Updated HP BladeSystem Management Pack, version 1.6.2 is now available

Download the updated HP BladeSystem Management Pack, version 1.6.2 here.

As I reported in a previous post there were regional settings problem with the Blade Enclosure discovery. This is fixed in this new release.

Version 1.6.2 addresses the following:

Bug Fixes:
Fixed the HP BladeSystem Enclosure Monitor Manager to support the regional and language settings on Windows Operating System.
Fixed the HP BladeSystem Management Pack for Alert Parameter Replacement Failure on Operations Manager 2007 SP1.

LSASS Monitor in Active Directory MP gives false alerts

The AD Processor Overload (lsass) Monitor in the Acticve Directory MP gives false alerts if the LSASS process consumes over 15% CPU. This is caused of a misconfiguration in the Ops Mgr 2007 monitor. The script running the monitor AD_CPU_Overload.vbs have 6 parameters as input. Parameter 4 and 5have been mixed so that the "MaxFrequency"=15 and "LSASSThreshold"=80 (Default values) replaces each other. So instead of alerting for LSASS process consuming more than 80% CPU the monitor alerts for over 15%.
To fix this before a update MP is available make a ovverride for the "AD Processor Overload (lsass) Monitor".

The override should look like this:
Min number of min between alerts:80 (15 Default)
Lsass Threshold(%): 15 (Default 80)

Operations Manager 2007 Performance and Scalability Whitepaper

Download the Operations Manager 2007 Performance and Scalability Whitepaper here.

Brief Description
Operations Manager 2007 Performance and Scalability Whitepaper
This document describes performance and scalability guidelines to consider when planning a Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 deployment

Quick Details
File Name: OM2007_PerfScal.doc
Version: 1.0
Date Published: 4/15/2008
Language: English
Download Size: 291 KB

This documentation can be handy to have when planning an Ops Mgr 2007 deployment.

Need help sorting out what went wrong with WMI and Scripts in the Console?

After implementing the Ops Mgr 2007 you get to the point when adding MPs, upgrading MPs and other changes like upgrading to SP1 gives you some noise in the alert views. Our Ops Mgr 2007 Operators doesn´t like the noise and I think they are in good company. Does anyone like it? Anyway I have done some tweaking with the Console to get the Operation Manager noise, "Script or Executable Failed to run" and "WMI Probe Module Failed Execution" out of the alert log. I have made overrides to these 2 rules and changed the severity to "0" (from "1" Warning). With this value the alert comes as a Information alert instead of warning. To even more easy up the Active Alert log I have removed the Information alert from the default "Active Alerts" view and then created a new "Active Information Alerts" view were all the alerts with severity "0" = Information Alerts ends up.

Now the Operators just looks into the Active Alerts view and are told to not touch the Informational Alerts. By sorting the Alerts in this new "Active Informational Alerts" view by repeat count you can se witch rules on witch systems have the most noise problems? And looking at the end of this sorting you can check for alerts with no repeat count and Age 5 days or so and just close them as "bad luck" alerts. With this method you can keep your Operators in a good mood and it give the Ops Admin a good tool to fix (or report to the creator of the MP) bad scripting or miss configured servers. I would like in future release to have a new Severity for this kind of alerts. The Ops Admin Severity alerts that if they make sense (not all do!) it makes sense just to the Ops Mgr Admin and not the regular Operators.

Good luck hunting down the "Script or Executable Failed to run" backlog :)

Updated Exchange Server 2003 MP

Download the updated Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack here.

Quick Details
File Name: Exchange Server 2003 System Center Operations Manager 2007 MP .msi
Version: 6.0.6278.5
Date Published: 4/7/2008

Management Pack Release History:
3/23/2007 - Initial Release Version 6.0.5000.0
6/25/2007 - Updated Release Version 6.0.5000.11, version details
Microsoft.Exchange.Server.Library.mp 6.0.5000.0
Microsoft.Exchange.Server.2003.Discovery.mp 6.0.5000.11
Microsoft.Exchange.Server.2003.Monitoring.mp 6.05000.11

1/15/2008 - Updated Guide - same version
2/25/2008 - Updated MP Guide and Management Pack. Please refer to the MP Guide for details.
Microsoft.Exchange.Server.Library.mp 6.0.6278.0
Microsoft.Exchange.Server.2003.Discovery.mp 6.0.6278.0
Microsoft.Exchange.Server.2003.Monitoring.mp 6.0.6278.0

