Savision Live Maps Unity for System Center Operations Manager

SCOM alerts
Let's have a look at a common situation you find many times at customer sites: when using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), you know that alerts can be overwhelming. When multiple management packs are imported for more functionality and many agents are enrolled on servers with different applications and roles installed on them, you must configure Operations Manager to benefit from it! Otherwise there can be so many SCOM alerts and e-mail messages a day, that monitoring isn't effective anymore. I did see black television screens (monitoring screens turned off) and IT admins deleting all alerts each day (doing monitoring from that point), often. You can find an in-depth article about SCOM alert storms here.

On the other hand, no graphical Service dashboard is available for a perfect monitoring overview by design. The default built-in SCOM dashboards are using a column or grid layout, with performance, state, alert, and details widgets. They’re good for a basic overview, but nothing more than that. Dashboards can be created in Microsoft Visio, as well as you may know. By using SharePoint Extensions for System Center 2012, they can be connected with the Operations Manager environment. The problem is you need to create those dashboards yourself and have SharePoint Enterprise edition installed. It’s not so easy and user-friendly to create dashboards that way.

Let's introduce Savision Live Maps Unity here. With 700 organizations worldwide using Live Maps Unity, it's the business service management solution you want!

Savision’s SCOM dashboards
With Live Maps Unity, which is used for both monitoring service health and performance, this perfect monitoring overview (as mentioned before) is available! It can be used for a graphical Service dashboard instead, but it's much more than that. Savision's Live Maps Unity speaks the language of the business by focusing on service delivery. It includes unlimited HTML5-based SCOM dashboards for monitoring both service health and performance. With Savision’s SCOM dashboards (based on HTML5-code, which is fast and lightweight), there is no need to look at alerts all day. Just focus on the information Live Maps Unity sends to you.

There won't be many e-mail messages anymore as well. This because Live Maps Unity notifies only when necessary, giving IT admins the time needed to research and solve issues instead of wasting time on notifications. With the Service dashboard in-place, IT admins can use Operations Manager proactive again instead of reactively. The Service dashboard gives you all information needed on a single screen. It’s generated automatically, based on applications found in your environment and gives a total overview of business-critical services, like Exchange, SharePoint, Active Directory and more.

No need to design all those dashboards yourself. Live Maps Unity has the capability to examine your entire IT infrastructure. Additional dashboards can be created with a few clicks by using the built-in drag-and-drop interface. This is really different than using Microsoft Visio, mentioned before. This data is connected with real components and applications by default. These dashboards can be shown from anywhere on any device! This can be done on a mobile device (tablet or smartphone) or desktop if you prefer. This isn’t possible with the default SCOM solution; you have to use another solution for this.

Business Service Management Solution
With Live Maps Unity, you have that solution. The product can be used to monitor entire IT infrastructures, with features like: performance monitoring, .NET application discovery, easy-to-build dashboards, and a Services dashboard. It offers a lightweight web console with support for all major browsers; so no need to have a physical console installed. It offers interactive geographical maps and native System Center integration. It allows quick visualizations of the IT environment through SCOM dashboards. It has everything inside for monitoring service health and performance. It’s the Business Service Management Solution that makes SCOM the perfect monitoring solution!

As a result: With SCOM and Savision’s Live Maps Unity, you have best of both worlds and true power in SCOM finally. No need to focus on alerts anymore, because it helps to deal with the root cause of notifications. Just focus on alerts which really need your time and attention to manage the healthiest environment possible.

Included are some web links to find more information on the product and even more functionality as well. There are some videos and datasheets available too.

Happy monitoringJ!
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Current and upcoming features you’ll love in monitoring with Microsoft

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Join our exclusive webinar with MVPs Cameron Fuller and Bob Cornelissen (Jalasoft)

Operations Manager is continuously evolving! This includes management packs, new ways of looking at monitoring and gaining insight into monitored business services, cloud services, and more.

