Pavleck.NET

I’ve returned! SQL Query guide updates

Jan 272012

Hello friends! Yes, I know, it’s been awhile. I’ve been busy working. Now, not so busy, not so much working. So if you’re hiring, well let me know.

One of the reasons I reduced the amount of posting I did was I had already done all of the cool stuff you could do with SCOM. The regular day-to-day BS maintenance stuff is not fun for me. Nor is reposting every single press release Microsoft releases like a lot of my brethren. So I didn’t post much, just did my own thing.

But now with the upcoming release of Operations Manager 2012 there will be so many new, cool things to do with it! Not to mention I’ve extended my System Center fun to the other members of the family, and we should see some cool stuff happening.

To kick things off I’ve cleaned up and added to my Useful SCOM SQL Queries list. I’ve also uploaded it as both a PDF and as a .SQL file. So you can play with that for the time being while I finish up a few other things I’m working on.

MMS 2011 Early Bird registration ends today!

Community 1 Response »

Feb 142011

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Today is the last day you can sign up for MMS 2011 at the special “early bird” pricing! Either you – or more preferably your company – can save $275! Tomorrow they move to the standard pricing, so register now and be sure to say hi to me and pick up some random Pavleck.net schwag!

Curious as to what I’m interested in this year? No worries, here’s my .ics for it. If we’ll be at the same place at the same time let me know.

SCOM 2007 R2 VHD Test Drive & 2012 thoughts

R2, SCOM, SCOM 2012 4 Responses »

Feb 122011

Just in case you were interested in test driving Operations Manager 2007 R2, Microsoft published a VHD several days ago, you can download it here.

I’m curious as to why it’s only available as a 13 part RAR file, and doesn’t use the typical MS File Transfer Manager like we get on MSDN to download it one big bundle – or at least the option to get it that way. It’s a little odd.

Also, I’ve been messing around with a VM of Operations Manager 2012, now at CTP3. My initial thoughts? It looks a lot like 2007, which isn’t bad.

The best part? It actually tells you when it’s “thinking”. No more does it just lock up with the old green revolving bar at some random point while it’s collecting it’s thoughts – it actually tells you what it is doing!

More thoughts as I play with it!

Expect great things

News, Pavleck.NET No Responses »

Jan 072011

Good News, Everyone!

It’s been quite some time since I’ve really gotten to roll up my sleeves and get dirty with SCOM. And that’s about to change. I’ve recently accepted a position at Certified Security Solutions as a Senior Consultant. My role? To do the same Operations Manager stuff I haven’t been able to do for the past couple of years. 2011 is starting to look good!

I start this Monday, the 10th, where I’ll be flying out to Cleveland for a week to do the usual meet & greets as well as get a big picture on what they’re looking to do.

So, with any luck, you’ll see a new flurry of activity here on my humble blog as I return to my usual self; finding new and innovative ways to use, and abuse, OpsMgr and now the whole System Center family!

I can’t wait!

Is it done yet, is it done yet, is it done yet?

Community, Guides, Pavleck.NET, SCOM, Web Service No Responses »

Nov 122010

So, I’ve received a few (Read: a metric ton) of comments regarding if my eBook and Webservice is done yet.

In short: No.

In long: Yes, but no, well sort of.

So I had a lot of bad things that went down in my personal life. I was laid off, the wife and I separated, etc etc. So mentally I was able to devote as much time as I had hoped to this endeavor – though I do have a decent ground work laid for it.

But there’s another problem now.

Being unemployed for as long as I was, I had to sacrifice some things to get by. I had to sell the servers I used for my virtual SCOM infrastructure. So now I don’t really have a machine capable of running OpsMgr + all the additional VMs I need to setup all of the various environments to testing and deployments to.

Did you want to help? I’d love it if you could!

What I need right now to finish all of this:

A proper server. If anyone has one for sale, or to loan to me for awhile (1 year or so), I can get this whole thing back up and running.

I’m looking for something like a Dell Poweredge T610 – a dual processor capable machine with plenty of ram and disk. It doesn’t have to have the extra proc (Though that would be awesome) or be fully populated with ram and drives – but it would be helpful.

