Monthly Archives: March 2013

How to get Knowledge Editing to work in Operations Manager 2012 with Office 2010

If, like me, you have tried to add company knowledge in SCOM 2012 you may have run into a few errors.

In my case it was “Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime is not installed.”

Here is a great article from SatyaVel on how to get knowledge editing to work (http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2012/10/10/how-to-get-knowledge-editing-to-work-in-operations-manager-2012-with-office-2010.aspx)

Steps below are for my record:

The Workaround:

Step 1: Install Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition Runtime Link to download VSTO 2005 SE: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=24263

Step 2: Install Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime Link to download VSTO 2010 (64 or 32): http://www.microsoft.com/en-za/download/details.aspx?id=35594 Note depending on the version of Office 2010 you have installed you will need to install the x64 or x32 version of VSTO 2010.

Step 3: Reboot the OpsMgr Console machine. Note there is not prompt in the VSTO setup requiring you to reboot but this is something you have to do otherwise it will not work.

Step 4: Replace the Knowledge.DOT file found in install path:\\Program Files\System Center 2012\Operations Manager\Console with Knowledge.DOT file attached to this blog

Step 5: Replace the Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Monitoring.Console.exe configuration file found in install path:\\Program Files\System Center 2012\Operations Manager\Console with the Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Monitoring.Console.exe file attached to this blog

 

KnowledgeEditingNewFiles

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SCOM issue discovering SQL Instances / Databases

 

There appears to be an issue when trying to discover certain SQL 2008 instances with SCOM. Which is related to MOF data not being registered in the WMI repository correctly when SQL is installed.

The error that you will see in your Operations Manager event log is:

DiscoverSQL2008DBEngineDiscovery.vbs : The Query ‘select * from SqlService where SQLServiceType =’1” did not return any valid instances. Please check to see if this is a valid WMI Query.. Invalid class

I’ve had success with the below solution:

From an elevated command prompt, browse to the folder “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Shared”

Run mofcomp sqlmgmproviderxpsp2up.mof

Restart your SCOM Agent on the server.

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Moving your OperationsManager database – SCOM 2012

Recently I had to move our OperationsManager database to a different server as part of testing a disaster recovery plan. While the Microsoft procedure for this (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh278848.aspx) is quite in-depth there is something to be aware of if you upgraded your environment from SCOM 2007.

Step 8 will ask you you to update the table dbo. MT_Microsoft$SystemCenter$ManagementGroup in your OperationsManager database however if you upgraded this table does not exist. Instead you will need to update the old SCOM 2007 management group table dbo.MT_ManagementGroup.

Step below:

Update the operational database with the new database server name.

  1. Open SQL Server Management Studio.
  2. Expand Databases, OperationsManager, and Tables.
  3. Right-click dbo. MT_Microsoft$SystemCenter$ManagementGroup (or dbo.MT_ManagementGroup if you upgraded from SCOM 2007), and then click Edit Top 200 Rows.
  4. Change the value in the SQLServerName_6B1D1BE8_EBB4_B425_08DC_2385C5930B04 column to reflect the name of the new SQL Server-based computer.
  5. Save the change.

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SCOM 2012 SMS notifications

This article is about an issue experienced with SCOM SMS notifications after upgrading from SCOM 2007 R2 to SCOM 2012. If you are looking for how to setup SMS notifications in SCOM in general I’d recommend this great article by Jeremy Pavleck (http://www.pavleck.net/2009/04/configuring-sms-in-opsmgr/)

We use a GSM modem in order to send alerts via SMS to our engineers. After upgrading to SCOM 2012 however this method stopped working and we started getting the following alert in the console.

Notification subsystem failed to locate (discover) devices/servers to use to send notification over ‘SMS’ protocol or no devices/servers were provided in configuration. All notifications for ‘SMS’ protocol will not be sent. Rule id: Subscriptionaad09d28_a5b8_4b24_ad06_7b0145a34e79

This was quite strange as testing with the modem software, it was possible to successfully send a test SMS.

