System Center Blog by Russ Slaten

The out of the box Web Application template that exists in OpsMgr 2007 SP1 and R2 is useful but there are situations where it just doesn’t fit. Consider the following scenario: The Contoso Corporation’s global IT headquarters is located in Richardson...

How to remove a retired/retiring DP from all your packages/...

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where an SMS Advanced client ends up getting policy or advertisements from the wrong site, or they are using the wrong MP/DP? This is a very common issue for our customers and determining root cause can be difficult...

Additional logging for SMS 2003...

Methods to delete a client throughout your hierarchy...

If you are running a script via a rule, and that script returns a propertybag, then it is possible you'll want the data returned to show up in the alert description assuming an alert is generated. The syntax for this in OpsMgr 2007 isn't that straight...

The SMS MP Guide actually tells you this: "To specify the location of the SMS installation folder the script uses a system environment variable on the SMS site server. The administrator must create the %SMS_INSTALL_DIR_PATH% environment variable as a...

I recently had the opportunity to learn a lot about SNMPVarBind values and populating those values in the Alert description Field from a monitor and rule. A customer was having difficulty determining the proper syntax to use for this and with the help...

VBScript version of MPGetPolicy.exe...

I recently worked on an issue sequencing an application with the Softgrid 4.1 SP1 and 4.2 Sequencer. After selecting a location to download the virtual environment (after the install was completed) an error would appear "SystemGuard download failed (error...

Introduction to the MP API...

In large environments, with tens of thousands of SMS 2003 clients, inventory may get "lost" for various reasons. An example of a lost inventory is below: An SMS 2003 Advanced Client reports a full inventory upon install The client continues to...

Recently I was working on an issue which involved moving from a custom solution, which used noidmifs to insert data into SMS, to a solution where an end user inserted data directly into WMI and that data was collected by SMS. The requirements for the...

How to submit discovery reports to an SMS 2003 Management Point using the MP API...

Describes how to create Client Configuration Requests (CCRs) on SMS 2003 Management Points (MPs)...

Over a year ago I blogged about the proper syntax required to populate an alert description with data returned from a property bag. The syntax in the blog is correct but the idea of doing this confused some. I will describe below how to accomplish this...

Adding a new DP to all existing packages...

What if OpsMgr is in a state where it is running but not working properly? Maybe your RMS is gray or the notification and alerting systems are down. How do you detect this condition so someone can take action to resolve it? Monitoring the console all...

This entry is part of the following series: URL Monitoring Part I – The Design URL Monitoring Part II – The Classes and Discoveries URL Monitoring Part III – The Monitors Creating the monitors was by far the most complex part of this solution because...

VBScript to post CCR via WMI...

Lists out protected DPs and their configured boundaries...

This entry is a continuation of the following series: URL Monitoring Part I – The Design URL Monitoring Part II – The Classes and Discoveries URL Monitoring Part III – The Monitors After my initial posts on URL monitoring I received...

Recently some of my peers were discussing issues that their customers are encountering with manual reset monitors.  I thought the main points of the discussion were worth sharing. What is a Manual Reset Monitor? It is a type of monitor that detects...

This entry is part of the following series: URL Monitoring Part I – The Design URL Monitoring Part II – The Classes and Discoveries URL Monitoring Part III – The Monitors Each of the 3 web applications has its own class. The applicable discovery queries...

I recently worked on an issue involving a customer attempting to create a mandatory Advert using a C# application. The advertisement worked but wasn't mandatory even though it looked to be in the SMS Admin console. There was also some confusion as to...