:::Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005:::

Well, 2007 was a busy year for me and I've been away for a while. I recently changed jobs and have earlier in 2007 my first son was born. Needless to say, I haven't had much time to post. I would like to get back into the swing of things though if there is an audience.

 

If you'd like to see me continue posting MOM 2005 and SMS 2003 articles/downloads, please email me at justinharter@hotmail.com. 

Head on over to http://www.momresources.org for a lot of new updates including an article and script from yours truly :)

Pete Zerger and I, in an effort to consolidate the MOM resources on the web, have now developed a new MOM website. This website is http://www.momresources.org!

 

While it pains me to see my much beloved blog lose some of it's great MOM-focused infrmation, I am also extremely excited to be working with Pete and I feel it will be a great thing for the MOM community. I will still be posting information to my blog periodically for some MOM and IT-related topics, but almost all of my MOM information will be posted to the new site at http://www.momresources.org.

 

This new website will have many of the great features you already enjoy from Pete Zerger's blog and my blog, but it will also have MANY more new features and downloads that you can't find anywhere else.

 

I am extremely excited about this new venture and I am excited about the possibilities it brings for MOM. Head over to the new site and check it out and let us know what you think!

 

I have been severly lacking on updates lately, but do not fret. There will be updates aplenty in the very near future...

After having the Availability MP working flawlessly for 6 months, the MRAS scheduled task has been causing me problems lately. The job just runs and runs and runs, but never completes. It doesn't technically fail and I believe that it is doing "something", but the problem is I can't let it run for days on end (the longest I let it run was for 64 hours) because it pegs the CPU and causes other MOM jobs to fail.

 

I have a case open with PSS, but since the job hasn't run in like 3 weeks, I'm thinking it's beyond repair. Normally the job would take 2 hours to complete for one day worth of data, so at this point it would take a long time to run anyway. I am attempting one more thing to see if I can get it to complete, which is increasing tempDB log size and SCDW log size. I believe that it is maxing out these log files during run time and the tempdb is having to autogrow every 10 minutes or so, which will cause a slow down.

 

Any suggestions are appreciated :)

On Friday I noticed that Microsoft has released the Micorosft Virtual Server R2 management pack. This didn't particularly spark my interest because I don't use Microsoft Virtual Server R2, but I just so happened to notice the reports included in this MP. There are 2 reports that are EXCELLENT reports and they don't even require Virtual Server R2. The two reports are "Virtualization Candidates" and "Performance History".

 

The "Virtualization Candidates" report is a great report that basically shows underutilized servers. This report can quickly show you all of the servers that meet a specified criteria. There are lots of parameterrs that make this report extremely flexible. The "Performance History" report gives you 4 graphs that show CPU utilization, memory use, disk use, and network use.

 

The "Virtualization Candidates" report requires that the MP be installed because it includes a required SQL view, but the "Performance History" report only requires the Base OS MP. Check them out!

 

 

P.S. Special thanks to Pete Zerger for tracking down where the SC_Class_Rel_Computer-Virtual Server_View comes from.

Well I don't know how I missed this one, but Microsoft has released (albeit quietly) the management pack for BizTalk 2006. The MP actually includes two different .akm files, including one for BizTalk 2006 and one for the Microsoft Enterprise Single Sign-On component that ships with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006. You can download the MP below:

 

 

I decided to follow up Pete Zerger's great post (his article can be downloaded HERE) with a task of my own. This article describes a couple of different tasks. One, you can create a task that will display what service packs and hotfixes are installed on any selected computer (along with some other info). The other task (listed at the end of the article) will display what processes are currently running on the selected computer along with some other information regarding those processes.

 

You can download my article HERE.

After a brief hiatus it appears John Hann might be getting back into the MOM community. He has a new blog located at http://learnsystemsmanagement.com/community/blogs/mom_2005_blog/ and his first couple of posts are excellent ones. He includes in one post an email he sent to Steve Ballmer regarding MOM.

A visitor recently asked a question regarding the event storm query I posted (http://spaces.msn.com/jharter/blog/cns!39CE28DB5474A6C7!332.entry). His question was:

 

If you are using MOM to only manage Windows devices, you are losing out on functionality. While there are more intuitive and flexible 3rd party packages, MOM is capable of managing non-windows devices through SNMP or syslog.

 

Setting up both SNMP and syslog monitoring is fairly simple if you have some background with SNMP or syslog. Daniel Lai has written two KB articles on these two subjects. You can learn how set up SNMP monitoring with MOM by reading his article here:

 

 

He also has an article detailing monitoring syslog through MOM. You can find this article here:

 

 

If you want a more flexible solution, there is 3rd party software out there. A good company that produces MOM connectors and virtual agents is eXc Software. You can visit them at http://www.excsoftware.com. Another good company for network monitoring is JalaSoft. You can visit them at http://www.jalasoft.com.

 

 

I was strolling through my local Barnes & Noble tonight and a couple of things caught my eye. First, I thought I would see if they had the new MOM books. To my shock and surprise, they actually had both (my local B&N doesn't have an extensive tech book collection). In any event, I quickly browsed both books and did see a couple of very useful chapters in each, but for the most part they were books that I really wish I had when I was just starting out with MOM. Unfortunately, I'm not just starting out with MOM and I just couldn't bring myself to spend $80 on MOM books that wouldn't necessarily help me a lot. I still may buy them, but I decided to wait.

 

The second (and in my opinion the luckier and more useful occurrence) was the fact that I found a book called "Advanced VBScript for Microsoft Windows Administrators". This book in my opinion is a GREAT reference that any MOM Administrator should get. And, Chapter 16 in this book is actually called Scripting for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005!

 

After reading a lot of the MOM chapter, I didn't necessarily find I was getting lots of new information, but in general there were a LOT of excellent code samples and this book would be a great reference to any MOM scripter. I haven't bought this book yet, but as soon as I find a good deal on it, I will be picking it up and will give more of a review. You can get the book below:

 

 

EDIT: After I posted this, I actually went to Amazon to buy this and you can currently get this book for $31.49 with FREE SuperSaver shipping! Barnes & Noble was actually selling this book for $49.99.

Microsoft have added parts 3 and 4 to the "Scripting for MOM" section of the Script Center. Parts 3 and 4 are definitely good articles to read. They cover topics for writing and debugging scripts and also best practices for writing scripts. You can view all 4 parts to MOM scripting HERE.

 

If you haven't yet begun scripting, I HIGHLY recommend that you start at the Microsoft Script Center. They have plenty of good articles regarding scripting for beginners. Also (as mentioned above), they have an entire area dedicated to MOM scripting. Visit the Microsoft Script Center HERE.

I noticed some people have been adding me to their MSN Messenger list so I thought I would post a public invite. Feel free to add me to your list if you'd ever like to discuss MOM or talk about ideas. I don't get on MSN Messenger everyday, but if I do get on I usually am on after work, which is after 5 PM EST.

 

While I do welcome anybody (pros, newbies, or in between), I would like to avoid making MSN chat sessions a "help desk" type conversation. I'll always try to help though.

 

If you add me, drop me an email to tell me a little about yourself and your experiences with MOM. Use my hotmail address to add me: justinharter@hotmail.com

 

According to Omar Kouatly (MOM Program Manager), the public beta will be available to try in May! It will be announced via the official MOM page at http://www.microsoft.com/mom. Mark your calendars!