Tag Archives: #2016

SCOM 2016: Comtrade MP for Nutanix

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Comtrade has released a new management pack for monitoring Nutanix solutions.

Comtrade has in the past released high quality management packs for monitoring systems such Citrix XEN amongst others. The Nutanix management pack offers the below features:

 

 

 

 

 

 

As well as:

  • Automatically detect VMs running business-critical workloads
  • Detect resource bottlenecks before they start affecting end-users
  • Correlate application’s performance with performance of the rest of the application-delivery infrastructure
  • Ensure application availability by maintaining successful protection domain replication
  • Forecast performance trends and properly size Nutanix so you don’t run out of resources
  • Use Nutanix-Citrix SuperPack to quickly identify, eliminate and fix issues that would impact Citrix end-users

 

For a trial or more information go here

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OMS / SCOM: Service Map integration with SCOM now in public preview

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Hot off the press integration between OMS Service Map and SCOM Distributed applications is now in public preview.

This is a feature that I for one have been looking forward to for quite some time and I hope this is only a glimpse into the possibilities of having OMS and SCOM leverage off each other in the future.

Documentation is available here

Get the MP here

Screenshots courtesy of the MS OMS Blog

OMS Service Map

Integrated SCOM Distributed Application

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SCOM 2016: Error while connecting to management server: The client has been disconnected from the server

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When trying to install a second management server in a SCOM 2016 management group, after entering the OpsDB details,  a few moments later the wizard would return to the SQL details screen.

A brief investigation revealed the following error in the installation log file (OpsMgrSetupWizard.txt this is your best friend for troubleshooting SCOM installations):

Info:Error while connecting to management server: The client has been disconnected from the server. Please call ManagementGroup.Reconnect() to reestablish the connection.
Error: :Couldn’t connect to mgt server stack: : Threw Exception.Type: Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Common.ServerDisconnectedException, Exception Error Code: 0x80131500, Exception.Message: The client has been disconnected from the server. Please call ManagementGroup.Reconnect() to reestablish the connection.

First confirming that the Data Access service was in fact running on the original management server and that a connection could be made to the SDK.

It turns out that the two servers times were out of sync by more than 5 minutes causing a Keberos time skew. After correcting the server time the second management server installed with no issues.

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SCOM 2016: Updated SQL Server Management Packs v6.7.31.0

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New versions of the SQL management packs were released a short while ago links for all of the versions 6.7.31.0 MPs can be found below:

SQL Server

SQL Server 2008/2012 – here
SQL Server 2014 – here
SQL Server 2016 – here

SQL Server Dashboards

SQL Server Dashboards – here

SQL Server Replication

SQL Server 2008 Replication – here
SQL Server 2012 Replication – here
SQL Server 2014 Replication – here
SQL Server 2014 Replication – here

SQL Server Analysis Services

SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services – here
SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services – here
SQL Server 2014 Analysis Services – here
SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services – here

SQL Server Reporting Services (Native Mode)

SQL Server 2008 Replication(Native Mode) – here
SQL Server 2012 Replication(Native Mode) – here
SQL Server 2014 Replication(Native Mode) – here
SQL Server 2014 Replication(Native Mode) – here

 

New in this version:

Important Notes About This Release

  • Please note that we implemented a new alerting rule for SQL Server event #18456 “Login failed” in this release. However, this rule may become rather noisy due to the fact that the target events appear quite frequently in some environments. The rule is enabled by default; thus, if it creates too many alerts in your environment, consider disabling it via the override. The ideal would be to resolve the underlying issues causing the alert but we understand this is not always a priority.
  • We are introducing a new monitor in this release (see the first bullet below) based on customer feedback. You have now a better solution for monitoring backups of AG databases.

SQL Server 2008-2016

  • Added new “Availability Database Backup Status” monitor in Availability Group to check the existence and age of the availability database backups (this monitor is disabled by default)
  • “Database Backup Status” monitor has been changed to return only “Healthy” state for the databases that are Always On replicas, since availability database backups are now watched by the dedicated monitor
  • Improved performance of DB Space monitoring workflows
  • Added new “Login failed” alerting rule for SQL Server event #18456
  • Fixed issue: “Active Alerts” view does not show all alerts
  • Fixed issue: DB space monitoring scripts fail with “Cannot connect to database” error.
  • Fixed issue: PowerShell scripts fail with “Cannot process argument because the value of argument ‘obj’ is null” error
  • Fixed issue: Alert description of “Disk Ready Latency” and “Disk Write Latency” monitors displays the sample count instead of the performance value that was measured
  • Fixed issue: Different file location info from “sys.master_files” and “sysfiles” causes error when Availability Group secondary database files are in different path
  • Fixed issue: “DB Transaction Log Free Space Total” rules return wrong data
  • Introduced minor updates to the display strings
  • Deprecated “Garbage Collection” monitor and the appropriate performance rule
  • Resource Pool Discovery is disabled by default for pools not containing databases with Memory-Optimized Tables
  • “XTP Configuration” monitor now supports different file path types (not only those starting with C:, D:, etc.)
  • Fixed issue: “Resource Pool State” view shows incorrect set of objects
  • Fixed issue: Invalid group discovery in SQL Server 2016 Always On
  • Updated the visualization library

SQL Server Dashboards

  • Increased the version number to comply with the current version of SQL Server MPs

SQL Server 2008-2016 Replication

  • Added Distributor name caching to Subscription discovery
  • Restricted the length of some string class properties
  • Improved the internal structure of SQL scripts storage
  • Fixed variable types in SQL scripts
  • Fixed connectivity issues in SmartConnect module
  • Introduced minor updates to the display strings
  • Updated the visualization library

SQL Server 2008-2016 Reporting Services

  • Reimplemented Instance seed discovery: replaced the managed module with a PowerShell script
  • Reimplemented Deployment seed discovery: added a retry policy and improved error handling
  • Updated the visualization library

SQL Server 2008-2016 Analysis Services

  • Restricted length of some string class properties
  • Updated the visualization library

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SCOM 2016: Updated MP for Microsoft Azure Stack v1.0.1.0

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An updated management pack has been released for Microsoft Azure Stack, version 1.0.1.0 is available here.

Azure Stack is an extension of Azure, bringing the agility and fast-paced innovation of cloud computing to on-premises environments. Only Azure Stack lets you deliver Azure services from your organization’s datacenter, while balancing the right amount of flexibility and control—for truly-consistent hybrid cloud deployments.

New in this version:

  • Implemented “Edit Deployment” wizard.
  • Improved the authentication by means of Azure Active Directory (UPN authentication) and Active Directory Federation Services (UPN and AD FS SPN authentication).
  • Implemented UI improvements in “Add Deployment” wizard.
  • Implemented the Capacity Dashboard.
  • Implemented Auto Maintenance Mode Monitoring Rule that checks if any updates are run on Azure Stack regions and switches regions that are being updated to maintenance mode in Operations Manager. Implemented Turn Off Auto Maintenance Mode and Turn On Auto Maintenance Mode tasks to manually disable and enable the Auto Maintenance Mode.
  • Implemented improvements to reflect changes in the API.
  • Updated the display strings.
  • Added a workaround to support Alert names and descriptions to be displayed in the Operations Manager Reports as a plain text.

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SCOM 2016: Don’t forget those Antivirus Exclusions!

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Something that I find is often missed with a SCOM deployment is putting in place the recommended AV exclusions. Not having these in place can cause issues in your environment.

Note: Paths are examples, amend drive letter as required for your environment.

Processes
Monitoringhost.exe

Directories
The following directory-specific exclusions for Operations Manager include real-time scans, scheduled scans and local scans. The directories that are listed here are default application directories so you may have to modify these paths based on your specific environment. Only the following Operations Manager related directories should be excluded.

Important When a directory that is to be excluded has a directory name greater than 8 characters long, add both the short and long directory names of the directory to the exclusion list. These names are required by some AV programs to traverse the subdirectories.

