SCOM » 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.

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

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.

More Web Service Fun

Fun, SCOM, SDK No Responses »

Jan 102010

Or you could also title this “How to talk your company into buying you a high end gaming rig for your desktop”

So I’ve been playing with this web service I’m writing for OpsMgr. I was doing a bunch of practical things with it, that you’d normally want to do with it – but then I thought screw that, let’s do something fun with it.

I like to play Team Fortress 2. I like to monitor things. Why not put them together?

Well friends, once you’ve made a web service that talks to the system, it’s fairly trivial to write something to take that information and put it somewhere else.

Let me demonstrate (And yes, you probably do want to click and view the larger version of this)

Stay Tuned…. Video coming soon.

No longer an MVP

Community, SCOM No Responses »

Jan 032010

Alas, with the ending of my 12th month as a Microsoft Most Valued Professional, ends it, period. I didn’t get renewed.

Just as well though.

I could go on a slight diatribe about it all, but I’ll just keep it bottled in.

Until then, let me tell you, writing a web service is a lot harder than I thought – I might be eliciting the help of the community at some point. And yes, I am still slowly trudging along with it. It’s mainly been redesign redesign redesign. Though I’m hoping to have something ‘soon’.

How to monitor everything

Powershell, SCOM 4 Responses »

Oct 042009

Operations Manager has always been a fairly powerful tool. Even in it’s MOM2000 and MOM2005 variations it has a lot to offer. Sadly, in all the organizations I’ve been to, it’s never been utilized to it’s fullest.

I want to help change that.

Do you have a ‘batch’ server at your organization? You should. A batch server is a general all purpose scripting machine. It’s one you use to automate a lot of tasks that you don’t want to have a dedicated machine for, but are more important then you’d want to trust to run on your regular workstation. It doesn’t need to be anything particularly powerful – my batch server is a small Dell pizza box with now outdated hardware: Pentium 4 3.4Ghz CPU, maxed out at 2GB of ram, with an 80GB hard drive. Up until recently it ran Windows 2000 – it now runs Server 2008 standard.

A lot of the stuff I’ll be writing about will have a batch server in mind. I run these scripts there, and use OpsMgr to interact with the data. You’d be amazed at how much more you can accomplish and automate things with a simple ‘throw away’ desktop.

To start out, let’s get OpsMgr to record some stock prices. This will be a powershell script, that I’ll be running on our batch server. Read on to see how I do it.

Back in the saddle again

Pavleck.NET 2 Responses »

Sep 282009

Sorry for my lengthily hiatus folks. I honestly never meant to leave you stranded! There was a lot going on, and most of it wasn’t OpsMgr related, so I neglected you, fair reader. But my 33rd birthday was on the 26th and with it I vowed to not do it to you all again, so I am back!

Hopefully in a day or 2 I’ll have a new post for you – How to get other information into OpsMgr.

What do I mean by other information? Well, in my test scenario, that will be the current stock price for a symbol – we’re going to use MSFT.
There are many many ways to get information directly into SCOM. I’m going to use what *I* think is the easiest method – and that’s a PowerShell script that queries for the given symbols last price and then writes that into a custom performance counter.

To prepare for it, make sure you’re running the most current version of PowerShell 2.0 (Which is CTP3, if you’re on Windows 7 though, you’re fine). If you have UAC enabled, you’ll also need to run this script in an elevated prompt.

I was hoping to have the post out for you today – but an extended power outage at home ended that dream.

So in short: I’m back.

Health Service Script events 1 & 1000 on Domain Controllers

SCOM, Troubleshooting 2 Responses »

Feb 132009

This particular issue happens a lot on Domain Controllers, and especially DCs that you’re running as a gateway server. In the OpsMgr event log, you’ll receive a lot of events from the Health Service Script source with event IDs 1 and 1000.

OpsMgr Event ID 1000 Warning from Health Service Script

The text of the alert is:

Event Type:    Warning
Event Source:    Health Service Script
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    1000
Date:        2/13/2009
Time:        12:18:16 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    BADDC01
Description:
AD Database and Log : The script ‘AD Database and Log’ failed to create object ‘McActiveDir.ActiveDirectory’.
The error returned was: ‘ActiveX component can’t create object’ (0x1AD)

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

and

OpsMgr Event ID 1 Warning from Health Service Script

the text of which is:

Event Type:    Warning
Event Source:    Health Service Script
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    1
Date:        2/13/2009
Time:        12:18:09 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    BADDC01
Description:
AD Op Master Response : The script ‘AD Op Master Response’ failed to create object ‘McActiveDir.ActiveDirectory’. This is an unexpected error.
The error returned was: ‘ActiveX component can’t create object’ (0x1AD)

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Cause: For whatever reason, the Active Directory helper object is not being installed as part of the active directory management pack.

