Monthly Archives: July 2014

SCOM 2012 R2: Update Rollup 3 Released

Microsoft have just released Update Rollup 3 for SCOM 2012 R2 it is available for download here or via windows updates.

There are a few known issues with this update so be sure to read the KB article and test thoroughly before implementing.

Several issues are fixed with this update including those below:

  • A deadlock condition occurs when a database is connected after an outage. You may experience this issue may when one or more HealthServices services in the environment are listed as Unavailable after a database goes offline and then comes back online.
  • The Desktop console crashes after exception TargetInvocationException occurs when the TilesContainer is updated. You may experience this issue after you leave the console open on a Dashboard view for a long time.
  • The Password expiration monitor is fixed for logged events. To make troubleshooting easier, this fix adds more detail to Event IDs 7019 and 7020 when they occur.
  • The Health service bounces because of high memory usage in the instance MonitoringHost: leak MOMModules!CMOMClusterResource::InitializeInstance. This issue may be seen as high memory usage if you examine monitoringhost.exe in Performance Monitor. Or, the Health service may restart every couple of days , depending on the load on the server.
  • The Health service crashes in Windows HTTP Services (WinHTTP) if the RunAs account is not read correctly.
  • Windows PowerShell stops working with System.Management.Automation.PSSnapInReader.ReadEnginePSSnapIns. You may see this issue as Event ID 22400 together with a description of “Failed to run the Powershell script.”
  • The PropertyValue column in the contextual details widget is unreadable in smaller widget sizes because the PropertyName column uses too much space.
  • The update threshold for monitor “Health Service Handle Count Threshold” is reset to 30,000. You can see this issue in the environment, and the Health Service Handle Count Threshold monitor is listed in the critical state.
  • An acknowledgement (ACK) is delayed by write collisions in MS queue when lots of data is sent from 1,000 agents.
  • The execution of the Export-SCOMEffectiveMonitoringConfiguration cmdlet fails with the error “Subquery returned more than 1 value.”
  • The MOMScriptAPI.ReturnItems method can be slow because a process race condition may occur when many items are returned, and the method may take two seconds between items. Scripts may run slowly in the System Center Operations Manager environment.
  • When you are in the console and click Authoring, click Management Pack, click Objects, and then click Attributes to perform a Find operation, the Find operations seems unexpectedly slow. Additionally, the Momcache.mdb file grows very large.
  • A delta synchronization times out on SQL operations with Event ID 29181.
  • Operations Manager grooms out the alert history before an alert is closed.
  • The time-zone settings are not added to a subscription when non-English display languages are set. Additionally, time stamps on alert notifications are inaccurate for the time zone.
  • Web Browser widget requires the protocol (http or https) to be included in the URL.
  • You cannot access MonitoringHost’s TemporaryStoragePath within the PowerShell Module.
  • The TopNEntitiesByPerfGet stored procedure may cause an Operations Manager dashboard performance issue. This issue may occur when a dashboard is run together with multiple widgets. Additionally, you may receive the following error message after a time-out occurs:

Update Rollup 7 for System Center 2012 Operations Manager Service Pack 1 has also been released and is quite a minor update in comparison to the fixes for R2.

Below are the fixes for that update:

  • The Reset the baseline, Pause the baseline, and Resume the baseline actions fail when you run them against an optimized performance collection rule.
  • The DeltaSynchronizationengine work item times out on SQL operations, and Event ID 29181 is generated.
  • Execution of the Export-SCOMEffectiveMonitoringConfiguration cmdlet fails, and you receive the following error message:
    Subquery returned more than 1 value.
  • Time-zone settings are not added to subscriptions when non-English display languages are set.
  • The Operations Manager dashboard experiences a performance issue that is caused by the TopNEntitiesByPerfGet stored procedure.

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SCOM: Community Management pack for monitoring VMware

This management pack was brought to my attention by Mitch Luedy in response to a question I posed about VMware monitoring solutions for SCOM that specifically showed Datastore information. It’s is always great to see the monitoring community coming together to enhance the solution as a whole.

The MP is available as a free download from here and offers Availability and Performance Monitoring of VMware vCenter Inventory Objects as well as state relationships between various VMware objects.

The management pack uses VMware PowerCLI and PowerShell to gather vCenter objects and come with pre-created views such as below:

Views StateView

Screenshots courtesy of http://madscomer.blogspot.com/

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SCOM: Veeam Management Pack™ v7 release and Special Offer!

A name that that synonymous with monitoring VMware in the System Center Space, Veeam has now expanded their capabilities to give us the same depth and richness of features when monitoring Hyper-V.

Previously I wrote about the beta for the new Veeam Management Pack™ v7 adds support for Hyper-V. Well it has now been released and Veeam even has a special offer, you can get it for free!

“Limited Time Offer! Register today and get up to 100 sockets of Veeam Management Pack v7 Enterprise edition to manage your Hyper-V environment at no cost! Offer ends December 31, 2014.”

Here is a quick recap of the new features in v7:

  • Support for Hyper-V
  • Unique dashboards with customizable Veeam widgets
  • Veeam task manager for Hyper-V
  • Capacity planning for Hybrid Cloud
  • Monitoring and reporting for Veeam Backup & Replication Hyper-V environments

Go here for more information and to sign up.

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SCOM: New and updated SQL Management Packs 6.5.1.0

Microsoft has recently release updated management packs for SQL, the new version is 6.5.1.0. The new features and fixes list is available at each of the download links.

These have been updated:

System Center Management Pack for SQL Server 2014: Download here 
System Center Management Pack for SQL Server (2005/2008/2102): Download here

These are new:

System Center Management Pack for SQL Server 2014 Reporting Services (Native Mode):  Download here
System Center Management Pack for SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services (Native Mode): Download here
System Center Management Pack for SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (Native Mode): Download here

As always thoroughly test before deploying into your production environments.

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