Cumulative Update 5 for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 (KB 2495674)

The CU5 SE team is very happy to announce the release of Cumulative Update 5 for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 (KB link will be active shortly). CU5 is a continuation of our commitment to service our in-market products in timely, high-quality manner.

Cumulative Update 5 for Operations Manager 2007 R2 resolves the following issues:

• Restart of non-Operations Manager services when the agent is updated.
• Updated ACS reports.
• TCP Port Probe incorrectly reports negative ping latency.
• MissingEvent Manual Reset Monitor does not work as expected.
• Drill-through fails due to rsParameterTypeMismatch in the EnterpriseManagementChartControl.
• ACS – Event log message is truncated or corrupted in SCDW.
• UI hang caused by SDK locking.
• ACS Filter fails for certain wildcard queries.
• Edit Schedule button is disabled with SQL Server 2008 R2.
• Web console is timing out while opening the left navigation tree.
• Scheduled Reports view for Windows Server 2003 and SQL SRS 2005 SP3 CU9 – returns System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
• Signed MPs cannot be imported when new attributes are added to existing classes.

 

Cross Platform Cumulative Update 5 for Operations Manager 2007 R2 resolves the following issues:

• Performance data for LVM managed partitions is not available
• Process monitor does not retain name if run via symbolic link
• AIX with large number of processes crashes with bad alloc

 

Cross Platform Cumulative Update 5 for Operations Manager 2007 R2 adds the following features:

• Support for Red Hat 6

For additional information about this release, please see the CU5 KB article

Free tool for Monitoring of Hyper-V

Looking for a better Hyper-V monitoring solution other than Task Manager?

After a little searching I found a tool developed by Tim Mangan called HyperV_Mon

The HyperV_Mon tool helps you to understand Performance characteristics in a Hyper-V world.

HyperV_Mon monitors physical, logical, and virtual performance information that is available when running virtual machines under Microsoft Hyper-V. The graphical display is organized to help easily understand the CPU performaces being experienced. Detailed text displays also help highlight other performance issues such as memory, paging, and I/O. Additional information is provided about virtualization “overhead” that is detected within the VMs.

You can download the install and supporting documentation here.

Updated Dell MP for OpsMgr v4.1, A00

 

<—- click to download

 

Besides a fix for the Discovery issue (doah!) it contains these improvements:

• Support for OpenManage events up to version 6.4
• Management of physical and teamed Network Interfaces for Broadcom and Intel NICs
• Enriched monitoring of Network Interfaces on OpenManage Server Administrator versions greater than and equal to 6.2.0.1, along with basic monitoring on OMSA versions below 6.2.0.1
• Performance monitoring of Network Interfaces on OpenManage Server Administrator versions greater than 6.2.0.1
• Discovery of vflash card and monitoring of iDRAC network interfaces
• Realistic icons for the various components in Diagram View for the Dell Monolithic and Modular Systems
• Representation of Server Modules and Chassis Slots Summary under Dell Chassis Management Controllers and Dell Modular Chassis Remote Access Controllers
• Correlation of the Server Modules under Dell Chassis Management Controllers/Dell Modular Chassis Remote Access Controllers with Dell Windows Servers on System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2

Thanks for the update Dell – I know some folks that have been waiting for this!

Download: Dell Server Management Pack Suite

Service Manager 2010 SP1 Product Documentation

Looking for product documentation around Service Manager 2010 SP1? The links below will provide all the product documentation you should need…

Administrators Guide
Authoring Guide
Deployment Guide
Disaster Recovery Guide
Job Aids
Operations Guide
Planning Guide
Upgrade to SP1

System Center Service Manager 2010 SP1 provides an integrated platform for automating and adapting your organization’s IT service management best practices, such as those found in Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). It provides built-in processes for incident and problem resolution, change control, and asset lifecycle management.

System Center Service Manager 2010 Product Documentation Archive contains archived versions of the documentation for the original release of System Center Service Manager 2010. For the latest documentation, supporting the latest release, go here.

OpsMgr 2007 Tools and Utilities

SCOM MP Catalog

Active Directory Integration Script: Enables you to extract a list of computer names from your custom SQL Server database, based on a specified query parameter, and add them to an Active Directory security group. You can assign the members of the security group to a specific Management Server.
Understanding how Active Directory integration feature works in OpsMgr 2007

Operations Manager Cleanup Tool: A command-line utility that enables you to remove all of the components of Operations Manager from a local computer in cases where the typical method through the Add/Remove Programs application in the Control Panel has failed.

A few other useful tools and utilities:
Action Account Tool: A Windows PowerShell script that allows you to set the action account on multiple computers.
Effective Configuration Viewer: A tool that displays the set of rules and monitors that are running on a computer, distributed application, or any other managed entity after any configured overrides have been applied.
AEM Validation: A command line utility that will allow you to perform end-to-end validation of Agent-less Exception Monitoring to verify that AEM is properly configured and operational.

System Center Operations Manager

Plethora of Windows Server 2008 Posters

Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Component Poster

Windows Server 2008 R2 Feature Components Poster

Windows Server 2008 R2: Hyper-V Component Architecture Poster

Remote Desktop Services Component Architecture Poster

Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Pack

Feature Summary
The Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Packs includes the following features:

• Local and Remote Monitoring of an Agent’s Health
  • Operations Manager agents monitor themselves for events and performance indicators that signal an issue with the agent’s health.
  • Management servers also maintain an external perspective of an agent’s health via the Health Service Watcher.
  • The ‘Agent Health State’ view provides a side-by-side dashboard of both perspectives on the agent.
• Optional, Automatic Agent Remediation Capabilities
  • If the Health Service Watcher determines that an agent is unhealthy, a series of diagnostics and recoveries can be enabled to further diagnose the problem and event take actions to attempt to fix the problem (e.g. Ping the server to see if it is completely offline, start a stopped agent, trigger a reinstall, etc.). Refer to the management pack guide for more details.
  • Agents are monitoring their own process to ensure that memory utilization is not sustained at unacceptable levels. If this condition is detected then the agent will automatically restart itself to force the freeing up of memory.
• Detection of Problems and Misconfigurations with Run As Accounts and Profiles
  • Checks are run on a regular basis to detect if any of the management group’s “Windows” type Run As Accounts have credentials which are about to expire. Alerts will be raised, and where possible this will be done in advance of the credentials expiring to avoid outages.
  • Alerts will be raised if any errors are encountered during the distribution of Run As Accounts.
• Monitoring of problems with Running Workflows in Management Packs
  • Numerous rules are provided to detect if workflows within management packs are failing. Examples of workflows include discoveries, rules, monitors, etc. Failures can range from bad configurations on the workflows themselves, script failures, permissions problems, etc.
• Reports for identify drivers of data volumes in your environment
  • Introduced with the 6.1.7599.0 release of the management pack, these reports provide insight into the overall data volumes being processed by your environments. These reports can be used for gaining an understanding of current usage levels in order to establish a baseline and for identifying opportunities for tuning.
• Operational Data Reporting
  • Introduced in the 6.1.7599.0 release of the management pack, these reports gather information and sends reports to Microsoft on a weekly basis (if you select to send reports). Microsoft uses these reports to improve the quality of its management packs and Operations Manager 2007. Participation in the program is strictly voluntary. For more information, see the Management Pack Guide

Download: Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Pack

Kevin Holman’s review of the install.

Migration planning made easier with MAP Toolkit 5.5 Beta

The next version of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit-version 5.5- is now available for beta download. To participate, register for the MAP Toolkit 5.5 Beta at Microsoft Connect.

Simplify planning for upgrade or migration to the latest Microsoft products and technologies with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 5.5 Beta. This multifaceted tool is now even better-with assessment for easier migration to Windows Azure and SQL Azure, heterogeneous database discovery for SQL Server migration projects, Internet Explorer 8 upgrade assessment, and much more-MAP 5.5 Beta includes new features (see below) to help you streamline planning for your next migration project.

MAP works with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and Security Compliance Manager to help you plan, securely deploy, and manage new Microsoft technologies -easier, faster, and at less cost. Learn more.

The MAP 5.5 Beta will run through mid-January 2011. Now is the time to join the beta program, preview this toolkit, and provide Microsoft with your feedback.

What’s new with MAP Toolkit 5.5?
Assess your environment for upgrade to Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 (or the latest version).
Are you looking for a tool to simplify your organization’s migration to Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8—and, in turn, enjoy improved desktop security, reliability and manageability? The MAP 5.5 IE Upgrade Assessment inventories your environment and reports on deployed web browsers, Microsoft ActiveX controls, plug-ins and toolbars, and then generates a migration assessment report and proposal—information you need to more easily migrate to Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 (or the latest version).

Identify and analyze web application, and database readiness for migration to Windows Azure and SQL Azure.
Simplify your move to the cloud with the MAP 5.5 automated discovery and detailed inventory reporting on database and web application readiness for Windows Azure and SQL Azure. MAP identifies web applications, IIS servers, and SQL Server databases, analyzes their performance characteristics, and estimates required cloud features such as number of Windows Azure compute instances, number of SQL Azure databases, bandwidth usage, and storage.

Discover heterogeneous database instances for migration to SQL Server.
Now with heterogeneous database inventory supported, MAP 5.5 helps you accelerate migration to SQL Server with network inventory reporting for MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase instances.

Enhanced server consolidation assessments for Hyper-V.
Enhanced server consolidation capabilities help save time and effort when creating virtualization assessments and proposals.

Enhancements include:
·         Updated hardware libraries allowing you to select from the latest Intel and AMD processors.
·         Customized server selection for easy editing of assessment data.
·         Data collection and store every five minutes for more accurate reporting.
·         Better scalability and reliability, requiring less oversight of the data collection process.
·         Support for more machines.

Microsoft Virtualization Solution Accelerators

The Virtualization Solution Accelerators is a collection of automated tools and proven technical guidance to help you assess your current infrastructure, plan and design new infrastructure pieces, secure server roles, and deploy virtualization technologies.

Featured Resources

Application Virtualization (App-V) Dashboard The Application Virtualization (App-V) Dashboard helps you keep track of the usage, health, and compliance of your virtualized applications—in near-real time! Using the Dashboard’s built-in charts, gauges, and tables, you can track any App-V dataset.

Virtual Machine Servicing Tool (VMST) 3.0 Want to keep virtualized environments more secure and compliant – while saving time and money! Virtual Machine Servicing Tool (VMST) 3.0 helps you reduce your IT costs by making it easier to update your offline virtual machines, templates and virtual hard disks with the latest operating system and application patches—without introducing vulnerabilities into your IT infrastructure. Safely and effectively manage the workflow of updating your offline virtualization environment.

Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guide for Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology The IPD Guide for Selecting the Right Virtualization Technology enables the reader to rapidly and accurately select which Microsoft virtualization technology or technologies to use for specific scenarios. Updated to include coverage of Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), this guide walks the reader through the process of selecting the right virtualization technology for each workload—in five steps or fewer. Check out these other IPD Guides:  Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.6 Windows Server Virtualization Dynamic Data Center

New! Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guide for Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services Streamline your planning and design process for implementing the Remote Desktop Services infrastructure by using the simple nine-step process presented in this guide. Use this guide to save time and clarify your design and planning process.

Updated Virtualization Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guides The IPD Guide for Windows Server Virtualization and IPD Guide for System Center Virtual Machine Manager are now updated to reflect the features and functionalities of Windows Server® 2008 R2 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. These guides outline the critical infrastructure design elements that are crucial to a successful implementation of these virtualization products.

Elevate virtual environment security with the Hyper-V Security Guide This security guide provides IT professionals like you with guidance, instructions, and recommendations to address your key security concerns around server virtualization.

Jumpstart Your Virtualization Projects with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Tool Download this network-wide inventory and assessment tool to determine the virtualization candidates for Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Application Virtualization. If you’re currently running VMware, the toolkit now includes a VMware discovery feature that identifies already-virtualized servers running under VMware that can be managed with Microsoft’s System Center Virtual Machine Manager platform or which can be migrated to Hyper-V hypervisor.

New Release – Windows Optimized Desktop Scenarios – Solution Accelerator To address the need for flexibility in management and cost of the desktop, this new Infrastructure planning and design, Windows Optimized Desktop Scenarios relate IT and user business requirements for a flexible, efficient, and managed desktop environment to sets of complementary Microsoft technologies. The guide and supporting tool in this Solution Accelerator use the five standard user scenarios, including Office Worker and Mobile Worker, to map requirements to technologies and help with the selection. Read more in the TechNet Library.

Getting Business Done With Virtualization

Below are a collection of guides that can assist in defining how to accomplish business goals by utilizing server and services via virtualization technology.

IT Managers can make use of their limited resources in the most efficient activities, even making changes dynamically to utilize resources as demands change during a business day or week — for example, a busy Web server during the week that lays largely unused over the weekend could be repurposed on Friday evening for large database processing jobs and returned to serving Web requests late on Sunday.