This webinar explores new developments in the Microsoft monitoring sphere, as well as developments in SCOM and Azure Operational Insights and how to benefit from these options: 

 

• Hear about changes in the current product to monitor your environment more effectively.
• Learn tips and tricks to be more effective as an Operations Manager administrator.
• See possibilities of Operational Insights and how the solutions from the Cloud can augment your monitoring.
• Explore the futures of SCOM and monitoring solutions from Microsoft.

Join us this Thursday, April 23rd, 2015 at 12:00 EDT / 11:00 CDT / 18:00 CEST.

Register now

Update Rollup 2 for System Center 2012 R2 released

Today Update Rollup 2 for System Center 2012 R2 is released. It contains 7 hotfixes for multiple System Center 2012 R2 components, except ConfigMgr. Cumulative Update 1 for ConfigMgr can be found HERE. You can choose between Microsoft Update installation or manually download the update packages.
 
To download the update packages from Microsoft Update Catalog, go to one of the following download websites, as appropriate:
-Data Protection Manager (KB2958100)
-Operations Manager (KB2929891)
-Orchestrator (KB2904689)
-Service Manager (KB2904710)
-Service Provider Foundation (KB2932939)
-Virtual Machine Manager (VMM Console: KB2932942)
-Virtual Machine Manager (VMM Server: KB2932926)

To install the update packages, run the following command from an elevated command prompt:
msiexec.exe /update <packagename>

For more information or download the update have a look here:
Microsoft Support

Creating multiple dashboards in OpsMgr 2012 R2

As mentioned before I did a Operations Manager (OpsMgr) 2012 R2 installation already. One of the great items in OpsMgr (for myself) is creating dashboards. In OpsMgr dashboards can be created multiple ways. Some can be created in OpsMgr by default, some can be created with additional software needed. It's not my point to describe how to build them, but to point you in the right direction which is possible. Here we go!

Dashboards can be created mutiple ways, following is possible:
-Default dashboards (which can also be a Service Level Dashboard or Summary Dashboard)
-Microsoft Visio dashboards (which is published in SharePoint)
-Savision Live Maps (many possibilities, but additional licenses needed)
-Distributed Applications (chain monitoring of .NET applications)

Default dashboards are created with a layout and widgets. Widgets are powerful objects which can be used many ways. First decide how to build the framework, you can choose between:

-Column Layout (enables up to 5 vertical columns to displayed in a row)
-Grid Layout (allows layouts of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 9 cells)
-Service Level Dashboard (shows the data for a pre-configured SLA)
-Summary Dashboard (adds 3 default widgets in a 3-cell configuration)

Widgets can be choosen from the following list:
-Objects by Performance Widget (sort of Top 10 dashboard)
-Object SLA Widget (group that has an SLA applied to it)
-Performance Widget (creates a performance graph)
-State Widget (can be based on multiple configurations)
-SLA Widget (shows the data for a pre-configured SLA)
-SLA Configuration (Service Level tracking)
-Alert Widget (allows the display of alerts)
-Details Widget (shows the details of selected alerts)
-Instance Details Widget (show details of a selected group or instance)
-SLA Configuration Note (monitor Service Level Objectives)

Microsoft Visio dashboards are created with SharePoint 2010 using Microsoft Visio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Extensions for System Center 2012. Just make sure you have SharePoint 2010 Enterprise edition installed, because only this edition has the Visio Web Service available. Within Visio a dashboard can be created and used in SharePoint with Extensions. That way a graphical dasboard can be created with OpsMgr Health Explorer access on all items. Have a look here for installation: http://blog.scomfaq.ch/2013/07/10/scom-2012-sp1-publish-visio-dashboard-in-sharepoint-2010-walkthrough/

Live Maps for System Center is the enterprise visualization solution for Microsoft System Center. Their interactive dashboards, maps and diagrams add business context to every alert and incident, making sure your limited resources can focus on the things that really matter to your business. Live Maps is ready for R2! The upcoming release of Live Maps is compatible with System Center 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1. The release will be available on October 18. No SharePoint 2010 or Visio 2010 are needed with Live Maps. Just install the product and get started. All objects in OpsMgr will be automatically available for dashboard creation.

