SCOM Console Install on VMM Server Causes Service Crash

Had a strange one today.

Customer had tried previously to setup the connection between VMM and SCOM but made some mistake somewhere along the line and then uninstalled the SCOM console without removing the connection as they said the console was causing the VMM service to constantly crash.

Having not seen that behaviour before and slightly doubting it somewhat I re-installed the console and sure enough was prevented from accessing the VMM console as the service was crashing.

Just as an added check, I tried running some PowerShell commands to check it wasn't a GUI issue only to be created by error messages complaining that the VMM service wasn't running or accessible.

So I uninstalled the console again which allowed me access back to VMM and running the Get-SCOpsMgrConnection showed me the broken connection.  However attempts to remove via the console or PowerShell were both met by errors telling me I needed the SCOM console installed first in order to manage the connection.  Arh.. slight problem...

After checking everything I could think of (SPN's, SCP's, Service Accounts etc etc) and not finding anything that stood out (Including nothing useful in the event logs) I thought I'd try a timing trick.

So I opened up a SCVMM PowerShell window ready, kicked off the SCOM console install again and then repeatedly spammed Remove-SCOpsMgrConnection -Force and wouldn't you know it after a few messages saying the SCOM console must be installed, just before the install completed the command completed successfully and removed the broken connection.  More to the point the SCOM console installation completed and the VMM service didn't crash.

After recreating the connection everything remained stable, but even though the create connection job ran successfully, the following error was present in the connector details:

“Operations Manager discovery failed with error: “Exception of type ‘Microsoft.VirtualManager.EnterpriseManagement.common.discoverydatainvalidrelationshipsourceexceptionOM10’ was thrown.

This is because the SCOM connection was created with the PRO-Tips enabled but without a SCOM monitoring agent deployed to the VMM Server.
Easily fixable, just untick the PRO and Maintenance Mode connection settings, deploy a SCOM agent to the VMM server and once the agent is installed and reporting, re-enable the options.

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.

Extended Virtual Machine Discovery Management Pack

Infront released a new management pack, a while ago, for FREE, to the community via System Center Central.

http://www.systemcentercentral.com/tabid/143/indexid/94055/default.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+systemcentercentral%2Fblogs+%28Blogs+at+System+Center+Central%29

This management pack will give you a deeper insight into your virtual machines including recognising which platform (Hyper-V, VMware & Citrix), which hosts they're located on, if VM Tools are installed and the version.

(footnote. I actually wrote this post the day they released it, but forgot to post it /facepalm)

SCOM Data Access Service Fails to Start

I was speaking to an old colleague the other day who is in the middle of migrating his production Operations Manager 2007 R2 environment to a nice new shiny 2012 setup.

Things were initially going well but he explained that he ran into a rather strange issue just after migrating the first batch of agents across to just talk to his live 2012 infrastructure, what made it stranger was these had been talking to his test infrastructure (dual homed) fine for quite a while.

When he moved them across, shortly after, the System Center Data Access service stopped and refused to start.

No matter what he tried it wouldn't work and he had to fall back to restoring a backup.

This left him a little hesitant about the stability of his live environment and whether something wasn't quite right underneath it all somewhere, but it seemed to be fine after the restore so he thought he'd see how it went.

Well the same problem reared it's ugly head again the other day so he did some more digging.

Eventually he stumbled across this post from Travis Wright explaining an issue seen in Service Manager.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2011/10/04/system-center-data-access-service-start-up-failure-due-to-sql-configuration-change.aspx

Since Service Manager and Operations Manager share the same code base and the problem described is essentially a SQL problem anyway he took a look to see if it was indeed the same issue affecting him, turns out it was!

It finally turned out to be something one of the developers were doing with custom reports and scheduling that was adding a local SQL account to the security roles as DBOwner (Dev to be taken outside and shot...)

So in summary, if you're using SCOM and your System Center Data Access Service refuses to start and you're seeing event log errors such as:

• 26325 Authorization store exception
• 26339 Exception thrown while initializing the service container
• 26380 Unhandled Exception

then take a look at the Service Manager blog link above and check your SQL security logins to see if something/someone is flipping the Authentication mode to Mixed-Mode.

Good find Rob, now get your blog back online and start sharing things like this again ;)

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*

Building the TESG Private Cloud Customer Experience Centre - Part 1

Every year my employer holds an event for customers (and potential new customers) to show case what we do and give customers a chance to meet our partner vendors.

