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SCOM 2012: Overview link blog

This post will be my (and hopefully yours) one stop to post all the relevant info to SCOM 2012. I will try to generate an overview of all the different steps you need to start from scratch and continue to build your environment to a level that suites your environment.

If you feel there are things missing or you’ve found dead links please do not hesitate to leave a comment and I will update this post. This post has grown out of my favourite list of SCOM related topics and info I found on forums, technet and blogs.

Note:

    • I’ll sometimes post more than 1 link at a topic so you can combine the different blogposts to get the bigger picture.
    • Most of the info is relevant for SCOM 2012 and SCOM 2012 SP1 (if there’s specific info for a specific version it will be pointed out.)
    • This is a link post to relevant info I found on the web. All credits and copyright belong to the respective authors.

SCOM 2012 R2:

General information:

This section lists all links that will give you a general overview of SCOM.

Design and Topology

This section lists all links that will help and guide you to make a proper design and take the correct decisions concerning topology

How to install

This section lists all links to the install walkthroughs and possible issues.

Configuring scom

This section lists all links to help you quickly setup scom after you have succesfully installed it.

 

Specific configuration

This section lists all the different aspects of SCOM that need additional installation or configuration

Dashboards

ACS

APM (Application Performance Monitoring)

Gateway configuration

Network Monitoring

Azure Monitoring:

Management pack basics

This section lists all the links to give you the basics about management packs

 

Management pack advanced

This section liste all the links to the more advance management pack tips and tricks.

Community Management packs

A list of must have community management packs to increase your productivity and solve some gaps and functionalities in scom.

Note: These management packs are written by members of the community so no warranty is given. Test before you use in production!

Integration possibilities

This section lists links to different integration possibilities between the different System Center products.

 

Usefull blogs and sources for this list (In random order of importance)

Note: System Center Blogs: Now on iPhone, Android and Windows Phone

Tips & Tricks

Cool Showcases with SCOM

Partner solutions for SCOM (in random order)

Videos

SCOM 2012: What’s new: Default behavior of overrides

This post is part of a series What’s new: Check here for the other parts.

SCOM has some huge changes on board… But some are rather small and go unnoticed to the untrained eye although they could save you a major headache.

I’m pretty sure not a lot of hands will be raised when I pop the question: “Are you 100% sure your default management pack is free of overrides, if it’s not you buy me a beer?”. Although this is not that important because (let’s face it) it works doesn’t it? You will at one point or another have a big headache when you want to delete or upgrade a management pack which has an override stored in the default management pack. This makes the default management pack referenced by the management pack and therefore you can’t delete it.

Although a lot of new System Center admins make this error I must admit it’s in fact quite easy to make the error… Just click next and it’s there…

In SCOM2007R2 the default behavior when creating an override is storing it in the default management pack:

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NOTE: Notice that My default management pack name has been changes to something which draws a little bit more attention when you want to click OK to minimize the possibility you click ok to fast. Check here how to do this: http://scug.be/blogs/dieter/archive/2011/05/13/scom-2007-renaming-default-management-pack-display-name.aspx

This is one of the first things to do on my checklist when I open the console at a new client. As this is not ruling out the fact that you once in a while just click ok to fast it helps avoiding some issues.

In SCOM2012 this behavior is changed. Now you need to explicitly select a management pack before you can click ok. Making my linked blog post above completely useless but hey you can’t win them all Smile

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This small adaption will keep a lot of default management packs clean and will score me a lot less free rounds of beer but hey… it’s for a good cause Smile

While we are on the subject make sure you use the proper approach for storing your overrides.

Marnix Wolf MVP has written a nice blog post on the subject: Storing overrides, the good, the bad and the ugly.

His conclusion:

When storing Overrides, store them in a single unsealed MP which is dedicated only to the MP where you’re making the override for. So overrides for the SQL MP go into the unsealed MP ‘Overrides SQL’ and overrides for the Server OS MP go in to the unsealed MP ‘Overrides Server OS’. This is the only viable and workable option. All other options cause issues, sooner or later.”

SCOM 2012: Meet the SCOM 2012 experts at SCUG NL (wrap up)

Last friday 06/01 the event “Meet the SCOM 2012 experts” was held by SCUG NL near Amsterdam.

The turn up was really great and a lot of speakers (including yours truly Smile ) gave sessions regarding the next big version of System Center Operations Manager.

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The day was quickly sold out and those who made it in enjoyed the session which gave away a nice first view of the different aspects of the SCOM 2012.

All the slide decks can be found here:

http://www.scug.nl/2012/01/13/presentaties-scug-nl-vrijdag-6-januari-2012/

Program (in order of appearance):

Dieter Wijckmans:

Session about the proper preparation to upgrade your environment from SCOM 2007 to SCOM 2012 with all the different tweaks and perks you need to do to make sure everything goes smoothly: scug_nl_How to prepare yourself for SCOM 2012_Dieter_Wijckmans

Walter Eikenboom:

Session about the End to End application monitoring in SCOM 2012. Nice session packed with demo’s how to take full advantage of the different aspects of correctly monitoring your applications with SCOM 2012: SCUG NL – OpsMgr 2012 End-To-End monitoring v1.0_Walter_Eikenboom

Michael Guthrie (Microsoft product team of SCOM 2012)

Session about the different aspects of Application Monitoring features in SCOM 2012. The features are greatly improved to give you even more in depth insight in where to pinpoint the issue of a problem with an application: SCUG NL APM with OM12_Michael_Guthrie

Vishnu Nath (Microsoft product team of SCOM 2012)

Session about the greatly improved Network monitoring features in SCOM 2012. Discussed a broad variety of new features and possibilities in the field of network monitoring. The initial configuration is also explained: SCUG NL OM2012_NetworkMonitoring_Vishnu Nath

Oskar Landman (SCOM MVP)

Session about the difference between SCOM 2007 and SCOM 2012. Oskar highlighted some well hidden new features which make your live as a SCOM admin a lot easier. An in depth insight deep down the SCOM application. A nice interactive session with lots of questions from the crowd (unfortunately they are not documented in the slide deck Smile with tongue out): SCUG NL – under the hood_Oskar_Landman

Meet the System Center Operations Manager 2012 Experts

I have the privilege of giving a session at the “Meet the System Center operations Manager 2012 Experts” event of Scug NL on 06/01/2012.

On the link below you can find the different topics + timetable.

http://www.scug.nl/2011/12/07/meet-the-system-center-operations-manager-2012-experts-6-januari-2012/

I’ll go over the different aspects of preparing yourself for the upgrade / move to the next best thing SCOM2012 by planning and not by being the IT_Rambo for a change…

There’s a good chance that IT-Rambo will surface in NL.

So if you see him start hitting next as quick as possible!rambo-ii-9

SCOM 2012: Webconsole fails to load after upgrade

In my recent session I’ve showcased an error I encountered when upgrading my SCOM2007R2 environment to SCOM2012beta.

After the upgrade was finished successful I performed my standard after migration health check and opened my web console to check out the new features of the SCOM 2012 console.

Only to find out this very “nice” cryptic error message:

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Apparently this is because the ASP.NET version was installed after the IIS role and the new web app “SCOM 2012 Web Console” was never registered to use this version of ASP.NET with the IIS role.

So what are we going to do now… well euhm… Fix it Smile

Open an elevated command prompt (make it a habit, this will save you a lot of trouble in your live)

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Open explorer and browse to “c:\windows\Microsoft.net\Framework64\v4.0.30319\”

Note: Make sure you use your installed framwork and version

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Locate the file aspnet_regiis.exe and drag it into your elevated command prompt and add the switch –iru at the end as shown below. printscreen0053

This actually will reinstall the ASP.NET version into the IIS sites so they can all use the new version. Sites which already use the new version are left untouched.printscreen0054

Finished installing… So we’ll see what happened to our console!

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Well it’s loading up fine at this point Smile

Note: You’ll need to have Silverlight installed. If you don’t have it on your machine a nice kind message will appear whether you want to install it. I’ve installed it in advance as it is one of the prerequisites.

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There we have our nice brand new shiny Scom 2012 web console which we can start exploring Smile

SCOM 2012: Upgrade failed with error 0x80070005

During the prep of my lab I came across an error which was in fact not this very common so I’ve decided to share my solution with you to save you some trouble when performing this in your environment.

After running through the entire installation wizard my upgrade process started fine… But after 10 minutes…printscreen0036

After restarting the process I was left with a broken SCOM2007R2 and SCOM2012 not installed. SQL Reporting services were broken so I had to revert my machine back to a snapshot I took earlier on and started all over again…

Now the solution so you shouldn’t have to go through the whole process of troubleshooting.

