SCOM 2007: How to backup your unsealed management packs
This blog post is part of a series how to backup your SCOM environment.
You can find the other parts here:
- How to backup your SCOM environment
- How to backup your SCOM dbases
- How to backup your SCOM encryption key
- How to backup your SCOM IIS settings
- How to backup your unsealed management packs
- How to Document your SCOM installation
- How to Backup your Reporting
Next step in our backup process is to take a backup of our unsealed management packs to make sure we don’t loose all the customization we’ve made to the environment.
First a little bit of explanation about the difference between sealed and unsealed management packs. At my clients I sometimes see some misunderstanding about these 2 sorts of management packs.
Difference between sealed management packs and unsealed management packs.
The difference is rather simple. All the management packs you download from vendors such as Microsoft, Dell, HP,… are sealed once. They have been developed by the vendors and sealed to prevent any further customizations. These management packs often include a variety of Rules, monitors, views and even reports which are installed when you import the management pack.
All the management packs you create yourself are by default unsealed ones. In here you store all your customizations such as: overrides on the sealed management packs, custom reports, custom made rules, custom made monitors…
Notice the word “custom”… In my book the word “custom” equals a lot of time and effort are spend to create them… Don’t want to loose them in case of a disaster then!
So how do we back these up… There are basically 2 ways: Manually or automated.
Manually:
If you have one unsealed management pack that you want to backup or you want to quickly back it up while working in the console you can use the following method:
Open the console and navigate to Administration > management packs > select the management pack you wish to backup and right click > choose Export Management Pack…
Select a location for your backup:
Click ok and your management pack is successful.
If you check your location you’ll see the management pack in XML format.
While the above method works like a charm for a quick backup before changing something in your management pack it’s not workable and a hassle when you want to backup several management packs. Not to forget the human factor… You have to remember to take backups of your management packs…
Automated Backup of Unsealed Management packs
Therefore the preferred way to backup is by automating it via script using PowerShell.
Microsoft has actually gave the proper tools to do so in the powershell cmdlet set for SCOM.
The command to use:
$mps = get-managementpack | where-object {$_.Sealed -eq $false}
foreach ($mp in $mps)
{
export-managementpack -managementpack $mp -path “C:\Backups”
}
There are basically 2 approaches to automate this: SCOM scheduled rule or Scheduled tasks on the RMS itself
You can make your choice based on this nice discussion to compare the 2: http://www.systemcentercentral.com/BlogDetails/tabid/143/IndexId/56798/Default.aspx
I choose to use the Scheduled task method to avoid the extra (although it’s minimal) load on the server and create a management pack to monitor the process.
SCOM 2007: How to backup your SCOM IIS settings
This blog post is part of a series how to backup your SCOM environment.
You can find the other parts here:
- How to backup your SCOM environment
- How to backup your SCOM dbases
- How to backup your SCOM encryption key
- How to backup your SCOM IIS settings
- How to backup your unsealed management packs
- How to Document your SCOM installation
- How to Backup your Reporting
There are 2 versions supported in SCOM and they both need a different approach to backup.
IIS6 is normally used if you are running SCOM 2007R2 on a Windows 2003 platform. It is used to support the components of the web console and the SQL Server Reporting Services. If you are using SQL Server Reporting Services from SQL 2008 IIS is not used anymore and it is just sufficient to backup the dbases.
IIS7 is normally used if you are running SCOM 2007R2 on a Windows 2008 platform (it can also run on a windows 2003 server but is not installed by default). The approach to backup IIS7 is somewhat different as it stores it’s data differently. The files you need to backup are web.config files and the applicationhost.config files. For more info on how to backup IIS 7 you can read this nice reference: http://blogs.iis.net/bills/archive/2008/03/24/how-to-backup-restore-iis7-configuration.aspx
So let’s start with the backup shall we:
Backup IIS6
Connect to the RMS and navigate to Start > administrative Tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
Right click the server name and navigate to “All Tasks” > “Backup/restore Configuration…”
The configuration backup dialog box will come up.
