To pause script execution for 30 seconds in Windows 2003 and older was easy enough with the script command

sleep 30 

on Windows 2008 and Windows 7, you can use this alternative in your batch files

@ping -30 127.0.0.1 > nul

All in all, it makes me glad we have PowerShell. Since I had the script I'd carried forward from Windows 2003 already written (that used Sleep and EventCreate to trigger a unit monitor in OpsMgr), I didn't want to start from scratch.  But the PowerShell equivalent is simple as well...I just have to convert the rest of the script when I have some free time.

Sleep in seconds

Start-Sleep –s  30

And now, back to work....

Pete Zerger, MVP OpsMgr and Essentials

]]> Sat, 13 Mar 2010 06:12:03 GMT /BlogDetails/tabid/143/IndexId/60799/Default.aspx The answer on dynamic virtual hard disks (or thin provisioning, in VMware terms) has become more nuanced over time. A few years ago, the answer was "not for production workloads". As with many situations, the answer today is "it depends".

In part 1 of this series, Virtual Operations Manager: Part 1 - Should I Virtualize?, we discussed which Operations Manager 2007 roles could and should be virtualized. From this point, we're going to broaden the discussion to virtual workloads as a whole, with info applicable to all System Center products. Really the discussion we're about to have here is just the tip of the storage iceberg. To get the complete storage picture, we have to look at storage drivers, storage controllers and the underlying options for storage architecture. But we'll leave some of these deep discussions of storage for another day.

In This Article

In this article, I will provide some authoritative source material we found in researching this issue in the past few months. I'll provide recommendations and source material for

1) The Case for Thin Provisioning

2) Recommendations from Microsoft (Hyper-V) and VMware (ESX / vSphere) for production workloads

3) Quantitative Information on the difference in performance of dynamic versus fixed virtual disks.

4) Simple, real-world, common sense guidance to help you in choosing which virtualized production workloads (if any) should be thin provisioned.

The Case for Thin Provisioning

First, let's just address why would you use dynamic VHDs in the first place. If I know fixed size disks are faster, why do I want to thin provision? The answer is simple - to save storage space. If you don't care about utilization of your storage, then you don't need to use dynamic disks. But let's face it, SAN storage is not free, nor are the storage architects and engineers we have to pay to design, deploy, migrate, update and tend to this infrastructure. We all want to save storage space.

In Hyper-V, you can create a dynamic VHDs. In VMware thin provisioning can be leveraged within the storage array as well as at the virtual disk level. We're going to focus on the virtual hard disk as common element here (VHD in Microsoft-speak, VMDK in VMware terms).

Microsoft (Hyper-V)

What is Microsoft's recommendation for use of dynamic VHDs in production workloads? We can look at a couple of good sources within MS for answers. There is a short blog post that addresses this question, titled Hyper-V  Dynamic or Fixed Size VHD , by Mark Ghazai [MSFT].

Mark says this:

• Best practice says; “Dynamic expanding VHDs are not recommended for virtual machines that run server workloads in a production environment”.
• Dynamic expanding VHDs will suffer a slight performance impact on writes when a dynamic VHD has to expand. This is one of the reasons why it doesn’t give the exact same performance as a fixed size VHD.

However, both disk types are now supported by Microsoft in production. However, the only reason someone would use Dynamic disks is if they’re trying to save space otherwise I’d still recommend using Fixed VHDs. You can always expand the fixed size VHD (Using Edit Disk option in Hyper-V management Console or PowerShell script) if you need to.

Performance Comparison

The real question is "how much better is slightly better"? What do I lose with dynamic VHDs?

Tim Litton [MSFT] answers this question in Hyper-V and VHD Performance - Dynamic vs. Fixed.

Fixed VHD always performs better than a Dynamic VHD in most scenarios by roughly 10% to 15% with the exception of 4k writes, where Fixed VHD performs significantly better, as shown in this chart.

How do you know where your workload falls in this chart?

