Category Archives: Console

SCOM: Dashboards are blank when opened in a particular console

It’s always the bugs you come across when you are trying to do something else that can be the most frustrating. Today while creating some dashboards for one of my clients the views returned blank after saving them.

I then had a look at the SQL built in dashboards to see how widespread this issue was and had the same results. The dashboard pane was blank and the tasks also did not display.

dashie

First I tried restarting the console with the /clearcache command and this usually address display issues and had the same result.

I then tried a console on a different server and then I tested using the web console both loaded the dashboards properly . So I was dealing with a server issue or a profile issue.

A bit of research suggested that sometimes this problem can be caused by a corrupt .net installation. As this requires change approval in order to address I first tested the profile option by logging on to the same server, where I experienced the issue with another user account. This time the dashboards loaded correctly so it’s probably not a .net issue.

Considering that /clearcache didn’t work I wanted to first try and remove the momcache.mdb cache file located in C:\Users\<user account>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Monitoring.Console in order to test all options before recreating the user profile.

After deleting momcache.mdb and re-opening the console all the dashboards now loaded correctly.

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SCOM: Supercharge console performance

I came across a recent article by Marnix Wolf and S.Carrilho regarding a little known SQL setting known as Max Degree of Parallelism (MDoP)

When SQL Server runs on a computer with more than one microprocessor or CPU, it detects the best degree of parallelism, that is, the number of processors employed to run a single statement, for each parallel plan execution. You can use the max degree of parallelism option to limit the number of processors to use in parallel plan execution.

This becomes an issue on servers with hyper-thread enabled processors, as by the nature of hyper-threading the system thinks that there are more cores available then there physically are.

This setting can be found under SQL Server advanced properties:

mdop

In order to calculate the recommended value for this setting we need to use the MDoP calulator which makes use of two queries:

1. Output of following query from the SQL Server instance: 

SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT memory_node_id) AS NUMA_Nodes FROM sys.dm_os_memory_clerks WHERE memory_node_id!=64

2. Launch Powershell and get the output of following PS command:
Get-WmiObject -namespace “root\CIMV2” -class Win32_Processor -Property NumberOfCores | select NumberOfCores

3. Input these value into the calculator:

mdopcalc

In this example the SQL query returned a value of 1 and the PS returned a count of 4 cores, the calculator recommends an MDoP setting of 4.

I’ve had situations in the past where no amount of tweaking seemed to improve console performance and this certainly a factor I will be taking into account in the future. Definitely give Marnixs’ article a read as he covers the topic in more detail with additional findings from his field experience.

There are other ways to improve console performance, I will combine them together in a future blog post about complete console tuning.

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SCOM 2012 Improving console performance when creating dashboards views

The following registry change will improve your SCOM 2012 console performance overall but I’ve notived a particular improvement when creating dashboard views.

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\console\CacheParameters\PollingInterval

The value can be from 0 to 10. 0 will disable automatic refresh and require using F5 to refresh manually. The every incriment will increase the console refresh period by 15 seconds to a maximum of 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

 

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SCOM 2012 Specified cast is not valid when opening run as account properties

Earlier today I received the following error in SCOM 2012 SP1 when trying to open a Run As Account in order to add a new server for distribution

“Specified cast is not valid”

Clicking ok on the error brings up the run as properties but the distribution list is empty.

This error seems to be caused when an agent is deleted from the console and doesn’t get removed properly from the run as distribution. If you are able to, re-approving the agent does fix the error allowing you to remove that device from distribution before deleting it again.

However if the server is no longer availible (due to being decomissioned or just plain crashing) the following steps, courtesy of Blake Wilson will help:

  1. Create a list of your servers which use the affected Run As Account.
  2. Rename the current Run As Account to “Run as Account – Old” or similar.
  3. Created a new Run As Account with the name and credentials of the orgional, then distribute to all of the servers from step 1.
  4. Assign the new Run As Account to all of the Run as Profiles associated with the origional one. The easiest way is to edit the existing entry and select the new Run As Account.
  5. Once you’ve confirmed everything is working you can safely remove the old Run As Account.

 

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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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How to search for more then 500 objects in the SCOM console group and report add objects fields.

The other day I needed to add a large amount of objects (860) to an availability report. After the report ran I noticed that only 500 objects were present in the report view, as it turns out this is by design.

In your registry you need to browse to the following key:

Location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\Console

Create a new DWORD value key that is named MaximumSearchItemLimit, and then assign it a decimal value to reflect the number of objects that you want to display. For example, use a value of 1000 if you want to limit the maximum number of objects to 1000 instead of the default of 500.

Name: MaximumSearchItemLimit
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 0 to 65535

Close and re-open your console.

You will now be able to search the number of objects that you set the value to.

Note: This needs to be applied on each machine running a console that you want to remove the restriction from.

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