This year, nicely coinciding with just after the System Center 2012 release, I landed the brilliant job of setting up something to demonstrate our System Center and Desktop expertise.

And so the concept of the Private Cloud and Optimised Desktop Customer Experience Centre was born.

The goal?

1. To showcase the full System Center 2012 suite
2. To showcase the interactions of each component and how they drive efficiencies
3. To showcase an elastic and easily scalable datacentre that can flex into the Public Cloud
4. To showcase the dynamic desktop with OS, Data, User and Application layers abstracted
5. To showcase BYOD and specifically desktop/application access on tablet devices

Over a couple of blog posts I'll aim to share some of the planning, thoughts and tips & tricks that went into building it.
What I'll not be doing is guides on how to install the different components as there are plenty of them out there, but I will post links to some relevant good guides.

My original test lab was made up of a couple of HP Proliant DL380 G7's with some shared space pinched off the corporate SAN, but as this was going to need to host a lot more and it would need to be "slightly" portable for attending events like the T360 it was time to purchase some upgrades.

1. More memory.  Upgrade from 64Gb per host to 128Gb
2. Dedicated Storage.  iSCSI SAN that would also allow me to show some of the VMM storage management features (N.B. More details on this later, plus some pitfalls to watch out for!)
3. Dedicated Switches.  To show SCOM network management & keep the environment self contained.
4. More NIC's.  The original environment only had 4 onboard NICs, not good enough.
5. Flight case to rack it all in to make it portable (kind of!)

Now that might sound slightly overkill for a test/demo environment.  However, I have a laptop which is quite capable of showing 2-3 of the System Center products at the same time, but this Customer Experience Center had to host the following:

• Active Directory
• Virtual Machine Manager
• Operations Manager
• Service Manager
• Configuration Manager
• Data Protection Manager
• Orchestrator
• App Controller
• SQL 2008 R2 Server
• SharePoint Enterprise Server
• Exchange
• Lync
• ForeFront UAG
• ForeFront TMG
• File Servers
• XenDesktop Mgt Server
• XenDesktop VDI Desktops
• XenApp Mgt Server
• XenApp App Servers
• Remote Desktop Session Hosts
• Remote Desktop Broker/Gateway/Licensing
• RDS/Hyper-V VDI Desktops
• Dedicated Win 7 Admin Workstations
• Citrix NetScaler VM Appliance
• App-V Sequencer Workstations

When you consider that all of this needs to be up and running at the same time, my laptop just wasn't going to cope!

So far this has spread out across 34 VM's and there's still more to come...

This is a quick example diagram that I drew up to show the Hyper-V layout

Once all the hardware components were installed and racked then Hyper-V was the first thing to tackle and all I can say is thank god for Aidan Finn and his blog: http://www.aidanfinn.com/

Lots of useful posts, for example: http://www.aidanfinn.com/?p=10311

I'm going to leave the rest for the next post, but I just want to mention something that came to light when I installed the first System Center component, Virtual Machine Manager.

This is a logical first place to start if you've got the chance to build a private cloud from scratch like I have as you can implement Service Templates for deploying your VM's to help structure the environment and provide servicing and scale out options.

However, I hit a problem almost straight away, I struggled to get it to see my storage provider.

Originally I was ordering a Dell Equalogic iSCSI SAN for the environment, but due to certain disks not being available and increased costs for alternatives I was suggested to look at a DotHill AssuredSAN 2332.

The first thing I did was ask/check it supported SMI-S protocol, which it did as this is what VMM requires for the new features.
However when trying to set it up in VMM, it soon came to light that it only supported SMI-S 1.3 whereas VMM requires version 1.5.

So lesson learnt, make sure that when checking specifications, especially SAN's that you check in detail, right down to the version number!

There is a useful table (I found this afterwards!) that details the supported arrays:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610600.aspx

Part 1 - Building the TESG Private Cloud Customer Experience Centre

Part 2 - Service Accounts & Permissions

Part 3 - Installation Guide Links
Part 4 - Partner Solutions & Extensions

Updated Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012

No sooner do I finish pushing out my SCOM agents do I then see that Microsoft have released Update Rollup 1 for Operations Manager.

Normally I'd be quite happy and plod along with getting the update installed, but hang on a second, this update looks very familiar.

The article that I saw referenced in the update announcement is KB2686249, the same one that I blogged about here a couple of weeks ago.

In fact, it is the very same update, just with Operations Manager 2012 added, along with the updated Virtual Machine Manager Management Packs.

Now I'm not one to moan (yeah, I'm not going to get away with that statement!) but updating an update without increasing the rollup/update number isn't exactly the best way to go about it in my opinion.  Does this mean when the ConfigMgr update is ready we'll see yet another addition to the Update Rollup 1 package but with no name change?

The only reason this probably half bothers me is that I'm in the middle of setting up my new testlab/customer experience center for work and having just updated VMM and App controller by using Windows Update for a change rather than pulling the file down manually and I'm now a bit perplexed as Windows Update is unable to find the SCOM update for the console that is installed on my VMM server (not that it finds it for the SCOM management server either via WU).

And then to make matters worse, there's a "known issue" with the update:

No updates items appeared in Control Panel ARP after installing Update Rollup 1 (UR1). After installing UR1 on server and all roles (except Agent and Gateway), no update item appears in Control Panel ARP list.

The version number of the console does not change after installing Update Rollup 1 in the UI. After installing Update Rollup 1 ,the version number of the console is still 7.0.8560.0 in the UI

Why is this a problem?  Well if you were planning to distribute the console update via ConfigMgr then you're going to have to fall back to file version checking for targeting and it makes it just that tad harder for verification checking when you can't just simply ask a user to check their console version by check "help about"

I'm not going to blog about the whole installation order/methodology as Kevin Green has already written this up nicely here:
http://kevingreeneitblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/scom-2012-deploying-cumulative-update.html

One thing he doesn't mention though is that after installing the Web Console fix, the following line requires adding to the web.config file.

From the KB Article:

Web console fixes will work after adding the following line to the %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\CONFIG\web.config file:

<machineKey validationKey="AutoGenerate,IsolateApps"
decryptionKey="AutoGenerate,IsolateApps" validation="3DES" decryption="3DES"/>

The line should be added under <system.web>, as described in the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

911722 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911722/ ) You may receive an error message when you access ASP.NET Web pages that have ViewState enabled after you upgrade from ASP.NET 1.1 to ASP.NET 2.0

 

All in all, there are 17 core updates to SCOM, 3 for Unix/Linux Monitoring and a lovely new feature - Oracle Solaris 11 (x86 & SPARC) support included in this updated update so it's definitely one to go and install.

The VMM & App Controller update parts are available either through Windows Update or from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29679

The Operations Manager update packages can be downloaded from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c593536c-94f3-4c71-b963-5ab3b7fc05e1

Visio Management Pack Designer for Operations Manager

I'm just sat in a session at MMS 2012 where they're presenting about the new Management Pack designer for Operations Manager (2007 & 2012).

While it's not a complete replacement for the authoring console\Visual Studio\XML editing what it is is a major benefit for those new to or need quick development of management packs without major in-depth knowledge but can create a pack that is fully best practices based and in a very visual way through dragging and dropping.

More information can be found here:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/5235.visio-management-pack-designer-for-system-center-2012-operations-manager-en-us.aspx

SCOM Monitoring with Windows Phone 7

Microsoft have released a case study about a custom solution they developed to provide access to their Operations Manager infrastructure from a Windows Phone 7 app.

Microsoft IT designed some SQL APIs to expose the data in SCOM and a data synchronisation service that used the APIs to push the data into an Azure hosted service.

They then developed an Azure cloud-based middle tier service that receives the data and pushes it out to a Windows Phone 7 app.

Microsoft IT then developed a new Windows Phone app called ECIT Monitor that receives the Operations Manager system status information in near real time from the middle tier over a secure network connection, including the use of live tiles to display counts of alerts etc.

There is also mention in the case study of further enhancements for future revisions including graphically displaying incident management metrics and trends, and new drill-down screens that will provide more detailed information about a selected platform or application.

Does this mean maybe we'll see Service Manager integration?

I can only hope that this doesn't remain an internal project.  Making this service an additional Software Assurance benefit like System Center Advisor would make this a really compelling argument for SA on either Windows or System Center 2012!

Case study can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28944

System Center Advisor Released

Yesterday (26/01/12) Microsoft announced the general availability of System Center Advisor (formerly codename 'Atlanta')

http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2012/01/26/system-center-advisor-released.aspx

System Center Advisor is a new benefit of Software Assurance for SQL Server or Windows Server. 