Do your own testing. As Tim says "The exact result that a customer is going to see will depend on quite a few variables (e.g. how large and often the reads and writes are, how many outstanding I/O there can be at one time), so performing real-world testing is the best way to assess what impact virtualization will have."

VMware (vSphere) 

VMware has plenty to say on this topic as well. VMware has a whitepaper titled "Dynamic Storage Provisioning, Considerations and Best Practices for Using Virtual Disk Thin Provisioning"

Excerpts: When considering use of thin provisioned virtual disks there are often concerns about its impact on overall virtual machine performance. These concerns often stem from the perception that fragmentation may reduce performance when the entire disk is scanned as well as more frequent updates to the metadata updates may cause increased contention. The next portion will address why both those concerns should not prevent one from considering use of thin virtual disks.

Thin provisioning won’t be an ideal solution for every environment. But when used and managed correctly, it does offer significant benefits to providing efficient and dynamic space allocation that improves the overall operations for many virtual administrators. 

Common Sense Guidance

As you can see, the answer is no longer simply "no". However, I recommend that you only use thin provisioning in specific scenarios.  

• Don't use thin provisioning if you're not concerned about storage capacity...(but who isn't pushing storage to the limit these days?)
• Do use thin provisioning for data (non-database) and application binary volumes. Particularly, server roles that are light on disk I/O will be good candidates (like the OpsMgr Gateway role).
• Don’t use thin provisioning for the system volume of a VM, database-type data partitions, or volumes that will grow data rapidly.

For specific guidance on System Center workloads (OpsMgr 2007 specifically), have a look at Virtual Operations Manager: Part 1 - Should I Virtualize?

Conclusion

I hope you've found some value in this post. I have another post lined up on the deeper discussion of storage architecture. I'll try to follow up with "Virtual System Center Part 3: Storage Architecture" as soon as I can. With MMS 2010 only a few weeks ago, spare time is in short supply, so may be a bit. If you're headed to MMS 2010, I'll see you in Vegas!

In this installment, we'll have a look at the Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) functionality in Essentials 2010, which is provided via SCVMM 2008 R2 installed as part of the Essentials 2010 virtualization management feature. To leverage PRO functionality in Essentials, you  really need two or more Hyper-V hosts in a cluster configuration. Conveniently, Essentials 2010 supports clustered Hyper-V hosts and Live Migration as of Release Candidate.

What is a PRO Tip?

PRO (Performance and Resource Optimization) Tip is a feature that enables monitoring of your virtualized infrastructure and alerting when there is an opportunity to optimize the usage of these resources. A PRO Tip window contains the description of the event that produced the PRO Tip and the suggested remedial action. This feature allows you to better load-balance virtual machines between physical hosts when specific threshold values are reached. Alternatively, you can migrate virtual machines when a hardware failure is detected. Hardware companies such as Dell and HP provide their own PRO packs to provide these tips when vendor-specific hardware errors or failures occur.

Enabling PRO Tips in Essentials

PRO Tips are actually enabled by default in Essentials, but without some of the configuration options you see in the SCVMM Administrator Console. You can right click the "PRO Tips" node in the navigation pane of the Computers space (see figure 1) to enable or disable PRO tips for all your Hyper-V hosts. You do not have the option to enable or disable for individual hosts in Essentials console.

The default settings for PRO in Essentials 2010 are:

• Enabled for Critical and Warning
• Not Automatically Implemented

You cannot adjust either of these settings in the console beyond enabling or disabling for all hosts. Technically, you can configure these settings differently using the SCVMM Command Shell, but Microsoft recommends against making any changes outside the Essentials console without Microsoft guidance.

Viewing and Responding to PRO Tips

PRO Tips in Essentials are presented in the top center of Computers space in the default view. If you right click a PRO Tip, you can select to implement or dismiss, as shown in figure 1.

Figure 1 – PRO Tips in the Computers Space

PRO Tips Knowledge and Detail

The detail of the highlighted PRO Tip appears in the bottom center of the Essentials console, as shown in figure 2.

