Love v Annoying

This is a really great post by Seth Godin and well worth a read.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/love-and-annoyi.html

He talks about products that people will love and so create an excitement and enthusiasm for which will help drive sales. The most obvious at the moment is Apple.

The goal is to create a product that people love. If people love it, they’ll forgive a lot. They’ll talk about it. They’ll promote it. They’ll come back. They’ll be less price sensitive. They’ll bring their friends. They’ll work with you to make it better.

If you can’t do that, though, perhaps you can make your service or product less annoying.

I think smart marketers at Apple work to make products that people love. Smart marketers at American Airlines ought to work at making an airline that isn’t annoying.

I thought of Microsoft rather than American Airlines. Steve Ballmer does seem to want to emulate Apple and get people to love Microsoft and the products. The WOW adverts for Vista were supposed to be part of that but backfired. I think the last time Microsoft generated that type of excitement and enthusiasm and hence love was the launch of Windows 95. And people did forgive them for a lot of things. And it helped that it was seen as Microsoft’s David v IBM’s Goliath. People do like the underdog which Microsoft is definitely not any more.

Going for the mass market as Microsoft tends to do means it is hard to generate love and so forgiveness. Especially if you have been convicted of abusing a monopoly by the DOJ. So the real strategy that Microsoft should adopt is to go down the less annoying route. As Seth says:-

Put a sign on your office door, or send a memo to the team. It should say either, “Everything we do needs to make our product less annoying” or “Everything we do should be idiosyncratic and engage people and invite them to fall in love with us. That’s not easy, which is why it’s worth it.” Can’t have both. Must do one.

I think that each leader for each product group should start off all meetings with the phrase “Everything we do needs to make our product less annoying”. It should be pinned to all their computers and be made their core objective. Just imagine how much better Microsoft products would be if that strategy was adopted. And conversely people would love them more! Go on Microsoft – make the products less annoying. Or at least the Operations Manager group. I want OpsMgr R2 the least annoying OpsMgr version.

Good Stuff for Your Toolkit

Here is a collection of recent additions that I think are useful to have.

 

Matt Goedtel has done an update on his Extended AP MP.

http://blogs.technet.com/mgoedtel/archive/2009/01/25/updated-improved-extended-active-directory-management-pack.aspx

 

This management pack augments the existing Active Directory management pack by monitoring the following specific components and subsystems that Active Directory relies on, which are not captured in the current version:

• Monitor the Windows Time Service (W32Time) for time synchronization issues with authoritative time source.
• Monitor for clients not authenticating against a local domain controller, indicating site boundaries are not properly defined or scoped.
• Monitor for expensive or inefficient LDAP queries performed against a DC
• Monitor for FRS related events that affect the health and availability of the SYSVOL shared directory and its replication on a domain controller.
• Monitor for specific performance characteristics of a domain controller with respect to Free System Page Table Entries and Database Name Cache hit rate.
• Includes two Tasks to remotely shutdown and reboot a domain controller from within the Operations Console.

I am currently working on the next version which will verify that the AD Helper Object (OOMADS) is installed, is the latest version, and is running on the domain controller, as this can impact certain workflows from running successfully on a DC.   This is something that we do not monitor by default today, and the only way you know there is a problem is if a script fails and the error refers to an “ActiveX component cannot create the object.”

 

Lincoln has created a great PowerShell script to do some diagnostic and troubleshooting on the certificates used in OpsMgr. Very good script to have in your toolbag.

 

http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2009/01/23/troubleshooting-ops-mgr-certificate-issues-with-powershell.aspx

 

The steps for configuring certificates in Operations Manager are numerous and one can easily get them confused.  I see posts to the newsgroups and discussion lists regularly trying to troubleshoot why certificate auth is not working, perhaps for a workgroup machine or gateway.  Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 messages back and forth before I or anyone else can diagnose what the problem actually is.  Once this is finally done we can suggest how to fix the problem.

 In an attempt to make this diagnosis stage eaiser, I put together a Powershell script which automatically checks installed certificates for the needed properties and configuration.  If you think everything is set up correctly but the machines just won’t communicate, try running this script on each computer and it will hopefully point you to the issue.  I have tried to provide useful knowledge for fixing the problems.

 This is for stand-alone Powershell 1.0 – it does not require the Ops Mgr Powershell snapins.

Please leave a comment if you find bugs or the script gives a faulty verdict for you – either it says your setup is fine but actually it’s not working OR it says your setup is busted but the machines communicate anyways.  I appreciate this feedback and will use it to improve and update the script.

 

I did a post last month (http://ianblythmanagement.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/resolve-rule-alerts-with-powershell/) on how to resolve rule alerts older than a certain number of days with a PowerShell script. I am using that on a daily basis to clear lots of old alerts. Cleaning up health monitor alerts is harder as if you delete the alert it does not make health explorer go green and teh alert will not reappear. You need to reset the health monitor. For the odd one that is fine but to do it for a large number is a pain. Juts like a bus you wait for a while then multiple come at once. Here are 2 different approches to bulk clear heath monitors.

Tim Helton has created a command line tool for resetting health monitors

http://blogs.technet.com/timhe/archive/2009/01/15/announcing-the-greenmachine-utility-for-operationsmanager-rtm-sp1-and-r2.aspx

 

And the very clever Marius Sutara provides another way to reset health explorer states but from within OpsMgr using a web view.

http://blogs.msdn.com/mariussutara/archive/2009/01/19/how-to-restart-monitoring-of-my-environment-another-version-update.aspx

 
Good for a whole group of servers. While it is nice and I usually prefer GUIs I think Tim’s Green Machine is the one that I would tend to use. But you can have both!