After checking the log file I found the following cause of my initial failing of the upgrade:

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“System.UnauthorizedAccessException, Exception Error Code: 0x80070005, Exception.Message: Access to the path ‘MOMAspNet.msi’ is denied.”

This in fact is your ASP.net msi which is used when you install the agents. I’ve checked the rights and they were all good.

Delete folder: “C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\AgentManagement”

The installation went through after this.

After your upgrade this folder will be replaced anyway by the new SCOM2012 agent install packages so it’s safe to delete this before upgrade.

Another little step towards our brand new shining SCOM2012 environment Smile

SCOM 2012: Don’t be the IT-Rambo…

The title says it all…

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Don’t be the IT-Rambo but prepare yourself for the move to SCOM2012 by checking my session which I gave the 20th of September and is now available online.

Check it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/Hh443650

The slide deck is also available here: https://skydrive.live.com/?sc=documents&cid=f14edda98c2a18de#!/view.aspx?cid=F14EDDA98C2A18DE&resid=F14EDDA98C2A18DE%21126

SCOM 2012: Run WebConsole in different application pool

During my session on how to prepare yourself I’ve showcased some tips and tricks which will make your live much easier when you upgrade your existing SCOM 2007 R2 installation to SCOM2012.

One of the tricks I’ve mentioned was to run the SCOM2012 web console in it’s own app pool. During the upgrade of your web console the application pool will be removed and you can only choose the default application pool to install the website which is in my opinion not a best practice.

So before installing the Web Console on your webserver perform the following tasks in IIS:

Open the IIS manager on your machine

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Right click the application pools and choose “Add Web Site…”

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Fill in the details:

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Note: At this point you need to choose another port than the default 51908. You can change this again after the upgrade.

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The site is up and running.

During the wizard for pre installation you’ll get at one point at the following dialog to choose your application pool. Here’s the reason explained why we can’t reuse the “old” site:

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The Operations Manager WebConsole will be deleted during the upgrade so it will default to the default application pool.

Select the new created website and continue.

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After the upgrade you’ll notice that the old site has been removed. At this point you can edit the binding of the application pool again to the default port to keep the same transparency towards your users.

More tips to follow so stay tuned!

Live meeting: How to prepare for SCOM 2012

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On 20th of September I’ll be hosting a live meeting where we’ll go over the different steps to prepare yourself and your environment for the move from SCOM 2007 to SCOM 2012. The upgrade path has been said to be easier than the one from MOM2005 to SCOM2007 (god thank). But still there are some things to keep in mind and consider before moving towards the new version when it’s released.

So join me on the 20th of September to prepare yourself for the next version of the SCOM software family.

The abstract of the topics covered (more to come):

  • Backup and Document your environment.
  • Health Check your SCOM installation.
  • Compare management packs for SCOM2007 and SCOM2012.
  • Supported upgrade paths.

Link to join in: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032492077&Culture=en-US

I’ll be prepared for SCOM 2012… will you?

SCOM 2007: How to add Custom Field to monitor

In SCOM 2007 it’s possible to fill in custom fields with rules like you did in MOM 2005 as explained here: http://scug.be/blogs/dieter/archive/2011/05/13/scom-2007-custom-alert-fields.aspx

However this is not possible in monitors because there’s a fundamental change in how the alerts are created. In Rules the GenerateAlert module is used to create the alerts. In this GenerateAlert module it’s possible to pass extra data like the custom fields. In monitors the alert creation is slightly different. The alert is generate with parameters in the monitor itself so it’s not possible to pass extra data.

Case:

For a client I’m migrating MOM2005 to SCOM2007R2 and of course I would like to take advantage of the fact I can create monitors instead of rules. My client has a mainframe based problem management system (could also be any other system which doesn’t have a connector) which uses a mail scrubber to read out mails and scan for specific keywords to create tickets.

Problem:

The specific keywords were passed in MOM through the custom fields. This is also possible in SCOM but only by using rules and not monitors. A solution could be to create a monitor and create a separate alert generating rule for that monitor. This solves our issue but is not manageable because if things change you have to change both the monitor and the rule to make sure they reflect the new situation.

Solution:

Therefore I came up with another solution. Because there are only 15 possible combinations of keywords at my client I choose to use the Subscription / notification channel to insert the keywords in the dbase before I send it to the Problem management system. I could have just passed the parameters to the mail and send it but I prefer to update the dbase as well to also reflect the changes in the alert.