If you have one for sale or loan, and would like to be my very best friend, please send me an email to jpavleck.servers@gmail.com – I’ll get back to you ASAP and be sure to credit you with saving these 2 projects. And, as a special gift, when I release the “pro” version of the Web Service Connector, you and your company will receive a free license to it – as well as support – for free! This will easily be a $5,000 value!

So lets see if the community out there can rally around and help me get this done!

Oh, and likewise, if you’d rather send me $2,500 so I can just buy the server, well I can do that too. Send an email to the same place.

I’m fairly certain nothing will come from this post, but I’m putting it out there just in case there’s some kind soul who can help me out.

Thanks,

Jeremy

PowerShell Cookbook v2 Mirror

Powershell 1 Response »

May 222010

In case you guys missed it, Lee Holmes had a ‘review’ copy of the upcoming PowerShell 2.0 Cookbook on the O’Reilly website for a bit. It has since been taken down in preparation for it’s August 15th release. It just so happens that when it was up it was under a Creative Commons license, which means I could distribute it. So I made a mirror on March 29th, and have now placed the book in its entirety online. Enjoy! You can also download it as a PDF if you’d prefer, with all links and such intact. If you like it, and I’m sure you will, then I highly encourage you to support Lee and buy a copy. And support me too and use my Amazon associate linked version. Or don’t support me, and use this link instead. Cheers!

Visio and Sharepoint 2010 Extensions for OpsMgr

SCOM, Tools No Responses »

Apr 212010

From the MOMTeam

If you’re looking for a reason to roll out Visio 2010, have I got a doozie for you!

Using the new Visio 2010 add-in for OpsMgr 2007 R2 and the SharePoint 2010 Visio Services Data Provider, you’ll be able to create a visio-based view of a web application, a service, or even an infrastructure (Or even import one with the OpsMgr add-in for Visio 2007) then publish it to SharePoint 2010 as a web drawing.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll get a ‘live’ view of what your environment looks like – in the way you want to see it. Perfect for a big board application in a NOC!

And there’s some even neater things coming down the pipe. Check out this MMS 2010 keynote to see this and more in action!

And go pick up the downloads from Visio Toolbox while you’re at it!

Hopefully I’ll have a nice little tutorial about how to set all of this up, as I need to rebuild my OpsMgr environment several times over the next 30 days to ensure I’m ready to go for my next assignment! Can never have too much practice, right?

Powershellpoint

Powershell No Responses »

Mar 122010

People are doing a lot of interesting things with Powershell. Joel Bennett is a magician of “Look what it can do”. But then I came across this post from John Robbins’ blog and was blown away – Powerpoint, in Powershell. What better way to show the power and flexibility of Posh than to do it in posh! Friggin brilliant!

Silect Agent Explorer

Authoring, SCOM, Tools No Responses »

Mar 052010

Now this seems really promising! I’ve been involved with Silect Software since their inception years ago. They make some great tools – MP Studio in particular. But its costs has always made it a hard sell with clients, since there’s “already a way to author management packs in SCOM”.

But what there isn’t in OpsMgr is a quick, easy, and simple way to find out just what’s running on that server – until now.

Silect is announcing the Agent Explorer feature of the next version of MP Studio.
With Agent Explorer you’ll be able see exactly what rules, monitors, discoveries and management packs are running on a given server.

Interested? View the 5 min screencap and then email Randy R and tell him you want to try this out!

Just a few things

Community, R2, SCOM, Web Service No Responses »

Mar 032010

So my current contract has ended and while I have some spare time I’m going to be focusing fiercely (Well, fiercely for me anyway) on “Project KONOP”, the OpsMgr Web Service. I’ve even been so bold as to take the liberty in registering SCOMWS.com to host it.

And a new project, still unfinished – SystemCenterSearch.com. Hoping to make it a very basic ‘portal’ for all things system center – but mainly centered on the most recent issues, most common problems and solutions, and a simple search that looks through all of the system center websites for your query.

And for you Redditors out there I’ve made two new sub-reddits. /r/SystemCenter – dedicated to all things System Center related and /r/SCOM – dedicated to just OpsMgr stuff (Of which we know I’m kind of partial to).

So just a quick note to let you know what I’m working on. Now, I’m back to working on website front-ends and building a web service using a 5 year old book from MS Press heh.