Savision Maps just announced version 2.0 of their popular add-on for Operations  Manager 2007. I spent some time with these guys at MMS learning about their product. The product and it’s architects are brilliant for. I wish MS would just write these guys a big check and integrate this functionality into SP2!

Announcement: 

After a successful launch of Live Maps 1.0 for Operations Manager 2007 we are proud to announce Live Maps version 2.0. Live Maps 2.0 comes with a number of new features that enable you to get even more out of your System Center Operations Manager investment.

So what’s new in Live Maps 2.0?

• Web console - share your maps over the web
• Audible alarms - never miss a critical alert anymore
• Improved performance - solve your problems faster
• New editions and prices - more value for money

Live Maps 2.0 is available for download today and will be on display at the Teched IT Pro in Orlando (booth 1530). The new features can also be watched in this webcast.

Kind Regards,

Douwe van de Voort & Dennis Rietvink, Founders

When CPU and memory resource consumption are running at or near 100%, the first thing an administrator wants to check is what processes are running at the time the excess resource consumption took place. The problem is that by the time you can get to a machine and retrieve a list of running processes, the condition has improved and the evidence gone.

This problem can be easily overcome in Operations Manager or Essentials 2007 using a new feature called a diagnostic to automatically perform data collection tasks at the time a condition is encountered. However, you will not find the appropriate diagnostic in place out of the box.

The diagnostics in this sample Retrieve Running Processes MP (link provided at the end of this article) , which automatically retrieve a list of running process the moment the alert threshold is breached, ensure the offending process information is captured. Simply download and import into your environment to make immediate use of this feature (no configuration required).

If you are looking in the Management Packs area of the Administration name, you will see the name of this sample MP is named Custom Diagnostics and Recoveries, which is so named so as to allow you to save your own diagnostics you create to this MP. The monitors shown in figure 1 represent the monitors in the Windows 2003 Base OS Management Pack that will alert when CPU and/or memory utilization break MS recommended thresholds.

How it Works

This management pack creates a diagnostic on each of the five monitors in the Windows 2003 Base OS Management Pack (shown in figure 1) that automatically dumps a list of running processes on the target machine when the threshold of the monitor is breached. The output can then be viewed in the Health Explorer for the target machine for the monitor in critical condition, as shown in figure 2. The settings of the diagnostic itself can be seen on the Diagnostics and Recoveries tab of the monitor.

Figure 1 - Monitors affected by diagnostics in the Retrieve Running Processes Sample MP. 

Figure 2 - Output of the Retrieve Running Processes Diagnostic

Settings of the Dump Process Diagnostic

The dump process diagnostic is configured with the following characteristics:

• Executes when the monitor is in a critical state
• Executes automatically
• Executes tasklist.exe to dump the list of running processes.

Figure 3 - Retrieve Running Processes Diagnostic Settings(1)

Figure 4 - Retrieve Running Processes Diagnostic Settings(2)

Conclusion

Hopefully this has increased your awareness of the usefulness of diagnostics in Operations Manager 2007. Download the Retrieve Running Processes Sample MP HERE:

Have a cool script, MP or other System Center Solution you’d like to share? Submit an entry in the System Center Solutions Contest for a chance to win an Xbox, Zune 2 and other great prizes! Visit the System Center Virtual User Group website for more information today!

There is a new MP added to the downloads section called Alert on Pending Actions that create an alert when there is a pending action in the Ops Mgr 2007 Console. The script that performs the SQL query is “parameter free” and is scoped to run from the Root Management Server only. The MP contains a rule to run the script and another rule to alert on a specified event.

You can find the download here.

Occassionally, a resource comes along that changes my operational processes (for the better) with regard to Operations Manager 2007. I think this is one of them.

Silect started with the release of MP Studio Lite for free MP reporting and browsing. I’m already using this to explore my unsealed MPs where I store overrides.

Now, the Silect Software team has done it again! The group created a Wiki with MP reports on the various MP versions. Additionally, they have zip file downloads illustrating the differences between MP versions. Very convenient to be sure.

Check it out at the URL below:

http://www.silect.com/wiki/doku.php?id=mps:latestreleasedmps

When installing the Xerox CentreWare MOM 2005 MP on a management server, it will require a SQL database and login to create two databases to support discovery and configuration. The setup program uses the DTSRUN executable to create the required databases and default configuration required by the discovery program.