A Distributed Application in OpsMgr is an application that is comprised of multiple objects. These objects may be defined by different management packs and may be managed on the same agent or on different agents. The purpose of the distributed application is to provide an overall health for an application that is comprised of different objects. Distributed applications do not provide any additional monitoring for the objects in an application. Instead, they include objects that are already being monitored. The value of the distributed application is to provide a relationship between the health of objects that are part of a single application. You can create distributed applications using the Distributed Applications Designer in the Operations console.

A few examples on this:

Summary Dashboard in SharePoint 2010

 

A Distributed .NET Application

 

MAP View with Active Locations

 

Integration with Microsoft Visio

 

Performance Widget - Grid Layout

 

Service Level Dashboard

 

Network Monitoring

 

SLA Widget - Grid Layout

 

They look just great isn't it? Possibilities are many on this point.
Want to know more? Just leave a comment on this post.


How to find the SQL Server used for OpsMgr installation

When looking in the OpsMgr console, you cannot see which SQL Server is used for the OperationsManager and OperationsManagerDW database. There are however a few ways to find this server. I will explain them in this blogpost.

1) Install the SQL Server management pack and wait till the SQL Servers are discovered. Expand the Databases tree and type 'OperationsManager' into the look for field. Select the database and in path name you will see the server (and instance) hosting the database. (Or look at the databases immediately)

2) You can determine the SQL database by reviewing the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\Setup\DatabaseServerName. On this location the server (and instance) hosting the database is found.

3) Go to Monitoring, Discovered Inventory and run the 'Change Target Type' task. Select 'Operations Manager Operational Database Watcher' and choose OK. You will only see one instance.  Scroll to the right until you see the 'Operational Database Server Name' and 'Operational Database Name' columns.

Hope you find this as useful as I did.

How to monitor weird SNMP devices in Operations Manager

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A much too common scenario, you have a device that you know for a fact supports SNMP, but it's not supported by Operations Manager or by Jalasoft Xian Network Manager. In that case, you can opt to create your own Management Pack for Operations Manager, but that’s kind of a tough job and definitely not something that you’ll enjoy doing. An easier way to get around this is to use Xian Network Manager 2012. It has a simple feature called "Custom Rules" that will make it possible, in just a matter of minutes, to monitor anything you want on those weird SNMP devices.

Adding your weird network devices to Xian Network Manager

The first thing you need to do is add you weird device to Xian NM. Make sure you have SNMP enabled and the IP-address and community string at hand. Click on [Device] in the menu bar followed by [Add]. A small dialog appears, search for "Network Device" and then click OK. Next a screen like the one in figure 1 appears. The only thing you need to do here is provide the IP-address and the community string. If the device is not within the same network you might consider increasing the time out.

Figure 1, Discovering the Network Device

Now click [Finish] and Xian NM will begin to discover the device. As an example, we enabled SNMP on a Windows 2008 R2 server and within 15 seconds the mentioned server appears as a network device in the Xian NM Console, as you can see in figure 2.

Figure 2, The Discovered Network Device

What is monitored out of the box?

Xian NM monitors some standard aspects after the Network Device has been discovered. You can see this by double clicking on the discovered device and going to "active rules". In Figure 3, you can see exactly what is being monitored, Total Traffic, System Uptime and Availability. Total Traffic monitors the traffic flowing over all the interfaces on the devices, which is set with an automatic threshold. This means that Xian NM will define a threshold after monitoring it for 12 hours. System Uptime returns and the name suggests the number of days the device is up and running.

By default, an alert is sent when the device is up for more than 90 days or below. In this way you’re alerted when the device restarts or when the device is due for a maintenance check. Availability checks if the device can be reached through ICMP and SNMP. The default settings can be easily changed according to your needs. Moreover, you can also apply inactive rules which you can see on the right side of the "device properties" window. Simply drag and drop and the wizard will help you to set up the rule.