SCOM Management Servers
C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2016\Operations Manager\Server\Health Service State

 Agent machines
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Monitoring Agent\Agent\Health Service State

SCOM SQL Servers
These will include the locations for your SCOM databases and log files as well as you SQL master and tempdb
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data
C:\MSSQL\DATA
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Log

File Extensions 
SCOM Management Servers / Agent machines
EDB
CHK
Log

SCOM SQL Servers
MDF
LDF

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SCOM 2016: Update Rollup 3 Released

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UR 3 for SCOM 2016 is out  you can get it through windows update or in the Catalogue here.

As always test in your labs before deploying to production systems.

Fixes in this update:

  • When you run System Center 2016 Operations Manager in an all-French locale (FRA) environment, the Date column in the Custom Event report appears blank.
  • The Enable deep monitoring using HTTP task in the System Center Operations Manager console doesn’t enable WebSphere deep monitoring on Linux systems.
  • When overriding multiple properties on rules that are created by the Azure Management Pack, duplicate override names are created. This causes overrides to be lost.
  • When the heartbeat failure monitor is triggered, a “Computer Not Reachable” message is displayed even when the computer is not down.
  • The Get-SCOMOverrideResult PowerShell cmdlet doesn’t return the correct list of effective overrides.
  • When creating a management pack (MP) on a client that contains a Service Level (SLA) dashboard and Service Level Objects (SLO), the localized names of objects aren’t displayed properly if the client’s CurrentCulture settings don’t match the CurrentUICulture settings. In cases where the localized settings are English English, ENG, or Australian English, ENA, there’s an issue when the objects are renamed.
  • The Event ID: 26373 error, which may cause high memory consumption and affect server performance, has been changed from a “Critical” message to an “Informational” message.
  • The Application Performance Monitoring (APM) feature in System Center 2016 Operations Manager Agent causes a crash for the IIS Application Pool that’s running under the .NET Framework 2.0 runtime. Microsoft Monitoring Agent should be updated on all servers that use .NET 2.0 application pools for APM binaries update to take effect. Restart of the server might be required if APM libraries were being used at the time of the update.
  • The UseMIAPI registry subkey prevents collection of processor performance data for RedHat Linux system. Also, custom performance collection rules are also impacted by the UseMIAPI setting.
  • Organizational Unit (OU) properties for Active Directory systems are not being discovered or populated.
  • The Microsoft.SystemCenter.Agent.RestartHealthService.HealthServicePerfCounterThreshold recovery task fails to restart the agent, and you receive the following error message:
    LaunchRestartHealthService.ps1 cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system.

    This issue has been resolved to make the recovery task work whenever the agent is consuming too much resources. 

  • The DiscoverAgentPatches.ps1 script in Microsoft.SystemCenter.Internal.xml fails and you experience the following exception:
    Exception:
    Method invocation failed because [System.Object[]] does not contain a method named ‘op_Subtraction’.
    At C:\bin\scripts\patch.ps1:37 char:35
    +                   for($count = 0; ($productList.Count-1); $count++)
    +                                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (op_Subtraction:String) [], RuntimeException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : MethodNotFound 

  • An execution policy has been added as unrestricted to PowerShell scripts in Inbox management packs.
  • SQL Agent jobs for maintenance schedule use the default database. If the database name is not the default, the job fails.
  • This update adds support for OpenSSL1.0.x on AIX computers. With this change, System Center Operations Manager uses OpenSSL 1.0.x as the default minimum version supported on AIX, and OpenSSL 0.9.x is no longer supported.

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SCOM: Updated NiCE DB2 MP 4.20

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Another updated MP released over at NiCE this time for IBM DB2 get more info here.

New with this release

  • Feature: Support of DB2 BLU Acceleration
  • Feature: Monitoring of InDoubt Transactions
  • Security: Support of DB2 restrictive databases
  • Security: Support of non-root setup and operation
  • Security: DB2 Instance attach extensions for user and password options
  • Platform: New platform support for IBM AIX 7.2
  • Platform: Support of non-standard paths for both installation path and instance user home directory

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