Microsoft Exchange Monitoring Service

Ensure that your Exchange team has the Microsoft Exchange Monitoring service set to Automatic if you are using SCOM to monitor Exchange 2007.
If this service is not running you will see a number of Backward Compatibility Script Error alerts mentioning line 279. And not just one for each server but one for each test for [...]

Views – Or How to Tame The Beast

One of the great things about OpsMgr is the sheer amount of management packs and rules available. This means that in a typical install there are over 6,000 rules looking at various aspect of the OS and applications. The problem is that this can create a significant amount of alerts. Tuning OpsMgr is the most [...]

Patching Problems Part 3

Today I pushed out the agent to a number of new servers to see how patching would be delivered. It worked fine and when I looked at the view I had created to show the patch list field I could see that both patches had been installed. I confirmed by going onto one of the [...]

Patching Problems Part 2

Now that I had fixed the problem of the patches being applied to all servers I had second problem – the manually installed agents. Actually although I had manually installed some agents before the Gateway server was installed I found that with this in place it could patch the agents. A useful distinction to make. [...]

Patching Problems Part 1

I knew I would have to patch the OpsMgr system that I am working on at some time as the organisation I am working with is putting in Exchange 2007. At least now you can get the patches without having to phone Microsoft. Just request them and they will e-mail you a link.
Kevin Holman has [...]

Rule v Simple Monitor

I have been asked to create a custom management pack for one customer but they only want a list of events turned into alerts. Immediately this suggested rules to me but it is distributed application which means that rules would not show up in the DA  – only monitors do. My initial reaction was that [...]

Get SP Info from AD

One of the things that is required when you roll out agents is to know that the minimum service pack has been installed. Of course you can find out by trying to deploy the agent. The install failing will tell you but that is not a great strategy. If the customer is really good then [...]