Contact us today|info@ctglobalservices.com
FacebookXLinkedIn

Azure Automation / SCOM: Triggering a runbook as a Recovery task using Webhooks

  If you havent heard about it, the future of automation is here! In the form of  “Azure Automation”. also known as “OMS Automation” when it is part of the Operational Management Suite (OMS). This cloud service can control our automation, just as System center Orchestrator has done for years. It works in a very similar way, but has been extended to support more features, for instance it supports what is known as Webhooks. A webhook enables us to trigger a runbook using a standard HTTP call, making it easier to integrate from other tools (could for instance be used [...]

By |2016-02-10T15:41:56+01:00februar 10th, 2016|Azure, Operations Manager (SCOM)|1 Kommentar
Læs mere

FTP / SFTP monitor for SCOM

In this post we'll make a script for a FTP / SFTP monitor that can monitor the FTP/SFTP status, by doing the following operations: -Log in -Upload a file -Download a file -Delete the file Since Powershell doesn't have any built-in ftp support I was looking for some alternatives, and since I use WinSCP normally for ftp/sftp I found that they also support Powershell scripting, so why not take advantage of this? This guide was written with great help from WinSCP's own page: https://winscp.net/eng/docs/library_powershell Get the SSH fingerprint (This part is only nessary for the SFTP solution). Since we need the SSH [...]

By |2016-02-07T11:09:32+01:00februar 7th, 2016|Operations Manager (SCOM), Powershell, Scripting & Development|5 Comments
Læs mere

Bluestripe acquired by Microsoft

It was with great excitement that I read that Microsoft has acquired Bluestripe . I have been working with their product Factfinder for a while now and is impressed with it’s features. The acquisition means even better integration and features for a solution that is already great and right now provide immense value to any SCOM and SCSM solution, which is why we always recommend our customers to consider Factfinder as part of their System Center implementation. Without Bluestripe’s product Factfinder, mapping services and creating distributed applications in SCOM, is typically a manual task and requires you to collect information [...]

By |2015-06-11T10:18:08+01:00juni 11th, 2015|Operations Manager (SCOM)|1 Kommentar
Læs mere

Monitoring Exchange 2013

With Exchange 2013 a new way of monitoring workloads appeared, at least in the windows world. Managed Availability is the name and my guess is, that we will see more of this type of monitoring going forward. As a SCOM administrator you have limited possibilities of creating overrides for Exchange 2013 monitoring. This must be done by an Exchange administrator in the Exchange Management Shell, but you still need to know how this is done so you can work with the Exchange administrator to tweak the default monitoring configuration. I recommend reading these articles to begin with: Understanding how Exchange [...]

By |2014-09-18T13:54:06+01:00september 18th, 2014|Operations Manager (SCOM)|4 Comments
Læs mere

Where is the alert history?

This error has been there before in OpsMgr 2007 and also resolved, however it has been re-introduced in SCOM 2012 and is still an issue in SCOM R2 UR2. If you have active alerts without any alert history or only a recent entry, then it is due to this bug. Until a fix comes out the workaround is to update the store procedure that takes care of alert grooming. I recommend you raise a support case with Microsoft to get the workaround from Microsoft. But the workaround will be this one. Important – test this in your SCOM test environment [...]

By |2014-05-08T15:35:16+01:00maj 8th, 2014|Operations Manager (SCOM)|Kommentarer lukket til Where is the alert history?
Læs mere

Check if a resolution state is in use before deleting it

  1. Go to Administration –> Settings and Alerts 2. Check the ID of the Resolution State you wish to delete   Notifications   1. Export Notifications Internal Library 2. Open the exported XML in Notepad 3. Search for <Value>ResolutionStateNumber</Value>, for instance: <Value>30</Value> 4. Copy the GUID, without the “ “     5. Open Operations Manager Shell and execute the following query: Get-SCOMNotificationSubscription –Name TheGuidFromXML     You then get which subscription uses the Resolution State Views 1. Open SQL Management Studio and connect to your SCOM instance 2. Execute the following query, with your Resolution State number:   [...]