Figure 2 – PRO Tips Knowledge and Detail

Conclusion

To our mid-market IT friends and consultants advising this audience, I say there is a lot to like about Essentials 2010. Give it try! You can download a copy of the Essentials 2010 RC at www.microsoft.com/sce

Download Locations

• Dell 4.0 Server Management Pack Suite
• Dell 4.0 Client Management Pack
• Dell PRO Pack for SCVMM 2008
• Dell StorageArray 4.0
• Dell Printer Management Pack 4.0

Eric Brodish[MSFT] posted a verbose list of WSUS error codes at http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/archive/windows_update_codes.htm

The list is HUGE, here is a small sample of what you'll see:

How to Essentials 2010 Measure Up?

As a little side note, Essentials 2010 just received an 'excellent' rating from ZDNet UK. Read the full review at

http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/enterpriseapplications/0,1000001814,40067876,00.htm

If you're working with System Center Essentials 2010 and have not yet gotten comfortable with the shortcut keys, they are nice for those of us who prefer the keyboard over the mouse. Here is a list of the Essentials 2010 keyboard shortcuts to streamline console navigation.

AVIcode is pleased to announce that it has been included in Gartner Inc.'s first "Application Performance Monitoring" magic quadrant. The magic quadrant positions vendors according to their ability to execute and completeness of vision. Vendors were evaluated on the five most recognized dimensions of application performance monitoring (APM):

• End user experience monitoring
• User-defined transaction monitoring
• Application component discovery and modeling
• Application component deep-dive monitoring
• Application performance monitoring database

AVIcode is regarded as the market leader in the management of .NET-based applications, offering a broad range of solutions covering all five APM dimensions. 

To be included in the magic quadrant, AVIcode also had to demonstrate that at least 50 customers are using its APM products in production environments and show a global sales presence.  With tens of thousands of servers monitored worldwide, and a complete keyboard-to-eyeball solution, AVIcode earned recogniztion by Gartner and inclusion in the magic quadrant.

Click here to read the full announcement at www.avicode.com.

I was working on a System Center project, needed to retrieve this info, and found some info on MSDN about how to query Windows 2008 Operating System SKUs. In this case, i was checking for Hyper-V compatibility, but no doubt you may want this info for other reasons. There are a couple of ways to do this using WMI Test Utility, WMIC command line or PowerShell. Here are the three methods and a list of Windows 2008 Operating System SKUs.

I'll demonstrate three methods to retrieve this value 1) WMI  2) Command Line 3) PowerShell

1. Using WMI Test Utility

1. From a Run box, type WBEMTEST
2. Connect to namespace root\cimv2
3. Click the Query  button and run the following query

Select OperatingSystemSKU from Win32_operatingsystem

Double-click the result in the query Window (below left), and you should then see the SKU for the installed OS (below right)

2. Using WMIC Command Line Utility

This method is great for Windows 2008 Server Core where you have no UI. At the default command prompt, enter the following

wmic OS get OperatingSystemSKU

3. Using PowerShell

Your final option is PowerShell.  Naturally works on GUI, but PowerShell is available in Windows Server Core only if you are running Win2008 R2!

get-wmiobject -query "select OperatingSystemSKU from Win32_OperatingSystem"

OR

gwmi Win32_OperatingSystem | select OperatingSystemSKU

Hyper-V Compatible SKUs

The following OperatingSystemSKU values are Hyper-V compatible. You can only install Hyper-V if your Windows 2008 install matches one of these SKUs

• 7 = Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition (full)
• 8 = Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition (full)
• 10 = Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (full)
• 12 = Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition (core)
• 13 = Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition (core)
• 14 = Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition (core)
• 42 = Hyper-V Server 2008

Non Hyper-V Compatible SKUs

The following are a couple of the "without Hyper-V" SKUs. I'll add others to this list as I run across them.

