Management Packs

Updated & Improved - Custom Windows Server OS Management Pack

rodtrent — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:20:55 GMT

Shortly before the Christmas holiday, a colleague from Premier had reached out to me to verify that in the Active Directory management pack, when a DC is demoted some cleanup actions are automatically performed upon detection. I responded by saying I vaguely remember that such a script existed in the ADMP and that it would execute upon detecting a DC demotion event, but I needed to double-check before I could say for sure. Well, I decided to fire up my console and review the latest ADMP (6.0.6452.0) and sure enough such a rule and script existed. However, upon testing of the rule - AD DC Demoted in my lab environment, I uncovered the following:

No alerts were generated indicating the cleanup script completed successfully or failed.
Testing the script manually, I uncovered a minor syntax error in the logic for the CreateEvent method when the successful removal of the replication monitoring objects for that DC were removed from the DC. You would never see an alert indicating it completed successfully.
The script would never completed successfully after a DC demotion process is complete because the script runs under Local System security context of the agent action account (by default). It would need to authenticate to another DC in the domain using alternative credentials (Run As account as an example). This is important because once the demotion is complete, there is no local copy of the DS and the script is configured to perform a serverless bind to the domain without hardcoding a DC. Since the server is no longer a DC, it can't bind to itself but to another DC in the domain the server is a member of.
The latest version of the ADMP changed the name of the replication monitoring container in the DS to - OpsMgrLatencyMonitors. The script in the ADMP was still referencing the old naming standard - MOMLatencyMonitors.

So I fired-up my old custom MP- Extended Windows Server OS Monitoring management pack (If you remember, I had uncovered a different, but similar issue with the first release of the ADMP - 6.0.6246.0) to refresh my memory and test it to make sure it would work. However, upon review I determined that my logic was flawed and it needed to be re-written from the ground up (being the critical person I am, even of my own work). Therefore, I started to evaluate the scenario and develop a workable solution. This management pack has undergone testing for two weeks now and I can say with certainty it works and meets my high-quality bar.

This management pack provides the following capabilities:

Has the rule - AD DC Demoted, targeted at the Windows Server Operating System class, so that it will monitor Windows Server 2000/2003/2008.
An override so that you can change the parameter for the replication container (i.e. MOMLatencyMonitors or OpsMgrLatencyMonitors) to support the old and new versions of the ADMP.
The script has been corrected so it will generate an informational alert if successful and includes the complete path - MOMLatencyMonitors or OpsMgrLatencyMonitors. The default script would not include the replication container name in the alert details. The same can be said if it fails.
Two alert rules based on outcome of the cleanup script - success or failure respectively.
A Run As Profile so that you can associate an existing Run As Account (preferably the ADMP Replication Monitoring Account) and target it against the domain controllers in your environment. Additional rights will need to be granted to this account in order for it to successfully delete the object(s) from the container in the DS.
Also has two tasks - Reboot Windows Server and Shutdown Windows Server.

If you used the Extended Windows Server Operating System management pack (6.0.6246.0), delete it from the management group before importing this one, as it won't upgrade to this new version. The zip file contains the sealed MP and the deployment guide for your review.

Updated & Improved - ConfigMgr 2007 OS Deployment MP

rodtrent — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:19:29 GMT

Finally I have found the time to post an updated version of the custom Configuration Manager 2007 OS Deployment Management Pack. This version (6.0.6278.6) includes the following changes:

Updated the Task Sequence status message alert description by removing the reference to the
task execution date/time as it was formatted in DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM:SS with UTC offset (which is
the default in SQL Server) and not local time.
Updated the query for Task Sequence Status Messages script, which monitors specific SCCM status messages from the Task Sequence Engine, to get 11170 and 11171 from a different table - ClientOfferStatus. (Thanks to a colleague - Denis Rougeau for catching that bug).
Updated the interval for the System Schedule data source for the Hung Computer Monitor Script and Task Sequence Engine Script from 5 minutes to 15 minutes to minimize impact on SCCM Site Servers. I also corrected the Knowledge Article for the Hung Computer Alert Rule.