3/17/2008 Updated MP Guide and Management Pack. Please refer to the MP Guide for details.
Microsoft.Exchange.Server.Library.mp 6.0.6278.2
Microsoft.Exchange.Server.2003.Discovery.mp 6.0.6278.2
Microsoft.Exchange.Server.2003.Monitoring.mp 6.0.6278.2

4/4/2008 Updated MP Guide and Management Pack. Please refer to the MP Guide for details.
Microsoft.Exchange.Server.Library.mp 6.0.6278.5
Microsoft.Exchange.Server.2003.Discovery.mp 6.0.6278.5
Microsoft.Exchange.Server.2003.Monitoring.mp 6.0.6278.5

MP authoring samples from Boris

Boris Yanushpolsky is publishing examples for creating MPs for Ops Mgr 2007. First out is "NT service based discovery". Read the information and get the example from his blog "OpsMgr++".

Updated info on HP BladeSystem Management Pack

If you are running the HP BladeSystem Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 and use a regional setting that uses "," instead of "." as delimiter, the Blade Enclosure discovery doesn´t work(We are running swedish regional settings and most of the european regional settings have the same problem). A workaround for this until a updated version of the MP i released is to change to US-Regional setting during discovery of the Enclosures and then switch back to your orginal regional setting.

This is tested with the following Versions:
•HP BladeSystem Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 – Version 1.6.15.0
•Hewlett-Packard BladeSystem Management Pack – Version 1.6.0.0

How to:
Install the HP Blade MP (Follow the documentation that follows the MP)
When it is time to run the HP BladeSystem Enclosure Monitor Manager for Enclosure discovery:
1. First change your regional setting to US
2. Restart the HP BladeSystem Enclosure Monitor Service
3. Start the HP BladeSystem Enclosure Monitor Manager and do the discovery.
5. Set the regional settings back to your normal one.
6. Restart the HP BladeSystem Enclosure Monitor Service.

Now everything should work just fine.

Updated Cluster Management Pack

Download the updated Windows Server 2003 Cluster Management Pack here.

You will find more information on what was changed and how to update in Marius Suatras Blog

Quick Details
File Name: Microsoft Windows Cluster System Center Operations Manager 2007 MP .msi
Version: 6.0.6277.1
Date Published: 4/2/2008

Important Notice
If you have installed the Windows Server 2003 Cluster MP 6.0.6277.0, remove the following management pack files prior to importing this management pack:
Microsoft.Windows.2003.Cluster.Management.Monitoring
Microsoft.Windows.2003.Cluster.Management.Library
Microsoft.Windows.Cluster.Management.Monitoring
Microsoft.Windows.Cluster.Management.Library

Release History:
3/6/2008 - 6.0.6277.0 - Original English release
4/1/2008 - 6.0.6277.1 - Updated version, see MP guide for details

Updated SQL Server 2000/2005 Management Pack

Download the updated SQL Server 2000/2005 Management Pack here.

Quick Details
File Name: SQL Server System Center Operations Manager 2007 MP.msi
Version: 6.0.6278.8
Date Published: 3/31/2008

Management Pack Release History:
Initial Release 3/23/2007 Version 6.0.5000.0
12/21/2007 - updated version 6.0.6247.5
3/31/2008 - Updated version 6.0.6278.8

The SQL MP Guide in this download is updated.

Changes in this Update:
• The “Transaction Log Space Free (%)” monitor was made public for both SQL 2000 and SQL 2005 to allow for further customization.
• Some corrections were made and additional detail provided in the “Key Monitoring Scenarios” sections of this guide.
• Removed the hard-coded exception for jobs with a specific name from the “A SQL job failed to complete successfully” rules for both SQL 2000 and SQL 2005.
• Fixed an issue with the scripts used to calculate DB free space which was preventing some databases from having their free space correctly monitored on SQL installations that did not have DBs with contiguous IDs.
• Corrected typographical errors.
• Fixed an issue where incorrect free space values were being calculated for some SQL 2000 databases.
• A fix was made to address issues with collection of performance data from specific instances of Analysis Services.
• Significant changes were made to the “Database Status” monitor in the SQL 2005 MP. The monitor now has three states reflecting good, bad, and neither. The possible database states have been realigned into these categories which will reduce “false-positive” alert volumes specifically when log-shipping and database backups are occurring.