Fill in a backup name and if you want to make a secure backup you can tick the box “Encrypt Backup using password” and supply a password for the backup.
Click OK and your backup is made…
The actual backup file is stored in “%systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\MetaBack”
I suggest you take a copy of this file in case your RMS is unrecoverable. Otherwise the file itself which resides on the server will also be gone and what’s the point in backing up then 
Backup IIS 7
Open an elevated prompt on your RMS
Navigate to %windir%\system32\inetsrv
Run the command “appcmd add backup “name of your backup set”. If you not specify a name a name will be generated with the date and time.
If you are using IIS 7 your live just became a little bit easier. If you are using Vista SP1 or later / Windows Server 2008 the backup is automatically done if you create an initial backup like shown below. IIS automatically makes a history snapshot of ApplicationHost.config each time it detects a change so you can easily restore a prior version. By default it will keep 10 prior versions and checks every 2 minutes.
The files are stored in “%systemdrive%\inetpub\history”
Pretty cool feature if you ask me and a big improvement from the previous version.
To enumerate a list of backups and configuration history files, use the following command:
“%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list backup”
SCOM 2007: How to backup your encryption key
This blog post is part of a series how to backup your SCOM environment.
You can find the other parts here:
- How to backup your SCOM environment
- How to backup your SCOM dbases
- How to backup your SCOM encryption key
- How to backup your SCOM IIS settings
- How to backup your unsealed management packs
- How to Document your SCOM installation
- How to Backup your Reporting
One of the key factors in a successful restore of your environment is the SCOM encryption key.
Purpose of the key
This encryption key is used to store the data in the Operations manager dbase. It’s ensuring that the data in the dbase remains confidential and encrypted. The RMS uses this keep to read and write data to the Operations Manager dbase.
Implications of you don’t have the key at hand when restoring a Management group
Pretty severe actually. If you don’t have the key you can’t establish connection from your fresh RMS to your existing Operations Manager dbase and therefore you loose all your settings, customizations and have to start all over again.
Please note that’s it’s a best practice to take this backup once after installation of the environment and after ANY changes to the RunAs accounts in the environment.
So how do you back this key up in case Murphy pays you a visit
There are actually 2 ways: GUI or command line
GUI
Log on to your RMS with an account with admin privileges
Open an elevated command prompt and navigate to your Operations manager install folder. In this case I kept it at default so c:\program files\system center operation manager 2007\
Run securestoragebackup.exe
Note: Securestoragebackup.exe is only installed if you have installed a console on your RMS. If not you need to copy the securestoragebackup.exe file from the SupportTools folder from the installation media
The Encryption Key Backup or Restore Wizard pops up:
Click continue and select Backup the Encryption key.
A dialog box will appear to save your bin file. Best practice is to not save the file on the RMS. This makes perfect sense because you’ll need the file when there’s an issue with your RMS so there’s a big chance you can not reach the file.
I always save it on my file server and keep an extra copy somewhere else just to be save. As soon as you have exported the key you can make a copy of the bin file and store it twice on different locations.
So the location is set let’s continue.
Fill in a password to secure the backup bin file. Make sure you remember the password in X amount of time when you’ll need it to restore the key.
It will take no more than a few seconds to backup the key and if all goes well a nice complete message appear.
Via Command line:
Log on to your RMS with an account with admin privileges
Open an elevated command prompt and navigate to your Operations manager install folder. In this case I kept it at default so c:\program files\system center operation manager 2007\
Run securestoragebackup.exe /? to get the syntax of the command.
The command used: securestoragebackup backup <filename>
You need to supply the password twice
and the second time
And the key was successfully backed up.
Downside is you cannot automate this process without further scripting because you need to put in a password. Would be nice that it would be an option in the exe to give your password as a parameter but maybe in another release 
SCOM 2007: Convert MOM2005 management pack guide
Recently I was working on a migration from MOM2005 towards SCOM2007R2. Unfortunately the MOM2005toSCOM2007 migration tool which was included in the SCOM2007 install media was not working anymore so I had to convert the management packs manually.
This post is for my reference whenever I need it again but in my search on the web I did not find many good write-ups so I wrote one of my own.