Where you might run into issues is when the SQL service specified during setup is on a remote server. I ran into this issue recently and I wasn’t able to get much information because the DTSRUN command window(s) were flashing on/off the screen too fast. The resolution to my issue was installing the SQL 2000 client component prior to installing the Xerox MP.

Even with the keynote still in progress, good things are coming from the face-to-face contact with fellow System Center community members at MMS 2008.

After a lengthy discussion last night, some members of the System Center User Group decided to launch a community development effort to develop a proper, model-based File System Management Pack for Operations  Manager 2007. The group is asking for your input into the design phase of the effort.

Read more and offer your feedback on the System Center User Group site HERE.

There is another addition to the downloads section that will check the availability of a DNS server by running a "nslookup" type test.  This MP uses a 3rd Party DLL called Simple DNS Resolver to make the DNS calls.  The VBscript that is included in this MP will test a FQDN using the nameservers specified and compares it to an IP address that is supplied as well.   Not only can you really test the availability of the target DNS service, you can also use it to verify that a DNS record is returning the proper IP address.

After importing the MP, you can view the sample rules by changing the scope of the Rules view in the Authoring pane to Management Server.  The two rules to look for is called DNS Check - Example and DNS Check Failure.  The DNS Check - Example contains the script that will check DNS availability and the DNS Check Failure rule checks for the event IDs logged by the DNS Check - Example rule.

You can download the Simple DNS Resolver from the author’s site at kartmann.org and you can download the sample MP located in our Downloads section called DNS Check MP.

There is a new MP added to the downloads section that will monitor file shares on a Windows Server.   The MP is designed to discover any file shares on the server (not including the hidden $ shares) and monitor the availability of the shares.  The monitors are initially disabled so you will need to override the monitor to activate it. 

We would like to thank and credit Jaime Correia for creating this MP and sharing it with Systemcenterforum.org!

You can retrieve this MP from the downloads section or from here.

I have created a MP that will check a target server’s SMTP service by using telnet.  The script included in the sample MP will require a command (to run on the target server) and an expected response (usually a string).  The VBscript part of this MP uses the Toolsack Baseline dll (from Toolsack Software) to perform the telnet functions.  When you import this MP, can you find the example rules by changing the scope of the Rules View in the Authoring pane to Management server.  You can implement this MP in a SCE environment as well. 

This is better than a port check, as it allows you to send an SMTP command (like EHLO) and check the string returned to make sure the server is open for business. A readme is included with the MP download.

Note: Which ever server you pick to run the scripts/rules from this MP, it must have the Toolsack baseline package installed.  You can visit the site www.toolsack.com to download the DLL.

You can find the MP in the downloads section called “SMTP Check for Ops Mgr 07″ or you can download it from here.

The development team reports that while making some WMI-related improvements in preparation for Windows 2008 and Vista, they were also able to take time to resolve the performance issues common to running their virtual agents on a virtual guest. Thus, they now support Quest Extensions for Operations Manager 2007 running in a virtual machine.

NOTE: This  includes support for guests on VMware ESX, which should address the issue for most enterprise users.

I created a script for a customer to measure the response time of SMB file share (Windows File Share) to test new network equipment.  I thought that this script might be useful to someone in the community so I dressed it up a bit and created two versions of it.  You can download the scripts in a MP form here. 

The versions of the script are as follows:

• Single File Share - The script will copy the file to a single server share and log the response time.  The script will log an event if it succeeds or fails.
• Multiple File Share - The script will copy a file to multiple servers with the same share.  This script will also log an event if it succeeds or fails.   

Both sample scripts listed above and included with rules in the MP as an example on how to use it.  Included in the download is a readme file that explains the command line parameters.

I am fairly sure this can work in SCE but I haven’t tested it so I would really appreciate some feedback from anyone that tries it.

While it’s clear MS has a long journey to take the lead in the virtualization market, it’s interesting to see how System Center technologies can drive virtualization, often on the cheap. But with hyper V on the way, we’re going to see more Windows shops looking to consolidate servers on the new virtualization platform.

Operations Manager 2007 plays an obvious supporting role in monitoring VM hosts and guest operating systems. However, Operations Manager can play a key role in actually planning your organizations virtualization initiative.

Did you know you can order up Operations Manager 2007 virtualization reports from the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) Administrator Console?

