Articles

Articles: TROUBLESHOOTING AGENTLESS EXCEPTION MONITORING (AEM) AND DESKTOP ERROR MONITORING (DEM) FEATURES

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:33:52 GMT

by Satya Vel, this document describes the steps you need to take to ensure that the Microsoft Error Reporting and Windows Error Reporting are configured correctly.

Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) of System Center Operations Manager and System Center Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) are identical features with the only difference being that AEM is shipped with Operations Manager 2007 and DEM is shipped with Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) SKU’s. These features leverage the Microsoft Error Reporting (formerly known as Dr. Watson) or Windows Error Reporting client applications for reporting the crash or hang.

Articles: Hybrid User Group Meeting this Friday 3/5/10 ATLSMUG and SCVUG

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:57:49 GMT

The Atlanta Southeast Management User Group and System Center Virtual User Group invites you to attend the next SMUG meeting scheduled for March 5th, 2010 for a day of great presentations, discussions, and networking.

Because this is a hybrid user group meeting there are two ways to register.
1. If you would like to use Live Meeting to attend the meeting remotely, register here http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=146192
2. If you would like to go to the Alpharetta, GA Microsoft Campus to attend the meeting please register here, this will help us with planning for lunch requirements. https://www.usergroupsupportservices.com/UGEventView.ugss?EventID=8775

DATE & TIME
March 5, 2010
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM Eastern Time Zone

Lunch provided by Prowess http://www.prowesscorp.com

“At Prowess Consulting, we focus on providing technology marketing, technical writing, IT infrastructure, and managed services to Fortune 500 companies. We make businesses stronger by delivering the right information at the right time. We are trusted by the largest organizations to deliver results through innovative and customized solutions.”

THE AGENDA

9:45 AM 10:00 AM Opening and Introductions
10:05 AM 11:00 AM Prowess Presentation
11:05 AM 11:50 AM Introduction to Microsoft App-V and the Enterprise
11:55 AM 12:40 PM SCCM R3 Features and Benefits
12:45 PM 1:00 PM Break
1:05 PM 1:50 PM Ed Wilson Powershell Best Practices
1:55 PM 2:40 PM MP Authoring Resource Kit
2:45 PM 3:40 PM What is SCUP and How Do I Use It?
3:35 PM 4:00 PM Closing

PRESENTER BIOGRAPHIES

Steve Bucci
Steve is a Senior Support Engineer with Microsoft System Center Support in Charlotte, NC. He supports Application Virtualization (App-V), Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), and Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). He has worked for Microsoft for the past 8 years.

Brian Shaw
Brian has been with Microsoft the past 2.5 years and is currently holding the position of Senior Support Escalation Engineer supporting SMS, Configuration Manager (SCCM), and WSUS. Brian has been supporting SMS for well over 10 years, starting with SMS 1.2. Brian is currently the CSS Beta Engineer supporting the development and release of SCCM R3.

Ed Wilson
Ed is a senior consultant at Microsoft and a well-known scripting expert. He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer who delivers popular scripting, networking, and administration workshops to Microsoft employees and customers worldwide. He’s written several books on Windows scripting, including Microsoft Windows Powershell Scripting Guide, Microsoft Windows Scripting Self-Paced Learning Guide, and Microsoft VBScript Step by Step. Ed holds more than 20 industry certifications, including MCSE and CISSP.

Cory Delamarter
[Unavailable at this time.]

Jason Lewis
Jason is a Program Manager on the System Center Configuration Management SE Team at Microsoft. He’s been with the team for over 5 years working on products such as Systems Management Server 2003 SP2 and R2, including the Custom Updates Publishing Tool (CUPT), Inventory Tool for Custom Updates (ITCU), System Center Updates Publisher (SCUP), and Configuration Manager 2007 R2. Jason also authors a blog at http://blogs.technet.com/jasonlewis where he covers products that he’s working on including “FYI” and “How To” topics.

Thank you for your continued support!