Feel free to submit your feedback and any ideas you may have to expand the monitoring capabilities of this management pack.

System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 Service Pack 1 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

rodtrent — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:24:19 GMT

Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager Service Pack 1 2008 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 provides proactive monitoring of your Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 SP1 environment. This management pack includes:

Detection and monitoring of all MDM SP1 servers and dependent services
The alert-driven state
Performance and backlog monitoring and configuration

Before you install the MDM SP1 management pack, read the MDM Management Pack Guide document, which includes instructions for properly deploying and configuring the management pack.

Feature Summary
The System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 SP1 (MDM SP1) Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 provides capabilities for MDM SP1 monitoring, including the following:

Collection of events from MDM Device Management Server, MDM Enrollment Server, MDM Gateway Server, and MDM Self Service Portal.
Health state monitoring and alerting for MDM service errors requiring administrative intervention.
Collection of MDM performance counters from MDM Device Management Server, MDM Enrollment Server, MDM Gateway Server, and MDM Self Service Portal.
Events indicating service outages.
Alerts indicating configuration and data source connectivity issues.
Verification that all dependent services are functioning properly.

Windows HPC Server 2008 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007

rodtrent — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:07:30 GMT

The Windows HPC Server 2008 Management Pack provides both proactive and reactive monitoring of Windows HPC Server 2008 for a cluster environment. It monitors Windows HPC Server components – such as head node, compute node, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) broker node, network, and Job Scheduler – to report issues that can cause downtime or poor performance for the cluster that is running Windows HPC Server 2008.

Feature Summary
The Windows HPC Server 2008 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 includes a number of key monitoring scenarios that are enabled with monitors, rules, alerts and tasks to help manage an HPC cluster, which include:

Head Node Monitoring
Network Monitoring
Job Scheduler Monitoring
Compute Node Monitoring
Broker Node Monitoring

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Management Pack for System Center Operations Management 2007

rodtrent — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:34:31 GMT

The Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2008 Management Pack monitors exposed services of TFS. This management pack includes event rules and monitors. It is designed to proactively monitor quality and availability of TFS services and even automate recovery in some scenarios.

Feature Summary

Auto discovery of TFS components
Leverages ASP.NET MP and SQL MP
Implements containment hierarchy reflecting logical architecture of the Product
Implements a proper health model using Monitors
Contains tasks, diagnostic and recovery for certain failures
Events indicating service outages
Alerts indicating configuration issues and connected data source changes
Verification that all dependant services are running
Targeted running of BPA against TFS Servers from Operator Console

New monitoring capabilities can be easily added.

Microsoft SQL Server Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

rodtrent — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:59:17 GMT

12/3/2008 - Updated version 6.0.6460.0, fixed an issue with the database discovery script to prevent overflows

The SQL Server Management Pack provides the capabilities for Operations Manager 2007 to discover SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008 installations and components and to monitor them, primarily from the perspective of availability and performance. The availability and performance monitoring is done using a combination of scripts and native Operations Manager capabilities.

Note: Scripts in the SQL Server 2008 management pack rely on SQL Data Management Objects (SQL-DMO) to query information from the SQL Server. SQL-DMO is now deprecated and is not shipped as a part of SQL Server 2008. Every system with SQL Server 2008 that will be monitored must have SQL-DMO installed from the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components. For instructions on how to download and install the SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components refer to the management pack guide.

Feature Bullet Summary:
The following list gives an overview of the features of the SQL Server management pack. Refer to the SQL Server management pack guide for more detail.