The reports are generated by Operations Manager 2007 monitoring, but can be ordered through the VMM Console. This makes it convenient for your virtualization gurus to analyze their piece of the infrastructure, even if they don’t know a thing about Operations Manager 2007.

This does require three things to make the magic happen:

1. You must import the Server Virtualization MP for Operations Manager 2007.

2. You must enable reports in SC Virtual Machine Manager.

3. The second item is that to see and order reports in SC Virtual Machine Manager, you must be a member of an Operations Manager Report Operator role

Available Reports:

The available virtualization reports through Opsmgr include these listed below.

• Virtualization Candidates report - Helps identify physical computers that are good candidates for conversion to virtual machines. The Virtualization Candidates report displays average values for a set of commonly requested performance counters for CPU, memory, and disk usage, along with hardware configuration, including processor speed, number of processors, and total RAM. You can limit the report to computers that meet specified CPU and RAM requirements, and you can sort the results by selected columns in the report.
• Virtual Machine Allocation report provides information you can use to calculate chargebacks to cost centers for virtual machines.
• Virtual Machine Utilization report provides information about your virtual machines. For the identified time, this report shows average usage and total or maximums for virtual machine processors, memory, and disk space.
• Host Utilization report shows the number of virtual machines running per host. For the identified time and host group, this report shows average usage and total or maximums for host processors, memory, and disk space.
• Host Utilization Growth report shows the percentage growth of host resources and number of virtual machines running for the identified time period.

What is this worth?

VMware partners (like EMC) actually offer a services package in which they collect data from your environment, which they then analyze and make recommendations. I’ve had some customers tell me they actually paid for this service.

The real value here is that System Center takes the planning process from a professional services engagement to an in-house activity.

References to Kurt Vonnegut novels aside, allow me to introduce the fix our friend and collegue, Pontus Blomqvist, has been waiting for! The new and improved Active Directory Managment Pack with the localization fix for the LDAP Bind Monitor!

Get your ADMP fix right HERE.

There are several updates recently posted to the System Center Pack Catalog. In particular, the Active Directory and Configuration Manager MPs both contain several fixes.

• 3/19 - Active Directory Management Pack  -  Download HERE.
• 3/19 - Windows System Resource Manager - Download HERE.
• 3/17 - Exchange 2003 Management Pack -  Download HERE.
• 3/10 - System Center Configuration Manager MP - Download HERE.

Update your MOM skills to Operations Manager 2007 at the Operations Manager 2007 Bootcamp! Check the 2008 Bootcamp Schedule and request pricing and availability HERE.

By Roberto Alcocer

For System Center Forum readers that might have missed our first blog posts, this is Jalasoft’s last article about Xian Io’s functionality in a series of eight. Prior posts discussed the monitoring of network device interfaces, port status, a device’s response time, asynchronous monitoring, the monitoring of processes, distributed applications with Xian Io, policy templates and Xian Network Manager Io’s UI integration. On this occasion, we will look into receiving mail notifications associated to network devices being monitored by Xian Network Manager Io.

Ops Mgr 07 provides network administrators with the option to receive e-mail notifications associated to any of the servers, computers and applications being monitored. As soon as the event is generated network administrators will be informed about this problem quickly and thus will be able to take the proper actions to solve this issue

You can also configure Ops Mgr 07 to send you a mail if there is a problem with any of the network devices that you are monitoring with Jalasoft’s Xian Network Manager Io. For example, you will be able to know if an interface of a specific switch was unplugged or if the CPU load of your Linux server is over a normal value without the need of constantly reviewing your Ops Mgr console. Let’s take a look at the steps needed to configure Ops Mgr 07 to achieve this:

Enabling mail notifications:

1. Open the Ops Mgr 2007 console.
2. Go to “Administration”.
3. Click the “setting” node of the administration tree.
4. In the settings panel; double click on the “notifications” element so that the “Global Management Groups Setting - Notification” dialog will be displayed.
5. Click on the “Email” tab and check the “Enable e-mail notification” checkbox.
6. Click on the ‘add’ button.
7. Fill the “SMTP server (FQDN)”, port number and authentication method parameters and click on the ‘OK’ button.
8. Fill the “return address” field with the address of the sender object.
9. Fill the “Return primary after” with the value 0 minutes.
10. Click on the ‘OK’ button.