Scott Moss
Microsoft MVP (Operations Manager)
Vice President Atlanta SMUG http://www.atlsmug.org
President System Center Virtual user Group http://systemcenterusergroup.org

Articles: How to Build a CentOS Management Pack (3 part series)

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:39:46 GMT

by Robert Hearn[MSFT], this 3 part series includes everything you need to monitor CentOS with XPlat feature of Operations Manager 2007 R2.

In part 1 - basics of building a CentOS Management Pack,.
In part 2, how to build the actual MPs.
In part 3, MP installation and validation.

To view the entire series at the source, click the Download button.

Articles: OPSMGR 2007 RTM AND SP1 RC COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS (COMPLETE LIST)

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:12:55 GMT

This document is the complete list of all the command line parameters for OpsMgr 2007 server roles including Audit Collection. And the command line parameters for upgrading to Service Pack 1 (SP1) Release Candidate (RC). Should be functional for OpsMgr R2 installs as well.

Articles: Automatically Protect VMs using DPM 2010, PowerShell & OpsMgr

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:30:39 GMT

This article demonstrates how you can use PowerShell scripts in Operations Manager to automatically protect virtual machines in Data Protection Manager 2010.

Articles: SQL Self Service Recovery using DPM 2010

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:36:00 GMT

Enable your SQL admins to do their own DB restores with Data Protection Manager 2010... Click the download button to access the full article :-)

Articles: Protecting Computers in Workgroups with DPM 2010

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:32:53 GMT

One of the new eagerly anticipated features of DPM 2010 is the ability to protect machines that are in a workgroup or in an untrusted domain. In the DPM 2010 Beta this feature was not available, however it is available in the DPM 2010 RC and it is very simple to configure. Click the Download button to read the full article :-)

Articles: Creating SNMP Probe Based Monitors

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:24:32 GMT

Setting up a probe based SNMP monitor is quite simple; however, there does seem to be some confusion out there about what to use as the Parameter Name and how to call the value in the alert description. Hopefully this will clear things up but if you do still have questions after reading this blog entry please leave a comment or contact me using the link above.

Before setting up the monitor you need to discover your SNMP device(s).

Once your devices have been discovered you need to create your new SNMP probe based simple event monitor..

Then set the general properties for the monitor making sure your monitor target is set to SNMP Network Device..

Next, set the object identifier for your first expression. This will be the OID of the object you are querying; in this case the temperature value from an environmental probe is being monitored..

The next stage is to build your expression and this seems to be the part where most of the confusion is lying. To return the value of the OID you need to enter /DataItem/SnmpVarBinds/SnmpVarBind[1]/Value in the Parameter Name field. Then complete the expression by using the Operator and Value fields which are self explanatory..

Once completed, continue to follow the unit monitor wizard to build a second expression in the same way as the two previous steps above. Then comes mapping your monitor conditions to a health state - so, for example, put health state into Warning if the first event has been raised and put health state to healthy if the second event has been raised..

The last step is to configure the alert settings which are pretty straight forward until you decide that you would like the value of the OID query in the alert description. To return this value enter $Data/Context/SnmpVarBinds/SnmpVarBind[1]/Value$
along with any other static text you may want..

I hope this is short but descriptive enough to help anyone struggling with setting up an SNMP probe based monitor.

Happy Monitor Creating :-)

Articles: DPM - Putting the Console on Your Desktop

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:26:37 GMT

One of Data Protection Manager's shortcomings is that you can only run the DPM console on the DPM server. This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to get the DPM console on your PC desktop using Remote Desktop Services (formerly Terminal Services).

Articles: DPM - Using PowerShell to Recover Shares

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:29:48 GMT

Restore individual shares protected by Data Protection Manager using PowerShell. Click the download button on the right to access the article.

Articles: Managing VMware Environments in Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:27:51 GMT

Full Article below:

Articles: PKI: How to publish the CRL on a separate web server

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:38:44 GMT

By default, an issuing enterprise CA publishes its certificate revocation list (CRL) to locations within the forest. When you are using Internet-based client management with Configuration Manager, there are scenarios where you might need to publish the CRL on a separate server, outside the forest. These scenarios include the following:

Your Internet-based site systems are in the DMZ but the issuing CA for the client computers is in a separate forest in the intranet. These Internet-based site systems will not be able to access the CRL for clients connecting over the Internet.
Your Internet-based site systems are in the DMZ but the issuing CA for these servers is in a separate forest in the intranet. When clients connect from the Internet and they are configured for CRL checking, they will not be able to access the CRL for the server certificates on the Internet-based site systems.

In these Internet scenarios, it makes sense to publish a CRL that can be accessed over HTTP with an Internet FQDN. If you already have a Web server in the DMZ that is configured for HTTP, it makes an ideal candidate because you just need to add an additional virtual directory - there's no need to add a host entry into your public DNS, or install and harden a new server to run IIS. However, think twice about using a server running Internet-based site system roles because (with the exception of the fallback status point), these use HTTPS to help secure the server from unauthenticated access. Certificate revocation lists cannot be accessed over HTTPS so to add HTTP access to one of your Internet-based site system servers would greatly increase the risk of an attacker connecting to this server.

Click the Download button at to view the entire article.

Articles: Second Site Saver

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:28:55 GMT

by Cliff Hobbs, This informative yet concise article provides insight and information into the functionality and use case scenarios behind the Branch Distribution Point in ConfigMgr 2007.

...System Center Configuration Manager 2007 is a multitalented animal for distributing software, and with the branch distribution point option you may not need a secondary site server in branch offices. Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (ConfigMgr) introduces many site server roles. In this article, we look at the branch distribution point.

Click Download to read the full article...

Articles: So, you installed System Center Operations Manager…what next?

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:16:42 GMT

by Kenneth Van Surksum, So, you decided to install System Center Operations Manager in your environment in order to start monitoring your environment. Or someone else installed Operations Manager for you, and it’s your job to start working with it. What should you do next?

Click Download to read the entire article...

Articles: How to write monitors to target Logical or Physical Disks

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:12:29 GMT

In this article, Kevin Holman explains how to write, and how not to write, logical and physical disk monitors in System Center Operations Manager and Essentials.

Kevin writes: This is something a LOT of people make mistakes on – so I wanted to write a post on the correct way to do this properly, using a very common target as an example.

When we write a monitor for something like “Processor\% Processor Time\_Total” and target “Windows Server Operating System”…. everything is very simple. “Windows Server Operating System” is a single instance target…. meaning there is only ONE “Operating System” instance per agent. “Processor\% Processor Time\_Total” is also a single instance counter…. using ONLY the “_Total” instance for our measurement. Therefore – your performance unit monitors for this example work just like you’d think.

However – Logical Disk is very different. On a given agent – there will often be MULTIPLE instances of “Logical Disk” per agent, such as C:, D:, E:, F:, etc… We must write our monitors to take this into account. (continue at source)

Articles: How-To: Configure OpsMgr R2 Service Level Tracking on Live Maps views

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:04:52 GMT

The other day I got a question from a customer if it was possible to use Live Maps with the new OpsMgr R2 Service Level Tracking feature. The answer is simple, yes you can.

In this article I will give a step-by-step instruction how to configure Service Level Tracking on a Live Maps view and show the results using the Service Level Tracking report in OpsMgr and the Service Level Dashboard in SharePoint.

(continue at source)

Articles: How to Decommission a Cluster in OpsMgr 2007

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:09:41 GMT

In this HOW-TO, J.C. Hornbeck explains how to properly remove a Windows cluster from monitoring in Operations Manager 2007.

Articles: How to Deploy the OpsMgr 2007 R2 console with ConfigMgr 2007

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:39:26 GMT

In this HOW-TO, Simon Skinner demonstrates how to deploy the OpsMgr 2007 R2 console to multiple systems using ConfigMgr 2007.

Articles: Microsoft Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 and MORE!

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 06:32:54 GMT

This is a presentation from Brian Huneycutt during the AtlSMUG October 2009 meeting.

Articles: SCVMM 2008 R2 w/ Windows Server 2008 R2 and LiveMigration

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:48:26 GMT

Presentation at AtlSMUG during our October 2009 meeting.