Mother

DHCP 2000, 2003 and 2008 Management Packs for OpsMgr live...

incarnato — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:28:00 GMT

Great work by the MP and web release teams for making this happen.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2694E87C-76E0-417B-AD0F-5897E46FFF88&displaylang=en&displaylang=en

I'll tell you what I like about the MOM team...

incarnato — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 06:05:00 GMT

Sajid is one of our MP developers and just got his author access on the MOM Team Blog. Good to see.

http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2008/08/14/console-task-execution-with-flexibility.aspx

If you are monitoring Exchange 2007 read this...

incarnato — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:27:00 GMT

Health Service restarts even after installing the following hotfixes (monitoringhost.exe) on X64 Systems running Exchange 2007.

950853 A memory leak occurs when you monitor Exchange Server 2007 by using the MOM 2007 agent in System Center Operations Manager 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;950853

951979 Problems occur on a management server that is running System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 when certain management packs are installed
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;951979

You'll see the following event being logged in the Operations Manager Event log.

Event Type:        Warning
Event Source:    Health Service Script
Event Category:                None
Event ID:              6026
Date:                     6/26/2008
Time:                     8:59:55 PM
User:                     N/A
Computer:          SGBD012512
Description:
LaunchRestartHealthService.js : Launching Restart Health Service. Monitoring Host exceeded Process\Private Bytes threshhold.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

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From Microsoft SCOM product development:

On Exchange 20007 servers the .Net runtime (CLR) gets loaded into MonitoringHost.exe. The way Windows performance counters work is that to read a performance counter from an application a DLL provided by that application is loaded into your process. Since some of the Exchange services (ex hub transport) are written in managed code the CLR performance counter client is loaded into our process for reading those counters. The .net runtime performance counter client implementation loads the CLR to handle reading the counters from the managed service.

The CLR handles memory management via a garbage collection system rather than traditional native code where you explicitly allocate and de-allocate memory. In a garbage collection system the application doesn't explicitly release memory. Periodically the garbage collector will run to see what objects are no longer being used and then free up the memory for those objects. The CLR garbage collector is designed to monitor system load so that if there is no memory pressure then it doesn't need to run as often. When the garbage collector runs it will internally release objects and make space for new objects. However, it may not trim the amount of memory it has requested from the operating system if it detects there is no memory pressure on the system. If the system starts seeing memory pressure then the CLR may start decreasing the amount of memory it has asked for.

On large systems like these exchange servers our default private byte threshold of 100MB ends up being too small. Since there is limited memory pressure on these systems the CLR will commit more than 100MB of memory and not de-allocate until there is more memory pressure on the system.

Override the Monitoring Host Rule Threshhold of 100Mb, most customers have had good success with a value of 200Mb however some have chosen to triple the threshhold. There are recommendations to even increase to even 600Mb.

To override this for a specific Agent:

1.) Open the Authoring Pane of the Operations Manager Console
2.) Select Management Pack Objects > Rules
3.) Click Scope and choose Agent
4.) In the Look For: space type 'Private bytes' w/out the quotes and click find now. The rule we want to override is:
Monitoring Host Private Bytes Threshold
5.) Right click on the rule and choose Overrides > Override the rule > For a specific object of type
6.) Choose the agent that you would like to override the threshhold for in the Select Object pane
7.) Select Destination Management Pack, if neccessary create a new MP for these overrides. NOTE: It is not recommended to use the Default Management Pack.
8.) Click the Enabled check box for overrides, ensure that it is set to 'True'.
9.) Click the Threshold check box and enter the new value 209715200 (this doubles it).

The second piece to this is that you will also want to override the value in the 'Health Service Private Bytes Threshold' monitor to send an alert or display health state for these agents.

Thanks to Marc Reyhner, Ake Pettersson for this information.

System Center User Group, Malaysian Edition

incarnato — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:16:00 GMT

My man Raymond Chou is standing up SCUG.MY and I am really stoked abou it. This is the reason we have what I consider a very, very healthy MOM MVP program. These guys are like a MOM SWAT team...

-----

Tech Ed SEA... T-11 days... Defcon 3... but.. i'm a super SCUG!.. :)

On August 12th, 2008 we will be launching the System Center User Group, Malaysian Edition... the SCUG The objective of the community is to enhance the knowledge and skills of its members by community sharing, deep-dive sessions by MVPs and industry experts, open space discussions, 1-day clinics, video blogging and more!

The launch will be held at the Microsoft Auditorium, 29th Floor, Petronas Tower at 6pm on Aug 12th 2008.

Andrew McMurray from Microsoft Australia and Noel Teng from Microsoft Malaysia will be sharing a session on "The Future of System Center" and "Virtualization Rocks". We will have food, drinks and more importantly.. FUN!..

I would like to thank Microsoft, Redynamics Asia and EasySafe for sponsoring the event.

There will be a special launch promo to join SCUG at only RM15 for 2-years. The normal membership is at RM20/year. On top of that, you will receive a LIMITED EDITION SCUG T-shirt, Microsoft premiums and your 1st SCUG event stamp to be redeemable for more gifts after 6 stamps!

If you can't come for the launch and still want to join as a member, send a mail to ask@scug.my

See you guys there!!!

View article...

Clive is all over OpsMgr like ugly on an ape...

incarnato — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:47:00 GMT

http://blogs.technet.com/cliveeastwood/

Monitoring processes in OpsMgr?

incarnato — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 06:31:00 GMT

We are planning to do some improvements in SP2 around monitoring processes. I've talked to our MVPs about this in detail and wanted to see what would happen if I threw this out to the community for comments.

Requirements?

Thoughts?

Boris could write an MP or a tool for OpsMgr that would alert you if monkey's escaped from their cages at the local zoo...

incarnato — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:59:00 GMT

http://blogs.msdn.com/boris_yanushpolsky/default.aspx

Seriously, he has a gang of good stuff on his blog, check it out

If you want to know what's going on in the world of System Center, check out Maarten's blog here

incarnato — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:57:00 GMT

http://www.techlog.org/

I could use a couple Maarten's as well...

About as good as community "how-to's" as it gets, nice work as always Cameron

incarnato — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:56:00 GMT

http://cameronfuller.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

Anders is the man...

incarnato — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:55:00 GMT

http://contoso.se/blog/

I wish I had three of him

This v-SCUG group is all out goodness

incarnato — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:52:00 GMT

I can't say enough good stuff about the MVPs we have in the "MOM" space, what a great community

http://systemcenterusergroup.org/

It usually takes me about 3 reads to get what Marius is trying to tell us...but at the end of the day I am glad he blogs

incarnato — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:49:00 GMT

http://blogs.msdn.com/mariussutara/default.aspx

You should RSS this one

Hot bits :)

incarnato — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:48:00 GMT

Windows Server 2008 Application Server (6.0.6278.22)

Windows Server 2008 Base OS (6.0.6278.22)

Terminal Services (6.0.6278.22)

Exchange Server 2007 (6.0.6363.0)

Key Management Service (6.0.6278.9)

This announcement takes me out of blog retirement...

incarnato — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:13:00 GMT

http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2008/07/28/updated-management-packs-have-been-released-with-server-2008-support.aspx

OpsMgr 2007 SP1 and SCE 2007 SP1 have recently announced support for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 in knowledge base article 953141. Along with the release of this support statement, the first batch of management packs that provide monitoring for the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Operating System have been released to the MP Catalog. This batch of MPs covers the following technologies:

· Windows Server Operating System

· Windows Terminal Services

· Windows Server 2008 Application Server

· Windows Key Management Service

In addition to introducing Server 2008 support, the Windows Server Operating System MP includes the bug fixes detailed below:

· Updated the logical drive discoveries to omit mapped network drives.

· Addressed an issue with the Logical Disk Free Space to prevent it from looking like the thresholds were set incorrectly.

· The state of the configuration of a server now reflects the state of its operating system as well.

· Fixed an issue with the Server Service Configuration Health monitor which prevented it from ever generating an alert.

The same detail is provided in the MP guide, which is included in the MSI package that can be downloaded from the MP catalog. The online versions of the MP guides will be available online soon at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc540358(TechNet.10).aspx.

Note: As described in knowledge base article 954049 you will need to install a hotfix rollup package on your OpsMgr/SCE SP1 environments to address issues on Server 2008. Likewise, in that article under the section “Prerequisites” there is a list of four additional Windows fixes that you need to be aware and that will need to be deployed. One of the fixes should be deployed to systems with the Operations Console installed, and the other 3 fixes are for Server 2008 systems that will be managed by OpsMgr/SCE agents.

System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 (RC0) newsgroup live (microsoft.public.opsmgr.sp1)

incarnato — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 20:20:00 GMT

The newsgroup for System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 (RC0) is now live for our customers that will be installing the RC (bits coming very soon).

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.sp1

Thank you,

-Justin