• 36 = Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition without Hyper-V (full)
• 40 = Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition without Hyper-V (core)

List all installed hotfixes on local machine

Get-WmiObject -query 'select * from win32_quickfixengineering' | foreach {$_.hotfixid} 

Search for a specific hotfix.

This example will find if KB976749 is installed, returning 1 if yes, 0 if no.

Get-WmiObject -query 'select * from win32_quickfixengineering' | where {$_.hotfixid -eq "KB976749"} | 
foreach {$_.hotfixid}

Check list of remote machines for a specific hotfix

This script reads the comma-delimited list of computers assigned to the variable on line 1. It quietly continues if it cannot connect, and if it does, returns message to screen with message about whether the hotfix is installed.

To run, save in Notepad with a .ps1 extension and run from PowerShell prompt. Update the list of computers with your desired list

$boxes="pzerger-01","pzerger-pc","127.0.0.1"

foreach ($box in $boxes) 
{ 

if (Get-WmiObject -Computer $box -Class Win32_QuickFixEngineering `
-Filter "HotFixID='KB976749'" -erroraction silentlycontinue) 

{Write-Host "$box has KB976749 installed"}

else

{Write-Host "Cannot connect to computer or KB976749  not installed on $box"}


}

Conclusion

Checking for hotfixes in PowerShell is quite easy. Let me know if there are any specific scenarios with PowerShell and hotfixes you'd like to see.

Sample Script

This script provides easy variables to add server name, db name and your SQL query

1. Save in notepad with a .ps1 extension
2. Change the server name and query to desired value
3. Save and run from a PowerShell prompt

$SQLServer = "MySQLServer" #use Server\Instance for named SQL instances! 
$SQLDBName = "MyDBName"
$SqlQuery = "select * from authors WHERE Name = 'John Simon'"

$SqlConnection = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection
$SqlConnection.ConnectionString = "Server = $SQLServer; Database = $SQLDBName; Integrated Security = True"

$SqlCmd = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand
$SqlCmd.CommandText = $SqlQuery
$SqlCmd.Connection = $SqlConnection

$SqlAdapter = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataAdapter
$SqlAdapter.SelectCommand = $SqlCmd

$DataSet = New-Object System.Data.DataSet
$SqlAdapter.Fill($DataSet)
 
$SqlConnection.Close()

clear

$DataSet.Tables[0]

Conclusion

Seems like this could be the basis to get this OpsMgr health check script in motion we talked about awhile back???

Requirements for a SCOM 2007 Health Check Script?

• Event Search
• AD Object Changes
• Exchange AD Object Activity
• many many many more 

Read More

http://blogs.technet.com/jimmyharper/archive/2009/12/10/some-custom-acs-reports.aspx

Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner (SCCP) is formally being discontinued, effective immediately, as it no longer supports the current versions of Microsoft applications it was designed for.  The most recent version, SCCP 2007, is no longer available.   No new versions of this standalone capacity planning tool, as well as any new or updated application capacity planning models, will be developed. 

As an alternative to SCCP 2007 for capacity planning, we encourage you to make use of the following resources:

• Microsoft Exchange Server – Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator, Mailbox Server Storage Design, and Performance and Scalability.
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server/Windows SharePoint Services – SharePoint Products TechCenter, SharePoint Team Blog, and To the SharePoint Blog.
• Microsoft System Center Operations Manager – R2 Design Guide and Sizing Helper.

We recognize that capacity planning/management is an important IT systems management discipline.  We will continue to evaluate how capacity planning/management functionality fits best in our System Center portfolio.  ]]> Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:43:00 GMT /BlogDetails/tabid/143/IndexId/59783/Default.aspx While System Center Essentials 2010 supports management of Microsoft server virtualization technologies, including Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Hyper-V (all flavors RTM to R2), it does not support management of VMware hosts (ESX or vSphere servers)...VMware guest OS can be managed via Essentials agent. This leaves one option – V2V conversion. This is a surprisingly easy task in Essentials 2010, and consists of 3 steps, all of which are detailed in the System Center Essentials 2010 Operations Guide, which can be downloaded from connect.microsoft.com.

