I posted a copy of an ACS Database and Disk Calculator tool we presented in the ACS Master Series from SecureVantage that provides a utility to ease the process of estimating Audit database sizing and growth, as well as appropriately sizing your disk subsystem of your Audit Collection Services deployment. In keeping with MS best practices, the calculator is based on the procedural guidance contained in the Operations Manager Performance and Scalability Guide, making it unique among other similar aids posted in the past.
It goes a step beyond existing guides to provide a tool that helps administrators negotiate the sizing formulas of the Perf and Scalability Guide. Download the ACS Database and Disk Calculator Tool HERE.
Find links for past sessions and register for future sessions of the ACS Master Series by clicking HERE.
An updated version of Boris Management Pack Viewer, now including greater detail on performance rules and monitors is available for download HERE.
I was doing some research and testing on Windows 2008 security and audit logging capabilities and wanted to share these resources for you Opsmgr administrators that may be have need for some of this information for use with Audit Collection Services.
Here are some great resources to get you familiar with Windows 2008 security events and granular audit policy configuration.
- Windows 2008 Audit and Compliance - This TechNet Magazine article is a great introduction to auditing capabilities of Windows 2008 and configuration of Granular Audit Policies (GAP).
- Security Audit Events for Win2008 and Vista - Here’s a great list of Windows 2008 Security Event IDs and descriptions. You’ll notice that Win2008 events are nearly identical to Windows Vista, and you’ll see these in the EventSchema.xml
- SVT Audit Reference List - If you have interested in matching Windows 2008 event IDs to their legacy counterparts, Secure Vantage folks took some info from MS and ultimatewindowssecurity.com to reference some of the legacy event IDs next to their Windows 2008 equivalents.
Update your MOM skills to Operations Manager 2007 at the Operations Manager 2007 Bootcamp! Register in December for training in 2008 at SystemCenterForum and receive a free copy of Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed!
Check the 2008 Bootcamp Schedule and request pricing and availability HERE.
My copy of System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed arrived to my secret location in Texas (after it spent some time at my home in Oklahoma). After the mail carrier wheeled it into the den (it is heavy), I had a look at the official page count - 1322, and that’s if you don’t count appendices!
I’ll publish some mini - reviews chapter-by-chapter as I can. No doubt this will be the authoritative reference for Opsmgr administrators everywhere. Congratulations to (my fellow MVPs) Kerrie, Cameron, John, Andy and the Unleashed team for a job well done!
If your an Essentials administrator reading this, remember Opsmgr and Essentials have the Monitoring, Authoring and to some degree Administration workspaces in common. I encourage you to pick up a copy as well.
Get your copy of unleashed on Amazon.com for less than $40! Page for page, that’s a pretty good deal indeed.
Boris has updated his MP Viewer for Operations Manager and Essentials 2007.
Get details on the updated version HERE.
These GPO templates allow controlling execution policy via group policy. A handy shortcut if you wanted to deploy Powershell to your servers and employ agent tasks that call Powershell scripts.
Get them HERE.
Resolve alerts via e-mail in MOM 2005
#3 in our countdown is this freeware solution that allows MOM 2005 administrators to actually acknowledge or resolve alerts via e-mail!
David Wallis wrote this app, which runs as a Windows service, called the MOM Email Service, that allows MOM administrators to acknowledge and resolve alerts via email. You essentially setup a mailbox for the service, and by replying to the alert with the word “acknowledged” or “resolved”, the service updates the status of the alert.
If you’re running MOM 2005 Notification Workflow, it does require a small edit to the NWSA XML config files, but I tested and documented all that in detail.
Download the MOM 2005 E-Mail Response Service HERE.
After Stefan mentioned this product recently, I thought I would check on licensing and availability. Licensing details are available below. If you want to create visual representations of your environment, this looks to be a promising option.
You can view an online demo at www.savision.com/demo
You can download a 30-day full functional evaluation version at (www.savision.com/download). The package includes an evaluation guide that walks you through the basic configuration step
Live Maps is priced per management group and has a number of editions that are limited by the amount of maps you can create:
|
Edition
|
Number of maps
|
Price (Euro)
|
|
Small Business
|
5
|
1,999
|
|
Standard
|
15
|
4,999
|
|
Enterprise
|
Unlimited
|
9,999
|
This Management Pack Inventory Utility displays the contents of a management pack: Rules, Monitors, Views, Tasks, Console Tasks, and Reports. At the bottom of the window it will also show you the knowledge associated with the particular management pack item. The only requirement is that you have the OpsMgr console installed on the same computer.
Check it out at Boris Yanushpolsky’s weblog HERE.