Creating and configuring an account for mail notifications:

1. Right click on the “Administration > Security >Run as accounts” node and choose the “Create Run as account” option so that the “Create Run as Account” wizard will be displayed.
2. On the introduction step, click on the ‘Next’ button.
3. Select “Actions Account” on the “Run As account type” combo box, insert a valid “display name” and click on the ‘next’ button.
4. On the “account” step, fill all the required fields such as User name, password and domain and then click on the ‘Create’ button.
5. Click on the “Run as Profiles” on the administration tree.
6. Double click on the “notification account” option under the “Run as profiles” pane.
7. Select the “Run as account” tab and click on “New”.
8. Select “Network service Windows account” and Click on the ‘OK’ button.
9. Click OK.
10. Right click on the “Run as profile” node and choose the “Create run as profile” option.
11. Click the ‘next’ button on the introduction step.
12. Fill a proper “display name”.
13. Select “Jalasoft SDK overrides for performance data collection” on the “Select destination management packs” option and then click on the ‘next’ button.
14. On the “Run as account” step, click on “new” and select “Network service Windows account”; finally click on the ‘OK’ button.
15. Click “create”.

Configuring the notification recipients and subscriptions:

1. Right click on the ‘Administration > Notification > recipient’ pane and select the “New notification recipient” option.
2. Click on the “General” tab and provide a recipient user on the “notification recipient display name” field.
3. Go to the “notification devices” tab and click on the ‘add’ button.
4. On “notification channel”, select “E-mail”, provide the mail for the “Deliver address for the selected channel” option and click the ‘next’ button twice.
5. Enter a proper name on the “notification device name” and click on the ‘Finish’ button.
6. Click on the ‘OK’ button on the ‘notification recipient properties’ dialog.
7. Right click on the ‘subscription’ node and choose “New notification subscription”.
8. Provide a subscription name.
9. Click the ‘add’ button and select a recipient.
10. Click ‘next’ up to the “Alert Aging” step and then select “use alert aging as a notification criteria”
11. On the “for longer for than this criteria (in minutes)” parameter, enter 1 and then click on the ‘next’ button.
12. Click on the ‘finish’ button.

After performing these configurations, Ops Mgr 07 will automatically send a notification to your email account as displayed on the images below:

Alert generated on OpsMgr 2007

Received Notification

Should you have any questions/comments about receiving mail notifications & Xian Network Manager Io, please reply to this post, and we’ll make sure to send you an answer as soon as possible. For further information on Xian Io for Ops Mgr 07 please visit our website www.jalasoft.com or visit our booth (#320) at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas.

I recently had trouble finding links to the IBM hardware MPs (links we published HERE on systemcenterforum.org a few months ago appear outdated, and got some help from IBM partner with some updated links. If you’re looking for links to the IBM Director 5.2 or Bladecenter Chassis MPs, visit the xAnalisys website HERE, or reference the updated links below.

IBM Director 5.20 Management Packs for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007

• Discovery: Provides discovery of Level-1 and Level-2 managed systems.
• Events: Captures events that occur on Level-1 and Level-2 managed systems.
• Alerts: Sends a notification when certain events occur on Level-1 and Level-2 managed systems.
• State: Changes the state of Level-1 and Level-2 managed systems based on event criteria

IBM BladeCenter Chassis Management Pack

• Discovery: Provides discovery of a BladeCenter chassis and its components.
• Events: Captures events that occur on a BladeCenter chassis and its components.
• Alerts: Sends a notification when certain events occur on a BladeCenter chassis and its components.
• State: Changes the state of a BladeCenter chassis and its components based on event criteria.

by Roberto Alcocer

For System Center Forum readers that might have missed our first blog posts, this is Jalasoft’s seventh article about Xian Io’s functionality in a series of eight. Prior posts discussed the monitoring of network device interfaces, port status, a device’s response time, asynchronous monitoring, the monitoring of processes, distributed applications with Xian Io and policy templates. On this article we are going to focus on Xian Network Manager Io’s UI integration.

Xian Network Manager Io (Xian Io) extends the OpsMgr 2007 monitoring capabilities to a heterogeneous environment so you could monitor your Windows servers along with your network devices and UNIX servers. The Xian Io UI integration features further extend the integration with OpsMgr since most of the Xian tasks, such as discovering, removing and configuring the rules to monitor network devices/servers can be executed directly from the OpsMgr monitoring console; therefore, there is no need to work with other windows besides the OpsMgr one.

