Operations Manager Data Warehouse High CPU Utilization

Some good steps if you are having trouble with CPU on your DW.

http://www.afinn.net/2008/10/operations-manager-data-warehouse-high-cpu-utilization/

Speed up Command Shell startup

There is a post over on the Powershell team blog about how to speed up Powershell startup times. I ran this on a few of my Operations Manager Servers and it noticeably made a difference to Powershell startup times. However the Operations Manager command shell was still quite a bit slower.

I then ran the same script from within the command shell and it found something to NGEN

NGENing : Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.OperationsManager.ClientShell.dll

In my very scientific way of couting seconds in my head before and after running this it definitley starts faster.

Check it out - http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2008/09/02/speeding-up-powershell-startup-updating-update-gac-ps1.aspx

Clearing Console Cache and User Settings

There are a few steps to be taken to really clean up a console if you have performed some personalization.

Open regedit and delete the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\Console

Start the Operations Console from the command line with the option /clearcache

Example:

C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\Microsoft.MOM.UI.Console.exe" /clearcache

Quick Access to OpsMgr Agent Information

Sometimes you need access to some information from Opsmgr in a hurry and you really do not want to open up the Ops Console and wait for it to load.

Here is a powershell script that extracts information from OpsMgr and drops it into several HTML files so it can be added to a website.
Download Script


The pages created are the following

AgentsCounts.html - This gives give you a count of the number of agents per management group and breaks this down also by per management server

MonitoredServers.html - This page gives a complete list of all the agents being monitored by Opsmgr.

ServersDown.html - This gives a list of servers that may be down. It is actually a list of servers where the health service watcher is in an "Error" state.

AgentsLast7days.html - This is a list of all agents installed in the last 7 days, when they were installed and includes their health state

The script does require some configuration before it can be used:

1) At the very start of the script you have to enter the name of the Root Management Server. You can uncomment the next lines lines and define multiple RMS's if you want to pull the information from more than 1 management group.

2) $outpath = "c:\" - Change this to where you want the script to write the html files.

3) If connecting to more than one management group you need to comment out line 17 and uncomment Line 19

Updated Agent Maintenance Mode

---Update---

Updated version of this MP at http://derekhar.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-agent-maintenance-mode.html

---------

There is a new version of my Maintenance Mode MP and scripts that can do maintenance mode from the Agent with no extras installed (The original post is here). The 4 files are available for download from http://cid-397bb61b75cc76c5.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public/AgentMaintModeV2?view=details

-----------

EDIT

Be aware the PowerShell execution policy might block the script from being run.

You may need to do the following:
1. Open the Command Shell, and do "set-executionpolicy remotesigned" (using "allsigned" may be considered a bit more secure.
2. Right-click on the .ps1 files, chose properties and click "Unblock" especially if you've downloaded these scripts using Internet Explorer.

Thanks to Marco for catching this. I had a few people contact with with the earlier version not working and I could never figure out why. Could be the same reason.

----------------

This version adds the ability to turn off maintenance mode from the agent as well as turn it on. The vbscript has been updated with some more options and some instructions on how to use it.

To install or update you need to import the management pack and copy the 2 ps1 files to System Center Operations Manager 2007 program folder on the RMS.

Then you need to copy the vbscript file to any agent managed server and run it to set any server in maintenance mode for the desired time period.

------------------------------

VBScript Usage:

Usage: MaintMode ON|OFF [ON Duration][D][H][M]

Examples: MaintMode ON 6H
MaintMode ON 2D

ON is a mandatory keyword to put a server in maintenance mode.

ON Duration is number of [D]ays [M]inutes or [H]ours Maintenance
Mode should remain ON.

If not specified, the default is 6 hours.
This means Maintenance mode will turn itself OFF after 6 hours.

If ON Duration is specified without [D][H][M], the number is
interpreted as hours.

------------------------------

This MP creates a new class which contains all Windows Operating Systems. There are 2 rules in this class. One listens for the Maint Mode ON event and the other listens for the Maint Mode OFF event. The script on the RMS that turns on Maintenance Mode actually turns it on for all the components of the server and then turns it off again only for the Maint Mode class. This means that even in Maint Mode it can listen for the OFF event.

NOTE: The discovery for this class runs every 12 hours so be aware that systems may take this long after install for the scripts to work

Thanks again to Boris for his examples and scripts for doing maintenance mode.

Initiate Maintenance Mode from an Agent (no extras installed)

---Update---

Updated version of this MP at http://derekhar.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-agent-maintenance-mode.html

---------

This post will detail a method to initiate Maintenance Mode from an agent managed computer using a vbscript. This method is useful in the case where the people doing patching are not the same people who use the Operations Console and when you cannot dictate what is to be installed in the server. Clive Eastwood's AgentMM for example, if run remotely requires .NET 3.0, Operations Manager specific dll's, Admin permissions on OpsMgr and the ability to connect to the SDK service on the RMS.

Using this method, the person running the command needs to have absolutely no permissions on Ops Manager. All of the components required to have this function are part of a standard OS with and agent installed. It works through Gateways so can be used in firewalled or untrusted environments if you have a gateway in place.

There are 3 parts to this solution:

1) A VBScript on each managed computer that writes an event to the local event log.