While Essentials hides this in the Import Virtual Machine wizard, make no mistake – this is V2V conversion. Since Essentials 2010 leverages VMM 2008 R2 for virtualization management, this is not a problem. This functionality is part of VMM already.

High Level Steps

1. Power down your VMware guest and copy to Essentials Library Share
2. Launch the Import Virtual Machine wizard
3. Select your VMware guest from the list of Virtual Machines

Test Details and Results

The result? Success on the first try. While I am not always happy with the level of simplification within Essentials, this is one area where the team is making good progress in providing a simple process in spite of the complex enterprise technologies beneath...

I used a 15GB Windows 2003 64-bit guest. I actually used a VMware template and renamed the .vmxt file with a .vmx extension. I was pleased to see this did not bother Essentials at all. Not only was the the conversion successful, it was pretty fast.Here's a snapshot of job detail from Virtual Machine Manager.

You can see the end-to-end process including  conversion of the vmdk (VMware's virtual hard disk format) to VHD and V2V conversion right around 11 minutes.

Conclusion

To our mid-market IT friends and consultants advising this audience, I say there is a lot to like about Essentials 2010. Give it try! You can download a copy of the Essentials 2010 RC at www.microsoft.com/sce

What applications does it check  for?

The periodic scan checks to see if any of the following applications are present on SCE-managed computers, but for which the management pack is not installed. You can tell SCE to stop warning you above applications you don't want to monitor...cannot imagine you'd do that very often.

• Server OS: Windows Server 2008 R2, 2008, 2003
• Client OS: Windows 7, Vista, XP
• RDBMS: SQL Server 2008, 2005
• Active Directory 2008, 2003
• Exchange 2003, 2007, 2010
• Virtual Server 2005
• Hyper-V
• VMM 2008 R2, 2008
• WSUS
• DPM
• Network Monitoring

Can I change which applications it checks for?

No. At this time, Microsoft is the only one who can change the list of applications for which the Recommended Monitoring scan.

How do I configure this feature?

You  don't need to. As long as you don't tell Essentials not to, this feature is working for you every day. If you look in the Administration –> Settings you'll find the Recommended Management Packs node. The interface is shown in figure 1. This window will be empty....unless you're missing a management pack that should be installed. I removed the ADMP from my lab and then clicked the hyperlink on the summary screen of the Administration space to force an immediate scan and bingo – there it is!

Figure 2. The Rule – Recommended Monitoring Discovery for Management Pack Imports

Conclusion

If you're a mid-market admin or a  consultant to mid-market companies, there's a lot to like about System Center Essentials 2010. I encourage you to check it out. You'll find a link on the Essentials  homepage at http://www.microsoft.com/sce

• Database Maintenance – Reindexing and defragmentation of the Updates database
• Decline Unneeded updates (this is a good one!)
• Remove updates Essentials is no longer using
• Update cancelled or renewed subscriptions

And the piece that ties it all together is the Scheduled Maintenance checkbox, that allows administrators to schedule this recurring maintenance. As Ron Popeil (Ronco) says, "set it and forget it". It's on auto-pilot and SCE 2010 is keeping it clean without your intervention.

Where to find it

Goto Administration Space –> Settings and look in the Update Management category)

Conclusion

For mid-market IT support folks without time to sweat the small stuff, this is one of many great additions in Essentials 2010. Give Essentials 2010 a try – download from the product homepage at http://www.microsoft.com/sce

• Agents Currently Down (grey agents)
• Total Database Size (OpsMgr and DW)
• Top Performance Data Insertions (per object / counter / instance)
• Number of Alerts Per Day
• Computers Generating Most Events

One thing all these queries have in common is that they are much more useful when used routinely as part of a daily process. And once you see a few of these in single click reports, I think you'll appreciate their convenience in maintaining a tidy OpsMgr environment.

