Configuration Manager 2012 Beta 2 - Program starts April 2011

Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta - Program starts May 2011

Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 - Program starts June 2011

Orchestrator 2012 Beta - Program starts June 2011

Operations Manager 2012 Beta - Program starts July 2011

Upcomming Data Protection Manager 2012 Beta

Have guidance from the product teams and share experiences among community peers?

Then this new program from Connect is the program for you!

Welcome to the Community Evaluation Program on Microsoft Connect!

The Community Evaluation Program from the Management and Security team at Microsoft provides IT professionals a structured approach to evaluating System Center and Forefront products before their final release. Members of this program are able to evaluate early versions of products with guidance from the product team and by sharing of experiences and best practices among a community of peers.

This site is a starting point to get involved with the Community Evaluation Program. Please check this page often for updates on current and upcoming programs.

After you have applied and been accepted to a program, you will be invited to a product specific site on Connect. It is important to note that although a program may have started in the past, applicants will continue to be accepted and simply asked to catch up on the materials that have been previously published.

You can contact the team at mscep@microsoft.com with any questions about the Community Evaluation Program. Thank you for your interest!

Open Programs

Configuration Manager 2012 Beta 2 - Program starts April 2011

· Download the Datasheet

· Apply to Configuration Manager CEP

Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta - Program starts May 2011

· Download the Datasheet

· Apply to Virtual Machine Manager CEP

Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 - Program starts June 2011

· Download the Datasheet

· Apply to Forefront Identity Manager CEP

Orchestrator 2012 Beta - Program starts June 2011

· Download the Datasheet

· Apply to Orchestrator CEP

Operations Manager 2012 Beta - Program starts July 2011

· Download the Datasheet

· Apply to Operations Manager CEP

Upcoming Programs

Data Protection Manager 2012 Beta

If you are interested in applying to one of the upcoming programs, please email mscep@microsoft.com and you will be notified when applications are being accepted. ]]> Tue, 17 May 2011 14:54:44 GMT http://www.systemcentercentral.com/BlogDetails/tabid/143/IndexID/86939/Default.aspx Had the opportunity to travel to the USA for the second time my life and all in one month.

Needless to say this is a pretty intense month

Because of this little time to do some blogging etc….

First the MVP summit in Redmond which was totally awesome to meet all fellow MVP’s and product team members.

After recovering one weekend I packed my bags again but now for Vegas, which is a totally different world…..

Arrived on Saturday and we decided to beat the Jetlag with a nice night out, we ordered online tickets for Paul van Dijk at the Marque Day/Night club.

The next day we had our company day out, since we travelled with the entire crew to Vegas to dive into System Center and a nice occasion to do some team building. A  nice line up of a helicopter flight over Vegas which ended in the Mandalay bay at the top floor watching over the strip having a drink.

The Helicopter “ride”

The view from the bar At the top of the Mandalay.

Now totally pumped up to start with the Summit we started on Monday with a couple of sessions and the Expo opening.

Unfortunately I didn’t had a chance to visit the session of Cameron about the Kinect…..Sorry man but way to go GAVIN for the Kinect demo…I will definitely point my customers in the Netherlands to check this out!

It is already legendary!

Check this out:http://www.systemcentercentral.com/BlogDetails/tabid/143/IndexID/85735/Default.aspx 

Because  of the little time to fully blog on the new changes / announcements here is a quick list of the facts:

• First  keynote: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/mms-2011-day-1-keynote.aspx
• Launch of Windows Intune to the public - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsintune/pc-management.aspx 
• Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 is now part of the core CAL!
• SCCM manages all phones! (including the non MS ones)
• SCCM 2012 Beta 2 – public http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=4da60258-5e61-4d16-8fae-d3c9fccf56dc&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MicrosoftDownloadCenter+%28Microsoft+Download+Center%29#tm
• SCCM 2012 cross platform support
• System Center Advisor - https://www.systemcenteradvisor.com/
• System Center products all RTM around the end of this year.

And MMS 2012 back to the venation again.

A question which comes up frequently doing a SCOM implementation is "What are we monitoring?"

Because this questions pops up every time you do an implementation I have some PowerShell scripts which will expose the information you are looking for in a decent csv format.

The following scripts are attached to the post:

Above scripts are ones I used when this question pops up once in a while. The code in the scripts I have collected and altered throughout the years …..

The Scripts need to be run in the OpsMgr Powershell command window and there ned to be a directory C:\Export\
(If needed the location can be altered in the script)
To give you an idea of the scripts here are some examples:

PerformanceMonitors.PS1

This script will collect all unit monitors with the category Performance Health and put it in a CSV file.

PerformanceCollectionRules.ps1

This Script will collect all rules with the category PerformanceCollection and put it into a CSV file

EventCollectionRules .ps1

This Script will collect all rules with the category EventCollection and put it into a CSV file

Discoveryrules.ps1

This script will collect all discoveries and put it into a CSV file.

If you have some additions to this please let me know and I will alter the scripts.

A need trick would be to correlate the overrides to these ones as well but I am no PowerShell Guru

If you need more regular ways to get the data you can use the one liners in this post to get all monitors or all rules…..

Try them and let me know if these will work for you.

Cheers,

Oskar Landman

Configuring the SCOM CI Connector (Default)

Welcome screen	Fill in a name and description for the connector and make sure it is set to enabled.
Fill in the SCOM RMS name and the runas account. The runas account needs to have SCOM Operator privileges.	Select the Management Packs you want to synchronize.
Fill in the schedule when you want the connector to synchronize.

How to check the connector?

At the results pane you can review the connector settings and status.

When you want to run the connector manually go to tasks and select Synchronize Now.

(refresh the connector to see the results, be patient this make take a couple of minutes)

After running the synchronization you can review the results. In the CI pane.

 Customize the SCOM CI Connector

First of all here is a link from the Service Manager Team Blog on how to add objects (classes) by the use of PowerShell.

To be able to add the classes we want we first need to define which class(es) we want to add:

There are more ways to retrieve the classes like PowerShell or the authoring console but for this example  we are going to use the SCOM console and PowerShell.

Retrieve Management Pack and Class from SCOM

Before you start with adding classes from SCOM to SCSM you will need to identify which classes you want to add and in which management pack these classes are defined.

The easiest way to detect in which management pack the class is defined is to do the following in the SCOM Monitoring pane:

Navigate to Discovered Inventory and right click the results pane and select Change Target Type...

When you select Change Target Type the above window will pop-up.

By selecting View all targets and fill in part of the class name you are looking for you can navigate through the classes. Select the class you want to add later on in SCSM in our case Dell Windows Server.

Notice the Management pack where the class is defined in our case Dell Windows Server (Scalable Edition).

Navigate to Administration pane \ Management packs and in the results pane look for the management pack you just retrieved by searching for the class.

Now check the properties for the management pack

When checking the properties you will see the ID which is the actual name (filename) of the management pack.

Also don't forget the dependencies tab:

Check if the management is depended on a management pack which isn't currently installed in your SCSM environment. In our case it's the Dell Base Hardware Library.

Again check the properties of the management pack to locate the actual name of the management Pack:

Double check if this Management pack “Dell.Connections.Library” is dependent on any other management packs which are currently not installed in SCSM!

The above packs are already in SCSM so we now know we need to import 2 management packs into SCSM to be able to add the Dell Windows Server class later on.

• Dell.Connections.HardwareLibrary.mp
• Dell.WindowsServer.Scalable.mp

Copy both these MP's to the SCSM server.

Before we can import the pack in SCSM we need to retrieve the class name from SCOM.

We know the display name of the class which is Dell Windows Server but to be able to add the class we need to know the ID!

To be able to find the Id we are going to use the SCOM PowerShell commandlet.

Open the Operations Manager Shell and with the following command we are able to translate the Display Name into the ID:

Get-MonitoringClass | Where-object {$_.DisplayName -match "Dell Windows Server"

This is the Display name of the class which we want to add!

Notice we have retrieved 2 classes. The one we want to know is called Dell Windows Server which is the one on the bottom.

Write down the Name property

Dell.WindowsServer.Server

This is the class ID we are going to need to be able to add the class to SCSM.

Import Management Pack and add Class to SCSM

Next logon tot the SCSM console and navigate to Administration\Management Packs:

Select Import and navigate to the dell management packs:

• Dell.Connections.HardwareLibrary.mp
• Dell.WindowsServer.Scalable.mp

Select both the packs and import them into SCSM. 

Now we have added the management packs into SCOM we can go on with the next step which is to get the new classes into SCSM and make sure the SCOM CI connector will synchronize these.

Add class to SCSM to be able to synchronize data

The Class we want add we retrieved from SCOM Dell.WindowsServer.Server class.

We are going to add the classes by the use of PowerShell on the SCSM server.

First of all to be able to run the SCSM PowerShell commandlets you need to add them to PowerShell.

To be able to add the commandlet you need to change the security settings within PowerShell.

First check the execution policy, which is default restricted.	Command set-executionpolicy Unrestricted sets the execution policy to allow unsigned script.	Now add the snapin with add-pssnapin smcmdletsnapin
The command get-command *scsmallow* will retrieve the commands we are looking for to add a class.	The command get-SCSMAllowlist will retrieve the current classes defined.  This will list all classes we currently synchronize.	We are going to add our class to the list: Add-SCSMAllowListClass –ClassName Dell.WindowsServer.Server
After adding the class you can check the results by get-scsmallowlist After making sure the class is added you can switch back the execution policy.

there is one more step to do before everything starts working.

Navigate to the SCSM administrator pane\Connectors. Select the SCOM CI Connectors an check it’s properties.

Look at the management packs section:

You will notice you can now select the Dell MP’s for synchronization. (It could be you need to refresh the list)

Here you select the MP’s you want to synchronize and we now have the Dell Server class added.

After adding the class you would need to create a view to be able to see your results. Simply add a view and target it to the Dell Server Class.

 OpsMgr Database Hygiene: SCC Health Check Reports Management Pack by Oskar Landman & Pete Zerger

This version is a follow up based on feedback on the first version.

Apart from more knowledge and links added we have also wrapped up almost twice the amount of reports in this version!

Version 2

A quick review on all reports in this version: New additions!