2) A Management pack containing an rule that detects this event and runs a response on the RMS.

3) The response executes a Powershell script on the RMS that puts the server in to Maintenance Mode. I have borrowed pieces of the powershell script from Boris.

VBScript

Powershell Script

Management Pack

The vbscript is pretty simple and just writes an event to the event log that indicates the length of time Maintenance Mode should remain on. This time is passed as a parameter to the script.

Usage: MaintModeOn 4

- This command turns on Maintenance Mode for 4 hours

The single rule in the management pack picks up the event from the Application Log with event ID of 0, with a source of WSH and where the description contains the words "Maintenance Mode". In response, the rule runs the Powershell script MaintModeON.ps1 and passes to it two parameters -the name of the computer where the script was run and the event description.

The Powershell script puts all three pieces of an agent in the Maintenance Mode. This Powershell script should be copied to the System Center Operations Manager 2007 program folder on the root management server. If you have clustered the RMS it should be in the folder on both nodes.

---Update---

I have updated the links since google appears to have taken down the site hosting the files.

XPath statements to display event data in monitors and rule-generated alerts.

http://goteamshake.com/?p=31

Here are the XPath statements to display event data in monitors and rule-generated alerts.

Monitors

$Data/Context/EventDescription$

Rule-Generated Alerts

$Data/EventDescription$

More about Property bags and Varant types

When returning values in a property bag that are not string values you will have to break open the XML of the management pack to be able to compare the values correctly.

The XML generated by the Authoring console will look something like:

<ErrorExpression>
<SimpleExpression>
<ValueExpression>
<XPathQuery>Property[@Name='Status']</XPathQuery>
</ValueExpression>
<Operator>GreaterEqual</Operator>
<ValueExpression>
<Value Type="String">7</Value>
</ValueExpression>
</SimpleExpression>
</ErrorExpression>


If returning Integer values that you want to compare with integers you will have to change it to:

<ErrorExpression>
<SimpleExpression>
<ValueExpression>
<XPathQuery Type="Integer">Property[@Name='Status']</XPathQuery>
</ValueExpression>
<Operator>GreaterEqual</Operator>
<ValueExpression>
<Value Type="Integer">7</Value>
</ValueExpression>
</SimpleExpression>
</ErrorExpression>

Note that the Type declaration has to be on both sides of the expression. Also be aware that some version of the Authoring console may strip the Type="Integer" from the XPath query.


Thanks to Alexandre Coelho for this fix.

Export a Sealed MP

Export a Sealed MP

A sealed MP can be exported to an XML file using Command Shell.
Find the correct name of the MP you want to export using:

get-managementpack | where {$_.Name -like "*Server.2003"}

Export using:

get-managementpack | where {$_.Name -eq "Microsoft.Windows.Server.2003"} | export-managementpack -path C:\MP

Property bags and Variant Types

When using script based monitors the name value pairs get returned in what is called a propert bag. A property bag is simply a blob of XML that looks like this:


<DataItem type="System.PropertyBagData" time="2007-07-16T23:10:53.1294962+01:00" sourceHealthServiceId="8FD1B472-1464-691B-9BF7-E3AC669C2310">
<Property Name="scan.dat" VariantType="3">19</Property>
<Property Name="names.dat" VariantType="3">19</Property>
<Property Name="clean.dat" VariantType="3">19</Property>
</DataItem>

The XML describes that this is a property bag, that date/time that it was submitted to the management server and the properties contained in the property bag.

The VariantType describes the type of the value that is returned. The variant types are:

Empty = 0
Null = 1
Short = 2
Integer = 3
Single = 4
Double = 5
Currency = 6
Date = 7
String = 8
Object = 9
Error = 10
Boolean = 11
Variant = 12
DataObject = 13
Decimal = 14
Byte = 15
Char = 16
Long = 17

Some Ops manager Agent Stuff

We had some problems every time we built a new management group in our lab. All the old agents would still be trying to report to the old management group. This was a pain because all this did was clutter up the Operations Manager Log. The solution we used was to create a task that would completely uninstall all the agents. They would then be automatically reinstalled by the active management group if you have applied the overrides to enable the recoveries as detailed in the System Center Management Pack Guide. A bit of powershell would then run this task against all agents.

To Create the Uninstall Task

On the Authoring pane on the console create a new command line agent task called CompleteUninstall. The target is Windows Computer. The command line settings are shown below.





Uninstall command for Agent (RTM)

MsiExec.exe /x {E7600A9C-6782-4221-984E-AB89C780DC2D} /quiet

This gives us a task that ca be run on an agent to perform an uninstall of an agent. To run this on all agents the easiest way is to do it in a powershell script

Powershell Script to run the task for all agents

$uninstallTask = get-task | where {$_.Name -eq "CompleteUninstall"}
foreach($agent in get-agent)
{
$server = $agent.Displayname
$server
start-task -asynchronous -task:$uninstallTask -path .\Microsoft.SystemCenter.AgentManagedComputerGroup\$server
}


Save this script as a .ps1 file and then run it from the Operations Manager Command Shell. The results of these tasks will always show in the Operations Console under Task Status as failed as the Agent has been removed.