To point up the seamless integration between Xian Io and Ops Mgr 07, we are going to show how to add, remove a device, and also view its properties, all from the Ops Mgr 07 monitoring console. First, perform the steps below to display the different types of operations that can be performed over Xian Io from Ops Mgr 07:

1. Open the OpsMgr 2007 console and click on the ‘Monitoring’ button.
2. Expand the ‘Monitoring > Xian Network Manager > Jalasoft Xian’ branch and select the ‘Diagram view’ node. Remember to import the Xian management packs before attempting this operation.
3. Select the child Jalasoft Xian environment (in this image it is called ‘DEMOOPSMGRXIAN’).

The ‘Actions’ pane will now display the commands applicable to Xian Network Manager Io.

Adding a new device:

1. Click on the ‘Add device’ task option of the Xian tasks displayed under the ‘Actions’ view. The following dialog will be displayed:

2. Select the device type you want to discover and then click on the ‘OK’ button. A discovery or ‘add device’ wizard will be displayed.

3. Provide with the information requested at the different tabs of the wizard and then click on the ‘Finish’ button.

After a couple of minutes the device will show under the corresponding folder within the OpsMgr console.

Removing a device:

1. Select the ‘Remove Device’ task from the ‘Actions’ pane. The following dialog will appear:

2. Check the device(s) you want to remove and then click on the ‘OK’ button.

Viewing the properties of any device.

The ‘device properties’ dialog associated to any device you are monitoring with Xian lets you add, remove or edit rules, Syslog filters and/or policy templates applied to it. This important dialog is also available directly from the OpsMgr console; you only need to perform the few simple steps described below:

1. Select the ‘View Device Properties’ task associated to your Xian environment from the ‘Actions’ pane. The following dialog will be displayed:

2. Select the device from which you want to see its properties and then click on the ‘OK’ button. The ‘device properties’ dialog will now show.

However, should you be in a hurry, a faster way to see the properties of any device that you are monitoring with Xian, consists on simply ‘right’ clicking on the device displayed under the state or diagram view and then selecting the ‘view device properties’ context menu option.

As you can see from our examples, Xian Io helps manage and monitor your network devices/servers conveniently from one console.

Should you have any questions/comments about this article, please feel free to reply to this post, and we’ll make sure to send you an answer as soon as possible. For further information on Xian Io for Ops Mgr 07 please visit our website www.jalasoft.com.

There have been a couple of hardware MP announcements recently mentioned from various community sources.VERITAS Storage Foundation Version 5.0.1000.0MP available at http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/288628.htm
MP Guide (69 page PDF) available at http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/288629.htmGet Ian’s take on this converted MP HERE.HP Proliant Management Pack v1.1·         HP ProLiant Server Management Packs for Operations Manager 2007 – Version 1.1.3
Hewlett-Packard Servers Core Library – Version 1.0.33.0
Hewlett-Packard ProLiant Servers Base – Version 1.0.33.0
Hewlett-Packard ProLiant Servers SNMP Management Pack – Version 1.1.0.0From the release notes:Download the updated MP HERE.Thanks to Timothy for the HP bits.

by Roberto Alcocer

For System Center Forum readers that might have missed our first blog posts, this is Jalasoft’s sixth article about Xian Io’s functionality in a series of eight. Prior posts discussed the monitoring of network device interfaces, port status, a device’s response time, asynchronous monitoring, the monitoring of processes and distributed applications with Xian Io.

As we saw on earlier posts, monitoring a network device with Xian is a simple task that consists on discovering it by providing its IP address and SNMP community string and then applying one or several rules to immediately start monitoring it and receiving counters and alerts on OpsMgr 2007.

The problem starts when you have already discovered several devices and need to manually apply similar rules to all of them; moreover, imagine that after adding all these rules to all your devices, you find out that one of the parameters you provided your rules with, such as the schedule, is wrong or has to be modified. Then to fix this error, you would have to manually edit one by one all these rules. Finally, what if you had another environment with similar devices and you wanted to apply the same policy (list of rules with specific parameters) that you previously defined to these devices? Most likely you will have to write down the list of rules and their parameters on a piece of paper and then start with the same manual procedure, hopping that you will not need to modify or correct anything afterwards.