Figure 3, Device properties of our 'weird' Network Device

Creating a custom rule

Next it’s time to create a custom rule. For our Windows server we are going to add a CPU Load rule.  In the main console click on [Configuration] on the bottom left of the screen. Now select [Rules] and then [Network Device] in the tree view on the left. Right click on the Network Device and click on "Add Custom Rule". Consequently, a dialog window as the one in figure 4 appears. First you have to define some general information regarding your custom rule. Name, Title and Description can go without an explanation.

However, do be careful with the type of rule, most rules are Performance rules. For example, CPU Load, Memory, System Uptime, so if you are not sure choose one of the three. Select Incremental Performance rule for rules that deal with traffic, this type calculates the difference of two points in units per second. Lastly, if you are concerned with Fan status, Interface status or any other status, select Status rule. In our case since we are going to add a CPU load rule we select Performance rule.

Figure 4, The Add Custom Rule Wizard - General

Next you need to set some performance parameters. The most important ones are:
- Maximum and default threshold value, here you define the threshold value that should be shown by default when you apply the rule and the max value the user can assign;
- Unit, what unit are you using? Percentage, Buffers, packets etc.;
- Allow automatic threshold; Enable this option in order to have a rule that can calculate the threshold automatically;
- Applicable Element, over which element the rule is running. Normally you probably need the NetworkDeviceSnmpDeviceElement;
- Rule Category, Normal this is General, but you are free to change this.

The most important part of the setup process is defined under expression. You will see a small XML code, but you don’t need to do much. Copy and paste the OID over the OID that is already shown. However, for our example we made it slightly more complicated. This is due to the fact that our Windows Server has two cores and thus we will have two CPU loads OIDs. What we’ve done is changed the syntax to get the two CPU loads and divide them into two. Through this operation we also discard the variable MyOID. If you take a look at figure 5, you can clearly see what we’ve done. 

Figure 5, defining the syntax to get the average CPU load of the Windows Server which has two cores

The last thing that you need to do in this wizard is fill in the alert data. This is data that will be displayed when an alert is triggered in OpsMgr and gives the user some extra information. Now click [Finish] and the rule will be added in Xian NM. But before we add the Management Pack of OpsMgr, let’s first do a short test to see if the rule runs as expected.

1. Go to the "General Section" of the rules of the Network Device. There you will see the rule you just added. Right click and select "Test Rule", click OK. Now you will be asked to select the device that you want to use to test the rule. Select the device you added earlier;

2. Now a simplified version of the rule wizard will appear. Go immediately to the schedule and set the interval to 5 seconds. (you can opt for another interval if you want);
3. Click on start.
 

Figure 6, Testing your custom rule

After starting the rule a small dialog window like the one in figure 7 will appear. If all is configured correctly, you will see values appearing. If not, select the "alert" tab. If it says that an exception occurred, you probably made a mistake with the OID setting. In that case, go back and adjust the OID settings in the Custom Rule Wizard. Additionally, you can export the result to CSV in case you need to test more than just the rule and if you also want to analyze the value in a different format, for example excel.

Figure 7, Rule test output

Time to create the Management Pack and import it into OpsMgr. This is needed so OpsMgr is aware of the data that could arrive from this new rule and furthermore, to make sure that this information is processed in the correct way. To generate the Management Packs click on "Network Devices" in the rules section, consequently the option "Generate Management Packs" appears in the action panel. Click on it and select a destination folder. Next, you use the normal import procedure to import the generated Management Pack into OpsMgr.

Adding the custom rule

Let’s add the custom rule to your device. Note that as of this moment the rule you created can be added to any device of the same type. So in our case, if we add any other Windows Server we can deploy this rule as well.
1. Double click on the device where you want to add your custom rule;
2. Go to the active rules Tab;
3. Drag and drop the rule from rule list (on the right side) to the running rules list. Note that you can easily distinguish the custom rules since they are blue colored. (see figure 8)

Figure 8, adding a custom rule to your device

4. Now the typical Xian NM rule wizard will appear. Here you have to pay attention to the threshold level and type. If you know which threshold level you need, opt for a manual threshold otherwise choose automatic threshold. This one will monitor the values for a certain period and define a threshold for you, which you can change also later on. Also be careful with the correct interval. You don’t want it to be too low, since that would be complicating the performance of Xian NM and OpsMgr;
5. Now click Finish;
6. The rule will now go in to running state.

What do you see in OpsMgr?

After the new rule has been running for a while and it has past at least one cycle of the interval, you will be able to see performance data and alerts appearing in OpsMgr as long as you enabled it in the rule settings. In figure 9 and 10 you can see the performance data and alerts appear exactly as any other Xian NM rule or actually as any other rule/monitor of OpsMgr.

Figure 9, Performance data of your Custom Rule in OpsMgr

Figure 10, Alerts of the Custom Rule in OpsMgr

Thanks for reading!

How to install OpsMgr 2007 R2 on SQL Server 2008 R2

Last week I installed System Center Operations Manager (OpsMgr) 2007 R2 on SQL Server 2008 R2. This is supported by Microsoft, but the OpsMgr wizard does not recognize a SQL Server 2008 R2 installation. Therefore a specific installation order is needed to have it all functional. All steps needed will be explained in this blogpost. Just follow them for having a correct installation.

I won't describe the SQL 2008 R2 installation here, so make sure it's ready before installation. First choose "Check Prerequisites" on the OpsMgr server. The following Roles and Role Services must be added:

• Application Server
• Web Server (IIS)
• Common HTTP Features (Static Content, Default Document, Directory Browsing, HTTP Errors)
• Application Development (ASP.NET, .NET Extensibility, ISAPI Extensions, ISAPI Filters)
• Health and Diagnostics (HTTP Logging, Request Monitor)
• Security (Windows Authentication, Request Filtering)
• Performance (Static Content Compression)
• Management Tools (IIS Management Console, IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility, IIS 6 WMI Compatibility)

The "Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions 1.0" is needed here also. When Prerequisites looks fine the installation can be continued. There are 2 service accounts needed for OpsMgr functionality (Administrator and Action account).

Normally the installation starts with "Install Operations Manager 2007 R2" for installing the databases. This because the specific order which must be followed during installation:

1. OperationsManager database component (SQL Server)
2. OperationsManager Data Warehouse component (SQL Server)
3. OperationsManager Management Server and console components (OpsMgr Server)
4. OperationsManager Reporting component (SQL Server)

Now another utility is used for creating the database and Data Warehouse components. It's called DBCreateWizard.exe which is found in the <OpsMgr source>\SupportTools\AMD64 folder. Use it twice for creating both databases and decide the name and size in it.

Then Operations Manager can be installed on the OpsMgr server with the default GUI. Just start with "Install Operations Manager 2007 R2" again and select all components except "Database". Follow all necessary steps during setup for a complete installation. There is the possibility to install it on another location or drive here.

Again a different approach is needed now. Before the Reporting component can be installed a workaround is needed. Otherwise it won't be functional. Have a look at local groups on the SQL Server and rename “SQLServerReportServerUser$<OpsMgr Server>$MSRS10_50.MSSQLSERVER” to “SQLServerReportServerUser$<OpsMgr Server>$MSRS10.MSSQLSERVER”.

This is described here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2425714

 

Now the Reporting component can be installed with the default GUI. Just start with "Install Operations Manager 2007 R2 Reporting" and select the "Reporting Server" component only. No Data Warehouse installation is needed on SQL Server 2008 R2. Follow all necessary steps during setup for the installation. Again there is the possibility to install it on another location or drive.

All components are installed now, but the local group must be changed again. Rename the local group to “SQLServerReportServerUser$<OpsMgr Server>$MSRS10_50.MSSQLSERVER” back again. After that Operations Manager is installed and usable. The Reporting component is even functional then.

To install latest hotfixes CU3 is needed. It can be download here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17893

All steps needed for a functional installation are explained now. Hope you like it and use these steps for instaling OpsMgr 2007 R2 yourself!