Category: OpsMgr 2007

2009

MicrosoftOpsMgr 2007

Updated: MP for System Center Configurations Manager 2007 SP2 on x64

Microsoft has released an updated MP for SCCM SP2 (v6.0.6000.2, released on 10/28/2009) for OpsMgr R2. The update basically contains support for x64 that was missing in the previous release. The Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 Management Pack adds support for monitoring Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 in a 64-bit environment with Operations Manager 2007 R2 or Operations Manager 2007 SP1 with hotfix (KB971541) installed. This enables the Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 Management Pack to work with either the 32-bit or the 64-bit Operations Manager 2007 agent. Except for the 64-bit support, the other features and guidance for Configuration Manager 2007 Management Packs remain intact. Emphasis is mine. Read more and download here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a8443173-46c2-4581-b3b8-ce67160f627b

MicrosoftOpsMgr 2007

Microsoft Adds support for SUSE 11 in OpsMgr R2

This update hasn’t showed up in the MP Catalog yet, but the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Update can be downloaded here. Besides SUSE 11 support, here’s the short overview. The System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Update adds fixes for a defunct process issue on Unix/Linux Servers, as well as, adds support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions) and Solaris Zone support. Feature Summary: The System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Update supports the monitoring of Unix/Linux Servers including: Monitoring of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 servers (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions)* Support of Solaris Zones* Fix for defunct Process issue* The Cross Platform Agent may not discover soft partitions on Solaris systems. Therefore, the disk provider may be unloaded, and the Cross Platform Agent may stop collecting information from the system disks.* The Cross Platform Agent may not restart after the AIX server reboots. The latest versions of all the Operations Manager 2007 R2 Unix/Linux agents are included in this update. Perfect timing, I must say, since I really need this today. 😄 Update: This is no small MP-update, which probably is the reason that we do not find it in the MP Catalog, but a ~250MB OpsMgr R2 Software Update. You need to run this on all Operations Manager Servers (RMS/MS, GW?) since it actually updates many of the agent Cross Platform binaries. It does add a new MP för SUSE 11 that you have to import from disk if you need it. So, the installation goes somewhat like this: Install the Software Update (pick the right Architecture) on all OpsMgr R2 Servers Import the SUSE 11 MP if necessary Re-discover your Unix/Linux machines. Files updated in this update for R2:

MicrosoftOpsMgr 2007

Health Rollup not working in Exchange Management Pack

I’ve wrestled a bit with a critical status on one of the Organization States at a clients site that wont go back to green despite all the underlying monitors have gone back to green. And apparently I am not alone on this one. Others, like me, has read and re-read the MP-guide i search for a monitor/rule/discovery for overrides forgotten, and I don’t know how many times I’ve made a small change and tried resetting the health once again. Anyhow. Marius Sutara posted an answer on TechNet forums last week with a “fix” (-ish), or rather the acknowledgement that the problem is not a 40c. The problem might be related to other MP as well, but I’ve only seen it on the new Exchange MP so far. In that same post, Pete Zerger provided some links to two nifty little tools that will help you reset the health of the monitor. In case you wonder why on earth I post when there’s allready a “solution” out there; Pagerank, baby! Not for me, but for the forum post making it show up earlier on google.

MicrosoftOpsMgr 2007

Updated: Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Pack

Microsoft released an updated MP (v6.1.7533.0, released on 10/8/2009) for monitoring the health the Operations Manager components. Most significant updates, according to me, would seem to be: Fixed an issue that was previously preventing all rules related to agentless exception monitoring from generating alerts. Added the rule “Collects Opsmgr SDK ServiceClient Connections” to collect the number of connected clients for a given management group. This data is shown in the view “Console and SDK Connection Count” under the folder “Operations ManagerManagement Server Performance”. Updated a number of monitors and rules to ensure that data is reported to the correct management group for multihomed agents. Fixed the configuration of the rule “IIS Discovery Probe Module Execution Failure” to so that the parameter replacement will now work correctly for alert suppression and generating the details of the alert’s description. The rest is mostly polishing, fine-tuning and complementary updates. Nothing really ground-breaking here, but still a welcome update. Download at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61365290-3c38-4004-b717-e90bb0f6c148

MicrosoftOpsMgr 2007

SQL ManagementPack Survey – Make your voice heard

According to the OpsMgr Team blog, Microsoft wants to know what you think about their SQL Server MP. It’s really hard to come by a better opportunity to express your feelings and desires about monitoring SQL Server, so don’t miss this one out. http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2009/09/25/sql-management-pack-survey-live-on-connect.aspx

MicrosoftOpsMgr 2007

Replace/Change a Gateway Server

Description of problem If you are looking into replacing an (or just switching to another primary) Operations Manager 2007 Gateway Server for any reason, there’s a little more to consider than just right-clicking the clients and selecting “Change Primary Management Server” in the Operations Console. You could end up with agents not being able to connect to the Management Group at all due to a small problem with the order in which Operations Manager do things. Here’s basically what happens: You tell Operations Manager to change Primary Management Server for AGENTX from GW1 to GW2. The SDK Service (i guess) tells GW1 that “You’re no longer the Primary Management Server for AGENTX” GW1 acknowledges this and stops talking to AGENTX. And I mean Completely stops talking to AGENTX. OpsMgr then tells GW2 to start accepting communication from AGENTX. OpsMgr tries to tell AGENTX that it should talk to GW2 since GW1 won’t listen. Spotted the problem? This modus operandi probably works when agents are on the same network and in the same domain where fail-over is sort of automatic. The problem we are facing now is that the server are telling the Gateway to stop accepting communications to and from the agent before the agent is notified that there is a new Gateway server to talk to. The agent will continue to talk to GW1 but will be completely ignored and you will probably start seeing events in the Operations Manager eventlog on GW1 with EventID 20000. How do I get around this little feature then? No matter if you found this article after running into the mentioned troubles or if you are googling ahead of time to be prepared, the fix is the same and consists of a few powershell scripts. These scripts are out there allready, but in different contexts, hence this post. First step: Install the new Gateway Documentation on this from Microsoft is good enough, but here’s the short version. Verify name resolution to and from Gateway server and Management Server Create certificate for the Gateway server Approve the Gateway server Install Gateway server Import certificates on Windows system Run MOMCertImport.exe on Gateway server to add the certificate into Gateway server configuration Wait

MicrosoftOpsMgr 2007

The TCP Port Check: Use with caution!

Just wanted to raise a word of caution about the TCP Port Check in Operations Manager 2007. Some customers have notices the the system-logs on some Unix machines are completely swamped with “connection error”, “TCP Connect failed”, “TCP Session Lost” and similar and after a bit och research the problematic servers were narrowed down to those monitored by Operations Manager. Specifically, those who are targeted by a TCP Port Check. It would seem like the TCP-connection never fully initializes on the target server. Kind of like knocking on your neighbours door and then hiding. Then when the door opens, no one is there causing your friendly neighbour to hang around waiting for something to happen. Maybe there’s a setting somewhere to modify how “deep” a Port Check should go before closing. Perhaps fully initializing and then sending a proper “Close” instead of just cutting the connection. In a few extreme cases we have noticed that the target server even goes so far as to start a session, but never ending it since there’s no closure and finally having no sessions to spare for the real users. But on most servers it’s just an annoyance since the “real” errors is very hard to be found in all the connection related logs. Anyway. Just a good thing to keep in mind when running TCP Port Checks from Operations Manager 2007. Keep an eye on the logs when implementing the port checks.

MicrosoftOpsMgr 2007

MSMQ Management Pack: Subscript Out of Range

UPDATE: This problem seems to be fixed in the latest update! The MSMQ Management Pack seems to have a few problems with it’s discovery script that can lead to the following error showing up in the logs: The process started at 13:34:40 failed to create System.Discovery.Data. Errors found in output:C:Program FilesSystem Center Operations Manager 2007Health Service StateMonitoring Host Temporary Files 499788DiscoverQueues.vbs(107, 4) Microsoft VBScript runtime error: Subscript out of range: '[number: 0]'Command executed: "C:WINDOWSsystem32cscript.exe" /nologo "DiscoverQueues.vbs" {615D37C9-477D-62E2-0833-6ECBF0E89A87} {A176AC83-CC31-01C3-5DE9-E2DFF64E7CC7} "MASKED.server.fqdn" "MSMQ" "true" "true" "False" "false"Working Directory: C:Program FilesSystem Center Operations Manager 2007Health Service StateMonitoring Host Temporary Files 499788One or more workflows were affected by this.Workflow name: Microsoft.MSMQ.2003.DiscoverQueuesInstance name: MASKED.server.fqdnInstance ID: {A176AC83-CC31-01C3-5DE9-E2DFF64E7CC7}Management group: MASKED This seems to be related to the discovery of public queues on some servers that has none. One quick fix, or rather work-around, is to override the discovery on these servers to set DiscoverPublic to False.

MicrosoftOpsMgr 2007

Windows Server 2008 NLB MP for OpsMgr released

Don’t know how I missed this when writing the last post, but Microsoft released the MP for Windows Server 2008 NLB yesterday (28/4 -09). This is the initial release for Win2k8 NLB so I guess we just have to try it out then. Quick Details File Name: Microsoft Server 2008 Network Load Balancing System Center Operations Manager 2007 MP.msiVersion: 6.0.6573.0Date Published: 4/28/2009Language: EnglishDownload Size: 519 KB Feature Summary Monitor the NLB Node status. Based on the status of individual cluster nodes, determine the overall state of the cluster. Where an integration management pack exists, determine the health state of a cluster node by looking at the health state of the load balanced application, such as IIS. Alert on errors and warnings that are reported by the NLB driver, such as an incorrectly configured NLB cluster. Take the node out of the NLB cluster if the underlying load-balanced application becomes unhealthy, and add the node back to the cluster when the application becomes healthy again. Requires OpsMgr 2007 SP1 or later, the Base Operating System MP for 2008, the QFEs for Windows Server 2008 and that you are not running the converted 2003 NLB MP. If you are running the old converted NLB MP, upgrade first. As an additional recommendation, Microsoft recommends in the MP Guide that you install the QFE for wmiprvse.exe problems on Windows Server 2008. No support for Mixed-mode (2008 and 2003) clusters though.

MicrosoftOpsMgr 2007

MSMQ 3 MP for OpsMgr v.6.0.6587.0 Released

Last friday, 24/4 -09,  Microsoft released an updated Management Pack for MSMQ 3.0. Quick Details File Name: Message Queuing System Center Operations Manager 2007 MP.MSI Version: 6.0.6587.0 Date Published: 4/24/2009 Language: English Download Size: 502 KB Release History 6/3/2008 - Initial Release, version 6.0.6278.23. Refer to the MP guide for further details.* 4/24/2009 - Undated release, version 6.0.6587.0. Refer to the MP guide for further details. The MP Guide does not really say much about what’s updated and I don’t know how much more than the reporting they have fixed. I can just state the fact that support for clustered MSMQ 3 instances is still missing.