Extremely good Technet article for troubleshooting “gray” agents

I bet you got a agent in a “gray” state sometime. Now there is a very detailed KB that describe what can be the reason. This is useful for both SCE and SCOM admins

Link to the KB

Visio 2010 Add-in now available for Operations Manager 2007 R2

Microsoft has updated the Visio Add-in to support Visio 2010. Except support for Visio 2010 they added support to publish your Visio diagrams as live dashboards in SharePoint.

Read more about the announcement

Download Visio 2010 Add-in For Opsmgr 2007 R2

Cross Platform Cumulative Update 2 is now released

Yesterday Microsoft released the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Cumulative Update 2 (KB979490). This update fixes the blow issues (plus the fixes in KB973583)

• The Log File provider rescans a file repeatedly if the size of the file has become smaller than last scan, generating old records and potentially causing performance issues on AIX computers and the Operations Manager Management server.
• When the Operations Manager Management server fails over to another Management server, alerts in the failed server’s log files may be re-generated and CPU load may increase significantly.
• The Cross Platform agent installed on a Solaris computer could stop working when the system configuration is changed. For example, when disks are added or removed on the Solaris computer.
• The Operations Manager agent stops working on computers running supported version of Solaris where Hot Spare Pool is declared by name and there is no disk association.
• The Operations Manager Management server fails to replace display string parameter while creating the alert for monitor state change.
• Operations Manager generates ‘disk full’ alerts when mounting UFS CDROMs on any supported version of Solaris.
• Certificate generation could fail when adding a new UNIX or Linux computer to the management group.

Note that this update need to be install on both Management Servers and gateway Servers

Download this update from Microsoft

Updated Management Pack – Windows Server Internet Information Services 7

This week a updated version of the Windows Server Internet Information Services 7 was released:

Download from Microsoft or use the Operations Manager R2 console to download/Import

Note that if you are running Operations Manager 2007 Sp1 you need to install the “Service Pack 1 Update”  K971541 before importing the MP. Since this update is not supported for SCE, I’m not sure if the MP will be supported. I will update this post when I get more information

Exchange 2007 MP 6.0.6702.0 issues

When I was at a customer, I run into two issues when configuring the Exchange 2007 MP that I thought I would share with you all:

• Problem 1
• If your Exchange has multiple OWA virtual directories, you wont get any data in the synthetic transaction performance views
• Solution
• As of now, you need to delete the “extra” virtual directory
• Problem 2
• If you are running Exchange 2007 SP2 and configured the “client synthetic transaction” you will get an alerts (see below) and the state of your CAS Synthetic Transaction State(s) will go red.
• When configured client synthetic transaction for OWA internal and/or External monitoring
• The test was unable to log on to Outlook Web Access because the SSL certificate did not validate. You can force the cmdlet to proceed by re-running it and specifying the TrustAnySSLCertificate parameter URL
• When configured client synthetic transaction for Activesync and/or Web Services monitoring
• [System.Net.WebException]:The underlying connection was closed. Could not establish a trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel.Inner error [System.Security.Authentication.AuthenticationException]:
  The remote certificate is invalid according to the validation procedure – Some of the client access server connectivity transactions failed
• Solution
• Disable the BPA on CAS servers.
  1.   Click the Authoring button in the Operations console, and then click Rules.
  2.   In the Rules pane, in the Look for box, type Exchange 2007 Test System Health, and then click Find now.
  3.   Right-click the Exchange 2007 Test System Health rule in the list, click Overrides, click Override the rule, and then click For all objects of class: Exchange 2007 Best Practice. A list of override controlled parameters is displayed.
  4.   Select to disable it

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Audit Collection Services now available

In System Center Operations Manager we have had the Audit Collection Services since the 2007 version. Now with Operations Manager R2, we got support for monitoring cross platform (UNIX/Linux servers) and today the System Center team released an add-on so ACS also works with UNIX/Linux servers.

I haven’t had time to play with it yet, but when I do I add more info.

Download from Microsoft

Operations Manager 2007 SP1 and R2 is now supported on Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7

Today Microsoft published a technote that state that both Operations Manager 2007 SP1 and R2 is supported on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

Note that there is some known issues if you upgrade your servers to Windows Server 2008 R2, these will be fixed in updates that will be available in the future. Doing a clean install should work fine.

Also note that System Center Essentials is still not supported on Windows Server 2008 R2.

PS! Microsoft also release an updated MP for Windows Server Operating, we can now monitor Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2000 Server

Read the technote from Microsoft

Exchange 2010 RC is now available for download

Today Microsoft released the release candidate for Exchange 2010. In the text from the Exchange team blog, they writes that this will be upgradeable to RTM.

More information about the Exchange 2010

Download Exchange 2010 from Microsoft

If you download and install it, you can also test the new Forefront Security 2010 for Exchange Server Release Candidate (this one works with both Exchange 2007 and 2010).

Download Forefront Security 2010 for Exchange Server Release Candidate

As for monitoring the Exchange 2010, I haven’t seen any public version of the Exchange 2010 management pack.

Update – You can download the Exchange 2010 beta MP from Microsoft Download. Note that this MP install some bits on the RMS.

Download Exchange 2010 Beta MP from Microsoft

Want to learn more about creating Management Packs?

Yesterday Microsoft added some more content that will help everyone that want to learn more about how to create a Management Pack. If you open the TechNet site and click on the Management Pack University link you will have 14 videos that describe different aspects related to building Management Packs.

New Management Pack – Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

Today Microsoft released there first MP for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009.

Feature Summary
The Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Management Pack provides the following capabilities.

• View the state of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 AOS instances
• View information about AOS instances such as version and configuration information
• View users connected to AOS instances
• View Event Log Messages for AOS instances
• View batch jobs and batch task information
• Start and stop AOS instances
• Receive alerts when AOS instances stop running

Download Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Management Pack for Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 from Microsoft

PS! If you are running System Center Operations Manager R2 you can download and import directly from the console