Previous Installments

• OpsMgr Database Hygiene: Monitoring database insertions to keep your infrastructure tuned
• OpsMgr Database Hygiene Part 2: Table Size Reporting and what this information reveals...
• OpsMgr Database Hygiene Part 3: Identifying recently noisy unit monitors
• OpsMgr Database Hygiene Part 4: Identifying Rules and Instances Generating the Most Alerts

SQL Queries

Below are the queries with a brief description of their significance.

Agents Currently Down (grey agents)

Run this query for a list of agents are not reporting into their management server. Andreas Zuckerhut wrote a PowerShell query that does the same thing HERE.

SELECT bme.DisplayName,s.LastModified as 'LastModified (UTC)', 
dateadd(hh,-5,s.LastModified) as 'LastModified (Local Time)' 
FROM state AS s, BaseManagedEntity AS bme 
WHERE s.basemanagedentityid = bme.basemanagedentityid 
AND s.monitorid 
IN (SELECT MonitorId FROM Monitor WHERE MonitorName = 'Microsoft.SystemCenter.HealthService.ComputerDown') 
AND s.Healthstate = '3' AND bme.IsDeleted = '0' 
ORDER BY s.Lastmodified DESC

Total Database Size (OpsMgr and DW)

Operations Manager requires 40% free space in its databases for nightly maintenance to run successfully. Retrieving SQL database size AND free space takes some work. There is a brilliant query that provides everything you need to check your database size and free space. Get it at  http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1426

Top 100 Performance Data Insertions (per object / counter / instance)

Performance data generally the top consumer of space in the Operational database. It's a good practice to have a look at the big consumers of database space and consider disabling collection rules for counters of no interest to your support teams. A must to get some input from your team on these decisions.

select top 100 pcv.ObjectName, pcv.CounterName, count (pcv.countername) as Total 
from performancedataallview as pdv, performancecounterview as pcv 
where (pdv.performancesourceinternalid = pcv.performancesourceinternalid) 
group by pcv.objectname, pcv.countername 
order by count (pcv.countername) desc

Number of Alerts Per Day

This is a good indicator of how well-tuned your OpsMgr management packs are tuned. I believe 50 alerts per day per 1,000 agents was the goal I saw mentioned by someone from Microsoft. Bottom line is tune tune tune until you have alert traffic down to mostly actionable alerts.

SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), TimeAdded, 102) AS DayAdded, COUNT(*) AS AlertsPerDay 
FROM Alert WITH (NOLOCK) 
WHERE TimeRaised is not NULL 
GROUP BY CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), TimeAdded, 102) 
ORDER BY DayAdded DESC

Computers Generating Most Events

This query quite simply shows us which computers are consuming the most database space with collected events. Run this one against either the Operational database (OperationsManager).

SELECT top 20 LoggingComputer as ComputerName, COUNT(*) AS EventTotals 
FROM EventallView with (NOLOCK) 
GROUP BY LoggingComputer 
ORDER BY TotalEvents DESC

Remaining Installments

At this point, we're down to processes and reports where these queries come in handy...

• Next time, we will look at a troubleshooting flowchart to help define a process for leveraging this information
• We'll then wrap up the series with a couple of sample reports to demonstrate how to more conveniently collect and present this information

Previous Installments

• OpsMgr Database Hygiene: Monitoring database insertions to keep your infrastructure tuned
• OpsMgr Database Hygiene Part 2: Table Size Reporting and what this information reveals...
• OpsMgr Database Hygiene Part 3: Identifying recently noisy unit monitors

In this installment, we'll take a quick look at identifying rules generating the most alerts, as well as the monitored object triggering the alert rule most often. After all, it could be a widespread need to tune the rule, or it could simply be a one or two agents where the rule is being triggered. This can help you identify how you need to target your override – to an entire class, a group of objects, or simply to a couple of problem instances. 

Options for Identifying "Noisy" Rules

When trying to find the rules generating the most alerts in your environment, you can look at it a few different ways. A couple of these queries focus on the rules themselves, while the third also does some grouping on the object being monitored as well.