Solution:

Xian Io Network Manager implemented a mechanism by defining policy templates that will allow network administrators to save valuable time. These policy templates contain a predefined list of rules which you can apply to one or several devices at once and that you can link to your devices. So by changing a parameter on the template, you are automatically modifying it on all the rules applied to your devices. It is also possible to import and export any policy template that you defined. To get a better idea of this features’ functionality let’s take a look at creating, applying, editing, importing and exporting policy templates in Xian Io:

Creating a policy template

1. Open the Xian Io console and then click on the ‘Policy Templates’ button.
2. Select any device category, such as ‘Cisco switches’, then right click over the folder and finally click on the ‘New’ context menu option. The following dialog will be displayed:

3. On the ‘Policy template properties’ dialog, define a name for your policy and a description.
4. Double click on any desired rule listed on the left tree list, its configuration wizard will be displayed, then provide all the parameters, such as threshold, severity level of the alert to be sent to OpsMgr, the schedule, etc. and then click on the ‘Finish’ button so that the rule will be now displayed on the right side of the ‘Policy template properties’ dialog.
5. Repeat the previous step for all the rules that you want to define for this policy template.
6. Click on the ‘OK’ button to save these changes and close the dialog.

Applying a policy template

If you want to apply a policy template to just one device, you can simply follow these steps:

1. Open the Xian Io console.
2. Right click over the desired device and then click on the ‘apply policy template’ context menu option.

3. On the confirmation dialog, make sure that the ‘Link the device with the policy template’ checkbox is selected and then click on the ‘Yes’ button.

If you want to apply a policy template to several devices at the same time, just perform this simple procedure:

1. Open the Xian Io console.
2. Click on the ‘Policy Templates’ button.
3. Select the policy template you want to apply to your devices from the tree view displayed at the left side of the Xian Io console.
4. Right click on the policy template and then click on the ‘Apply’ context menu option.
5. Select all the devices you want to apply the template to and then click on the ‘OK’ button.

6. As in the previous case, verify that the ‘Link the device with the policy template’ checkbox is selected on the confirmation dialog box.

Editing a policy template

If after creating and applying your policy template you find that there is a need for adding, removing or modifying the settings of any rules, you only need to access the policy template, perform the necessary modifications and then propagate the changes to all the rules running on your devices and that are linked to the templates:

1. Open the Xian Io console and click on the ‘Policy Templates’ button.
2. Double click on the template you want to modify so the ‘Policy template properties’ dialog will be displayed and you will be able to add new rules, remove current rules or modify them by double clicking on any desired rule displayed on the list at the right.

3. Once you have performed the desired changes, click on the ‘OK’ button.
4. On the confirmation dialog, select the checkbox that states ‘Overwrite customized parameter(s) on the monitoring elements with the policy template configuration?’ and then click on the ‘Yes’ button.

Importing and exporting policy templates

In order to facilitate the migration from one environment to another, Xian Network Manager Io provides the user with the Import/Export functionality for Policy Templates. This allows you to export policy templates found in one server to a different server, saving you from having to recreate the policy templates in the servers that you want migrate to. Just follow these simple steps to export/import policy templates:

Exporting:

1. Open the Xian Io console and click on the ‘Policy Templates’ button.
2. Right click on the policy template you want to export and then click on the ‘Export’ context menu option.

3. Provide the name and location of the file you are exporting the template to and then click on ‘Save’.

Importing:

1. Open the Xian Io console and click on the ‘Policy Templates’ button.
2. Right click on the policy templates category where you want to import the policy template to and then click on the ‘Import’ option, look for the policy template file and then click on the ‘Open’ button.

As a result, Xian Io’s Linked Policy Templates feature allows you to have a predefined list of rules functioning on the network devices/servers of your choice in a matter of minutes and with little effort.

Should you have any questions/comments about this article, please feel free to reply to this post, and we’ll make sure to send you an answer as soon as possible. For further information on Xian Io for Ops Mgr 07 please visit our website www.jalasoft.com.

I was working with a custom runtime script the other day and received an ambiguous error message when I executed the script on my development workstation. (Incidentally, if you’re developing custom runtime scripts for Operations  Manager and Essentials 2007 check out our Scripting Series, which is 3 installments and counting.

Error: Microsoft VBScript runtime error: Subscript out of range

Issue: The Event ID I was using was actually an invalid event number!

Workaround: The .LogScriptEvent method only accepts event IDs from 1 to 20000. 20001 and higher result in the error above.

