Category Archives: SCOM 2019

Silect Dashboards for SCOM

Silect has released an awesome set of dashboards for SCOM and best of all they’re free. You can request your copy here.

All you need to get started is PowerBI Desktop available here, then load the pbix file and edit the data source to point at your SCOM database instances.

Then hit refresh and you’ll have 10 nice health dashboards with an overview of your SCOM environment.

I really like this solution, it’s elegant and easy to setup. Great job Silect.

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SCOM 2019: UR1 has been released!

The much anticipated release of UR1 for SCOM 2019 is here and you can get it from the update catalog.

There’s quite a bit to unpack here so lets have a look

The big changes are of course support for gMSA which I for one have been looking forward to for a while. The security benefits are obvious and I can say while it does work well be aware that it is complex to implement so read those instructions thoroughly.

The one click upgrade experience is also a step in the right direction making things much simpler for the SCOM admin, just note it only includes the server update so you will still need to upgrade your console, reporting etc manually.

See below for a complete list of all the changes

Improvements and issues that are fixed


Web Console Fixes/Changes:

  • State widget now supports sorting by health and age. 
  • Alert widgets can now be searched on Date Time and sorted based upon age and severity.
  • The alert link in email notification when browsed throws an error, “Your session with the Web Console server expired” even though the user was not logged in web console . You will now see the login page post this fix.
  • Alert summary view in SCOM Web console was fixed in size.  This can be expanded as required now.
  • When Alert state is changed to some custom state, then these alerts are not displayed in web console. Alerts with custom resolution states will be displayed now.
  • Few additional scrollbars appear when a customer widget is created in web console or browser window size is reduced.
  • Improvement: SCOM views will load/save much faster than before. 

Unix/Linux/Network Monitoring Fixes/Changes:

  • SCX by default does Info level logging which causes SCX logs to be filled up soon. With 2019 UR1, Warnings and Errors will be logged by default not Info.
  • In the network device monitoring, if the node property is changed to null/empty, it displays the old value of the property not the null value. The actual value will be displayed now which includes null.
  • In a scenario where multiple (~500) virtual network interfaces are running on agent, SCOM sometimes received heartbeat failure alerts for such agents. SCOM will monitor only physical interfaces hosted on these machines. For monitoring virtual interfaces, you need to set “enumvif” to true. 
  • SNMP GET or SNMP WALK resulted monitoring host to crash when the network object ID is equal to ULONG Max. There is an error with event ID 4000 due to this crash.
  • For linux distros servers, when the kernel version >= 4.18, then file system related performance data is shown as 0 in SCOM. This is fixed in FS provider to make it kernel version agnostic and collect file system stat info.
  • Use of Async Windows Management Infrastructure (MI) APIs is default functionality from SCOM 2019 UR1 for scalability improvements.More details here

 Admin Console Fixes:

  • When admin created “one-time maintenance mode schedule” for non-English locales, SCOM console displays an error “The client has been disconnected from the server. Please call ManagementGroup.Reconnect() to reestablish the connection”. Admin would be able to create one-time maintenance schedule now.
  • When SCOM agent is multihomed, then SCOM 2019 MS always displays logon type as “Interactive” for this agent. The correct logon type will be displayed now.
  • Unit monitor to check correct logon type for Run as Account had incorrect name and Operational State.
  • “Operations Manager Products” view in Admin console did not update the “Version” column for the installed component version. This column will now reflect the updated version of all the components listed.

Others:

  • When system proxy is configured on the Reporting Server; proxy overrides are ignored by the “Report Console Watcher Monitor” and “Web Console Watcher Monitor” and as a result HTTP/HTTPS access fails.  With UR1 fix, “Set proxy Direct” parameter of the mentioned monitors can be set to true and URLs will be accessed.
  • SCOM did not discover Windows Cluster which are deployed on servers with IPV6 network only enabled. IPV6 network will be supported for cluster monitoring now.
  • When the Domain controller is moved to a different AD site, then SCOM does not display the correct site name. Any dynamic group which are created for SiteName will also fail

 In addition to these, all the issues fixed in SCOM 2016 UR8 and prior UR for SCOM 2016 are also fixed in SCOM 2019 UR1. Details of the fixes are below.

  • In a scenario where SCOM monitors 100s of virtual machines hosted on a single Hyper-v server; every hour the healthservice.exe of each Virtual machine write into the VM page file simultaneously. Due to this concurrent paging, every hour disk I/O increases and database becomes unresponsive. HealthService.exe now have Memory Trimming enabled by default on an hourly schedule. A registry key is provided to disable the memory trimming and control the duration.

          Registry key is: “HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\Setup\MemoryTrimming”

         Enable – 0 (Trimming is disabled); 1 (trimming is enabled)

         DelayInSeconds – Time period agent waits to start trimming (default is 120s)

         PeriodInSeconds – Recurring period at which the working set should be trimmed (default is 3600s)

  • Historical data do not appear, if input reporting end time is before group creation time. With this fix, historic data for a group (if data is available for objects in the group) would be displayed irrespective of group creation time.
  • Maintenance mode state changes which are recorded in MaintenanceModeStage table requires grooming when table grows. If the table is large, grooming takes longer and the operation times out with SQLTimeOut exception.
  • If a group is renamed in a Management pack, then console shows the new value but Powershell command Get-SCOMGroup returns the old name of group. Database Updates functionality was inconsistent for SCOM group renaming through MP and SCOM Console.
  • CPU Spike issues because of workflows running on all agents at the same time is addressed through script optimization and removing the sync time. 
  • Improvement: Sometimes SQL stored procedure “p_SelectForNewTypeCache” takes long time to complete, and SDK service fails to start. This is fixed and above SQL stored procedure will complete faster now.
  • Improved the performance of SCOM console in listing the groups.
  • Users of a scoped group are not able to use the Console.
  • SCOM console crashes while trying to connect to Azure Log Analytics and Azure Monitor.
  • SCOM Network Device Re-Discovery now probes for SNMP V3 devices too.
  • Agents by Health State report shows duplicate agent names.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented addition of a group in the Storage Spaces Direct 2016 management pack dashboard.
  • Linux agent is not able to get the correct version and port details for JBoss EAP 7.1.
  • An issue that lead to creation of multiple empty temp files in the /tmp directory of Linux servers has been fixed.
  • Fixed the formatting issue with the output for the task ‘Top10 CPU Processes’ when using Windows Management Infrastructure (MI) APIs.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the corruption of /etc/login.cfg file on AIX 7 machines during install/upgrade of the agent.
  • AIX Agent is now transitioned to 64-bit package to accommodate more stack and heap space if needed to avoid any stack/heap overflow which occasionally leads to heartbeat failure.
  • Free memory calculation accommodated appropriately on RHEL-7 platform.

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SCOM: OpsLogix has updated their Oracle Management pack v1.3.1683.0

The great crew over at OpsLogix has a new Oracle MP for us to ring in 2020, it’s available here

What’s different?

Changes

  • Rewritten the complete backend to make usage of a collector service. This way we detach the SCOM modules from the Oracle client resulting in a way less footprint and more performance.
  • Moved the Oracle configuration dashboard from monitoring pane to Administration pane.
  • Rewritten the Oracle configuration dashboard. Please read documentation how to use.
  • Added Opslogix General Reports MP to the install package.
  • The container DB discovery is now by default disabled.

Fixes

  • The connection monitor now only reports an error when it is x times (2 default) in unhealthy state.
  • When creating a connection alert a parameter could not be resolved for the alert description.
  • During getting sysstats information with containing very big numbers the converting to SCOM data could be broken

and yes it is upgradable from  V1.3.0.0 or later

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SCOM: Updated SQL Management Pack v7.0.20.0

A new version of the sql agnistoc MP is out get it here

What’s New

  • Updated MP to support SQL Server 2019 RTM
  • Added filter by edition to “Local DB Engine Discovery”
  • Redesigned DB Space monitoring to improve performance: Enabled by default
  • monitors and performance rules targeting Database which watch for disk space consumption by ROWS Filegroups and Logfiles
  • Redesigned DB Space monitoring: Added two monitors and two performance rules
  • targeting Database to watch for disk space consumption by In-Memory and
  • FILESTREAM data
  • Redesigned DB Space monitoring: Read-only filegroups now count as well
  • Redesigned DB Space monitoring: Disabled by default all workflows targeting
  • Filegroups, Files, Logfiles
  • Redesigned XTP performance counters to make them completely version-agnostic
  • Added attribute “TCP Port” to “SQL DB Engine Class” and updated “DB Engine
  • Discovery” to populate the new property
  • Added summary dashboard for SCOM 2019 Web Console (HTML5)
  • Added support for cluster nodes with disjoined namespaces
  • Added sampling to algorithm of monitor “WMI Health State” in order to eliminate
  • false alerting on cluster SQL Server instances
  • Updated alert descriptions of monitors “Availability Database,” “Availability Replica,”
  • and “Availability Group” (generating alerts still disabled by default)
  • Updated monitor “Product Version Compliance” with versions of most recent public
  • updates to SQL Server
  • Disabled by default monitor “Buffer Cache Hit Ratio” and changed its threshold
  • from 0% to 90%
  • Disabled by default monitor “Page Life Expectancy”
  • Removed monitors “Availability Database Join State” and “Availability Replica Join
  • State” as not useful
  • Updated display strings
  • Revised columns on DB Engine state views

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed: monitor “Service Principal Name Configuration Status” raises false alerts
  • because of case-sensitive comparison
  • Fixed: “Local DB Engine Discovery” crashes when Windows has Turkish locale
  • Fixed issue that caused performance degradation in workflows “General Always On
  • Discovery,” “Database Replica Discovery,” and “Always On System Policy
  • Monitoring”
  • Fixed: “General Always On Discovery” throws errors on environments with several
  • Distributed Availability Groups
  • Fixed monitoring issue in case of Database is replicated by Always On Availability
  • Group
  • Fixed empty property bag when Availability Group has cluster type NONE
  • Fixed wrong target in alerting rule “DB Backup Failed to Complete”
  • Fixed rule “MSSQL Integration Services on Windows: The package restarted from
  • checkpoint file” and its alert
  • Fixed rule “OS Error occurred while performing I/O on pages“ and its alert
  • Fixed: “DB Disk Write Latency” and “DB Disk Read Latency” monitors and
  • performance rules get wrong performance metric
  • Fixed alert description of monitor “WMI Health State”

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SCOM 2019: Updated Azure Management Pack v1.8.0.1

A new version of the Azure management pack has been released you can get it it here

What’s new

  • Enabled Resource Group filtering for subscription
  • Modified Alert description for all Alert types
  • Enabled multi-resource metric alerts support

What’s Fixed:

  • Fixed health state issue to be in sync with Azure portal
  • Fixed ‘unknown’ state issue for metric alert

Note: Upgrade is supported from v1.6.0.7 and v1.7.0.0. Existing template will be honored.

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SCOM: News from Ignite

This year at Ignite SCOM had it’s own dedicated session which is great to see. Here is a summary of the new upcoming features in UR1.

Version Agnostic Management Packs
Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) MP
RHEL 8 Support
One click patching experience
Support for gMSA
Relability and Performance Improvemennts for Linux Agent
Common Management Pack for Linux
Resource Group monitoring in Azure MP
Azure MP Web Console Dashboards

The ones I’m most looking forward to are of course the support for gMSA, with security being so critical in today’s IT real-estate this features adds an additional layer of peace of mind to your SCOM monitoring.

The one click patching experience is also a nice quality of life improvement, I had the privilege to see this in action and I like the direction this is going.

More agnostic management packs are also on the way which will simplify administration of products the same way we’ve seen them improve the SQL monitoring experience.

What do you think of this update? Leave a comment or if you have an idea head over to the SCOM Uservoice https://systemcenterom.uservoice.com/forums/293064-general-operations-manager-feedback and let the product group know.

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SCOM: Updated Management packs for HP Storage

HP has released updated MPs to go with the new version of HP Oneview

It’s a solid update with useful new features such as integration with the new HTML 5 console.

What’s new in HPE OneView for Microsoft System Center 9.4?

The new version is available for download the HPE OneView Partner integration page and the HPE Storage Integration with Microsoft System Center page. It includes the following improvements:

  • HPE OneView for Microsoft System Center v.9.4 the latest HPE Storage array software. For more information, see Integration Matrix
  • HPE Storage Management Pack for System Center v.5.0 supports monitoring of HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage systems with IPv4 and IPV6 connectivity
  • HPE OneView SCVMM Integration Kit v.5.0 supports HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage systems with IPv4 and IPV6 connectivity
  • Support for HPE OneView 5.0
  • The System Center Operations Manager 2016 web console integration is now fully HTML5 compliant. The dependency on legacy frameworks has been removed to enable a predictable, consistent user experience for the web console users

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SCOM: Updated SSRS and SSAS management pack v7.0.17.0

Updates to SQL Server Reporting Services and Analysis Services Management Packs have been released you can get them at the below links:

SSRS
SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (Native Mode)
SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services (Native Mode)
SQL Server 2014 Reporting Services (Native Mode)
SQL Server 2016 Reporting Services (Native Mode)
SSAS
SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services
SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services
SQL Server 2014 Analysis Services
SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services


Fixes and changes for SSRS

  • SSRS 2016: Updated monitoring of Memory Consumption and CPU Usage in order to collect performance data for all subprocesses in addition to the main SSRS service process.
  • SSRS 2016: Updated monitors “Report manager accessible” and “Web service accessible” to consider specifics in how appropriate SSRS 2016 web services work
  • Added support for cases when connection string to SSRS Database is set up the way different from “MachineName\InstanceName” (e.g., <IPAddress,Port>) and SSRS Database is in Availability Group or hosted either by named instance or SQL Cluster instance
  • Improved descriptions of events thrown by management pack to make it easier to figure out error reason
  • Improved error handling and error descriptions for cases when workflows can’t get responses from WMI
  • Improved error handling in workflows that watch for memory consumption
  • Fixed Start/Stop tasks
  • Fixed issue that caused some workflows to throw error events when SQL Server instance hosting SSRS Databases happened to stop operating or refuse connections
  • Fixed issue which caused Reporting Service instance to get undiscovered when WMI didn’t respond to calls
  • Updated display strings

Fixes and changes for SSAS

  • Added performance collections for MDX Query performance counters
  • Added retry logic to some workflows in order to reduce “Category does not exist” errors thrown when WMI fail to respond
  • Improved error handling in workflows that watch for memory consumption
  • Improved descriptions of events thrown by management pack to make it easier to figure out error reason
  • Fixed Start/Stop tasks
  • Fixed issue when “SQLServerInstalled” property was set to “False” if SQL Server DB Engine was of higher version than SSAS instance
  • Updated Dashboards configuration to show tiles for new MDX performance collections
  • Updated display strings

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