I’ve made some amendments to the Database Status Report that I posted about in 2015, Version 4 is now more streamlined and cleaner.
Sample screenshot:
Feel free to contact me for information on this report or the questions about the RDL.
I would be interested to hear from anyone who has any comments or suggestions on this report or ideas for future ones.
Version 1.1.270.0 of the Windows Server Storage Spaces 2012 R2 management pack has been released and is available for download here.
This version contains some minor additional monitoring:
Added alerts for Event ID 500 and 502
This posting is a continuation of my basics series, this one deals with Understanding Grooming and Aggregation, two very important concepts which can have great impact on your environment if they are not functioning properly.
First you need to understand the different between these two concepts, at their most basic, Grooming is the method where data older then a specific period, called the retention period, is deleted. Aggregation is the method where raw data, which is collected on short intervals i.e. 5 minutes, are averaged into hourly and daily time intervals used for reporting purposes.
The Operations Database
A stored procedure, called p_PartitioningandGrooming is run by a SCOM rule on a once a day schedule. The retention settings for each data type can be set in the console under Administration > Settings > Database Grooming.
You can see the history of the OpsDB grooming jobs with the following SQL query:
select * from InternalJobHistory order by InternalJobHistoryId desc
A Status of 1 indicates a successful completion.
The Operations Data-warehouse
The Data Warehouse is more complex, you cannot change data retention settings from the console, they exist in a table called StandardDatasetAggregation, which contains the grooming and aggregation retention periods, intervals and other related data.
Data in the DW database moves through several tables as part of the aggregations process as the data is collected it is written to a Raw Data table, from there is will move to a Staging table where it will be aggregated and then moved to a relevant aggregated data table (Hourly / Daily) where it will be available to the reporting services.
Then once the data in these tables is older then the data retention period it will be groomed out of the database.
So why is it important for aggregation to work?
Reports use the hourly and daily data in order to generate, this means that if your aggregations are not working or slow there will be gaps in your reporting. Example below:
And there you have it. the basics behind aggregation and grooming, I hope this has been informative.
The newly released Skype for Business Server 2015 management pack version 9319.247 is available for download here.
This MP guide is not included in the download but is available on a separate technet page.
New in this version:
Update:
As noted from Marnix wolfs blog There is an issue with the sealing of this MP, the following error occurs when importing.
“‘…This management pack cannot be imported.: Cannot load the management pack from the specified sealed assembly file: C:\Program Files\Skype for Business Server 2015\Management Packs\Management Packs\Microsoft.LS.2015.Monitoring.ActiveMonitoring.mp. This assembly is not fully signed. Cannot verify the strong name signature of the file: C:\Program Files\Skype for Business Server 2015\Management Packs\Management Packs\Microsoft.LS.2015.Monitoring.ActiveMonitoring.mp…’”
An updated MP has been released for Lync Server 2013 version 8308.951 is available here.
Documentation for this MP has also not been updated to include any fixes or updates at this time. Testing will be required.
The Lync Server 2010 MP has been updated to version 7577.723 and is available here.
At the time of this posting the documentation has not been updated with fixes and new features.
An updated SCCM MP has been released and is available here.
The guide refers to itself as being an RTM release and doesn’t include any change log so testing will be required. There is however an extensive appendix which includes a list of rules/monitors for every SCCM component.
A Community Technical Preview has been released for all of the SQL server versions and components they are available for download here. This MP is accompanied by a refresh of the SQL MPs released earlier this month v6.6.7.6, could this be an attempt to improve QA and testing on management pack releases, especially considering the issues with the SQL MP over the past year.
The new features and fixes introduced in CTP1 management packs are as follows:
New Reporting Services 2016 MP Features and Fixes
New SQL Server 2005-2012 MP Features and Fixes
New SQL Server 2014-2016 MP Features and Fixes
This posting will be part of my SCOM basics series and covers the key concepts of Objects and Classes.
Objects
An object is the basic unit of management in Operations Manager. An object typically represents something in your computing environment, such as a computer, a logical disk, or a database. It could also represent something more abstract, such as an application, an Active Directory domain, or a DNS zone. An object can also be referred to as an instance of a particular Class.
Classes
A class represents a kind of object, and every object in Operations Manager is considered an instance of a particular class. All instances of a class share a common set of properties. Each object has its own values for these properties which are determined when the object is discovered.
Most management packs define a set of classes that describe the different components that make up the application that is being monitored and the relationships between those classes
Targeting
A target in the Operations console represents all instances of a particular class. For example, a viewlists all of the objects that are instances of the class that is used as the target class for the view, and a monitor is applied to all objects that are instances of the monitor’s target class.
Classes have two further categories. Base Classes and Hosted Classes
Base Classes
Every class in Operations Manager has a base class. A class has all the properties of its base class and could add more. All of the classes from the different management packs installed in your management group can be arranged in a tree with each class positioned under its base class.
When you select a class as a target that is a base class for other classes, the monitor or rule applies to all instances of each of those classes. For example, if you use Windows Operating System as the target for a monitor, then the monitor applies to all instances of Windows Client Operating System and Windows Server Operating System. This is because those two classes use Windows Operating System as their base class.
Hosted Classes
Most classes are hosted by another class. When one class hosts another, the hosting class is called the parent, and the class being hosted is called the child. Instances of the child class cannot exist without a parent.
For example, several classes are hosted by Windows Computer because they are components on a computer. It would not make sense to have a logical disk if there was no computer for the disk to be installed on. Therefore, Logical Disk is hosted by Windows Computer. This means that every instance of Logical Disk must have one instance of Windows Computer as its parent.
Note about Groups
I’ve included groups in this posting because it can be a common mistake to try and use a group as a target for a rule / monitor this can cause that rule / monitor to not function correctly as the class for a group only exists on a management server, the group will not be enumerated into it’s members from the target selection.
There are several new additions for the Windows Server Technical Preview management packs available here.
They are: