Category Archives: SCOM 2012

SCOM: SQL MP (Community Technical Preview 2) v6.7.0.0

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Version 6.7.0.0 of the Community Technical Preview 2 for the SQL management packs have been released, they are available for download here.

Microsoft seems to be very cautions now with releases of the SQL MP which is good considering the issues with the last 4 live versions,

What’s new?

New Releases
MP for SSAS 2016
MP for SSRS 2016 (Native Mode)

Updates and fixes

SQL Server Dashboards

  • Added a feature to support Virtual Groups (groups defined by classes, not by real group instance). This will help users with partial access to use our predefined dashboards.
  • Added a feature to Bulk Add tiles from the class definition.
  • Added a feature to ignore some states while calculating the worst state for the Datacenter View State Tile; added a feature to set this ignorance up for each group
  • Added a feature to show/hide Instance path in the list on the Instance view
  • Added instance path to the Instance Details
  • Implemented deferred loading of the instance tiles to make the instance view operation faster
  • Implemented a new format for Dashboards configuration providing a smaller size and a single binding
  • Implemented a converter from old to new format providing preservation of user changes
  • Improved error reporting
  • Improved performance of initial load process
  • Improved data sources performance
  • Improved performance of instance selection (made it asynchronous)
  • Improved performance of Datacenter and Instance View Tiles, loading and loaded animations
  • Fixed animation issues and minor visual glitches (positioning, size of elements, fonts, main loading animation)
  • Updated Summary dashboard
  • “Known issues and Troubleshooting” section of the guide is updated

SQL Server 2016 / 2014

  • Fixed Smart Admin policies monitoring
  • Fixed Always On Database replica discovery incorrect behavior; fixed Always On policies discovery and monitoring
  • Fixed Database policies discovery and monitoring
  • Fixed and optimized CPU Usage monitoring scripts (the issue appeared when only one core was assigned)
  • Added support for more than 32 processors count in CPU Usage monitoring.
  • SQLPS module is now used for the tasks instead of deprecated SQLPS.EXE
  • Implemented FILESTREAM filegroup monitoring
  • FILESTREAM is now supported on the summary dashboard
  • Multiple Ports are now supported in SQL Server TCP/IP parameters
  • Fixed error occurring when no port is specified in SQL Server TCP/IP parameters
  • Fix filegroup read-only state discovery
  • Fixed RunAs profiles mapping for some workflows
  • Added support for new SQL Server 2016 Memory-Optimized Data implementation
  • Implemented support for TLS 1.2 in connection logic
  • Implemented support for different client drivers in connection logic
  • Updated connection logic error logging
  • Updated Availability Group Automatic Failover monitor
  • Added rules to collect new Always On performance counters
  • Updated SMO usage in Always On workflows to support the new connection logic
  • Upgraded the used PowerShell version to 3+, since SQL Server 2016 uses .Net 4 Runtime
  • Fixed issue: CPU usage monitor ignored SQL server limitations on CPU core count
  • Fixed display strings and Knowledge Base articles
  • Fixed error reporting in the scripts
  • Fixed threshold percentage comparison of deactivated subscriptions workflow in Distributor.

SQL Server 2016 / 2014 / 2012 / 2008 Replication

  • Reviewed threading implementation
  • Fixed issue: Distributor Discovery could fail for Replication
  • Fixed error logging, added more details
  • Fixed “Availability of the Distribution database” monitor issue: added missing overridable parameter
  • Assigned SDK profile to the Replication Database Health Discovery
  • Fixed replication monitoring issue: compatibility with SQL 2005 as a part of Replication
  • Fixed Publisher Discovery issue: unable to cast object of type ‘System.DBNull’ to type ‘System.String’
  • Added timeout support for .Net modules
  • Fixed issue: SQL Server Event Log Collection Target was not discovered Associate due to invalid path in DataSource
  • Fixed Replication Agent State monitor type cookdown issue
  • Fixed issue: failing replacement warning in “One or more of the Replication Agents are retrying on the Distributor” monitor
  • Dashboards fixes: added bindings to the tiles; added Datacenter Classes (L1 dashboard for Replication)
  • Fixed upgradeability
  • Fixed Knowledge Base articles and display strings
  • Updated Known Issues and Troubleshooting section of the guide

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SCOM: New NiCE MP for IBM PowerHA (HACMP)

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Those nice people over at NiCE have released a new management pack for IBM PowerHA (HACMP). More information and pricing is available here.

The MP offers the following features:

• Full overview of PowerHA landscape
• Detailed Resource Group Monitoring
• Cluster Status Monitoring
• Native SCOM integration means:
   no additional services to be installed,
   no ports to be opened, 
   re-use of existing AIX agent
• Using standard SCOM views and MP architecture
• Built on reliable NiCE components

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SCOM: Updated Microsoft Azure MP (Technical Preview) v1.3.18.0

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A new version of the Azure technical preview MP has been released you can get version 1.3.18.0 here

New in this version

  • Added support for Virtual Machines (non-classic) in addition to Classic Virtual Machines supported previously
  • Improved logging for the case when RDFE resources request is performed under SPN mode
  • Fixed/added display names and Knowledge Base articles
  • Improved error logging
  • Fixed resource group name validation issue (underscore symbols in resource group names led to discovery fails)
  • Added “Configuring Proxy Connection” section to the guide
  • Fixed Data Warehouse performance issue; added main aggregation for performance metrics
  • “Known Issues” section of the guide is updated

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SCOM: Updated Exchange 2013 MP v15.0.666.20

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There has been a minor update to the Exchange 2013 management pack version 15.0.666.20 can be download here.

Fixes in this version

  • Fixed a bug preventing Exchange 2013 Mailbox Properties collection when the contents of Email Addresses field exceed the total length of more than 1024 characters.

Exception:

‘InvalidOperationException’: The given value of type String from the data source cannot be converted to type nvarchar of the specified target column. 

One or more workflows were affected by this.  

Workflow name: Microsoft.Exchange.15.MailboxStatsSubscription.Rule 

  • Fixed a bug: alerts generated by the previous version of the Management Pack for Exchange Server 2013 have unreadable name. After upgrading of the Management Pack to version 15.0.620.19, alerts generated before the upgrade had the following name: {2}

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SCOM: Database Status Report version 4

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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:

dbstatussample

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.

 

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SCOM: Understanding Grooming and Aggregation

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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

opsdb1

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.

opsdb3

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.

opsdb2

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.

DW1

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:

DW3

And there you have it. the basics behind aggregation and grooming, I hope this has been informative.

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SCOM: MP for Skype for Business Server 2015 v9319.247

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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:

  • Automatic discovery for Client Sign-In Client applications that sign-in to Skype for Business Server 2015 often automatically discover the server to sign-in to. Synthetic transactions now support verification that automatic discovery is configured correctly.
  • Customized synthetic transaction run intervals To simplify the set up process of Watcher Nodes, synthetic transactions can share user accounts. This slows down the frequency at which the tests are run as the tests are serialized to avoid conflicts. By default, synthetic transactions run every 15 minutes to ensure all tests have time to run. Administrators who choose to use more users or fewer tests per user may now reduce the run interval, as well.
  • Video Interop Services synthetic transaction Customers who are migrating to Skype for Business Server 2015 from other vendor solutions often desire to continue using the video teleconferencing devices (VTCs) from these other vendors. Video Interop Server is a new Skype for Business Server 2015 server role that enables customers to continue to use Cisco VTCs in their conference rooms by connecting to Cisco CUCM via a video SIP trunk. This feature also adds a synthetic transaction to help verify that the Video Interop Server is up and can handle incoming connections over a video SIP trunk.
  • Application Sharing Conferencing synthetic transaction End-to-end scenario validation for Application Sharing Conferences is now supported.

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…’”

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