Report Name	Queries Database
Agents - Agent Hotfix Report (OM)	OperationsManager
Agents - Agents Missing Hotfix Report (OM)	OperationsManager
Agents - Down Agents (OM)	OperationsManager
Alerts - Alerts Closed by Specific User (DW)	OperationsManagerDW
Alerts - Alerts Closed by User [Count] (DW)	OperationsManagerDW
Alerts - Alerts Closed by UserID (DW)	OperationsManagerDW
Alerts - Number of Alerts per Day (OM)	OperationsManager
Alerts - Top 20 Alerts By Alert Count (OM)	OperationsManager
Alerts - Top 20 Alerts By Repeat Count (OM)	OperationsManager
Config Churn - Discoveries Last 24 Hours (DW)	OperationsManagerDW
Config Churn - Modified Properties Details Last 24 Hours (DW)	OperationsManagerDW
Events - All Events Count By Last 7 Days (OM)	OperationsManager
Events - Most Common Events by Number and Publisher (OM)	OperationsManager
Events - Top 20 Computers Generating the Most Events (OM)	OperationsManager
Misc - Groups Report (OM)	OperationsManager
Misc - Infrastructure Overview (OM)	OperationsManager
Misc - Management Packs (OM)	OperationsManager
Misc - Operational and Datawarehouse Usage Report (OM) - (DW)	Both
Misc - Outage and Maintenance Report (DW)	OperationsManagerDW
Misc - Run As Profiles (OM)	OperationsManager
Performance - Performance Inserts Per Day (OM)	OperationsManager
Performance - Top 20 Computers By Perf Count (OM)	OperationsManager
Performance - Top 20 Performance Insertions By Perf (OM)	OperationsManager
Performance - Top Performance Baseline Generating Rules (OM)	OperationsManager
State - Noisiest Monitors (OM)	OperationsManager
State - Old State Changes Not Groomed (OM)	OperationsManager
State - State Changes Per Day (OM)	OperationsManager

We have also changed the documentation a little because some people reported authentication problems when running the Ops DB reports.

Feedback

Again the idea behind this MP is a real community MP. If you have feedback or additions please contact Oskar Landman or Pete Zerger and we are happy to add them to version 3! Of course your additions will be recognized by the community it the way of special credits!

The feedback can be in several ways of adding knowledge like links to good articles to fancy SQL queries to retrieve data out of the DB. Also if you feel we are missing crucial reports and don’t have the sql query to retrieve the data let us know we always  like a challenge ;-)

Besides this we have also received rules and monitors to monitor the health of your environment more closely. We are currently looking if we will fit this in version 3 or make an additional MP accompanied by the reporting MP.

Future

The future of this MP will depend on the feedback and additions received. Although I can already tell you version 3 will be released and in here we will consolidate the reports to bring down the number of reports which will make it faster to check up on your environment! Because many of them are related.

Special Credits

Special thanks to  Kevin Holman for his great feedback and as a query resource ;-)

And of course Pete Zerger for his reports and query additions! Always fun and looking forward to version 3! maybe we can do this one in German ;-)

The writers of this MP are not responsible for any problems derived from the MP although the MP has been tested on different installations and there are no known issues. There is always a possibility things are different in your environment so as always use the documentation and make sure that you know what you are doing.

The MP can be downloaded at the MP catalog.

Have Fun and feel free to comment or send in your feedback!

Most of the times it comes down to running SQL queries directly on the databases to gather this information. After gathering the information you can retrieve the information widely spread on the Internet and start tuning over enthusiastic rules and monitors to keep your environment nice and tidy.

This Management Pack is written to make your life more easy!

The story behind the MP

When we first started talking about this MP the question “Should we put it into the open?” was one of the first questions we needed to answer.

Because reporting on data from the Ops DB is not supported by Microsoft. But with some effort you will soon find lots of queries to retrieve the data from the Ops DB by running queries directly on the Ops DB.

There are tons of them around on the internet and this MP may be a guidance on how you should use them in a need reporting format.

Pete and I started of with building some custom reports and use commonly used queries to retrieve the data, mostly derived from his series. Based on this I expanded the layout and settings to proper reports.

Next I started to gather some more useful queries from the famous blog byKevin Holman which has a long list of really useful queries and postings on performance and tuning.

Now I wrapped up all queries we think are useful gave the reports a knowledge addition and added them to a Management pack called SCC Health Check Management Pack!!

Community MP

The management pack is included with a small readme because you need to create a custom shared datasource to be able to connect to the Operational Database.The idea behind this Management Pack is it will be a community MP with ongoing development.

What does this mean?

Well as you know there are many articles written nowadays on SCOM and how to get it and keep it running smooth. The difficult part is most of the articles are scattered all over different blogs.

The idea behind this MP is to run the reports and read the knowledge accompanied by the report which should include a short description of the report and mostly important hyper links to articles explaining why the data is important and how you should interpret it.

The reports and knowledge links should be included in this MP by SCOM experts with their findings and real life recommendations!

Come to think of it this is one of the benefits for using management packs developed with the knowledge of experts in the first place!  ;-)

This is just the first version which has some knowledge but along the way we will extend the reports and knowledge based on your feedback!

Feedback

Because we want to have a real life community MP it is crucial for people to deliver their feedback and additions to this MP. All feedback will be reviewed by the authors Oskar Landman and Pete Zerger and if relevant will be added to the Next version of the SSC Health Check Management Pack. This way this MP can be a real benefit for running a smooth SCOM environment.

The SCC Health Check Management Pack

The MP contains 16 reports which are required to run on the Datawarehouse or the Operational Database. There is documentation accompanied how to set up the solution and import the MP.

Please first read the documentation otherwise the MP will fail…..as you already know as SCOM Experts ;-)

You need to create a custom Shared Datasource on your report sever to be able to run the reports on the Operational Database.

After creating the Shared Datasource on your reporting server you can add the Management Pack! Doing any sooner and the import of reports will fail! Which you should already know since as a SCOM expert you always read the documentation before adding any MP………….right???

Here are the reports currently in the MP:

The writers of this MP are not responsible for any problems derived from the MP although the MP has been tested on different installations and there are no known issues. There is always a possibility things are different in your environment so as always use the documentation and make sure that you know what you are doing.

The MP can be downloaded at the MP catalog.

Have Fun and feel free to comment or send in your feedback!

Basics

How to Setup SNMP on both SCOM and the Network device or Windows Server.

Authoring Console:

How to create a custom class based on Network Device and how to discover it.

The example MP is attached at the bottom of this post.

SNMP overall

This part is where most of the problems start. Because of wrongly configured SNMP Settings the devices never get discovered in the first place.

First you need to make sure SNMP is setup correctly on both the SCOM Management server and the Windows Server or Device you want to discover. Without the correct setup we are not going to discover anything ;-)

First some details on SNMP:

Wikipedia - SNMP operates in the Application Layer of the Internet Protocol Suite (Layer 7 of the OSI model). The SNMP agent receives requests on UDP port 161. The manager may send requests from any available source port to port 161 in the agent. The agent response will be sent back to the source port on the manager. The manager receives notifications (Traps and Inform Requests) on port 162. The agent may generate notifications from any available port

Basically our SCOM management server will act as a SNMP Manager and our device is going to act as a SNMP agent.

SNMP in detail on TechNet

SNMP on Windows 2003 from the Knowledgebase

Maybe obvious but always make sure you can communicate by port UDP 161 and 162 between the SCOM Server and the Windows Server or Device.

SNMP Setup SCOM Server 

For easy understanding we are going to use the example above.

On the SCOM Server SCOM2007.mydomain.local

First we need to install / add the SNMP components to SCOM2007.mydomain.local.

Windows 2003		Windows 2008
	Make sure you have access to the Windows 2003 Installation Source. (i386)		To install SNMP on Windows 2008 you will need to use server manager and add the SNMP Service feature.

After the installation you will have the following services on the SCOM Server:

You can leave the default settings.

SNMP Managed Devices

Network Device / other SNMP Device

When you want to add a network device you will also need to configure SNMP on the Device. How to do this will differ by device, most of the times you can find help on changing these settings in the manual of your device.

When you know how to you will simply need to add the SCOM Server, SCOM2007.mydomain.local or 10.10.10.10 and its community name scomtestsnmp on the device to be able to discover it by the use of SNMP.

*****TIP! Always make sure you know the version of SNMP your device is using. SCOM 2007 R2 Supports both SNMPv1 and SNMPv2. SNMPv3 is not supported in the current version we will have to wait until VNext. When running a Network Device discovery you need to specify the SNMP Version make sure you use the correct one otherwise discovery will fail.

Windows Server by SNMP

Win2003.mydomain.local or 10.10.10.30

(Settings apply to both Windows 2003 as well as Windows 2008.)

*****TIP! When using 2008 always make sure the Windows Firewall has exceptions for SNMP Traffic.  

When you want to add a windows server to your SCOM environment by the use of SNMP. You should also install the SNMP Service like we did at the SCOM server.

After the Installation You need to Adjust the SNMP Settings to allow the SCOM Server,SCOM2007.mydomain.local, to communicate with the Windows Server,Win2003.mydomain.local.

Simply navigate to the SNMP Service run—>Services.msc\SNMP Service

Select the properties and navigate to the Security tab and add the SCOM Server IP Address or Hostname and add the Community name you want to use.

In our Example we are going to use:

Community String scomtestsnmp

SCOM Server IP is 10.10.10.10 or hostname SCOM2007.mydomain.local

Configuring these settings on the Windows server you want to discover by SNMP, Win2003.mydomain.local, allows the SCOM Server to talk SNMP to the Windows 2003 Server ! Without these settings the windows server will never be discovered as a SNMP Device…..

If you followed the above procedures you should be able to now discover your SNMP enabled devices. When discovering these devices you are able to use the basic monitoring rules default to SCOM to monitor your device.

Next we are going to use the authoring console to configure a custom class and how we can discover the class and any additional properties.

Like stated this one is based on a forum post / question. Therefore I will use the same Management Pack and approach.

The approach was to discover an Application running on Windows 2003 that uses it’s own MIB.

Because monitoring requires to send SNMP get requests to check for a state

Create Management Pack

Create a Empty management pack named: XYZ.Management.Pack

On the properties tab of the management pack make sure you have the correct mp references:

If they are not present please add them.

Create a class named MyApp - XYZ.Management.Pack.Class.MyApp set the base class to be Microsoft.SystemCenter.NetworkDevice.

Because the Base class is Microsoft.SystemCenter.NetworkDevice it will automatically inherit al the Network Device properties.

Add a new property called Version to the class and don’t forget the displayname ;-)

Create the Datasource for the Discovery

Create a Datasource named XYZ.Management.Pack.DataSource.Discovery.MyApp

Member Modules			ConfigurationSchema
Scheduler – System.Discovery.Scheduler	SNMPGetProbe – System.SNMPProbe	Mapper – System.Discovery.ClassSnapshotDataMapper

How the datasource works:

If you want to discover more properties you can add them to the SNMPprobe Module.

The easiest way is to copy the XML and change the OID you want to query.

The ISwriteAction will always be false since we wan to do a SNMP get and not a SET!

 Create Discovery Rule

Create a Custom discovery Rule called XYZ.Management.Pack.Discovery.MyApp

Target the discovery at Microsoft.SystemCenter.NetworkDevice

For Discovered Classes select the MyApp Class - XYZ.Management.Pack.Class.MyApp

At the configuration tab you need to browse for the datasource, XYZ.Management.Pack.DataSource.Discovery.MyApp, you just created and select it.

Next you need to add the variables we declared in the datasource. Interval - Remember the interval is in seconds 86400 = 1 day so the discovery runs daily. IP - Because we set the target to Microsoft.SystemCenter.NetworkDevice we can simply use it’s properties. Use the arrow to select the IP property of a Network device. CommunityString - Use the arrow to select CommunityString from the target property Network Device. *****TIP! Remember to first delete any values present in the Value box, like IP,Community string when selecting the arrow next to the box. Otherwise the value selected will be just added and you will get something like CommunityString$Target/Property[Type="NetLib!Microsoft.SystemCenter.NetworkDevice"]/CommunityString$ instead of $Target/Property[Type="NetLib!Microsoft.SystemCenter.NetworkDevice"]/CommunityString$

 Create Monitors / Rules links

After discovering our custom class for the application we are now able to create rules and monitors target to the class.

Since the creation of rules and monitors really depend on How you want to monitor your application or device here are links from basic to advanced on how to setup monitoring.

System Center Central

SNMP Series by Pete Zerger

SNMP Support of Devices by Pete Zerger

SNMP Probe Based Monitors by David Allen

SNMP Device simulator by Jalasoft

SNMP Management Pack Example - NetApp by Oskar Landman

Other

SNMP Monitoring by Kris Bash -  http://operatingquadrant.com/

Microsoft

How to create a SNMP Probe-Based Unit Monitor in Operations manager 2007

How to Create a Monitor for SNMP Traps in Operations manager 2007

How to Create a SNMP Performance Collection Rule in Operations manager 2007

How to Create a SNMP Trap Event Collection rule in Operations Manager 2007

How to Create a SNMP Event Collection Rule in Operations Manager 2007

How to Create an Alert-Generating SNMP-Trap-Based Rule in Operations manager 2007

Although the approaches may be the same for most steps in Visual Studio 2008 the reports created in Visual Studio are NOT backwards compatible with Sql Reporting Services 2005. Reports designed with visual studio 2008 can only be used if you are running SQL 2008 reporting services! So for SQL reporting 2005 you should visual studio 2005 instead!

Wouldn’t it be nice to design your own reports with nice looking bars or graphs with your company logo on it ?

Requirements before starting are:

• Visual Studio 2008 which is delivered with SQL 2008
• Authoring Console
• Feeling really artistic!

Before we start with opening the Visual Studio console you will first need to determine which counters you want to generate the report on.

The example will create a custom report for reporting on logicaldisk space. Since this is one of the most asked for and is missing from the default reports.

Counter(s) of interest

We are going to start with % Free Space.

This is the information we need to know to be able to collect the counters:

Counter : % Free Space

Object: LogicalDisk

The other ones are also of interest but to start with we need to know the object and counter to be able to setup a dataset to retrieve the information from the Datawarehouse.

The begin

Open visual studio and follow the steps below to start a new project in which we are going to create the report for disk space.

Go to new and start a new project. Select a Report Server Project and give it a Name.		After Creating the project we are going to create a report within this project. Navigate to Solution Explorer on the right side of the screen. (if not shown go to view and select Solution Explorer) Right Click on Reports and select Add New Item…
Select Report and give it a Friendly Name and click Add.		Now we have a report in our project. Next we are going to add an Item to the report. As stated in the design surface you can add one by using the toolbox on the right or you can right click and select insert.
When you right click and select insert you have the following options you can select. For our example we are going to select a Matrix.		When the Matrix is selected we need to define a dataset. This is going to be the query we are going to use to query the OperationsManagerDW. Give it a friendly name and select New next to Datasource.
The Datasource is the Shared datasource the Reporting server uses to connect to the OperationsManagerDW. The Name is “Data Warehouse Main” Unfortunately Visual studio 2008 doesn’t support datasource names with spaces… so we fill in “DataWarehouseMain” instead. We change this afterwards. Next connection string, simply edit browse your sql server for the OperationsManagerDW. The connection string to you data warehouse is used to test our reports directly from visual studio.		After Setting up the datasource we can add the query we are going to use. For ease click Query Designer… The Query Designer will open and you need to add your query in the box with SELECT FROM

Main Dataset Query

This is the query we are going to use. The SELECT and FROM part are for collecting the data from the Perf.vPerfDaily view which is the view for Daily data from the OperationsmanagerDW.

TIP! If you change vPerfDaily to vPerfHourly you will retrieve the data per hour!

The WHERE part is the part we are filtering the data on. Notice we are going to filter on date @Start_Date and @End_Date which will be the parameters we are going to define. This way we can tell from which date to which date we want to run the report on.

The data is filtered on LogicalDisk which will only retrieve Data from the Object Logicaldisk.

Last we are also filtering on @ServerName which will also be a Parameter we are going to declare for the servername we want to retrieve the data.

Lastly the data is ORDER BY date. This way the data is retrieved in a chronological way.

Well after pasting in the query you can run it by pressing “!”. It will ask for the parameters fill in a start date / end date and server name (FQDN). The query designer now shows the data and how it collected the data by joining the tables. How cool is that and you are starting to look like a developer now already with this cool code and models ;-) After looking over your result. You will notice we are retrieving more data then we are actually going to use in this example. No worries you will probably have enough inspiration after designing the report to use the other data as well! When you are done looking at your developer like screen you can click ok and save your dataset settings.		We are going to create 1 more dataset and after that declare the parameters. First the Dataset, let’s call it DataSet_Servers Use the following query: Select DISTINCT vManagedEntity.Path FROM Perf.vPerfDaily AS vPerf INNER JOIN vPerformanceRuleInstance ON vPerformanceRuleInstance.PerformanceRuleInstanceRowId = vPerf.PerformanceRuleInstanceRowId INNER JOIN vManagedEntity ON vPerf.ManagedEntityRowId = vManagedEntity.ManagedEntityRowId INNER JOIN vPerformanceRule ON vPerformanceRuleInstance.RuleRowId = vPerformanceRule.RuleRowId Where ObjectName = 'logicaldisk' This query retrieves all Server Objects to report on.
Declaring the parameters in the last thing before we can start with designing the report. These are our parameters: @Start_Date @End_Date @ServerName Go to parameters and go their properties.		At the parameters properties for @End_Date set the data type to Date/Time on the general tab. Next Default Values tab and select Specify values. This will set the default values for the parameters when opening the report. For Value click the Function button (fx) and now you are in the expression designer. Go to Common Functions\Date & Time\ and select today (double click). TIP!Also there are examples how to use this function.You can select each to find what it is used for! Function for End_Date which should be today =Today() Do the same for @Start_Date with function =DateAdd("d",-7,Today()) Finally the @Servers at the General Tab select Multiple values.Next open the Available values tab and select Get Values from Query. Fill the Dataset we created DataSet_Servers and fill in both Value field and Label field with Path. Simple use the selection to select the dataset and the values.
Now we can start with the design drag and drop the values from the report data pane onto the Matrix like on the right. You can now run a test report to check which results you get.		When you did test the report you noticed there where many counters and data. First we going to filter the results since we are interested in the % Free Space for this example. To filter the results we need to change the Column Group Countername. Open the group selecting the column and go to the group properties. Now navigate to Filters. Here we are going to filter our results. Click Add to add a filter and in expression select [CounterName] use the = sign as Operator and fill in % Free Space. Select Ok and run the report again to check the results. running the report will tell you how the data is presented and give you a quick solution to be able to visualize what you are actually doing. After Adding the filter we have narrowed the results down to only % Free Space. Except now the result is calculated all results together.
We need to change the results to 1 value which makes sense and probably the most up-to-date one. Select the cell and right click to open the FX Expression designer again. Almost every value in the report has a possibility to add expressions! This makes it very flexible! Now change the expression to the following: =Round(Last(Fields!AverageValue.Value)) The Round function is used to round the number so it’s easier to read instead of a PI like number ;-) The Last function is used to only retrieve the last value. Which is today because we ordered the query on Date we now this is the last number!		The result should now look something like the right picture. By adding the filter on the Countername we only see the counter % Free Space. And by adding the expression in the details part =Round(Last(Fields!AverageValue.Value)) we have the results shown. The screen is just from a test environment and the results are probably different but the basics should look the same. Computer \ Instances running on the computer and free space. The next steps will draw the graph in a more nicer way.

The Designing Part

The designing part really depends on your personal favor but I will show you how you can make your report look more sharp in a couple of minutes.

Let’s add some more to the report. Open the toolbox and drag and drop a Gauge onto the drawing area. Wow aren’t those meters looking sharp! Select the one you want to use and ok. The meter will be pasted into your design as a new object. Simply drag and drop your new meter object into your matrix and let it go in the cell with =Round(Last(Fields!AverageValue.Value)) .		First let’s go to report properties to check and maybe change the page settings of the report. The values given here you should pay close attention since when designing you should always make sure you stay within these boundaries. Especially when you want the report to be converted to like.pdf. When you go over the settings the graph will expand multiple pages which isn’t always nice looking. If you look at the default values here you will notice the width is 8.5 and margins both right and left 1 in this makes your drawing area 6.5 same goes for the height of your page which would be 9. Make sure your designing area is within 6.5 and 9! Simply click on your designing area and go to it’s properties if no properties are shown on the left of the screen click F4 to make them appear. Now change your design area to 6.5 by 9. This way you are always sure you are editing within the page limit! TIP! When you get blank pages it is most of the times because these boundaries are not set correctly!
The matrix should now look something similar. you can expand the matrix now from one point of your designing area to the other and make the gauge more visible. You can select the different objects which make up the gauge graph. The important one is the bar as shown. For both pointers add the expression =Round(Last(Fields!AverageValue.Value)) This will show the %free space collected value but now on the bar!! TIP! when designing the bar first make it look like you want and after this you can edit the size. This makes navigation easier ;-)		After playing around endlessly with colors and settings let’s continue we have a report to make  ;-) Let’s make a page header and footer to hold extra information like title company logo execution time etc. Right click on your design area to add a page header and footer.Here you can add a text box or image. In the text box you can also add expressions! Or drag and drop report properties to the text box. This way you can display logos, a title, creation date, etc.of the report. Save your report as .rdl file and open the SCOM Authoring Console.
Create a new Management pack and go to the reporting tap. Create a new report and give it a name. Next go to the Definition tab and select “Load content from file” Navigate to the .rdl file and import it.		Now you will see the xml version of your report in the authoring console. First remove the first line After removing this line we need to correct the datasource setting. Remove the connection settings Data Source=.;Initial Catalog=OperationsManagerDW         true       And add after the following Data Warehouse Main. TIP! Don’t forget to change the options tab the visible setting to True otherwise no report will be shown!!! Now you can save your report in the management pack. And after this you can import the management pack in your environment.

Result

This post described how to create a report for SQL 2008 reporting with visual studio 2008. Although it takes some time to get the graphical results you want you can now create a custom report.

This report is a simple example of how to create reports using visual studio 2008. I know there are more and possible better solutions and queries to get results but this is for another post ;-)

Have fun with expanding your reporting functionalities and drawing skills!

The Management Pack is a big improvement compared to the old version 1.4 which was basically a SNMP trap catcher.

The Management pack can be freely downloaded from the NetApp Now page. If you are a NetApp customer you should have access.

The official documentation reads

You can do the following with ApplianceWatch PRO 2.0:
• Use your existing storage management tools
• Use one interface to monitor all of your NetApp storage systems
• Simplify data management through integration with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007
• View hardware and storage layout of all of your NetApp storage systems
• Isolate problems using alerts and Microsoft Health Explorer
• Monitor the performance of your NetApp storage controllers using different performance metrics
• Configure deduplication and autosize settings on NetApp flexible volumes
• Launch FilerView from the ApplianceWatch interface
• Connect to Data ONTAP DataFabric Manager servers from the ApplianceWatch interface
• Monitor storage availability and capacity of virtual machines running on Microsoft Hyper-V hosts
• Receive Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) Tips with automatic remediation support

The following is NOT supported

• Traditional volumes are not supported.
• Data ONTAP GX and Data ONTAP 8.0 Cluster-Mode are not supported.

ApplianceWatch supports the following versions of Data ONTAP:
• 7.2.6 or later in the Data ONTAP 7.2 product family
• 7.3 or later in the Data ONTAP 7.3 product family
• 8.0 (7 mode) in the Data ONTAP 8.0 product family

Before we start

Needles to say since you are a good SCOM admin and are fully aware of the use of the installation manual before adding anything in your environment, right? ….. ;-)

Every documentation accompanied by a management pack is not for people who don’t know or for read when you have some spare time because SCOM is watching your environment for you ……but it is a absolute must before doing any importing or adjustments in the environment !

Okay after reading the documentation and knowing the limitations and actions to take we can continue.

Installation

After Downloading the management pack msi you can install (extract) the files.

The Actual management packs which you can import are:

• DataONTAP.mp for general monitoring your NetApp Appliances
• DataONTAP.PRO.mp if you are using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 and want to use PRO tips.

The other files are required to run tasks and to connect to the NetApp Appliances.

Before you can start with importing the management packs you need to setup SNMP on your NetApp Appliances and SCOM and make sure you add the NetApp Appliance as a Network device in your SCOM environment.

The procedure for doing this is described in the manual (a separate download from NetApp NOW). Also notice there may be hotfixes needed in your scom environment dependent on the version you use.

After making sure the NetApp Appliances are discovered and being monitored as network devices you can continue the installation extract (install) the MSI and import the DataONTAP.mp and optionally the DataONTAP.PRO.mp into you SCOM environment.

The next step is to fill in the login credentials for the NetApp Appliances you want to monitor.

You need to target your management server and start the task in the action pane DataONTAP:Manage Controller Credentials the following screen will appear:

Here you can fill in the credentials for the NetApp Appliances you want to use for monitoring and discovering the appliances. Simply select the NetApp Appliance and fill in your credentials. You also have the possibility to test the credentials.

The design of the management pack is not standard this makes it more difficult to understand and manage. By default you would want to store any additional credentials or accounts in the way SCOM is designed in your Run As configuration although the approach is similar.

Personally I think you want to use one approach for standardization and ease of usage which should be using Run As accounts but this is just my thoughts. 

Discovery

After setting the credentials to access the DataONTAP on the NetApp Appliances you need to turn on discovery.You need to turn on discovery on your management server because it is disabled by default. Well let’s take a look at the MP.

The Management pack has 1 discovery rule which is a group populator. This one is activated by default and it is not the one we are after. How does the discovery run?

Actually it is a rule which is doing the discovery, again different approach from most management packs. Let me explain….

The NetApp Appliancewatch management pack uses it’s own libraries, these are the dll files which are extracted into the installation directory of NetApp Appliance watch 2.0 they start with NetAppSCOM…..dll.

Besides the SCOM dll’s there are more which are being used to talk to DATA Ontap. This is the way the management pack is designed and it is not just a couple of MP’s.

This approach makes it hard to tell how the data is being collected or “read” the management pack because besides knowledge of Management Packs you should also have knowledge of the SCOM api and Data Ontap api and know how to read the dll’s files and understand the functions being used in the files!!

This makes it difficult for most people to understand what is happening under the hood. Although this is most of the times no problem, an admin who really wants to know what is being done at the NetApp Appliances can be hard to convince although the management pack is designed by NetApp.

Well back to turning on the discovery for NetApp Appliances. The rule which needs to be turned on by the use of an override is DataONTAP.Discovery.Rule and can be found under rules instead of Object discoveries.

Simply go to the authoring pane in your console select rules and search on “ontap” will reveal the rule we want to override. The override needs to be set at your Management Server, if you have more then one management server you can select which Management Server you want to use to run the discoveries on.

The default discovery interval is set at 24 hours or 86400. If you want, you can force a discovery by the use of a task DataONTAP: Run Discovery task which is targeted at the management server where you turned on the discovery rule.

After the discovery runs  your filers should look something  like this:

He, where did I see this diagram view before ;-)

When all components are discovered they will be monitored. The monitoring of the components is being done by the use of the newly created eventlog AppWatch. The monitors are triggered when certain event id’s occur and when the event occurs the mapping is being done by the UUID of the effected component.

Example:

This is an example of the events being created in the AppWatch log. These events are being picked up by the Monitor DataONTAP.Volume.UsedSpace.Monitor which monitors the AppWatch eventlog for events 4000 – 4001 – 4002 - 4003 The event ID itself will be monitored for the status of the monitor. In this example Event ID 4000 will tell everything is OK.

When an error event is detected the health status changes to warning or worse and an alert is raised. The UUID will tell which instance is having problems. When an event is detected everything is ok again the health status will change to healthy again.

Monitors

These are all monitors within the management pack. This to give an idea of what is being monitored by the management pack.

Also you have the possibility to receive snmp traps but these monitors need to be set by an override.

Pro Pack

The NetApp Appliance watch also includes a management pack to implement PRO tips for SCVMM 2008 R2. This management pack consists of a discovery rule to discover Hyper-v Hosts and virtual machines.

The management pack will send pro tips which can be manually changed or automatically by the MP.

To give an idea what exactly is discovered for a Hyper-V Virtual machine

The cool part is it actually discovers the relation between a Virtual Machine and the NetApp Storage to give a better view on the health status of your NetApp Storage and how it relates to the virtual machines! Nice Job!

The PRO tips which you may expect: 

Conclusion

Great to see more and more management packs from vendors which make the datacenter solutions for your entire datacenter monitoring possible! Especially combining System Center Products together.

Really a step forward compared to the old version NetApp Appliance Watch 1.4! For standard monitoring needs version 2.0 will deliver the basic availability of your NetApp Storage. 

A few pointers though from my personal perspective.

Still no performance collection for disk space which is one of the crucial parts which missing in the Management Pack. Don’t understand why they didn’t include it. Every SCOM project I run one of the first questions I get is does it monitor disk space? And if so can we report on it? Although the base management packs collect disk space performance you will certainly want to know how much storage is left on your storage solution. With today’s virtual environments adding space to a virtual machine is  just a couple of mouse clicks away..but adding space to your storage solution is another thing. Also it is always nice you can prepare your manager in an early stage he has to spend money and show him the graphs to convince him ;-)

Another nice feature would be to relate the luns used on Servers to the luns on the NetApp Appliance like they did in the pro pack. But without SCVMM this is not an option, although it is again one of the reasons to start thinking Hyper-V + SCVMM ;-)

The design of the management pack is not standard which makes it hard to understand what is happening under the hood. Therefore extending it or trouble shooting will be very hard or you will have to have developer like expertise. Maybe an extended expert documentation on the management pack would be really beneficial.

Although I did not have the opportunity to test this MP in a big environment and see it running together with Hyper-V and see it performing. I think this management pack can be a real addition to your monitoring solution with little extra configuration. Would be interested to hear from people who are using the mp about their findings!

And as with most annoying problems the solution was easy, well most solutions are easy if you know them ;-)

 First of all some back ground. There are like 20 domain controllers all running Windows 2003 and where working fine. All monitors running and after configuring everything According to the guide and knowledge available there where still  a couple of domain controllers which kept on complaining about the response times.

If you look at the default thresholds of these monitors:

Configuration
• Interval (sec) default 300.
• Number of Sample default 5. Number of times the threshold has to be exceeded before an alert is raised.
• Threshold Warning (sec) default 5. GC Search time threshold for warning.
• Threshold Error (sec) default 15. GC Search time threshold for error.

When I compared the value’s collected on the 3 effected domain controllers they where way off and when looking at the performance reports they where all around 200 - 300 average which means the response times where around 5 minutes!!!

Since I don’t like and want to adjust thresholds just to have a green view this asked for further investigation.

There are some tasks to check the response times like running the task AD General Response Task  when I ran this task manually it would give back a value way below what was shown in the performance graphs.

So this task was telling me there where no response problems!?!?! But the monitors showed all red with values above 200 and the performance graphs where also showing these values.

After checking the overall performance of the DC’s which resulted in nothing….. time to dive a little deeper into the Management Pack and it’s rules.

A quick review of the management pack in a unsealed version learned the response times where calculated by script based monitors. Which uses the script : AD_Op_Master_Response.vbs

Since you can always get a copy of the script on the agent (Default C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\Health Service State\Monitoring Host Temporary Files) and copy it to a temp location.

If you copied the script to a temporary location open the script and check which parameters the script uses. Now run the script in a command prompt (cscript AD_Op_Master_Response.vbs ) if the parameters are passed correctly you should be able to view the output in the command prompt.

When I tested the script and reviewed the output the values where all again below the thresholds…..  like 0,029

Hmm why where the values in the monitors and performance views so high compared to the values collected directly by the script?

After taking a break and discussing the outcome with a colleague of mine we both simultaneously said the same thing “Well good it be the regional setting aka the good old “comma-dot” mix up! “

A quick investigation of the effected domain controllers learned indeed the regional settings where different!

Domain controller with no latency problems	Domain controller With latency problems.

Changing these settings and on the advanced tab check the box “Apply all settings to the current user account and to the default user profile” and restarting the health service on the effected domain controllers resulted in green monitors with the correct values!

The problem was because these settings where active it caused the comma to jump a couple of places resulting in values of 290 instead of 0,029 when the value’s where converted after the script runs.

Lesson learned with this problem is double check your outcome and make sure data is converted, translated and read in the correct way! If you have strange high values always be sure to be able to explain why the values are high before changing a threshold!