The resource kit tools page was recently published to the MS site:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/opsmgr/bb625978.aspx
We have talked about the backup of the SQL database, but what about unsealed management packs? In Operations Manager 2007, you can use the Command Shell to export all sealed & unsealed management packs to where ever you want using almost any query you want. So how can you automate that in SCE? You can export a management pack from the SCE UI but that can become tedious if you have more than one and it doesn’t solve the automation problem. If you are brave, you could explore your way through an unsupported version of the SCE Command Shell (SystemCenterForum.org Article - SCE Custom Command Shell) or you can find a utility. I decided to go the easier route and find a utility. In the Ops Mgr 2007 SDK, there is an example of exporting an MP with a particular name. With a little work, the snippet was modified to look for all unsealed management packs and a user driven target path for the XML. I have tested this on SCE and OM ‘07 and it works well. I would like to thank whoever put that code snippet in the SDK because it has been a very BIG help in developing this utility.
Parameters:
The only parameter is the path to the location where you want to save all management packs.
Ex. MPExportCMD.exe C:\MPBackup\
This command line example will save all management packs to C:\MPBackup. You will need to be sure that you put the trailing ‘\‘ at the end of the path otherwise the XML files will export to the wrong directory.
The easiest way to implement this is to use the Scheduled Tasks feature in the Control Panel to schedule when the MP backup happens.
This utility is configured to execute from the from the Root Management Server. In the case of SCE, it should have no problem running on the SCE server.
You can get the file here.
FYI, this is the first run of this utility so if you have any comments or feature requests, feel free to respond to this post or the Contact page on Systemcenterforum.org.
There is an issue present in Operations Manager 2007 RTM in that the Root Management Server role could not be moved back to a cluster if moved away failure or other reasons.
Satya Vel, PM on the Operations Manager team has posted a utility designed to address this issue, allowing re-promotion of a cluster to the RMS role. He also warns the tool should be used only in test environments and is currently unsupported, as it has not yet been fully tested.
Details HERE.
Download the utility HERE.
Someone asked how to retrieve the currently logged-on user on agent-managed computers from the SCE Admin Console. I created a quick Console Task to do this, which could be done with equal success on the Operations Manager 2007 platform.
Start by downloading the PSLoggedOn command line utility from Sysinternals.com (now Microsoft). It can be downloaded HERE.
In the Authoring Pane select New Task –> Console Tasks –> Command line
Settings were configured as follows:
Application: %systemroot%\psloggedon.exe
Parameters: \$Target Property[Type=”Windows!Microsoft.Windows.Computer”]/NetbiosComputerName$
I should note here that when I preceded this parameter with the -l (local only) and/or -x (dont show times) I got an InnerException Failure message. SCE didn’t like something about those parameters.
Working Directory: c:\windows\temp
And DO check the box for capturing output.
For this example, I dropped the tool in the Windows directory. If you added a \tools directory of some sort to the Path environment variable for these types of tasks, it will make life easier in the long run.
Boris Yanushpolsky from the Ops Mgr product team has developed a GUI utility for easy browsing of overrides in a n Operations Manager 2007 or Essentials 2007 environment.
Download the ‘Overrides Explorer v3.1′ HERE:
http://systemcenterforum.org/wp-content/uploads/OverrideExplorerV3.1.zip
This Excel spreadsheet, created by Ian Blyth and reminiscent of the MOM 2005 Sizer, delivers estimated Operations Manager database size based on number of agents and estimated data transfer (which varies by the number of management packs installed, overrides in place, etc). Very useful tool in my opinion.
Download the Database Size Estimator for Operations Manager 20007 HERE.
The data returned by the tool is based on Ops Mgr operations and warehouse database growth estimates compiled by Cameron Fuller, available HERE.
Great work Ian!
While the case for Silect in Ops Mgr 2007 is similar in many ways to the MOM 2005, like management pack tuning and versioning, this tool becomes more valuable given the inability to simply and easily view all rules within a management pack, and the greater complexity in rule / monitor authoring versus MOM 2005. The price tag on the full-featured edition really restricts this product to enterprise environments. The less expensive (and full-featured) versions would likely suffice for the mid-market.
Details below…
MP Studio 2007 Key Features
- Manage overrides to increase operational effectiveness
- Quickly and easily review Management Packs before implementation
- Manage and track changes to Management Packs to avoid unexpected changes in service monitoring
- Understand the differences between Management Packs
- Create override Management Packs
MP Studio 2007 Key Benefits
- Ensure your service level management objectives are effectively met
- Manage customizations to your environment using MP Studio’s extensive override management capabilities
- Manage change using MP Studio’s Management Pack version control system
- Reduce alert “noise” by tuning Management Packs before deployment
- Generate Audit History Reports for compliancy requirements
To obtain a free evaluation copy of MP Studio 2007 please Reply to this email or go to http://www.silect.com
MP Studio 2007 Resources
Data Sheet: http://www.silect.com/products/mpstudio2007.pdf
Case Study: http://www.silect.com/products/msncasestudy.pdf
Download an Evaluation Copy: http://www.silect.com/products/product_info.php
Using MOM 2005? Check out MP Studio 2.1. http://www.silect.com/products/mpstudio21.pdf