If your organisation is already covered by Software Assurance on either SQL Server or Windows Server you can activate the full Advisor service immediately.

While Advisor is built on Operations Manager Technology (Agents, Gateways & Management Packs) it is not a real time monitoring solution.  It also doesn't require Operations Manager to be installed within your infrastructure.

Instead, it uses Best Practises and experiences from Microsoft CSS to provide advice regarding the configuration of your systems, to help prevent server configuration problems before they ever impact your server’s performance or availability.

This means that System Center Advisor should be seen as a stand alone, complimentary, service used in conjunction with SCOM.

Presently SCA only provides a solution for Windows 2008 & 2008 R2 Servers and SQL (It will also advise on Active Directory and Hyper-V roles installed on those servers) but this will change over time and easily due to the management pack design of the product.

What also caught my attention is that should you need to speak with Microsoft Customer Support, you can choose to allow Microsoft Support Staff access to current and historical configuration data through Advisor to help them resolve your support calls faster.

For more information, take a look at the SCA website:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/advisor.aspx

System Center 2012 Licensing Changes - Knowledge Cast

After the recent announcement last week by Microsoft on the changes being made to the license models for System Center ready for the launch of the 2012 wave, I'd like to share an invitation to a knowledge cast that I will be presenting on these changes.

http://www.trustmarquesolutions.com/news/system-center-2012-licensing-changes-webinar/

These significant changes include:

• Streamlining the complexity of licensing System Center
• The discontinuation of the Enterprise workload licenses
• The removal of Management Server Licenses
• License grants & transition paths available for existing Software Assurance customers

The Knowledge Cast will cover:

• Review of the licensing changes
• What these changes will mean to your business
• The key timelines for pricing & product changes
• The increased benefits of the System Center 2012 models

*Update- due to demand, we've added an additional session on Thursday morning*
There are four sessions that I'll be presenting on, across two days:
Tuesday January 24th 2012
11:00 – 12:00
14:00 – 15:00
Thursday January 26th
11:00 – 12:00
14:00 – 15:00

I know it's short notice, but these changes were only announced last week and some of the changes have important impact if not acted on quickly.

Places are limited, and aimed at UK based organisations, so booking soon is recommended:
http://www.trustmarquesolutions.com/news/system-center-2012-licensing-changes-webinar/


*Usual disclaimer: While I work for Trustmarque Solutions, and this knowledge cast is presented for them by myself, this blog is my personal blog and the writings and opinions contained within this blog are my personal opinions and are not reflective of the thoughts or intentions of my employer*

Microsoft Private Cloud, System Center 2012 and License Changes

http://www.microsoft.com/business/events/en-us/PrivateCloudExec

Today Microsoft announced a change in the licensing for System Center.
The multiple SKUs and versions have been greatly simplified down to just 2 (yes that's just TWO!!) offerings.

That's a big change from currently the four different licensing schemes, Datacenter, Enterprise, Single Enterprise, and Single Standard.

The new license types are:
System Center Standard - Manage a physical server, or very lightly virtualised (2 VM's)
System Center Datacenter - Manage unlimited VM's on a physical host

Both the System Center license types contains the following products:

• Configuration Manager
• Service Manager
• Virtual Machine Manager
• Operations Manager
• Data Protection Manager
• Orchestrator
• App Controller
• Endpoint Protection 

So no more individual license for each product, it's a suite license only.

Another couple of major changes....
Licences are now only needed for endpoints being managed, no management servers or SQL licensing. (Yep, you heard it right, SQL licenses for the SC Management Servers is now included in the new licenses)

Both types (Std & DataCenter) are both processor based Licenses, but covers up to two processors per license.

There is also a transition model from the old licensing model to the new.

If you have Software Assurance coverage on your current System Center licenses at the time of System Center 2012 General Availability, you will receive the following System Center 2012 Server ML grants at the ratios listed below:

That covers off licensing Server Operating Systems, however for the Configuration Manager and Service Manager parts of System Center for example, you still require Client Management Licenses for non-server OSE's

Microsoft also have a useful interactive site online that can provide some common scenario questions about System Center 2012 licensing:
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/SystemCenter2012.aspx

Just to pre-empt the most likely couple of questions likely to get asked around this:

Q) Are there separate offerings without SQL Server Technology?
A) No. All System Center 2012 products include the right to run a runtime version of SQL Server Technology to support System Center so there are no longer separate offerings.