The Windows Server 2003 Cluster Management Pack monitors the health of the Windows Server 2003 clusters. This management pack is designed to improve the availability, performance, and security of your Windows Server 2003 cluster deployment.Download the Windows 2003 Cluster MP HERE.

You must enable agent proxy on the agents of physical servers which manage cluster nodes.

If you did not upgrade to the final bits of SP1, you will need to install the QFE and the import the Microsoft.Windows.Library management pack. After that’s done, you will need to import the following MP files:

Microsoft.Windows.Cluster.Management.Monitoring

Microsoft.Windows.Cluster.Management.Library

Microsoft.Windows.2003.Cluster.Management.Monitoring

Microsoft.Windows.2003.Cluster.Management.Library

If you do have SP1 installed, all you need to do is import the following MP files:

Microsoft.Windows.Cluster.Management.Monitoring

Microsoft.Windows.Cluster.Management.Library

Microsoft.Windows.2003.Cluster.Management.Monitoring

Microsoft.Windows.2003.Cluster.Management.Library

Following Ian’s suggestion for a simple format to find MPs for Operations Manager and Essentials 2007, I have created something closer to a proper management pack catalog with freely available management packs from various sources in our Community Management Pack Catalog. I have added in here community MPs, but also free management packs from popular vendors like eXc Software and Secure Vantage. Also in the list are a couple of our most downloaded MPs.

Find the Community Management Pack Catalog at http://www.systemcenterforum.org/mps

Have an MP you’d like to share? Drop me a note on our Contact Page.

 by Arnold Hagens

For System Center Forum readers that might have missed our first blog posts, this is Jalasoft’s fifth article about Xian Io’s functionality in a series of eight. Prior posts discussed the monitoring of network device interfaces and port status, a device’s response time and asynchronous monitoring and monitoring of processes.

In this installment, we’ll discuss a very nice feature that Operations Manager 2007 offers, which is the use of Distributed Applications (DAs). Although the term might suggest differently, it is not at all limited to applications. So its applicability can easily go beyond them.

Xian Network Manager Io is fully compatible with DAs, since it performs a full device discovery and gives the opportunity to add related interfaces to a DA where you can already have; for example, your Windows machine, SQL server or other applications. Below as an example, we are going to create a DA that will combine the following:

• A windows server.
• A CRM windows server, monitored through SNMP.
• Some processes on a Linux machine.
• Two interfaces on a switch.

Creating a DA is very simple. In the authoring section of Operations Manager 2007 go to ‘distributed applications’ and chose ‘create new distributed applications’ (blank) from the actions pane. Then add different components with the help of the ‘add component’ button in the toolbar.

Once you have the different components ready, you need to search for the specific objects that you want to add in them. In screenshot 1, you can see how to search for objects. After finding your objects, drag and drop them to the desired component.

Screenshot 1: Searching for objects to add in different components.

Once you have added your preferred objects you can enhance them by creating relationships with the ‘Create Relationship’ button in the toolbar; finally, click ‘save’ and your customized Distributed Application will be ready.

Screenshot 2: Distributed Application (Design View)

In screenshot 2 you can see how it all looks like once you have added all the different components and objects. Since this is the Design view you will not be able to see any alerts. For this you need to save and go back to the monitoring section. If you then go to the distributed applications section, you’ll be able to see your newly created DA and with a right click you will have several options. Select the ‘Diagram view‘ option to see a diagram with alerts rolling up similar to our example below (screenshot 3).

Other views available are the Health explorer view, which is very useful if you want to have a quick idea on the DA’s health, the Alert view where you can see all current alerts or the Performance view where you see only those performance counters related to the objects in the defined DA.

Screenshot 3: Diagram View with alerts

A very fast root cause analysis is possible with Xian Io, thanks to the distributed applications feature in Ops Mgr 07. Let’s assume that one Ethernet interface has a problem and is affecting your CRM application. As you can see in the diagram above there is a critical health status, but if we look at the real CRM Server, it shows that all is healthy; however, the DA clearly alerts that there is a problem with one interface and even shows that something is not properly functioning on a windows server. With the information provided by the DA and Xian Io, there is no need to guess anymore where the problem lies; instead, you are able to take action immediately.

If you have any questions or comments please reply to this post, and we’ll make sure to send you an answer as soon as possible, alternatively you could send us an e-mail to techsupport[at]jalasoft.com.