By |2014-04-28T14:36:22+01:00april 28th, 2014|Operations Manager (SCOM)|Kommentarer lukket til Check if a resolution state is in use before deleting it
Læs mere

OLE DB Data Source Monitor error: ORA-00900 invalid SQL statement

  There are no free management packs for monitoring Oracle databases in SCOM 2012. However, a free solution is to use the OLE DB Data Source monitor and install Oracle client on the watcher node. There are several blogs about how to set this up, so I’m not going to write about that.   What I am going to write about is the “ORA-00900 invalid SQL statement” error one might receive from these monitors. Some weeks ago I was at a costumer who wanted to monitor some Oracle databases and I configured the monitor without a query, which worked fine. [...]

By |2014-02-10T16:08:23+01:00februar 10th, 2014|Operations Manager (SCOM)|1 Kommentar
Læs mere

Visual Studio Web Test – without Visual Studio Ultimate

Using the Web Application Transaction Monitor is absolutely one of my favorites in SCOM. Adding GSM to this is nothing but brilliant. I know a lot of companies that wants to monitor their websites from outside the organization, and GSM does the job. But… It is not possible to create a Web App. Transaction monitor with GSM out of the box in SCOM. To do this one needs Visual Studio Ultimate. This is not one of the cheap ones. As a workaround one can you Fiddler2 and Notepad, which does the job. When using Fiddler2 you get a big load [...]

By |2014-01-13T11:34:30+01:00januar 13th, 2014|Operations Manager (SCOM)|2 Comments
Læs mere

SCOM 2012 Web Console prompts for credentials – new

  When accessing the web console from the server hosting the web site there is no problem, but when accessing it from another server, you get the following message:     This issue is pretty common and I have already blogged about it here: https://blog.ctglobalservices.com/msk/scom-2012-web-console-prompts-for-username-and-password/. As written in the blog post, this is due to Kerberos double hop. But what to do when that solution doesn’t do the trick?   I made sure that everything was as supposed:   Only Windows Authentication was enabled:   In Providers, NTLM had been moved up, which normally is the fix:   I then [...]

By |2013-11-27T11:17:36+01:00november 27th, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|15 Comments
Læs mere

Upgrade to SCOM 2012 R2: Unable to proceed

  The upgrade time has truly come!   During an upgrade at a costumer site I got the following error when trying to upgrade the secondary management server:   Unable to Proceed Setup could not detect the current Data Warehouse Scenario. Please ensure that the SQL Server service for the Data Warehouse is running, and the current user has permission to access the Data Warehouse.     I checked the services and I had already upgraded the RMS emulator server so i was sure it wasn’t a permission issue.   Time to dig a little deeper…   I start by [...]

By |2013-11-07T11:05:07+01:00november 7th, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|5 Comments
Læs mere

How to edit default Resolution States

  Resolution States is an area in SCOM that is highly underestimated in my eyes. These can really be used to a lot – scoping, viewing, alerting, subscriptions etc. I do see a lot using it, and those who do have seen the light in this magnificent “tool”.   However, with SCOM 2012 Microsoft has added some default Resolution States:     The Acknowledged state is fairly useful, but the rest… I don’t really know. But these are all predefined, so we can’t delete them. But we can actually!   To edit these it requires manually changes to the database, [...]

By |2013-09-17T16:32:34+01:00september 17th, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|Kommentarer lukket til How to edit default Resolution States
Læs mere

Exchange 2010 MP – be aware of events!

  I admit it, the Exchange 2010 has been fairly improved comparing to its younger sibling, the Exchange 2003 mp. We still have a load of Rules and Monitors, it’s still noisy and we still have to run all the Test-Something.ps1 scripts. There i one thing that one should be aware of though. The mp generates a LOT of events. I was at a costumer site last week configuring the mp, and i got this: 45202 events! In 10 days! The events are pretty usefull when testing the Test-Something scripts, as they run with 5 min. interval, you will get [...]

By |2013-09-16T13:41:09+01:00september 16th, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|Kommentarer lukket til Exchange 2010 MP – be aware of events!
Læs mere

Which management pack contains my group or Distributed Application?

  Which management pack contains my group or Distributed Application? A couple of days ago I got a question, which I thought could be the 1$ question on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, but I was actually a bit wrong.   While you can always see directly in the UI in which management pack rules, monitors, overrides have been saved, it is not exactly the same with Groups and Distributed Applications.   Neither in the Groups view nor in the properties of the group can you see anything about the management pack in which it has been saved. Same [...]

By |2013-07-23T11:35:05+01:00juli 23rd, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|1 Kommentar
Læs mere

SNMP trap/probe – with or without the dot in the OID?

  I was setting up some UPS monitoring at a costumer, and i got into a “discusison” with a collegaue about the first dot in a OID. We were discussing whether or not you need the dot before the first number when creating monitors/rules in SCOM 2012. We went ahead and created two simple monitors – one with the dot and one without: UPS Battery Temperature: .1.3.6.1.4.1.318.1.1.1.2.2.2.0   UPS Battery Temperature – WITHOUT DOT: 1.3.6.1.4.1.318.1.1.1.2.2.2.0   I faked a temperature alert and i got:   I got two alerts! So actually, apparently it doesn’t make a living difference if you [...]

By |2013-07-22T14:52:09+01:00juli 22nd, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|2 Comments
Læs mere

SCOM 2012 Linux discovery: Unexpected DiscoveryResult.ErrorData type. Please file bug report. ErrorData:

  Today at a costumer site I was installing some Linux agents, when I got a pretty weird and non-saying error:   Unexpected DiscoveryResult.ErrorData type. Please file bug report. ErrorData: Microsoft.SystemCenter.CrossPlatform.ClientLibrary.MPAbstractions.InvalidWSManTaskResponseException Failed to parse output from WSMan discovery. Output from task was: <DataItem type=”Microsoft.SystemCenter.WSManagement.WSManData” time=”2013-02-26T15:35:00.1849706+02:00″ sourceHealthServiceId=”16F56055-5671-604C-AF9D-088444BA4B6E”><WsManData><ErrorCode>0x800703fa</ErrorCode><ErrorMessage>Illegal operation attempted on a registry key that has been marked for deletion. </ErrorMessage></WsManData></DataItem>. at System.Activities.WorkflowApplication.Invoke(Activity activity, IDictionary`2 inputs, WorkflowInstanceExtensionManager extensions, TimeSpan timeout) at System.Activities.WorkflowInvoker.Invoke(Activity workflow, IDictionary`2 inputs, TimeSpan timeout, WorkflowInstanceExtensionManager extensions) at Microsoft.SystemCenter.CrossPlatform.ClientActions.DefaultDiscovery.InvokeWorkflow(IManagedObject managementActionPoint, DiscoveryTargetEndpoint criteria, IInstallableAgents installableAgents)     This really didn’t give me any clues about the issue. Started Googling the issue, [...]

By |2013-06-20T11:06:46+01:00juni 20th, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|Kommentarer lukket til SCOM 2012 Linux discovery: Unexpected DiscoveryResult.ErrorData type. Please file bug report. ErrorData:
Læs mere

SSL Certifikate Error – WS-Management Certificate Health

  Lately I have been working a bit with UNIX/Linux in SCOM 2012. I feel about it almost the same way I feel about certificates. Usually it works fine, but anything wrong or any errors, and it can quickly be a time consuming process.   Today I ran into the “SSL Certificate Error”. I got this alert on servers already monitored for a week, so I seemed a little strange. I had also done the scxconfig –export and –import, so I couldn’t see how it should be a certificate issue. Also, the Product Knowledge was of very little help, as [...]

By |2013-06-18T09:25:31+01:00juni 18th, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|1 Kommentar
Læs mere

SCOM 2012 web console prompts for username and password

  I have seen this issue several times, but as I always forget it after I’ve fixed it, I decided to make a blog post about it. As far as I have learned this issue is due to a Kerberos double-hop. But, fear not! The solution is pretty simple: Open IIS Manager, go to Operations Manager and click Authentication:     Mark Windows Authentication and then click “Providers…” in the right side     Move up NTLM so it is first.   No restart of the server or IIS is necessary. This action must be performed on all management servers [...]

By |2013-06-17T15:38:33+01:00juni 17th, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|9 Comments
Læs mere

Create a rule to collect Scheduled Task event log entries in SCOM 2012

  One of the biggest advantages of SCOM is how easy it is to pick up event from the event log and how flexible this can be. Simply go to Event Viewer, choose between the logs and find the event ID you want to alert upon.   But what about Scheduled Tasks? The status of the tasks is not written to any of the standard logs. So how does one pick them up? There is actually an event log for this; it is just not shown by default. In Event Viewer, right click Create Custom Views and scroll down to [...]

By |2013-04-29T15:44:31+01:00april 29th, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|7 Comments
Læs mere

The Web Recorder tab is gone when recording a browser session in SCOM 2012

I was going to create a quite simple browser session for a customer today, but when IE opened the Web Recorder tab wasn’t present. As usual I minimize the 32 bit version and open the 64 bit version of IE instead, but with same result. I also made sure the “Enable third-party browser extensions*” was checked off. Odd! Clicking around in blind a little, I went to View and Explorer bars and noticed…. Web Recorder! Open that and enabled the Microsoft Web Recorder Helper And voila! I can now record sessions: NOTE: a little trick is also to edit the following [...]

By |2013-04-24T14:27:46+01:00april 24th, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|Kommentarer lukket til The Web Recorder tab is gone when recording a browser session in SCOM 2012
Læs mere

Consolidate several performance counter objects to one in a performance rule in SCOM

  Creating a performance counter rule is fairly easy using the Select button to get the object and counter. However, some “systems” create a new performance counter for each of a given object.   One of these systems is SQL and the Buffer Manager object. This object is created for each instance you are running on a SQL server, as shown below with my instances:   So, if you have five instances on a server you don’t want to create a performance rule five times with different names (at least I assume so). To avoid this you can use wildcards [...]

By |2013-04-12T13:49:29+01:00april 12th, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|1 Kommentar
Læs mere

Both True and False is enforced on a rule/monitor – who wins?

Got this question today: A rule/monitor is created and disabled by default The rule/monitor is overridden and enforced to False for a class The rule/monitor is then overridden and enforced to True for a specific object of the class Will the rule be True or False? I created a rule and disabled it by default. I then made an override for All Windows Server and enabled marked the ”Enforced” box.   I then made an override for a specific object of Windows Server, and changed the Override Value to True. I applied this change, but the Effective Value would still [...]

By |2013-02-22T12:23:35+01:00februar 22nd, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|2 Comments
Læs mere

Install a SCOM 2012 agent – silent

  As a part of a script, I wanted to install the SCOM agent on several servers. All these servers are in workgroup/dmz/other domains, which means I had to do a manual installation. Now, there’s a lot of guides on how to install an agent using a command line, the official one from Microsoft: Install Agent Using the Command Line: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh230736.aspx However, this one doesn’t describe any silent parameters. The only way to use the /silent parameter is when installing an OpsMgr component (server, gateway etc). I tried with the /qn option, which made my command look like this: msiexec.exe [...]

By |2013-02-21T15:14:53+01:00februar 21st, 2013|Operations Manager (SCOM)|3 Comments
Læs mere