I’ve based my script on the script I used earlier on and is featured here: http://scug.be/blogs/dieter/archive/2011/05/11/scom-dump-alerts-to-text-file-and-mail.aspx

The main difference with the script above is that instead of reading the custom fields out of the dbase I pass them with the Notification Channel. Doing this makes the keywords centrally manageable when the keywords change.

The script:

As mentioned above I mostly reused the script of my previous blog post but for the record I’ll explain the script here once more:

First of all. You can download the script here: http://scug.be/members/DieterWijckmans/files/create_customfields_monitors.zip.aspx

Preparing the environment and reading the parameters:

The main difference with the previous script is the fact that we are not reading the data out of the dbase (in the $_.customfield fields) but inserting the data in the dbase through parameters by using the script.

Parameters: The “param” statement needs to be on the first line of the script. In my case I’m reading 3 parameters: The alertID (which is mandatory for the script), The Problemtype and the Objecttype.

The last 2 fields will be inserted in the $_.customfield dbase fields and are needed by the third party problem management solution to make the proper escalation.

RMS: Read the RMS server name of your environment. If you are using a clustered RMS it’s better to fill in the name of the cluster and comment the automatic retrieval of the name out to avoid problems.

Resolution State: The resolution state needs to be defined here and also defined in the SCOM environment (for more details on how to configure this in the SCOM environment check here: http://scug.be/blogs/dieter/archive/2011/05/11/scom-create-custom-alert-resolution-states.aspx

Loading the SCOM cmdlet

Culture Info: To make sure that the data format is correct you need to fill in the Localization. In my case it’s nl-BE.

Read in alert + fill in custom fields: The alertID which is passed as parameter is read in here and the data is retrieved out of the dbase. The other 3 custom fields which are required by the problem management system are filled in here and updated in the dbase. Technically there’s no obligation to fill in the fields in the dbase but to make sure that the custom fields are filled in when you open the alert in the console I update the alert anyway.

 

scom_custom_fields_monitor0000

Error Handling setup to make sure we have proper error handling
The conversion before dumping the data to the file.

Note that I needed to make modifications to the date format to reflect the localization format here. All the data will be dumped to a file which is kept for future reference. The File path in yellow can be changed to reflect your location.

scom_custom_fields_monitor0001

Mailing section:

Mailing the file to the problem management system or if in case an error occurred alerting the SCOM admin. Make sure you fill in the OK recipient, the NOK recipient and the SMTPserver to send out the mail.

scom_custom_fields_monitor0002

Last but not least we are writing an event in the event log whether the operation was successful or not. This gives us the opportunity to monitor the problem creation script from within SCOM. scom_custom_fields_monitor0003

This solution works for me because I have a limited number of possible combinations.

A couple of things you need to configure before this script can be used in production:

  1. Create custom resolution state in SCOM: http://scug.be/blogs/dieter/archive/2011/05/11/scom-create-custom-alert-resolution-states.aspx
  2. Create a notification channel per combination of the values of the custom fields: http://scug.be/blogs/dieter/archive/2011/05/11/scom-setup-command-notification-channel-subscriber.aspx

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  1.  
    • The following data is needed for the notification channel
      •  
        • Full Path of the command file: In my case this is PowerShell as I would like to run a PowerShell script: C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Powershell.exe
        • Command Line Parameters: In my case I’m running a PowerShell script and I’m passing the AlertID of the specific alert, problemtype and objecttype as arguments which I’m using in my script. Again you can use any arguments here if you like: C:\scripts\monitorcustomfields\create_customfields_monitors.ps1 -sAlertid ‘$Data/Context/DataItem/AlertId$’ -Problemtype ‘OSSUP’ -Objecttype ‘server’
        • Startup folder for the command line: This is basically the path of your program you want to run. C:\scripts\monitorcustomfields

The script must be run on the RMS (if it’s a clustered RMS make sure that the script is on both clusters in the same location).

Note:  If you want to use more parameters or different names you have the change the following things:

  • In the command line parameters: add –parametername ‘desired value’ to the command line
  • In the script:
    • change the first line in the script to reflect your custom situation: param([string]parametername,…)
    • change the section where the custom fields are filled in to reflect your situation:
      • $oalert.customfield# = desired value

There are 10 customfields available in the dbase so you can pass up to 10 parameters in the script and thus into the customfields.

If you have remarks or questions regarding the script please do not hesitate to drop me a line or contact me on twitter http://twitter.com/#!/dieterwijckmans

Enough talk, let’s build
Something together.