Q) Do I need to purchase separate Management Server Licenses to run Management Server software?
A) No. With System Center 2012, the right to run Management Server software is included with the Server MLs and Client MLs.

Further information:
System Center 2012 Licensing Datasheet

System Center 2012 Licensing FAQ

Operations Manager 2007 R2 (SCOM) Version Numbers

Just a quick post to help me remember what release numbers relate to which cumulative update version:

Version (numeric)	Version (name)
6.1.7221.0	RTM
6.1.7221.13	RTM with CU1 Applied
6.1.7221.15	RTM with CU2 Applied
6.1.7221.49	RTM with CU3 Applied
6.1.7221.61	RTM with CU4 Applied
6.1.7221.81	RTM with CU5 Applied
6.1.7221.99	RTM with CU6 Applied
6.1.7221.110	RTM with CU7 Applied

System Center 2012 Wave

I thought I'd post a quick one on how the System Center 2012 stack is starting to line up and some bits to note for testing and in preparation for implementations.

At present we have the following table that shows the parts of the System Center stack available and their current release stage:

Configuration Manager	Release Candidate 1
Operations Manager	Release Candidate 1
Service Manager	Beta 1
Virtual Machine Manager	Release Candidate 1
Data Protection Manager	Beta 1
Orchestrator	Release Candidate 1
App Controller	Beta 1

All of the System Center solutions are undergoing a branding change.
If you haven't noticed, the branding has now changed to:
"System Center 2012 Product Name"

So this makes it:

• System Center 2012 Configuration Manager
• System Center 2012 Operations Manager
• System Center 2012 Service Manager
• etc etc etc....

A small change I'm sure you'll agree, but important in the long run as we start to see really tight integration between all the solutions, and the development and release schedules of all the parts of the System Center align up.
(Hopefully we'll also see the Start Menu program groups be consolidated together unlike the random scatterings it is at present)

SQL Collations between the solutions are also drawing together with the need for the following collations per solution:

Configuration Manager	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
Operations Manager	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
Service Manager	See: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh495583.aspx
Virtual Machine Manager	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
Data Protection Manager	Unsure - Doesn't seem to specify
Orchestrator	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
App Controller	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS

Anyone else see the running theme here?
SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS seems now to be the de-facto SQL Collation for the System Center 2012 wave.

You can also expect SQL 2008 R2 to be the prefered SQL version, 2008 may be supported for some of them, but 2005 is definitely a no go.

Operations Manager 2012 Release Candidate Released

Not a day after I was demoing SCOM 2012 Beta, do Microsoft go and release the RC!

You can find the download here:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27974

Couple of things of note from the Release Notes:

Install hotfix before installing the Operations console
Before you install the Operations console, install the hotfix from article 976898 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=194637) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base. You have to contact Microsoft Customer Support Services to request the hotfix download. This hotfix helps prevent performance problems with the Operations console. After you install the hotfix, you must restart the computer.

This hotfix might not be required for all servers. The Operations console prerequisite checker checks for this prerequisite and alerts the user if it is not there. The hotfix has to be installed if the prerequisite checker finds that the hotfix is missing.

Upgrading from System Center 2012 – Operations Manager Beta to Release Candidate is not supported for installations upgraded from System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. You can upgrade from System Center 2012 – Operations Manager Beta to Release Candidate but only if the Beta installation was a new installation. You cannot perform the upgrade if the Beta installation was upgraded from System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.

There is a ton of information in the release notes, so please read thoroughly before installing to know what to expect.

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)

Agent Health Tips and Fixes for System Center Operations Manager 2007

Thanks to Marnix Wolf for this one as he's just pointed out a very important and useful article Microsoft have released regarding the health of SCOM agents and their operating systems in general, along with hotfixes to squeeze the best performance/stability out of them.


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2616936/

Operations Manager (SCOM) 2012 Upgrade Planning

Since many organisations with SCOM 2007 will already be thinking about the upgrade to 2012 when it's released, now is a good enough time as any to start planning the migration.

To help with the migration, Microsoft have recently released some process flow diagrams to help with the migration.

These can be found here and do a really good job with laying out the processes that need to be thought about and should hopefully help with a smooth migration as they're very comprehensive.