Support for Enterprise, Standard and Express editions of SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008 and 32bit, 64bit and ia64 architectures.
Support for both simple and complex SQL configurations such as clustered installations, multiple instances and 32bit roles running on a 64bit OS. For full details on supported configurations refer to the guide included with the management pack.
Discovery and monitoring of SQL Server roles such as DB Engine, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, Integrations Services.
Discovery of SQL components such as databases, the SQL Agent and SQL jobs.
Over 20 views covering areas such as database free space, SQL related performance, SQL related alerts, and lists of the various SQL roles and components which are discovered and their related state.
Reports for longer-term analysis of common problem areas related to SQL Server such as SQL Server lock analysis and top deadlocked databases, SQL Server service pack levels across discovered roles, user connection activity. Likewise the generic reports from the Microsoft Generic Report Library can be used against the roles and components discovered by the SQL MPs to review availability and performance across many systems and over longer periods of time.
Role and component specific tasks which provide access to common tools, triage information, or corrective actions without needing to leave the Operations Console in most cases.
Monitoring of databases covers database status, database free space, log shipping monitoring for both the source and destination, and transaction log free space.
Monitoring of key SQL related services.
Monitoring for persistent SPID blocking.
Monitoring of numerous SQL events and performance data points. Alerts bring the issue to your attention and provide knowledge on the impact and possible resolutions.

Windows Server Active Directory Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

rodtrent — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:21:54 GMT

The Active Directory Management Pack provides both proactive and reactive monitoring of your Active Directory deployment. It monitors events that are placed in the Application, System, and Service event logs by various Active Directory components and subsystems. It also monitors the overall health of the Active Directory system and alerts you to critical performance issues. The monitoring provided by this management pack includes monitoring of the domain controllers and monitoring of health from the perspective of clients utilizing Active Directory resources. To monitor the domain controllers, the Active Directory Management Pack provides a predefined, ready-to-run set of processing rules, monitoring scripts, and reports that are designed specifically to monitor the performance and availability of the Active Directory domain controllers. The client in your environment might experience connectivity and service issues even though the domain controller appears to be operating correctly. The Active Directory Client Management Pack, included in the Active Directory Management Pack files to download, helps to identify these issues. This management pack monitors the services provided by the domain controller. It provides information in addition to that collected directly on the domain controller about whether they are available by running synthetic transactions against the directory service, such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) binds and LDAP pings.

Feature Summary:

Replication
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
Domain Controller Locator
Trusts
Net Logon service
File Replication Service (FRS)
Intersite Messaging service
Windows Time service
Key Distribution Center (KDC)
Monitoring service availability
Collecting key performance data
Providing comprehensive reports, including reports about service availability and service health and reports that can be used for capacity planning

Microsoft SharePoint Services 3.0 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

rodtrent — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:23:02 GMT

This Management Pack monitors the health state of the components in your SharePoint environment that affect performance and availability. When there is an issue that may cause service or performance degradation, Operations Manager 2007 uses the Management Pack to detect the issue, alert you to its existence, and facilitate diagnosis and corrective actions.

Feature Bullet Summary:
The management pack monitors:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 related services (Timer, Tracing and Search)
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 related Events
Web server applications such as Internet Information Services (IIS)
IIS-related Events
Microsoft SQL Server® database-related events
WSS Server performance

Sample Linked Report MP

rodtrent — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:44:40 GMT

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/steverac/archive/2008/10/30/sample-linked-report-mp.aspx

I've seen several posts on various forums where folks are looking for samples showing how to build an MP containing linked reports. The report authoring guide refers to some sample files but, those files don't exist anywhere. I just finished up some linked report training and, as a part of the training, build out a custom linked report MP that is attached to this post. You can also review how to build linked reports by simply exporting most any of our sealed MP's and searching for the linked report section.

Windows HPC Server 2008 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007

rodtrent — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:37:57 GMT

Head Node Monitoring
Network Monitoring
Job Scheduler Monitoring
Compute Node Monitoring
Broker Node Monitoring

Windows Server Operating System Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

rodtrent — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:54:41 GMT

The Windows Server Operating System Management Pack consists of the following five management packs: Microsoft Windows Server Library, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Discovery, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Monitoring, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, and Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. The Microsoft Windows Server management packs monitor the performance, health, and availability of Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2000 Server.

By detecting, alerting on, and automatically responding to critical events and performance indicators, management packs reduce resolution times for issues and increase the overall availability and performance of your Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2000 Server operating systems, thereby helping to reduce the total cost of ownership.