Case
I needed a Microsoft Biztalk 2004 management pack in SCOM 2007. Unfortunately Microsoft never released a SCOM 2007 management pack but only a MOM2005 one.
So I had to convert it and load it into SCOM.
I’ve downloaded the management pack here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=14417
It’s an exe file which you need to unzip to a folder of your choice. I this example I’m going to put it on c:\managementpacks .
The file you need for the initial conversion is “c:\managementpacks\microsoft biztalk server 2004 management pack\Microsoft Biztalk Server 2004.AKM”
Convert to XML
Next we need to convert the management pack to a valid XML file format which is used by Scom 2007.
You need MP2XML.exe to perform this conversion. It’s part of the MOM2005Resourcekit.
The syntax: C:\program files\microsoft operations manager resource kit\tools\convert management packs to xml\mp2xml.exe “inputfile”.akm “outputfile”.xml
so in this case C:\program files\microsoft operations manager resource kit\tools\convert management packs to xml\mp2xml.exe “c:\managementpacks\microsoft biztalk server 2004.akm” “c:\managementpacks\microsoft_biztalk_server_2004.xml”
Note the underscores in the naming. It’s not allowed to have spaces in the name of the XML file.
Convert XML to SCOM2007 format
Next thing we need to do is convert the actual XML file to SCOM2007 format.
This is achieved with the mpconvert.exe which resides on the RMS in c:\program files\System center Operations manager2007\mpconvert.exe
The syntax in our example is: c:\program files\system center operations manager 2007\mpconvert.exe “c:\managementpacks\microsoft_biztalk_server_2004.xml” “c:\managementpacks\microsoft_biztalk_server_2004_converted.xml”
Now you can load the xml in SCOM like you load any other management pack.
Import MP in SCOM2007R2
There was an error with this particular management pack resulting in a failure of the import. Turned out there was an issue with the XML.
If you want to import the management pack you get the following error:
XSD Verification failed for management pack. The ‘Name’ element is invalid. This is an issue in the XML itself. A parameter which needs to be present in the XML is either corrupt or missing.
I’ve installed XML notepad 2007 on my machine to check the xml file.
You can download this nice tool here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=7973
Now if you look in the XML you browse down to the manifest > name field you immediately notice that the field is empty:
You can just fill in a name at the right like I did below:
Save the file and try to import the management pack again.
This time it’s working and it let’s you continue with the import.
In this example a standard mp without any customization was used from Microsoft. However during my migration I had a lot of mp’s which were full of custom rules.
I ‘ll create a Powershell script to automate this process and post it as a follow up on this blog.
If you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment or shoot me a mail.
SCOM 2007: How to backup your dbases
This blog post is part of a series how to backup your SCOM environment.
You can find the other parts here:
- How to backup your SCOM environment
- How to backup your SCOM dbases
- How to backup your SCOM encryption key
- How to backup your SCOM IIS settings
- How to backup your unsealed management packs
- How to Document your SCOM installation
- How to Backup your Reporting
In order to keep the possibility to restore your SCOM environment in case of a disaster you need to make sure that you have a good backup of your dbases.
Your dbases keep track of all the info in your environment so it’s crucial that you don’t loose these valuable assets of your environment.
A good backup strategy of your SQL dbases is crucial as you need to make sure that you always have a recent copy at hand.
If you have a backup admin in your environment and are using a backup product like Data Protection Manager it’s best to meet up with the admin to check how his SQL backup schedule is configured. If he’s confident that he provides your backups no need to backup them twice…
If not you’ll need to perform the backup yourself.
First of all a small word about the different options you have to backup a SQL dbase (this applies to all SQL dbases and is not SCOM specific)
- Full backup: This is self explanatory actually. You take a full backup of your dbase. In case of a restore the existing dbase will be overwritten and rolled back to the point in time where the backup was taken. This consumes the most storage space.
- Incremental backup: This method backs up all the differences since the last database backup. With this method you have more flexibility to do a point in time restore. It takes less space but can be more time consuming to restore.
- Transaction log backups: With this method you just take a backup of all the changes to the dbase since the last transaction log. This method is fast and safes some storage space but can be a hassle to restore.
A good mix of the 3 methods above is a good strategy. I always take a full backup of the operations dbase once a week (datawarehouse once a month), a incremental backup once a day (for datawarehouse once a week) and Transaction log backups every 2 hours.
Again you can skip the Transaction log backups but then you risk to loose a max of 23h59m of data.
So let’s get the backups up and running:
We’re going to create the full backup schedule for Operations dbase in this example:
Connect to the dbase.
Open the tree and go to the “OperationsManager” dbase > right click > Tasks > Back Up…
- Select the OperationManager dbase
- Leave backup type at full
- Fill in a name of the backup set
- Click backup to disk and choose Add to create the file
- Set the expiration. I choose 40 days but again this can change according to your requirements.
Choose Options in the left pane and set:
Verify backup when finished
When all the settings are correctly configured choose Script button at the top of the page and choose “Script action to Job”.
This will generate a SQL job which you can schedule in the SQL agent so it can fire the backup when needed.
Name the job: In this case “Back up Database – OperationsManager_weekly”
Choose Schedules in the left pane and select New at the bottom:
Name the schedule and define the frequency + schedule. This will be scheduled in the SQL agent jobs.
When your schedule is made > click ok and the job is created.
You can check this job in the SQL Server Agent under the tree Jobs…
This is for the Weekly full of the Operation manager dbase.
You need to complete the same steps to perform the backup schedules for your other dbases.
SCOM 2007: How to backup your environment
The funny thing is most of the admins think of backups just after they had a major crash and there were no backups available.
Most of the admin’s think backups are a hassle and they take some but loose interest in the long term. When disaster strikes they miss a vital piece to restore their environment, have an outdated backup or even worse… no backup at all.
In this series of blogs I’ll go over the different aspects of backing up your SCOM2007 environment to make sure that when Murphy is choosing you, you’re prepared…
One of my favorite cartoons to illustrate backups…
So let’s get started and get you prepared when disaster strikes.
Which components do you need for a successful restore of your environment:
This blog post is part of a series how to backup your SCOM environment.
- How to backup your SCOM environment
- How to backup your SCOM dbases
- How to backup your SCOM encryption key
- How to backup your SCOM IIS settings
- How to backup your unsealed management packs
- How to Document your SCOM installation
- How to Backup your Reporting
This series of blogs will be divided in the categories shown above and will be linked back to this post.
SCOM: Target a rule or monitor to a computer group
Today I had to explain to a customer how you need to target a rule or monitor to a specific computer group.
This is actually not a very intuitive process and if you are used to work with MOM2005 the process is different and can have big implications in the behavior of the rule / monitor you’ve created.
This is the only correct way if you want to target a rule or monitor to a select group of server.
Create your rule:
Open your console and go to the tab Authoring and navigate to the Rules. Right Click > Create a new rule…
In the “Create Rule Wizard” select the desired rule. In this example I’m going to create an Event Based rule in the NT Event Log (Alert).
CAUTION: make sure to change the destination management pack to a custom management pack and NOT the default management pack.
Give the rule name and click the “Select” button just behind Rule Target:
Here you need to target a class of which you are certain all the servers you want to target are part of. In this case I choose “Windows Server” but if you are for example convinced they are all SQL server you can target the “SQL server” class.
If you have selected the appropriate class hit ok but not next on the page.
Make sure the “Rule is enabled” tick box is off!
Now choose the event log where to target your rule. In our case it’s the Application log
The filter. In this example I’m searching for an Event ID 150 created by the source “Eventcreate”
Next thing is to specify the information that will be generated by the alert:
Now click create.
Create your Group
So far the rule has been created but is disabled. The next thing we need to do is create our group which contains the specific set of servers which need to be targeted. In the Authoring pane choose “Groups” > Right click > choose “Create a new Group…”
Choose a name for the group and again CHANGE the default management pack as a target.
NOTE: Choose the same management pack where you want to create your override in later on. It’s not possible to reference another unsealed group from a unsealed group so either use the same group for both your override and group or seal the management pack where your group is created in.
The next option is to specify the explicit group members.
There are actually 2 approaches to populating the group (which can be combined).
The first one is that you specify the explicit members of the group. They will be always in the group included no matter what criteria you specify later on. The disadvantage you have is if you install a new server which need to be targeted you have to manually include it here.
The second approach to populate your group is Dynamic Inclusion rules. These rules have a set of conditions to add servers. These can be for example all servers which are SQL servers based on the class or all servers which name starts with “SERVER0”.
You can also specify servers to be included in this group which reside in another group.
Specifically deny Objects from being included in the group:
When you are confident you have included all the servers in the groups click create.
Create your override for the rule
At this point go back to the Authoring pane > Rules > search for your new created rule.
In this example you can see our newly created rule in disabled state:
Right click the rule and choose Overrides > Override the Rule > For a Group…
Now choose the group we created earlier on:
In the override parameter locate the “Enabled” parameter and tick the box in the “Override” column. In the Override Value choose “True” , click Apply and OK.
At this point the rule we have created is targeted only to the servers you’ve added to the computer group and not enabled on all the other servers. This is in face a total different approach from the way of working in MOM2005.
This is because the computer groups (The class of objects that are computer groups) only exist on the RMS. If you target a rule directly to a computer group it will try to collect info from the RMS instead of the computers you have intended.
SCOM 2007: Scheduled reports failing
Recently I got a mail of a user stating he’s not receiving his reports anymore via mail. They were created way back and normally these reports are in my category “set it and forget it”…
When I checked the schedule reports pane instantly I noticed that all the reports are showing an error as shown below:
“The Subscription Contains parameter values that are not valid” error message is in the status field.
During my search on the web the most common solution was to recreate the report which I did for one but because these are like 20 reports it will be a lot of work to recreate them all and risk the fact that they break again without knowing when and why.
So the next step I tried in my troubleshooting is to see whether I could fill in the missing parameters in the report which resides in a custom management pack holding all these special reports.
When I tried to run the report I noticed the following: Data Aggregation and Histogram are greyed out and it’s impossible to change them
When I tried to run the report the following error message came up:
So there is an issue with the ‘Data Aggregation’ parameter. No possibility to troubleshoot any further in the SCOM environment so we’ll have to dig deeper and turn our attention to the underlying SQL Reporting Services (SRS) install.
Connect to the SRS server and open up the SQL management studio.
Note: If you’re not sure where your SRS install resides navigate to SCOM console > administration > Reporting. The Reporting Server URL is filled in there so you can retrieve the server name / alias here.
Make sure you select “Reporting Services” in the Server Type and select the server name you’ve retrieved from your console.
Navigate to Home > “Your management pack” > reports > Subscriptions.
In this example we’re troubleshooting the “PROD3_IOReport”.
Right click and choose view report.
The web browser opens and will generate the report. However in this case the following error shows up:
Didn’t we have an issue with the “DataAggregation”? The error above shows we have an issue with our “ManagementGroupId”.
Let’s take a look at the report properties to find out.
Right click the report and choose Properties.
The familiar SQL properties page pops up.
Behind the “ManagementGroupID” (in the above print screen the sixth item) it’s indicated that there are multiple… We only have one management group so why should there be multiple?
If you open the value you get a drop down box with the 2 id’s listed
So which one is the correct one…
I opened a newly created report in the same management pack (which I recreated to solve the issue with the first report) and there there’s only one ID listed:
This report is working with all the parameters so this ID is the correct ID for our management group.
Next step is deleting the ”wrong ID” in my report parameters and click ok:
Now we go back to our SCOM console and check the report once more.
Open the report and now it’s possible to check the Data Aggregation and Histogram again.
After clicking “run” the report is generated successfully.
So all we need to do is change the parameters in our scheduled report.
Navigate back to the scheduled reports list, right click the report and choose edit.
Check the parameters and fill in the correct Data Aggregation / Histogram settings (and check the other settings as well while you’re at it).
Click finish and check back at the scheduled report view.
The report has gone from error to “ready” and is able to process when the scheduled time is there…
In this particular case it apparently was an issue when there were agents temporarily multi homed to a test environment and this test environment was deleted afterwards.
Although this was a mistake on our side I posted this blog post to illustrate that the error message in SCOM was not the cause of the real problem which was hidden in the SRS installation. This threw me off when troubleshooting the issue because I was focusing on the wrong error and has cost me a lot of valuable troubleshooting time.
I’ve posted my experience to save you some time in troubleshooting the issue 
SCOM 2007: Renaming Default Management Pack display name
One of the most common frustration I face (and I’m sure I’m not alone) is the fact that from time to time there are things saved in the default management pack.
It’s so easy to forget to change the destination management pack while creating rules / monitors and just click next. We all know once you’ve created the rule it’s not possible to change the management pack anymore…
It’s best practice not to write anything to your default management pack but it’s always selected as default…
Yet you have 2 options:
- Delete the rule and start all over again
- live with the rule residing in your default management pack which is not a good idea in case you face issues with dependencies…
To avoid this common mistake / lack of attention I make a habit of renaming my default management pack display name to something eye catching so I see it before clicking next while creating a rule / monitor.
Open the SCOM console and navigate to Administration > Management packs and right click your Default Management Pack
Choose Properties in the menu:
Change the Name of your Default Management Pack. In my case I always put in capital “DO NOT WRITE TO” before the name.
And click apply.
This changes in fact the display name of your management pack but not the management pack ID. It’s not possible to change the ID (it’s greyed out) so your management pack will still hold all the dependencies…
At this point the default management pack is still the default when creating a rule but there’s a nice message in capital just above the next button.
This small modification saved me already a lot of (additional) headache to remind me to change to a different management pack when creating a rule / monitor…
SCOM 2007: Custom Alert Fields
Just recently I needed to connect SCOM to an in-house written Problem Management system. There was not a connector available and it was also not possible to generate tickets directly in the system itself.
The only way the system is receiving input is via mail through specific keywords.
Most of the keywords could be mapped to standard alert fields like severity, time raised, description….
BUT (off course there’s a but) the system also requested other fields to decide proper escalation, severity,…
The previously used system onsite is MOM2005. In MOM2005 there’s an option to define globally these fields so you can use them in whatever alert you want to raise.
This is in MOM2005:
Open Operator Console > Administration > Global Settings > Custom Alert Fields
Up to 5 Custom Fields can be named here:
These fields can than be addressed in the Rules you create and can be populated with the text you define:
When you select Custom Fields the labels you specified in the Custom Alert Fields settings are shown here and you can pass info to the fields via the rule into the alert:
While setting up the same connection from SCOM to the Problem management system I found out it’s not possible to define the custom fields globally in SCOM like we did before in MOM.
BUT there are 10 (!) Customalertfields available in the SCOM dbase to use as u please.
So How can we use these fields and fill them in with the proper parameters to give the correct data to the Problem Management system to do it’s magic?
Well through an Alert Generating Rule which is event based:
Open Scom Console and navigate to Authoring > rules > right click in the right pane and choose new Rule…
Note: Always change your destination management pack to something OTHER than your Default Management Pack.
In this example I’ll be creating a new rule for event ID 145 in the application log to show where exactly the custom fields are.
Fill in:
- The rule Name
- Description (if required)
- Rule Category: We’ll leave it at Custom for this rule
- Rule Target: Choose the Target class to where you want to target your rule. In this example we’re targeting towards all Windows Computers
Fill in the Event log name where you want to look for the event. In our case this is the Application log.
We want to look for an event ID which is equal to 145 in this case.
And in this screen there’s the option to add Custom alert field parameters.
Unfortunately it’s not possible to label them as you could in MOM so you need to keep a description at hand what you want to fill in in what number of custom field.
The custom fields are written in the SCOM dbase and can be used in PowerShell or other scripting language.
The parameter in PowerShell is $_.CustomField1 through $.Customfield10.
By passing the info here I was able to deliver the correct data to the Problem Management system to do it’s magic in the background…