Solution: Install the helper object OOMADs.msi. This can be found in 1 of 2 places.
First, look in the install directory of OpsMgr on the server with the issue – typically that would be C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\HelperObjects

If it’s not there, then you can also find it on the install media under \HelperObjects\<ARCH> (Where arch is amd64, i386 or ia64).
Restart your agent, and it should clean itself up.

OpsMgr 2007 R2 Beta 1 Released!

SCOM No Responses »

Nov 192008

A tad ahead of schedule, beta 1 of OpsMgr R2 is now out! Get yourself to Connect and grab it!

Here’s the email I just received:

The System Center Operations Manager team is excited to announce the availability of the Operations Manager 2007 R2 beta, which is ready for you to download through Connect today! Operations Manager 2007 R2 introduces key new and enhanced functionality, including:

Enhanced application performance and availability across heterogeneous platforms
. Delivers monitoring across Windows, Linux and Unix servers-all through a single console.
. Extends end to end monitoring of distributed applications to any workload running on Windows, Unix and Linux platforms.
. Maximize availability of virtual workloads with integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

Improved management of applications in the data center
. Delivers on the scale requirements of URL monitoring of your business.
. Meet agreed service levels with enhanced reporting showing application performance and availability.
. More efficient problem identification and action to resolve issues.

Increased speed of access to information and functionality to drive management
. Faster load times for views and results.
. Improved and simplified management pack authoring experience

The Operations Manager 2007 R2 beta integrates the functionality delivered within the Cross Platform Extensions Beta. New betas of the Interoperability Connectors will available shortly through the Operations Manager R2 Connect program.

Support for the R2 beta can be found through the following:

For general questions on the Operations Manager 2007 R2 beta, please use the existing newsgroups at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/opsmgr/bb839593.aspx

For questions relating to Cross Platform and the Interoperability Connectors, we are excited to launch the new forums available at:

Cross Platform Monitoring – http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=604&SiteID=17

Interop Connectors – http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=605&SiteID=17

New Contest and a new utility: SCOM-CloseAll

Contests, Notifications, SDK 7 Responses »

Nov 032008

Greetings my fellow OpsMgr admins! I’m back from vacation with 100% more married then before! And I come bearing gifts! ((Even though no one bought me anything OR even got me a giftcard. I guess I’m the only one that does that stuff at other peoples sites heh))

Yes, that’s right, it’s contest time again. This time I’m offering up 2 things: 1 autographed copy of System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed. This is a fairly rare item as it’s one of less then a half dozen signed by all the authors. I had to do dirty dirty things to Cameron to get it. I’m not proud, but for my peeps I go the distance!

A copy of SCOM2007 Unleashed signed by all the authors

The second item is a little teaser prize package from the wonderful folks over at Sapien Technologies. Soon I’ll be posting a new contest with oodles of Sapien prizes – from the PrimalScript Universal Resource Kit to flying monkies and more! That entire contest/post will be centered around setting up PrimalScript as the development environment for us OpsMgr Admins. You’ll love it! This current package, however, isn’t as illustrious: It contains a Sapien portfolio, PicoPad, Post-It notes, a credit card sized flash drive and an awesome pen!

A little teaser of whats to come from Sapien!

Additionally I’d like to offer up some SDK app loving I’ve been baking all day!

I’m working on a neat console application that was initially called Alert Utility, and is now just called the OpsMgr Utility. It reports on a variety of things and allows you to interact with the system in a variety of ways.
I’m not much of a programmer, so I need to start out slow – so the first thing I whipped up is a little utility called SCOM-CloseAll. Simply put, it takes 2 arguments – your RMS and an optional comment to insert when you resolve the alert. It then connects to the SDK service on the RMS, retrieves all open alerts, then resolves them. And yes, it does ask if you truly want to do this. It’s in beta, so I’d love it if you all could test it out for me. This is a perfect solution to handle those pesky alert storms and another tool in the box.
Take a look at the screenshots then download it here.

Showing the initial startup of the Alert Closer

Showing the progress bar indicating what % of alerts have been closed

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