Feature Summary

Availability
- Key Operating System Services: Required services are checked for status (for example, running, not running, or paused).
- Storage: Logical hard drives are checked for availability, sufficient free space, and integrity of the NTFS partition.
- Network: Network adapters are checked for connection health, name and IP address conflicts.
Performance
- Processor: System processor(s) performance is checked system-wide. Processors can optionally be monitored on a per processor basis.
- • Memory: Memory consisting of physical memory and virtual memory (also known as page files) is monitored using the following performance indicators:
  - Available memory (in MB)
  - Pages per second
  - Page file percent usage
- Disks and Partitions: Logical disks/partitions and physical disks are monitored, and performance data is collected for average disk seconds per read, disk seconds per write, and disk seconds per transfer. Depending on which version of the operating system is being monitored, either logical or physical monitoring is enabled by default. Refer to the MP guide for more detail.
- Network Adapter: Network adapters are monitored for the number of bytes received per second, the number of bytes sent per second, and the total bytes per second. In addition, the health state of the network adapter is evaluated and is set to Healthy if connected and Critical if disconnected.

Scheduled Tasks - Management Pack

rodtrent — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:17:56 GMT

INOVATIV proudly presents the Scheduled Tasks management pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007. Completely free and without any restrictions!

We have put our experience of System Center products and solutions to work in this completely native management pack. The scheduled tasks management pack introduces two new classes in your System Center Operations Manager 2007 environment:

Scheduler
Scheduled Tasks

It provides the classes as a child to the Windows Computer class and marks it as "public", for use in a Distributed Application. Scheduled Tasks are monitored every 60 seconds for three potential problems:

Last run time is "Never" or "N/A"
Last result is other than 0

Microsoft Application Virtualization Management Pack for Systems Center Operations Manager 2007

rodtrent — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:28:40 GMT

The Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (App-V) Management Pack enables IT professionals to use Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 to monitor App-V server systems. The Management Pack is designed to maximize Application Virtualization Server availability for handling Application Virtualization Client requests. This component delivers an enterprise-level solution to proactively monitor Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 server systems.

Feature Summary

Monitor and detect Application Virtualization service failures.
Monitor connectivity errors with external App-V dependent services such as SQL and Active Directory Domain Services.
Monitor when the backlog of queued requests crosses thresholds.
Monitor the general health state of the App-V Server.
Monitor machine-wide health metrics as related to App-V Server components.
Visually monitor trends in the backlog of queued requests on App-V Servers.
Monitor the number and type of alerts across the App-V infrastructure.
Monitor response time when communicating with external services.

Microsoft BizTalk Server Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

rodtrent — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:30:32 GMT

The BizTalk Server Management Pack for Operations Manager provides comprehensive discovery and monitoring of BizTalk Server components and applications. In addition to general support for BizTalk Server 2006, BizTalk Server 2006 R2, this management pack provides coverage for new BizTalk Server 2006 R2 features, such as the native EDI runtime and RFID.

Feature Bullet Summary:
This management pack focuses on the following key scenarios which are discussed further in the management pack guide provided within the download:

Suspended Message Alerts
Alert Suppression Policy
BAM Technical Assistance Alerts
BizTalk Message Boxes and Hosts
Orchestration Failures
Service Monitoring
Application Monitoring
Monitoring of various aspects of RFID

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 UNIX Interoperability Management Pack for Microsoft OpsMgr 2005

rodtrent — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:36:42 GMT

The Microsoft Windows Server 2008 UNIX Interoperability Management Pack monitors the performance and availability of the Windows Server 2008 version of Subsystem for UNIX based Applications component and Identity Management for UNIX component. By detecting, alerting on, and automatically responding to critical events and performance indicators, this Management Pack helps indicate, correct, and prevent possible UNIX Interoperability related service outages. The Windows Server 2008 UNIX Interoperability Management Pack helps ensure that your Subsystem for UNIX based Applications and Identity Management for UNIX components are available and working correctly.

Feature Summary

Events indicating service outages
Alerts indicating configuration issues and connected data source changes
Verification that all dependant services are running
Management agent errors requiring administrative intervention