As it turns out the issues lies with the Notification Resource Pool, in order to get SCOM to successfully send SMSs again I had to switch the  resource pool to manual membership and remove all management servers from the pool with the exception of the one with the modem attached. Now everything is working again.

 

pools yo

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Forcibly removing a SCOM agent that cannot be uninstalled by normal means

During our SCOM 2012 upgrade I came across some 2007 agents would not upgrade to 2012 due to being unable to complete the uninstall portion of the agent installer.

Errors we experienced  included corrupt MSIEXEC packages and a rollback of the 2012 agent upgrade with the message “unable to install performance counters.”

After attempting manually uninstalling from Add / Remove programs as well as the SCOM 2007 removal tool with no success we came across a tool called MSIZAP. (Thanks to Jonathan Almquist for his great blog post pointing us in the right direction)

The following process will allow you to remove the SCOM agent from your servers which will in turn allow you to install your new 2012 agent:
As always backup your registry before attempting any process that makes changes to it.

  1. Download MSIZAP and copy to a location on the affected computer.
  2. Find the product code, which is a GUID that is required for the MSIZAP product code switch.  This can be found by opening the registry and navigating to:HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

With the Uninstall key highlighted, click on Edit > Find, and look for the string System Center Operations Manager.  Open the UninstallString string value, and copy the GUID.  Include the squiggly brackets.

scom code

3. Open an elevated command prompt and run the program as follows:

msizap.exe t {product code}

Examples:

SCOM 2007 product code 25097770-2B1F-49F6-AB9D-1C708B96262A

SCOM 2012 product code 5155DCF6-A1B5-4882-A670-60BF9FCFD688

Wait until this process has completed..

4. Delete the SCOM program files, usually located under “%ProgramFiles%\System Center Operations Manager 2007”. Some files may be locked those can be ignored.

5. Open the registry, search for the Management Group name

6. Delete the Microsoft Operations Manager key that the management group name is part of

MG

7.Open the registry and navigate to:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services

Delete the following registry entries:

healthservice
opsmgr*
MOMConnector
System Center Management APM (2012 only)

8. Reboot the server

You will now be able to install your agent manually or with your console.

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Troubleshooting UNIX/Linux Agent Discovery in System Center 2012 – Operations Manager

The link below is an extremely useful article when is comes to troubleshooting your Unix / Linux discoveries with SCOM 2012.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4966.troubleshooting-unixlinux-agent-discovery-in-system-center-2012-operations-manager.aspx

Something I came across which I did not see in this article, you might get the following error during your discovery:

Unexpected DiscoveryResult.ErrorData type.  Please file bug report. ErrorData: Microsoft.SystemCenter.CrossPlatform.ClientLibrary.MPAbstractions.InvalidWSManTaskResponseException Failed to parse output from WSMan discovery. Output from task was: <DataItem type=”Microsoft.SystemCenter.WSManagement.WSManData” time=”2013-02-26T15:35:00.1849706+02:00″ sourceHealthServiceId=”16F56055-5671-604C-AF9D-088444BA4B6E”><WsManData><ErrorCode>0x800703fa</ErrorCode><ErrorMessage>Illegal operation attempted on a registry key that has been marked for deletion. </ErrorMessage></WsManData></DataItem>. at System.Activities.WorkflowApplication.Invoke(Activity activity, IDictionary`2 inputs, WorkflowInstanceExtensionManager extensions, TimeSpan timeout) at System.Activities.WorkflowInvoker.Invoke(Activity workflow, IDictionary`2 inputs, TimeSpan timeout, WorkflowInstanceExtensionManager extensions) at Microsoft.SystemCenter.CrossPlatform.ClientActions.DefaultDiscovery.InvokeWorkflow(IManagedObject managementActionPoint, DiscoveryTargetEndpoint criteria, IInstallableAgents installableAgents)

 If this happens all you need to do is restart your SCOM services on the management server that is running your discovery, it will then complete.

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