[OpsMgr 2012] Making DELL management packs lighter for your management servers ( #OpsMgr #SCOM #DELL #ManagementPack #SDK )

DELL has recently released a very comprehensive management pack suite for Operations Manager, you can download the suite here.

The suite can monitor Dell servers, DRAC and chassis:

• Server inband monitoring – for Windows servers with an Operations Manager agent installed
• Server Out of Band monitoring – for servers with any operating system (or without OS if this matters) it uses a WS-Management interface provided with the latest iDRAC models
• Remote DRAC monitoring – for DRAC monitoring
• Remote CMC monitoring – for CMC monitoring

The suite also provides a way to enable or disable specific monitoring scopes directly from the monitoring space of the Operations Manager Console, this functionality is called “Feature Monitoring”, and the ability to correlate chassis slot with actual servers.

Alas all this goodness has a major drawback many of these modules have dependencies to the management servers and use direct access to the SDK    

 Daniele Grandini (MVP) has published a post to show how to not install dependencies on the administartions servers with no lost of functionalities.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties.

[OpsMgr 2007 R2][OpsMgr 2012] Group Maintenance Mode PowerShell Script Updated by Tao Yang

Tao Yang have updated the script provided by Steve Rachui ( Place a Group in Maintenance Mode with PowerShell ) to use SDK rather than SCOM 2007 PS Snap-in so the script works on both SCOM 2007 and OM12.
He's also made few other changes including change the duration from number of hours to number of minutes to suit his needs.

You can read his full article on Tao's blog and download his modified script here.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties.

[OpsMgr 2012] System Center 2012 Operations Manager – Alert Update Connector

The Alert Update Connector can set/override custom field values, owner, and/or ticket id for alerts

Version:

1.0

Date published:

9/27/2012

File name	Size
SCOM2012_AlertUpdateConnector.msi	406 KB	Download

Overview

The Alert Update Connector can modify alert custom fields with additional information useful for situations like controlling alert forwarding to incident management systems and help reduce noise in the incident creation process.

Feature Summary:

• Specify custom field values, owner, and ticket id for alerts generated by monitors
• Override custom field values, owner, and ticket id for alerts generated by rules

System requirements

Supported operating systems: Windows Server 2008 R2
System Center 2012 Operations Manager Management Server or Console (The Alert Update Connector requires the System Center Operations Manager SDK)

Instructions

1. Click on the link to the right, and download SCOM2012_AlertUpdateConnector.msi
2. On a computer with System Center Operations Manager 2012 Management Server or Console installed, click on the MSI to extract the connector files
3. Navigate to the folder/directory where the connector files are extracted to and open AlertUpdateConnector.rtf
4. Follow the instructions in AlertUpdateConnector.rtf to install and configure the connector

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties.

[OpsMgr 2007R2][OpsMgr 2012] MP Authoring: Targeting RMS or MS?

Tao Yang has created a new script for SDK connection to be able to use the same script on a SCOM 2007 and on a SCOM 2012. Basically, the script now reads the default SDK service computer name from the registry of each management server and connect to this SDK machine instead of local computer. in 2007, this registry value points to RMS and in 2012, it points to the management server itself.

Read more on his blog

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties.

[OpsMgr 2007R2][OpsMgr 2012] The System Center Data Access Service fails to start after applying KB2677070

The System Center Data Access Service fails to start after applying KB2677070

Article ID: 2730040 - View products that this article applies to.

 

After applying KB2677070 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2677070), the System Center Data Access Service may fail to start with a Timeout error.

 

This issue occurs because the update changes the URLs used to contact Windows Update to download the trusted and untrusted CTLs. If the old URLs were hardcoded as exceptions in the firewall or proxy, the server running the Data Access Service will fail to download the new CTLs because it can't reach the updated web address.

The workaround for this is to ublock the updated URLs in the firewall or proxy or disable CRL checking for the Data Access Service.

The updated URLs are:

http://ctldl.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/disallowedcertstl.cab

(http://ctldl.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/disallowedcertstl.cab)

http://ctldl.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/authrootstl.cab

(http://ctldl.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3/static/trustedr/en/authrootstl.cab)

To disable CRL checking for the Data Access Service, open Microsoft.Mom.Sdk.ServiceHost.exe.config in a text editor and add the following line in the <runtime> section:

<generatePublisherEvidence enabled="false"/>

Below is an example of this tag being added for System Center 2012 Operations Manager:

 <runtime>
<generatePublisherEvidence enabled="false"/>
      <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
        <dependentAssembly>
          <assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.HealthService" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" />
          <publisherPolicy apply="no" />
          <bindingRedirect oldVersion="6.0.4900.0" newVersion="7.0.5000.0" />
        </dependentAssembly>
        <publisherPolicy apply="no" />
        <probing privatePath="" />
      </assemblyBinding>
      <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
        <dependentAssembly>
          <assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.Mom.Common" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" />
          <publisherPolicy apply="no" />
          <bindingRedirect oldVersion="6.0.4900.0" newVersion="7.0.5000.0" />
        </dependentAssembly>
        <publisherPolicy apply="no" />
        <probing privatePath="" />
      </assemblyBinding>
      <gcServer enabled="true"/>
    </runtime>


The next example shows the same parameter added in the configuration file for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
    <runtime>
<generatePublisherEvidence enabled="false"/>
        <gcServer enabled="true"/>
    </runtime>


Microsoft.Mom.Sdk.ServiceHost.exe.config is found in the following directories (where x is the drive on which Operations Manager is installed):

·         System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2: x:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007
·         System Center 2012 - Operations Manager: x:\Program Files\System Center 2012\Operations Manager\Server

Note This is a "FAST PUBLISH" article created directly from within the Microsoft support organization. The information contained herein is provided as-is in response to emerging issues. As a result of the speed in making it available, the materials may include typographical errors and may be revised at any time without notice. See Terms of Use

(http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=151500)

for other considerations.

 

Article ID: 2730040 - Last Review: July 9, 2012 - Revision: 2.0

APPLIES TO

• Microsoft System Center 2012 Operations Manager
• Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2

Keywords:

kbtshoot KB2730040

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties.

[OpsMgr 2007] Powershell Script to list Number of active SDK connections per user

I've already post a short word on this :  >>>>>>>>>> HERE <<<<<<<<<<

And here is a smal improvment that count the number of connection by connected users :)

Replace My.Server.FullName by your RMS fullname.

1. # Connect your environment
2. add-pssnapin "Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.OperationsManager.Client";
3. set-location "OperationsManagerMonitoring::";
4. new-managementGroupConnection -ConnectionString:My.Server.FullName;
5. set-location My.Server.FullName;
7. # Get the connected users
8. $SDKUsers = Get-ManagementGroupConnection | foreach-object {$_.ManagementGroup.getConnectedUserNames()} | sort
9. $SDKNumberConnections = $SDKUsers | measure-object
11. # number of active connections
12. $SDKNumberConnections.count
14. # count active connections per users
15. $hash =@{}
16. $SDKUsers | % {$hash[$_] = $hash[$_] + 1 }
17. $Result = $hash.getenumerator() | ? { $_.value -gt 0 }
18. $Result | sort value -DESC

 The result will be a table with the user account and the number of actives connections :

This can be a very usefull information to be able to investigate who is connecting the SCOM environment and why why have too much active connection.
Having too much SDK connection make the environment very slow.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties.

[OpsMgr 2007] Find out which users have a console connection with OpsMgr 2007

Find out which users have a console connection with OpsMgr | Info Support

Usefull link to have the Powershell command line to know the number of actual SDK connection and the list of user that have a connection.

List users that have a SDK connection

• Get-ManagementGroupConnection | foreach-object {$_.ManagementGroup.getConnectedUserNames()}

 Give number of current SDK connections

• Get-ManagementGroupConnection | foreach-object {$_.ManagementGroup.getConnectedUserNames()} | measure-object

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties.

[SCOM 2007] Reducing calls to the Operations Database - Operation Manager Console Tuning

I've very slow performance with the Operation Manager Console and after some searches, I saw that we can change the default configuration of the automatic polling to the Opsmgr DB made by the console.

By default, the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\console\CacheParameters\PollingInterval registry key is set to 1 - That means that console will poll every 15 seconds the Operation Manager DB. If you use multiple consoles, that can negatively impact performance. 

For best performance in large environments, you should turn off Polling by setting the key to 0 or increase it to at least level 5. (level 10 is the maximum level value)

Here are the different value
                 0 – Turn off console polling and only refresh when manually pressing F5
                 1 – Console will poll every 15 seconds (default)
                 2 – Console will poll ever 30 seconds
               10 – This is the maximum value – anything above 10 will be treated as 10



NOTE: The CacheParameters key did not exist by default in my environment. HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\console\CacheParameters\EnableContextMenuTasks
defaults value is 0 in SP1. Re-enabled it by recreating the key could cause performance issues.


Launch console on machine in good shape - I mean in good shape having a lot of free disk space not fragmented + at least 1 Go of free memory. The best should be to exclude the path to the console from the antivirus. The last thing should be to limit the number of open consoles.
Local console cache path is Documents and Settings\<username>\local settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Microsoft.MOM.UI.Console

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties.