Print Server Management Pack - Finally Updated!

Microsoft released the other day an update for the Print Server management pack, finally!

I've moaned about Microsoft's attitude towards this management pack for some time.
http://systemscentre.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/server-2008-r2-print-services.html

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/operationsmanagermgmtpacks/thread/634c02e8-30a8-4f6e-a26a-c2bfacd526cb

The quick fix MP for 2008 R2 that Myself and Rob Ryan (He did most of the work...) is no longer available as his blog is currently down.  However, Kevin Holman created a better one that was more preferable to use anyway. http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2010/11/10/how-to-monitor-print-services-on-server-2008-r2.aspx


But back to the here and now... MS have an updated MP available for Microsoft Print Servers.

From the MP Documentation it appears that not only is Server 2012 now supported, but finally 2008 R2 is as well.

Going through the Import MP Wizard and searching the catalogue will at present not get you access to the new Print MP as it doesn't yet seem to be updated.

 

That's not always a bad thing however as I would always recommend downloading the MP manually otherwise you may miss the associated MP Guide document.  As always with SCOM MP's, RTFM first before import!!

 

*Update 11/12/12 - Apparently the catalogue has now been updated, thanks for the heads up Daniel Savage*

*Update #2 11/12/12 - Confirmed, the catalogue has now been updated*

The MP can also be downloaded from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3290

Surprisingly, this MP is only listed as an Operations Manager 2007 R2 MP.

This is slightly strange with them adding Print Server monitoring on Server 2012 since monitoring Server 2012 with SCOM 2007 R2 isn't supported natively, well not without running 2012 Agents reporting back to your 2007 R2 Management Servers.
http://thoughtsonopsmgr.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/scom-r2-windows-server-2012-support.html


I've downloaded it anyway to test with SCOM 2012 and on first try of importing, I'm presented with an error that a dependant MP for the Print Server 2003 MP is missing.

This is fine though, it's only because I've not got any of the Windows 2003 MP's in my environment, after all who still uses Server 2003?  (I am joking before anyone comments!)

Import works fine on SCOM 2012.

 

After import there's plenty of Discoveries, Monitors and Rules...

Notice there's no reference to 2008 R2?

Well in the 2008 Print Server MP the discovery ran this WMI query:

SELECT Name FROM Win32_ServerFeature WHERE Name = "Print Services"

Kevin Holman's addendum MP changed this to this following query which then discovered 2008 R2 print services roles:

SELECT Name FROM Win32_ServerFeature WHERE Name = "Print Services" OR Name = "Print and Document Services"

Well the discovery for 2008 R2 is contained within the 2008 MP and now looks like this:

SELECT Name FROM Win32_ServerFeature WHERE ID = 7

Easy little change and simpler than listing specific names as it covers both 2008 & 2008 R2 regardless of the specific name.

This link shows all Win32_ServerFeature ID's: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/desktop/cc280268(v=vs.85).aspx

The same WMI query is also used in the 2012 MP which should mean if any name changes are made in an R2 release of 2012 the MP should carry on working.

I was going to run a difference compare against the old and the new MP, but I seem to have misplaced my old copy of the MP.  As soon as I can get my hands on one I'll run one and update the post.

*Update 11/12/12*
I'll also retract my previous comment (below) as it was rather harsh and actually untrue.  Now that I've done more that skim the MP guide, it does contain numerous references to 2008 R2 /facepalm.
So much for taking my own RTFM advice...

As mentioned by Daniel Savage in the comments, the MP Guide includes all rules etc stored within the MP for reference.

In short, it appears at first glance to run ok on SCOM 2012, but requires more testing.  I think it's probably just laziness on Microsoft's part that they couldn't be bothered to re-write the MP guide completely and just chose to add references to Server 2012 only rather than go back and add 2008 R2, which to be honest wouldn't add much value as it's 99.9% the same monitoring as plain 2008.

Operations Manager - New Authoring Tools

Back at MMS2012 Microsoft announced they would be releasing two new authoring tools for Operations Manager (SCOM).

Well after a little delay, they've now been released.

The Visio Management Pack Designer can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30170

The Visual Studio Authoring Extensions can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30169

They're a little self explanatory, but basically the Visio MP Designer allows you to graphically design a management pack within Visio, using built in best practice methods to fairly quickly generate a management pack.

Likewise the Visual Studio extensions add class types and discovery rules etc into Visual Studio.
I'm certainly not a developer and it will be a while before I get chance to test this, but Michel Kamp has written an excellent blog post showing  prelease version here:
http://michelkamp.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/scom-author-meets-the-real-vs-authoring-extensions/

Technet Wiki's:
VS Extensions: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/5236.visual-studio-authoring-extensions-for-system-center-2012-operations-manager-en-us.aspx

Visio MP Designer: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/5235.visio-management-pack-designer-for-system-center-2012-operations-manager-en-us.aspx


*Images linked from the Microsoft TechNet Wiki's*

Trickle of releases - System Center 2012 Downloads

With the release of System Center 2012 marching ever closer, a trickle of releases are starting to sneak out of the gate from Microsoft in preperation.

Over the last couple of days the following Solution Accelerators, Management Packs, Integration Packs and Add-ons have appeared:

Solution Accelerators

• Microsoft Security Compliance Manager

Management Packs

• System Center Monitoring Pack for System Center 2012 - Orchestrator
• System Center Monitoring Pack for System Center 2012 - Configuration Manager
• System Center Security Monitoring Pack for Endpoint Protection
• System Center Monitoring Pack for WS-Management and SMASH Device Discovery
• System Center Monitoring Pack for Active Directory (AD) - (This isn't 2012 specific, just updated!)
• SystemCenter Monitoring pack for SQL Server (now includes support for SQL 2012 Monitoring)

Add-ons

• System Center 2012 - Operations Manager Component Add - On
• System Center 2012 – Service Manager Component Add-ons and Extensions
• System Center 2012 – Orchestrator Component Add-ons and Extensions
• System Center 2012 – Configuration Manager Component Add-ons and Extensions
• Microsoft Visio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Extensions for System Center 2012

Integration Packs

• System Center Integration Pack for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus
• System Center Integration Pack for HP Operations Manager
• System Center Integration Pack for Active Directory
• System Center Integration Pack for HP Service Manager
• System Center Integration Pack for VMware vSphere
• System Center Integration Pack for HP iLO and OA

Technical Documentation

• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 - Service Manager
• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 – Operations Manager
• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager
• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 - Orchestrator
• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 - Unified Installer

Community Technical Preview (Think Early Beta) of SP1 for System Center 2012

• System Center 2012 CTP for Windows Server "8" Beta support
• CTP of System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Documentation

If you notice on some of these links, things like the Service Manager authoring tool are now named RTM, roll on the release of everything!

I'm not going to write a raft of explantion text for each one, either the name is fairly self explanatory, or click the link and read the description there.

Backup unsealed management packs in Service Manager - Update needed

Thanks to Sam for pointing out that my previous MP & Powershell combo for backing up unsealed management packs had stopped working when he tried to implement it the other day.

Something must have changed with the Powershell cmdlets, but anyway, I've found out what needs changing.

Using the latest SMLets from here:
http://smlets.codeplex.com/

I've highlighted the changes in the powershell script (and also checked this against a 2012 install):

#Initializing the SCSM 2010/2012 Powershell Snapin
Import-Module SMLets -ErrorVariable errSnapin ;

#Remove old backups
$xDays = (Get-Date).addDays($DeleteDate)
Get-ChildItem $targetFilePath -Recurse | where {$_.lastWriteTime -le $xDays} | Remove-Item -recurse -force
#Create TargetDir if it doesn't exist
if (test-path $targetFilePath)
{
"Folder Exists"
}
else
{
md "$targetFilePath"
}
#Create new backup dir
md "$targetFilePath\MP_$((get-date).toString('yyyyMMdd'))"
#Backup unsealed MP's
Get-SCSMManagementPack|where-object {! $_.Sealed}|Export-SCSMManagementPack -TargetDirectory "$targetFilePath\MP_$((get-date).toString('yyyyMMdd'))"


I'll try and get an updated bundle uploaded to the TechNet Gallery soon.

Updated Updated Server OS Base MP

I posted a couple of weeks back about an updated Server OS management pack that Microsoft released and how it contained some really good improvements, however it didn't go unnoticed that it also had some annoying bugs in it.

Well thanks to the efforts of the community and spearheaded by Marnix Wolf, Microsoft has listened and corrected them.

Kevin Holman has a post up that lists the fixes and can be sumariesed as:

• Disabled BPA Rules by default.
• Added appropriate SQL Stored Procedures credentials
• Updated Knowledge for Logical Disks
• Updated Overrides for Logical Disks
• Fixed %Idle time sorting in the utilization report.

Compared to some management packs and the teams that look after them, like the Print Server MP, this is a brilliant example of Microsoft's commitment to SCOM and what can be achieved.

The new updated MP can be downloaded from here.

Updated Management Packs for SCOM

Well, it looks like my scepticism was uncalled for, as Microsoft have just released an updated Operations Manager MP for Configuration Manager.

 

The release announcement can be found here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/configmgrteam/archive/2011/09/30/release-announcement-system-center-monitoring-pack-for-configuration-manager-2007-sp2-converted.aspx

Changes in this release:

• Consolidation Event Rules have been disabled to prevent the generation of false alerts.
• Operating system architecture detection logic was updated to determine 64-bit operating systems.
• You no longer have to run the SQL Server query to clean up the localizedtext tables as part of the post-installation cleanup
• Scripts that target site database servers now retrieve time values directly from servers running instances of SQL Server instead of site servers to avoid time-zone discrepancies.
• Site hierarchy discovery now succeeds even if a site or component server does not have a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) configured.
• The AlertLevel property can now be overridden, giving you control over the severity level.
• All monitors and rules are now public.
• The "ConfigMgr 2007 Collection Evaluations Tasks" script has been updated to let you monitor a collection that has a NULL StartTime value.The "ConfigMgr 2007 Collection Evaluations Tasks" script now uses CollectionID instead of Collection Name to track collection tasks. 

Biggest change is the Consolidation Event Rules change as this should mean a much less noisy MP out of the box, also removing the need for Kevin Holman's SCCM noise reduction MP

It's also great that all monitors and rules are now public, allowing for greater control with overrides.

Although its not exactly a brand new revolutionary MP, its a start.
It does show two things however:

1. Someone at Microsoft is taking note of feedback
2. Some changes to MP standards may be on their way

MS have renamed the MP “System Center Monitoring Pack for Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 (Converted)”.   Maybe by adding the (Converted) tag to the end of the name we'll start to see a cleared definition between original reworked MOM 2005 MP's and native 2007 MP's.  This could hopefully give MS more of a push to replace these MP's rather than having "converted" labels scattered around.



Microsoft have also release an updated Base OS MP to version 6.0.6957.0.

Kevin Holman as always was on hand to write up an excellent post about it so I'm not going to re-invent the wheel, check out his post here:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2011/09/30/opsmgr-new-base-os-mp-6-0-6956-0-adds-cluster-shared-volume-monitoring-bpa-and-many-changes.aspx

Biggest changes to the base MP include:

• Adds Cluster Shared Volume discovery and monitoring for free space and availability. This is critical for those Hyper-V clusters on Server 2008 R2.
• Adds a new monitor to execute the Windows Best Practices Analyzer for different discovered installed Roles, and then generate alerts until these are resolved.
• Changes to many built in rules/monitors, to reduce noise, database space and I/O, and increase a positive “out of the box” experience. Also added a few new monitors and rules.
• Changes to the MP Views – removing some old stuff and adding some new
• Addition of some new reports – way cool

The new reports look very cool:

Configuration Manager Management Pack for Operations Manager

Interesting.....
I've just had an e-mail from the connect site about a bug I raised for the SCCM MP for SCOM and the noise it generates in SCOM.

I posted about opening up connect to report about MP's here:
http://systemscentre.blogspot.com/2010/12/want-to-provide-direct-feedback-on.html

and the SCCM MP guide I posted here:
http://systemscentre.blogspot.com/2010/11/configuration-manager-2007-sp2.html

What was interesting was that my submission has been marked with "Fixed in new build".

Does this mean we're about to see a new release??? Fingers crossed!
Or is it the usual stock answer like, wait for the next version... coming, erm... sometime (never)

Service Manager - Backup Unsealed MP's

I've had a solution for backing up SCSM unsealed management packs on the TechNet Gallery for a while now, but I thought I'd mention quickly that I've just updated it.

No new functionality, but Sam Erskine (Service Manager Guru) has very kindly given me his documentation for the installation of the management pack so I've updated the zip file with it.

Sam's blog can be found here and the download here

Removing the time value from the date/time column in a view

I've finally found time to get back onto the TechNet forums and just happened to land on this post with a brilliant answer from Aaron Croasmun:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/systemcenterservicemanager/thread/62ce2f7e-12ca-44c9-b813-0a571c8fee36

I had been meaning to find this out for myself for a while now as it's annoying seeing dd/mm/yy 00:00:00 in my views in the asset management solution I did.

<mux:Column Name="$TimeAdded$" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=$TimeAdded$}" Width="100" DisplayName="TimeAdded.View.DisplayName" Property="$TimeAdded$" DataType="s:DateTime" />

Is changed to:

<mux:Column Name="$TimeAdded$" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=$TimeAdded$, StringFormat=d}" Width="100" DisplayName="TimeAdded.View.DisplayName" Property="$TimeAdded$" DataType="s:DateTime" />

Notice the "DisplayMemberBinding" has the StringFormat=d appended

So before it looked like this:

And then ends up like this after the MP edit:

Adding a custom image to a folder or view in Service Manager 2010

JR52MAR posted a comment earlier on my post about my Asset Management MP asking how I added the custom graphics for the views and folders.

I'll show you here how to add them for the folders and use the Mobile Assets as an example, but the views are the same principal.

1. Grab an image you want to use and get it sized appropriately, I used a 16 x 16 pixel image, called it mobilephone16x16.png and saved it in the same dir as the MP I was creating.
2. Add this XML at the bottom of your MP to reference the file:
   <Resources>
    <Image ID="Image.MobilePhoneFolder.16x16" Accessibility="Public" FileName="mobilephone16x16.png" HasNullStream="false"/>
   </Resources>
3. Add this XML to the Categories section (after TypeDefinitions and before Presentation):
   <Categories>
    <Category ID="Category.MobilePhoneFolderImage16x16" Target="Image.MobilePhoneFolder.16x16" Value="System!System.Internal.ManagementPack.Images.u16x16Icon"/>
   </Categories>
4. Add this XML to the ImageReferences section (before StringResources):
   <ImageReferences>
   <ImageReference ElementID="Folder.Mobiles" ImageID="Image.MobilePhoneFolder.16x16"/>
   </ImageReferences>
5. Use the new-mpbfile.ps1 powershell script to bundle the MP and images together into a MPB file.

So...
Step 1 is find and save you picture in the right size/format
Step 2 is add the section that tells the MP where to find the graphic
Step 3 tells the MP what size and usage etc the image is
Step 4 tells the MP to link the image to the folder (this is where you could point the image at a view instead)
Step 5 bundles the images and MP together into a MPB for importing

Asset Management Solution/Extensions for Service Manager 2010 SP1

I've updated the Asset Management solution that I've previously blogged about (including some work arounds for the previous problem mentioned about decimal values).

I've uploaded it this time to the Technet Gallery Beta so the files can be found here:
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Asset-Management-d06aff1f

Asset Items Covered:

• Peripherals (Scanners, Digital Cameras, Camcorders, Monitors, Fax Machines etc)
• Remote Access Tokens (RAS SecurID etc)
• Cisco IPT Phone Hardware
• Mobile Phones (Made up of 2 Assets: Handset & Phone Number)
• Network Infrastructure (Switches, ASA's etc)
• Server Infrastructure (Fibre Switches, UPS, SAN DAE's, Tape Drives etc)
• Printers
• Computers (Extended views from OOB and additional class extensions)
• Users & Groups (Extended views from OOB

I've included both the sealed MP's in a "Ready to Import" folder than can be imported straight away into Service Manager for testing and the unsealed xml so that you can see how it's all strung together.

Please read the documentation included in the zip file, before blindly importing.

It's been designed around UK Local Government, so won't fit every environment out-of-the-box but should be very easy to adapt.

If you are adapting it, please remember that if the original MP is sealed, then your customised version will need re-sealing. If you do this, you'll also need to re-alter all the public keys used in the references in the other MPs. Short and sweet... reseal ALL the MP's using your own key if you modify it.

If anyone does have any comments, suggestions, etc etc then please please please feed them back to me. The more people that look at it the more likely someone is to spot something I missed/did wrong.

Also, if you do extend it further, please let me know as it could be useful within my environment too.

There's a known issues section at the end of the documentation file in the package, please read that section and see if there's anything you can help with. I'll be enternally greatfull if there is!

** Disclaimers **
This is a slightly modified first release, first seen on my blog, and may very likely still have some issues.
Please test this in a non-live environment first, and don't shout at me if it breaks anything.
This comes with no warranty, expressed or implied.

SCOM & SCVMM Dirty Views

Both myself and Rob have mentioned a few times about the dirty views in Operations Manager after importing the Virtual Machine Manager MP (the SQL view contains ALL virtual computers rather than just servers with SQL installed).

Well good news, it's fixed in the new SP1 release of SCVMM!!!!

Along with Kevin Holman giving an outline of the new SCVMM SP1 he also confirms the problem, that for myself was a show stopper on the last System Center product for us to tackle, is now fixed.

More information can be found here:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2011/03/29/system-center-virtual-machine-manager-2008-r2-sp1-ships.aspx

Hurahh for Microsoft, it's only taken just over two years to fix ;)

TechNet Gallery - Beta

I noticed on the Opalis blog the announcement of something call TechNet Gallery today.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/opalis/archive/2011/03/18/announcing-the-public-beta-of-the-new-technet-gallery.aspx

I've just had a quick look and this could be very promising as a way of bringing a lot of community based content into a single easily searchable location.

I've tried a quick test and uploaded my Backup Unsealed MP's pack/workflow and it was very easy.

The main gallery site is here: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/

Filtered to System Center is here: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/site/search?f%5B0%5D.Type=RootCategory&f%5B0%5D.Value=SystemCenter&f%5B0%5D.Text=System%20Center

Filtered to Service Manager is here, and my MP's the first one on there at the moment, so get uploading!!
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/site/search?f%5B0%5D.Type=RootCategory&f%5B0%5D.Value=SystemCenter&f%5B0%5D.Text=System%20Center&f%5B1%5D.Type=SubCategory&f%5B1%5D.Value=ServiceMgrManagementPacks&f%5B1%5D.Text=Service%20Mgr%20Management%20Packs

Assign an Incident to a Filtered list of Analysts

I've finally made time to head back to the Service Manager forums and I've just spotted this discussion thread:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/systemcenterservicemanager/thread/ed869884-e58c-42c2-83e0-240dd679c288

Rob Ford has greated a great little management pack that adds a task for assigning an incident to an analyst, but uses up to 3 AD groups to filter the list down rather than being presented with all the users in AD as is the annoying OOB experience.

It adds a task:

You can configure the groups under settings in the Administration Wunderbar:

And finally, a pop up window to assign the incident with a filtered list!

And just to make it even better, he's made the source code available too so you can customise it even more.

Brilliant work Rob!!

Opalis 6.3 SCOM R2 Management Pack

Just noticed this post over on System Center Central for a management pack to help monitor Opalis Integration Server 6.3
http://www.systemcentercentral.com/PackCatalog/PackCatalogDetails/tabid/145/IndexId/85603/Default.aspx

From the post:

The SCOMGUY Opalis 6 Management Pack includes discoveries, service monitors, alerts, and views to assist Operators in detecting issues with Opalis Integration Server 6 servers.

·         Discovers Opalis 6 server components
·         Monitors Opalis 6 NT services
·         Agent Tasks to remedy service failures
·         Alerting Rules for Opalis 6 exceptions in the text logs
·         Opalis server state views for Role, Components and Services

I was talking with Rob about creating a simple MP to watch the services etc no so long ago, we might not need to bother now.  I'll get Rob to pop this into test ASAP and we'll see how it goes.

Want to provide direct feedback on Microsoft Management packs?

Sometimes I just wonder if it's co-incidence....

I posted a thread on the Virtual Machine Manager forums the other day about the SCVMM 2008 R2 management packs causing dirty views in SCOM as discussed by Rob and Kevin Holman on their blogs.

I actually got some replies from Kevin but also did my usual and had a little rant, sorry :(

However, this piece of news has just been announced, and I've got to say, as long as the product teams do look at the feedback and at the very least we get some information flow back via the site or blog posts it can only help make the management packs better!

http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2010/12/09/want-to-provide-direct-feedback-on-microsoft-management-packs.aspx

If anyone from MS reads this, please remember that the System Center products are a suite of products and the integration between them must work.  As the cloud buzz picks up, and I'm a strong believer that the System Center suite is at the heart of the cloud, people are going to rely more than ever on this brilliant product set working very closely together.

Connect Feedback site:
https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgr/feedback/CreateFeedback.aspx

Type projections, views and unsealed MP's

I was in the process of creating a view to show all Computers, basically a replica of the view under Configuration Items, but within my own management pack.

However, when I went to use the Computer (typical) type project for my view I got this error message:

This happens because the type projection for Computer (typical) is stored in the unsealed MP ServiceManager.ConfigurationManagement.Configuration.xml
This then means that trying to reference this type projection for views in your own MP is impossible without a bit of tweaking.

It's a fairly easy workaround though, simply recreate the type projection in your own MP.
the XML you will need is:

<TypeProjection ID="AllComputers.View.ProjectionType" Accessibility="Public" Type="Windows!Microsoft.Windows.Computer">
<Component Path="$Context/Path[Relationship='ConfigurationManager!Microsoft.SystemCenter.ConfigurationManager.DeployedComputerRunsWindowsComputer' SeedRole='Target']$" Alias="PhysicalComputer" />
<Component Path="$Context/Path[Relationship='Windows!Microsoft.Windows.ComputerHostsOperatingSystem']$" Alias="OperatingSystem" />
</TypeProjection>

You'll need to make sure you've got some references in as well, either use these, or if you've already got them referenced, change the code above to match your reference:

<Reference Alias="Windows">
<ID>Microsoft.Windows.Library</ID>
<Version>7.0.5826.0</Version>
<PublicKeyToken>31bf3856ad364e35</PublicKeyToken>
</Reference>

<Reference Alias="ConfigurationManager">
<ID>Microsoft.SystemCenter.ConfigurationManager</ID>
<Version>7.0.5826.0</Version>
<PublicKeyToken>31bf3856ad364e35</PublicKeyToken>
</Reference>

Finally, add a display string and make sure you change the name so that it differs from the built in type projection "Computers (typical)".

<DisplayString ElementID="AllComputers.View.ProjectionType">
<Name>Computer (typical - for custom views)</Name>
<Description>Defines the properties of computers typically used in views</Description>
</DisplayString>

Asset Management - Service Manager Management Pack

I posted a while ago about the management pack I was working on to satisfy our requirements for where I work.
http://systemscentre.blogspot.com/search/label/Asset%20Management

What I didn't do was get it finished as quick as I hoped to.

Well I'm nearly there now and after replying to a forum thread about this, I thought I'd best post an update here as well.

I've broken the MP off from Configuration Items where it lived before and it's now got it's own Wunderbar tab.  There's a common form across most of the MP as shown, but it differs slightly for Mobile, Remote access tokens etc.

