry settings for the EnableADIntegration key on the RMS and management servers. This information was based on our own experiences and testing during earlier versions of OpsMgr 2007, as well as recommendations from Microsoft. Microsoft has since changed the behavior such that this Registry key hack is no longer recommended, and can actually cause problems.

We will be changing the information in the next printing of the book and the errata to say:

To complete the proces of activating OpsMgr integration with AD, validate that the registry key HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HealthService\Parameters\ConnectionManager\EnableADIntegration is set to 0.This is the default setting.

There has been some confusion regarding how to configure this setting on management servers. However, do not change it to 1; the value should actually be the default configuration of 0. Changing the value to 1 is not required and actually may cause issues on the management servers.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PontusOperationsManagementBlog/~3/331691358/how-to-change-credentials-for-opsmgr.html

While doing some Lab work on the VMM 2008 PRO integration with Hyper-V and VMM 2008 and Operations Manager 2007 I needed to change the SDK Service account to Local System for the VMM 2008 to Operations Manager 2007 connection to work properly. I found a very good KB article that maybe someone else also has a need for. The article describes how to change the service accounts for Operations Manager 2007 in "any direction" to or from Local System.

You find all information in the KB936220 here.

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This is the first of a five part series that discusses lessons learned when installing System Center Operations Manager in a Windows 2008 environment. Windows Server 2008 introduces some features that impact how applications are deployed and configured. Specific areas that affect application deployment and configuration are server roles and the Windows 2008 firewall.

Windows 2008 Server Roles

Windows 2008 uses server roles to simplify the process of installing and to minimize the maintenance and potential security vulnerabilities of the system. Windows 2008 Server initially installs without activating any of these server roles. Examples of server roles include:

• Active Directory Certificate Services
• Active Directory Domain Services
• Active Directory Federation Services
• Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
• Active Directory Right Management Services
• Application Server
• DHCP Server
• DNS Server
• Fax Server
• File Services
• Hyper-V (64-bit OS only)
• Network Policy and Access Services
• Print Services
• Terminal Services
• UDDI Services
• Web Services
• Windows Deployment Services

The Windows 2008 Firewall

The Windows 2008 firewall, by default, is active on Server 2008. As you install various roles, the Operating System adapts the firewall rules so that the new roles will function. As an example, port 80 is opened inbound to the server if web services are activated.

Since Windows 2008 does not define SQL Server as a server role, firewall rules are not automatically configured when you install SQL Server. http://cameronfuller.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!A231E4EB0417CB76!1427.entry includes a discussion on how SQL Server needs to have firewall rules changed so the configuration manager can access the SQL Server databases.

Server Roles for our OpsMgr Configuration

The servers involved in the configuration we will be discussing in this series include a domain controller, database server, Root Management Server (RMS), data warehouse, and reporting server. We will discuss them in the following order:

• OpsMgr by Example: Server 2008 POC – Part 1 (Domain Controller)
• OpsMgr by Example: Server 2008 POC – Part 2 (DB)
• OpsMgr by Example: Server 2008 POC – Part 3 (RMS)
• OpsMgr by Example: Server 2008 POC – Part 4 (DW)
• OpsMgr by Example: Server 2008 POC – Part 5 (Reporting)

Installing the Domain Controller

The first step to build our Windows 2008 environment was installing a Windows 2008 domain controller using default configurations. Each server in our configuration was installed within Windows 2008 Hyper-V (a good discussion on installation of Hyper-V is available as part of http://cameronfuller.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!A231E4EB0417CB76!1273.entry, look at the first step). The following video shows the steps involved in the installation of a new domain controller into a new forest/new domain.

Once the domain controller reboots, validate that Active Directory Users and Computers shows the new DC appearing in the Domain Controllers container. You will want to validate DNS by verifying that the DNS Server role is installed and the forward lookup zone is created correctly.

With the domain controller installed and DNS functional, we can start installing prerequisites on the various Operations Manager components. The first step in this process is the Operations Manager database, which we will discuss in part 2 of this series.

Lessons Learned:

Windows 2008 affects how you install and configure applications; through using server roles and configuration changes required to the Windows 2008 firewall.