• Noisiest Rules by Alert Count
• Noisiest Rules by Repeat Count
• Noisiest Rules by Repeat Count AND Instance (the object being monitored)

The first couple of queries appear on a couple of different blogs (including the great and powerful Kevin Holman) and the last couple are variations I've derived to get a deeper slightly deeper understanding of where exactly the alert noise is coming from (useful in larger environments to be sure)

Top 10 Rule-Generated Alerts in an Operational Database (by Alert Count)

SELECT TOP 10 SUM(1) AS AlertCount, AlertStringName, AlertStringDescription, MonitoringRuleId, Name 
FROM Alertview WITH (NOLOCK) 
WHERE TimeRaised is not NULL AND IsMonitorAlert = 0 
GROUP BY AlertStringName, AlertStringDescription, MonitoringRuleId, Name 
ORDER BY AlertCount DESC

 Top 10 Rule-Generated Alerts in OperationsManager Database (by Repeat Count)

SELECT TOP 10 SUM(RepeatCount+1) AS RepeatCount, AlertStringName, AlertStringDescription, MonitoringRuleId, Name 
FROM Alertview WITH (NOLOCK) 
WHERE Timeraised is not NULL AND IsMonitorAlert = 0 
GROUP BY AlertStringName, AlertStringDescription, MonitoringRuleId, Name 
ORDER BY RepeatCount DESC

In the results, you'll notice the rule generating the most alerts (in my small lab) by RepeatCount shows a total of 3,826 occurrences. If this is spread

Top 10 Alerts in Operational Database (by Repeat Count AND Target)

This query adds the MonitoringObjectFullName field to the grouping, which then shows us the object / computer from which the alert is being generated often. This allows us to make a more informed tuning targeting decision when creating our overrides.

SELECT TOP 10 SUM(RepeatCount+1) AS RepeatCount, AlertStringName, AlertStringDescription, 
MonitoringRuleId, Name, MonitoringObjectFullName  
FROM Alertview WITH (NOLOCK) 
WHERE Timeraised is not NULL AND IsMonitorAlert = 0 
GROUP BY AlertStringName, AlertStringDescription, MonitoringRuleId, Name, MonitoringObjectFullName  
ORDER BY RepeatCount DESC

SELECT TOP 10 SUM(RepeatCount+1) AS RepeatCount, AlertStringName, AlertStringDescription, MonitoringRuleId, Name, 
MonitoringObjectFullName  
FROM Alertview WITH (NOLOCK) 
WHERE Timeraised is not NULL AND IsMonitorAlert = 0 
AND AlertStringName = 'Service Check Data Source Module Failed Execution' 
GROUP BY AlertStringName, AlertStringDescription, MonitoringRuleId, Name, 
MonitoringObjectFullName  
ORDER BY RepeatCount DESC

Hopefully you've found some of the info in this post useful. Below I've mapped out what's left in the series below, which we should wrap up over the next couple of weeks.

• In the next installment, we will look at some additional queries useful to daily operations.
• Following that we'll look at a troubleshooting flowchart to help define a process for leveraging this information
• We'll then wrap up the series with a couple of sample reports to demonstrate how to more conveniently collect and present this information

While I believe more is yet to be done, I believe the release candidate takes steps in the right direction, with feature additions I believe most anyone would agree are useful additions to the Essentials v2 product.

What's New in Virtualization Management in Essentials 2010 RC?

There are a couple of new features worthy of mention are complementary features absolutely critical to a high-availability virtualization infrastructure. The mid-market companies we work with want highly available business services just like the large enterprise, so these are smart (and necessary) feature additions in my opinion. I do have some additional feedback to submit on virtualization management in the RC, but I like where things are headed.

Cluster Support

Cluster support means Quick Migration and Live Migration, which are important for failover and high availability scenarios. You can now manage Hyper-V cluster servers with the new CSV file system and high availability virtual machines directly from Essentials 2010.