I've extended the Windows Computer class to record some extra properties such as department, section etc as well as making it less cluttered to manually add an asset.  The idea being that you can add basic details as soon as the item arrives and then let AD & SCCM connectors add more detailed information as the device gets onto the network.

 I've got a deadline for this going into our live production that is looming so I'm hoping to wrap this all up before Christmas.

Asset Items Covered:

• Peripherals (Scanners, Digital Cameras, Camcorders, Monitors, Fax Machines etc)
• Remote Access Tokens (RAS SecurID etc)
• Cisco IPT Phone Hardware
• Mobile Phones (Made up of 3 Assets: Handset, Phone Number & SIM Card)
• Network Infrastructure (Switches, ASA's etc)
• Server Infrastructure (Fibre Switches, UPS, SAN DAE's, Tape Drives etc)
• Computers (Extended views from OOB and additional class extensions)
• Users & Groups  (Extended views from OOB)

Things left to do/expand on:

• Reports - I've got basic data flowing across to the DW, just need to write some useful reports but these might wait until after Christmas now.
• Dashboards - I'm going to utilise the SCSM Dashboard Solution Accelerator and the ability to integrate it into the console to provide simple dashboards such as number of devices deployed/in stock/awaiting delivery etc.

Issues:

• Because in the forms you don't specify the Display name it creates a seemingly random display name:

In fact this is acutally the guid for the enumeration list value "Scanner".  Why it's putting the guid in instead of the friendly name I don't know, but I'm hoping to get a call logged with MS tomorrow to see if they can shed any light. It doesn't cause too many problems with views as I've purposefully worked around it, however, when using selction boxes for relationships it makes it hard to read which item you're after:

** Edit ** - You can now download the MP, check this post for more details: http://systemscentre.blogspot.com/2011/01/asset-management-solution-for-service.html

xSNMP & Oracle Operations Manager Management Packs

Rob has just pointed out to me that Kristopher Bash, creater of the excellent xSNMP management packs for SCOM and the previously unreleased but eagerly awaited Oracle MP, is now working for Microsoft.

http://operatingquadrant.com/2010/11/23/announcements/

As well as being a major achievement for him personally (well done!) it also brings the news that he's handed over development of his MP's to the community via Pete Zerger and SystemCenterCentral.com

The MP's, Source Code & Documentation etc can now be found on CodePlex.
http://xsnmp.codeplex.com/

SQL MP - Case of the missing DB size information.

When a colleague nudges you and says "You got SCOM open?  Just check a DB Size as I'm not seeing any data..." I tend to either sigh and wonder what they're on about or worry that somethings gone wrong with SCOM.

Well one of my colleagues asked me that question today, so I checked the SCOM console, went into the performance view in the SQL MP and, hmm... odd.  I can show the DB Size data for SQL 2000 DB's, but not SQL 2005 & 2008.

Oh, the DB information is the same.

But it's fine for SQL 2000

Little bit of googling later, and I find the bit of information that wasn't communicated around the office when the SQL MP was upgraded to 6.1.314.36
http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2010/08/16/sql-mp-version-6-1-314-36-released-adds-support-for-sql-2008r2-and-many-other-changes.aspx

The following monitors and rules have been deprecated:

Monitors:

• DB Space Free (MB)
• DB Log File Space Free (%)
• DB Log File Space Free (MB)
• Disk Free Space

Rules:

• Collect Database Size (MB)
• Collect Transaction Log Free Space (MB)
• Collect Transaction Log Free Space (%)
• Collect Transaction Log Size (MB)

ARGH!!
Microsoft hardcoded the value to 0 to stop the high config churn this rule was creating.

OK, so it's not going to be a simple rule re-enable as they've been deprecated for a reason.  However, the perf counter exists natively so it should be a simple task to collect that data.

Well I was going to find some time to look at it over the weekend and blog to process of doing it, but while I was doing my usual RSS feeds check, I spotted this on Kevin Holmans blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2010/11/19/collecting-sql-database-size-as-a-performance-counter.aspx

Thanks Kevin, you've just given me my weekend back.  Talk about timing!