Thanks to my colleague Kevin Holman for this post which has links to all of the SCOM tools which are becoming more difficult to find.
Including MP Viewer, Override Explorer, Override Creator, DWDatarp and others.
Kevin Holman recently published an article on some recommended registry tweaks for SCOM 2016 environments.
This is an important read to prevent potential future issues.
A post I came across from Ian Blyth with a short powershell script to show which Resource Pools your management servers are part of. It’s quite useful to see all of the resource pool members in one place without having to open each one in the console, particularly in larger environments.
For a single managementserver
$Member = Get-SCOMManagementServer -Name “FQDN”
$Pools = Get-SCOMResourcePool -Member $Member
$Member.DisplayName
$Pools.DisplayName
For all management servers
$Members = Get-SCOMManagementServer
foreach ($member in $members)
{
write-host “”
$Pools = Get-SCOMResourcePool -Member $Member
write-host “Management Server – “$Member.DisplayName
$Pools.DisplayName
}
Kevin Holman updated his MP post with the following warning,:
***WARNING*** There are some significant issues in this release of the Base OS MP, I do not recommend applying this one until an updated version comes out.
Issues:
So best to hold off on this one folks. This of course comes back to some big questions about MP quality control as we’ve had many issues with the recent SQL MP releases and now this.
Kevin Holman has written a post on how to to discover a Windows Computer as a Network Device in SCOM 2012.
The design choice to not allow snmp discovers of windows devices was questioned heavily when it was announced and caused vendor management packs such as Netbackup not to work.
This is a welcome discovery you can read the full article here. The below is for my record.
On the management server which will run the network discovery rules – browse to the following directory:
\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012 R2\Operations Manager\Server\NetworkMonitoring\rules\discovery
There is a file present in this directory named ic-post-processor.asl
Make a backup copy of this file, I like to name it ic-post-processor.bak, and place this backup copy in the same directly. Now, edit this file, and change the following lines:
ISWINDOWSHOST(systemObj) do {
if (systemObj->Type == “HOST” && systemObj->Vendor == “MICROSOFT”) {
return TRUE ;
}
if (SEARCHSTRING(systemObj->Description, “Windows”)) {
return TRUE ;
}
systemOIDCheck = “.1.3.6.1.4.1.311.1.1.3.1” ;
if (substring(systemObj->SystemObjectID, 0, sizeof(systemOIDCheck)) == systemOIDCheck) {
return TRUE ;
}
systemOIDCheck = “.1.3.6.1.4.1.99.1.1.3.11” ;
if (substring(systemObj->SystemObjectID, 0, sizeof(systemOIDCheck)) == systemOIDCheck) {
return TRUE ;
}
return FALSE ;
}
to:
ISWINDOWSHOST(systemObj) do {
if (systemObj->Type == “HOST” && systemObj->Vendor == “MICROSOFT”) {
return FALSE ;
}
if (SEARCHSTRING(systemObj->Description, “Windows”)) {
return FALSE ;
}
systemOIDCheck = “.1.3.6.1.4.1.311.1.1.3.1” ;
if (substring(systemObj->SystemObjectID, 0, sizeof(systemOIDCheck)) == systemOIDCheck) {
return FALSE ;
}
systemOIDCheck = “.1.3.6.1.4.1.99.1.1.3.11” ;
if (substring(systemObj->SystemObjectID, 0, sizeof(systemOIDCheck)) == systemOIDCheck) {
return FALSE ;
}
return FALSE ;
}
Marnix Wolf has written a great post about the different options available to IT Pros to write management packs for SCOM. The article is definitely worth a read and I wholeheartedly agree with the assessment of VSAE (Visual Studio with Authoring Extensions) and MP Author from Silect
Kevin Holman has updated his article on which SQL maintenance to perform on your SQL databases to now cater for the SCOM 2012 data structures.
The article which is available here and makes special mention of the types of maintenance which is run by SCOM itself which does not need to be handled by a SQL DBA.
Cameron Fuller said it best “Even when you spend years working on a specific technology occasionally you are pleasantly surprised to find out that something already exists in the product but you are unaware of it.”
He has written an article which is available here which describes the use of the /SiteName switch when approving a gateway in order to automatically create and populate a group containing all devices being managed by that gateway.
This is certainly a useful feature.
Note – If you use the /sitename switch then bookmark this article by Brian McDermott – How to remove an OpsMgr 2012 Gateway Server that is associated with a site to prevent some future headaches.
Kevin Holman has written an excellent article on the murkey subject of SNMP Trap monitoring with SCOM 2012 R2. This is definitly worth a read if you’ve ever been unclear on how this works.
It’s also nice to know once and for all “First clarification (and update to this blog post) – There is NO NEED to install or configure the SNMP service on the management server. We don’t use the SNMP stack. In fact – if the SNMP TRAP service is running (it does not by default) then only thing I need to do is make sure it is disabled! “
He has also kindly included MP authoring examples which you can use to get this running for your own scenarios.