PRO Integration

Performance and Resource Optimization is a feature of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (RTM and R2) that allows you to tie specific System Center Operations Manager alerts to remediation actions. For example, PRO can load-balance virtual machines between physical hosts when specific thresholds are exceeded, or it can migrate virtual machines to a host on a different physical computer after a hardware failure. Out of the box, PRO Integration is enabled in at both the CRITICAL and WARNING levels, and will display recommended remediation actions in the Essentials console, (called PRO Tips). These do require administrator response to the PRO Tip in the current configuration, which is a safe option for most use case scenarios.

If you  wish, you can actually disable PRO tips directly from the Computers space of the Essentials 2010 console

Conclusion

Essentials 2010 has a high standard to meet in VMM 2008 R2 in terms of ease of use and functionality, but this is a good step in the right direction. I You can download a copy of the Essentials 2010 Release Candidate from the Microsoft website. Download, install and check out the Release Candidate here

As a user of Microsoft Online Services, I noticed this today on the MS Online Services Team Blog

Microsoft Online Services is releasing a new version of the Microsoft Online Services Sign-In application (version 1.0.1423.65). This new version includes bug fixes and new capabilities announced via this Team Blog in the December Service Update. The capabilities include support for additional languages as well as support for service lifecycle prompts within the Sign-In application; these prompts provide notification about the status of your subscription

The new version of the application will be available from the Microsoft Download Center for users and IT administrators that wish to manually download and install the application...

Read more at http://blogs.technet.com/msonline/archive/2010/01/25/new-sign-in-application-and-update-notifications-from-the-application.aspx

Essentials 2010 delivers new functionality to manage your server virtualization infrastructure. Because virtualization concepts (and the VMM 2008 R2 functionality leveraged by SCE 2010) may be somewhat unfamiliar to some Essentials administrators, a bit of reading may be required initially to bring yourself up to speed. Here are a couple questions that came up in conversation recently:

Why when I try to mount an ISO can I not browse to the folder where I store my ISO files? How do I add ISO files so I can view them in the Essentials console?

When you attempt to install software on your virtual machines in Essentials, you will discover that you cannot simply browse to any old ISO file you like. This is because Essentials communicates with Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (via PowerShell) to determine what ISO files are in the Library Share(s) in the VMM installation. (Read more about what a Library Share is HERE).

In this post, we'll take a quick look at

• How to mount an ISO to a virtual machine in Essentials 2010
• How to add ISOs to the library if they are not already present

We'll do this all through the Essentials console, as the VMM 2008 Admin console is not available. Even if it were, administering VMs and Hyper-V hosts outside of the Essentials console would not be supported by Microsoft, and in some cases can cause issues with Essentials synchronizing the current state and configuration with VMM components.

To Mount an ISO to a Virtual Machine in SCE 2010:

• In the Computers space of the Essentials console, select the Virtual Machines node
• Right a virtual machine, select Properties (see figure 1 below)
• Select the 'use ISO image' radio button
• Select your ISO image from the drop down

But what if your ISO does not appear in the list?

Read on, steps for adding an ISO file to the Library Share shown below

Figure 1. Virtual Machine Properties in Essentials 2010 console

To Add an ISO to the Library Share in Essentials 2010

• In the Computers space of the Essentials console, select the View Library Folder (in the Actions pane at right – see figure 2 below)
• Copy and paste the ISO into the Library Folder
• Then click Refresh List (in VM properties shown in figure 1 above) to refresh the list of ISO files available to your VMs. VMM normally refreshes the inventory of the Library Share once an hour, but the Refresh List button forces an immediate refresh.
• You should now be able to select and mount your ISO file.

Figure 2. Virtualization Task Options in Actions pane of Essentials 2010 console

Conclusion

Essentials 2010 delivers useful new functionality for managing your Hyper-V virtualization infrastructure, but with new features comes a learning curve to get up to speed. Stay tuned for more guidance on virtualization management in Essentials 2010 in future posts.