To access prior blog posts on the monitoring of network device interfaces, port status, a device’s response time, asynchronous monitoring and monitoring of processes, please review the “Articles” section of the System Center Forum site.

For further information on Xian Io for Ops Mgr 07 please visit our website http://www.jalasoft.com/.

Steve Rachui and Rory both mentioned that Engyro product connectors for Operations Manager 2007 are now free.

Engyro was purchased by Microsoft last year, primarily for their connectors it would seem, as Engyro MPs were pulled from the market entirely.

 Details on how to obtain the connectors is still forthcoming.

by Rolando Bazoalto 

For System Center Forum readers that might have missed our first blog posts, this is Jalasoft’s fourth article about Xian Io’s functionality in a series of eight. Prior posts discussed the monitoring of network device interfaces, port status, a device’s response time and asynchronous monitoring. On this occasion we’ll talk about the monitoring of processes since it is a fairly useful feature unbeknownst to most of our customers.When monitoring UNIX servers, it is important to continuously monitor hardware components like CPUs, interfaces and memory. However, what to do with applications running in a server that also need to be monitored? Fortunately Xian Io gives you a chance to monitor processes and daemons running on a UNIX server.

But how can Xian users monitor processes in UNIX servers? It is quite easy! When configuring the add device rule in the Xian Io console, besides the IP address and port, you can as well discover daemons and processes. To do so, you must select this option in the “add device wizard” of the Xian Io Console and decide on a search criterion to discover the processes (See figure 1). For example, if you would like to monitor all your processes, set the “*” value as the search criterion. If you need to monitor all your sendmail processes, set “*sendmail*” as a criterion. Finally, if you were interested in monitoring only a single process, set the exact name of this process. On the other hand, to add multiple search criteria, just separate them with commas ‘,’.

Once the discovery process is completed, you’ll be able to see the list of processes and daemons that you have selected. Xian Io has three monitoring rules for processes: Process CPU usage percentage, Process memory usage percentage and Process status (See figure 2). You can use all of these rules to notify/warn you when your process is down or if it is using too much memory or CPU. This way you can be warned on time that your sendmail service is down or whether it is using too much memory (which could reflect a spam problem), or even more importantly, Xian Io could notify you that your firewall service is down. If you have any critical enterprise software running on your servers, you could monitor it as well.

Process monitoring is available in Xian Io and distributed with all our UNIX servers smart management packs (SMPs), such as our SMPs for Linux, Solaris and AIX Servers.

If you have any questions or comments please reply to this post, and we’ll make sure to send you an answer as soon as possible, alternatively you could send us an e-mail to techsupport[at]jalasoft.com. For further information on Xian Io for Ops Mgr 07 please visit our website http://www.jalasoft.com/.

Figure 1: Discovering Processes and Selecting a Search Criterion:

Figure 2: Monitoring Rules for Processes Available in Xian Io.

While we do not have the same versioning issues with MS-released managment packs we had in MOM 2005, backup and versioning of your unsealed management packs can still prevent the need to redo work or restore the database when critical changes are lost.

I created a “poor mans version archive” in an management pack backup scscript with built-in versioning for MOM 2005 some time ago.

We posted a Powershell script for automating export of unsealed MPs as well.

Derek Harkin has taken this script to the next level to create the equivalent for Operations Manager 2007 in the form of a Powershell script with similar versioning functionality to my MOM 2005 offering, wrapped up in a sample management pack.

Nice work Derek!

 Data Protection Manager 2006 MP (DPM) 6.0.5000.0 for OpsMgr07

Download the converted DPM MP for OpsMgr07 here

As this is a converted MP it has a dependency upon the Backward Compatibility Management Pack 6.0.5000.16 available from

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=98874.

Microsoft Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Management Pack

Download Microsoft Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Management Pack here.

Overview

The Windows Server Update Services 2003 Management Pack collects performance data and generates comprehensive diagnostic reports that give you the information you need to analyze problems and develop corrective actions.

Management Pack Release History

2/14/2008 - Initial Release v.6.0.5000.0

by Roberto Alcocer 

For System Center Forum readers that might have missed our first blog posts, this is Jalasoft’s third article about Xian Io’s functionality in a series of eight. In part 1, we discussed monitoring network device interfaces and port status. In part 2, we talked about monitoring a network device and it’s response time.We tried to come up w