SCOM: Add community power and keep the engine running…
Let’s face it: a good program is like a car. You need to maintain it properly to keep it in running condition. Well this is also the case with SCOM. I visit a lot of clients and one of the main questions I get is in fact how to make sure SCOM stays healthy and running.
Well there are some indicators in SCOM itself suggesting that there are issues with the install but unfortunately they are easily missed or looked over.
So this is where the awesome SCOMunity steps in!
This post should become your one stop location to find some of the leading community management packs you’ll need to keep your SCOM environment going or at least very easily pinpoint where there are (potential) issues.
These are management packs I actually install at almost every client I visit:
TAO Yang’s Self Maintenance management pack
Tao has been an active member of the Scomunity for quite some time now and his self maintenance management pack is already in version 2.4.0. This management pack features a lot of tasks and checks that every SCOM admin should perform but it’s always cool to have a management pack doing it for you. Before I used TAO’s management pack I had a standard PowerShell toolkit to automate some of the tasks but now if the customer approves it (remember it’s still an unsealed MP so sometimes you need approval of customers) I load up the management pack and configure it. TAO really went all in and included also a PDF to assist you in installing and configuring the MP.
Image (Tao Yang)
Some of the tasks I like the most (this is not a full list but just to highlight the things I personally find handy in there):
- Automatic scheduled distribution of agents across the management servers. Even with the possibility to limit the amount of agents distributed between the management servers
- Auto approve agents in management pending based on a input mask to make sure they are allowed in the MG.
- Check whether a management server is placed in maintenance mode
- Find orphaned alerts
- ….
This is an invaluable management pack for every scom admin out there. Whether you are visiting a lot of clients and need to get a clear view on the health of the management group or have only one client. This will free up a lot of your time and also reduce the chance of problems because there are early warning systems build-in. More info here:
http://blog.tyang.org/2014/06/30/opsmgr-2012-self-maintenance-management-pack-2-4-0-0/
SCOM Health Check Reports V3 (Oskar Landman + Pete Zerger)
One of the other hard things to do is in fact give a small report to the SCOM admin / supervisor telling how SCOM is actually doing and whether things are well in your SCOM environment.
Just recently Oskar Landman and Pete Zerger have updated their SCOM Health Check reports to give you a proper status in one glance.
This set of reports will give you an even more in depth view how you’re environment is doing and what are the key points to work on to further enhance your environment. One of the key benefits is the fact that you can check in detail that every aspect of your dbase and what is coming into them is valid and not too much. This is really helpful if you start your noise cancelling to really focus on the big consumers concerning space and cpu time of your SQL dbase.
Make sure you read the manual thoroughly before proceeding as you need to take additional steps prior to installation.
More info here:
Image (SystemCenterCentral)
Check the article here: http://www.systemcentercentral.com/scom-health-check-reports-v3/
Download here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/SCOM-Health-Check-Reports-c32e8f93
Let’s crank up that download count because this is definitely something you need in your SCOM environment
TAO Yang’s SCOM datawarehouse health script
This one is clean and simple. All the different things you would need to check on your datawarehouse but actually probably never did combined in a PowerShell script.
All the different aspects of what you need to know about your Datawarehouse are reported and gathered on a html page. This is one of the things you actually need to do at every customer site you come across to get an instant view on how the datawareshouse and more important the SCOM environment is setup and performing.
More info can be found here: http://blog.tyang.org/2015/06/11/opsmgr-2012-data-warehouse-health-check-script/
In conclusion
These are just 3 community provided tools which are freely available to help you get more insight in your environment or the environment you need to troubleshoot.
Special thanks goes out to TAO Yang, Oskar Landman and Pete Zerger in particular to invest their time in making these solutions possible / available and of course also thanks to all the other active community members who keep developing new things for SCOM and system center in general.
If you are just starting with SCOM: This is not an exhaustive list of all the add-ons out there. If you are looking for a 1 place stop to start your journey take a look at my: SCOM Link overview blog which is currently under revision: http://scug.be/dieter/2012/12/30/scom-2012-overview-link-blog/
MVP 2015: Cloud and Datacenter Management
It’s very strange how time flies by so quickly… It has already been a year since I received my first MVP title and just a week a go I noticed I was up for renewal again…
Receiving the mail above always has something magical like new-year’s eve. A new year full of opportunities lies ahead to experience the true value of the MVP program. During the last year I’ve got to learn a lot of people in person which I knew already online out of the community, got to interact with the product team and took part in some really cool in depth discussions which really benefit the products I work with on a daily basis.
It’s nice to know where to go to if you have a problem with configuring something… And with that I’m not only referring to the MVP community but also the System Center community in general. It’s you out there who keep this community alive and I’m grateful I can contribute to it.
So in conclusion: I hope we’ll meet (again or for the first time) at an event or online and keep continue to spread the Sysctr love.