Patch List Fix

This KB (958253) came through last week when I was on holiday but I noticed it on Daniel’s blog. It fixes the problem with limited space to show the agent patches. When I say fixes it strips away all the information apart from the KB number so a lot more information can be added. It also means that it is more readable.

Here is a screen shot of after installing it showing 2 agents with the new stripped down information. Overnight it worked its way through the agents and they are now all showing the new field apart from agents which are not reporting.

I have highlighted in the detailed tab the 2 relevant pieces of information that the new MP keeps.

You have to request the fix which is sent as a link in an e-mail with a password. The hotfix is an exe which you run and that creates a directory which has a couple of text files and an MSI and when you run the MSI you get the MP – at last! Why do they do this? The MP is System Center Internal Library v6.0.6278.55. The previous version was .19. Then it is a standard MP import.

Much better looking now when checking what hotfixes have been run on the agent. Thanks to Microsoft for fixing this.

New Blog with MP Woes

Daniele Grandini (he created the “undiscovery” fix for the previous DNS MP) e-mailed me to say that he has now started a blog at

http://nocentdocent.wordpress.com/

And immediately there are posts about problems with the new DNS MP and a corker with the ISA 2006 MP. He has created a test MP that emulates how to do a bad discovery so that it ups the CPU on the server – just like the ISA MP! Microsoft really need to sort out the quality control on their MPs. OpsMgr is picking up and R2 is looking good for this year. It would be a shame to ruin it due to MP issues that people will blame “OpsMgr” for and not the individual MPs.

Anyway a nice find with a small issue that I have just come across as I have just imported the DNS MP (6.0.6480.0) into a new environment and all the DNS servers have reported a problem with external resolution. As Daniele points out this is due to the monitor using http://www.microsoft.com instead of microsoft.com for the test domain. Override that and those nasty alerts go away.

Looks like a good blog to add to your feed.

Operations Manager in 2008 Review

I was going to to this at the end of 2008 but other things got in the way.

The big news was that SP1 was released in February. Not just bug fixes but enhancements with the key one speeding up the console so that it was usable. Still not a speed demon but so much more usable without having to wait for the green bar. And if your console is still slow see Cameron’s post to identify bottlenecks. System Center Capacity Planner was released for free but with models only for Exchange and SharePoint. The Engyro connectors were released for free. Well they had to do something with them as SC Service Manager was seriously delayed.

 

March was the release of the only book on OpsMgr worth buying – System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed. Very big. And I even get a couple of mentions in it.

 
In April there was the sold out MMS at Las Vegas and the big news was the beta release of the Cross Platform Extensions that will ship with R2 in 2009. Great beta showing great functionality. Silect also released a free starter version of MP Studio and Savision showed off Live Maps 2 with v3 in December. The Authoring Console was also released although the version number was the same as the RC one!

May saw the release of the Service Level Dashboard Solution Accelerator. May also saw the release of the OpsMgr model for System Center Capacity Planner which was talked about in the documents as the “official” tool for sizing OpsMgr 13 months after OpsMgr was released. Although it is free I panned it.

TechEd, Orlando saw the release of the new System Center logo and branding.

July saw the release of the hotfixes needed for Windows 2008 support. Windows 2008 got some great reviews whereas Vista got hammered.

 

August saw SQL 2008 released and an update to the Service Level Dashboard with Dundas gauges.

October saw the release of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 with integration into OpsMgr.

In November we had the first public beta of R2.

There were a lot of new MPs release, then re-released and then re-released again. Some MPs were released with bugs so shocking you had to wonder of anyone had tested them. I had a number of posts berating some of these. Too many to list which is not good. And some MPs just did not want to be found. SystemCenterForum had to post on how to find the IBM hardware MP.

On the community side the System Center Virtual User Group was formed with some good Live Meeting sessions and a competition that brought out new MPs and scripts. There were some good community MPs. A great MP for backing up unsealed MPs from Derek that now I have changed to using C instead of D I use at all installations. Another favourite is from Raphael Burri when you have multiple forests which has been missing from the AP MP for years. And although 6.0.64520 can find these it still does not do a 100% job but Raphael’s got a fix for that with this MP. I got fed up with all the links and posts for MPs that were not in the main catalogue so I created a page to keep track of them and SystemCenterForum.org has created a much nicer looking page.

Boris Yanushpolsky kept releasing new versions of MP Viewer throughout the year ending up with v1.7 in June. A must have tool and it is free. He also released Module Explorer in Feb, and v2 in June. Run As profile configuration helper v1 was done in Feb. A prolific year as well as the posts and PowerShell scripts. Other people released tools as well and Stefan summerised them here and SystemCenterForum.org created a new page to keep track of them.

More bloggers and posts through 2008 showing how much momentum the product has picked up. I found it difficult to keep track and remember all the good posts that everyone has written. Some bloggers started off and showed great promise but posts just stopped. It is difficult to blog on a regular basis. My favourite blogger of 2008 has to be Kevin Holman with an honorable mention to Jonathan Almquist and Marius Sutara. I star good posts that I want to find quickly again. I have starred most of Kevin’s blog. Great articles explaining things in depth, clearly and not documented elsewhere. Required reading. There are many other good blogs out there but for me those stood out.

PowerShell’s use kept increasing during the year but half of me thought it was because the console GUI was not that good compared to the learning curve of PowerShell. There is no doubt it is powerful and System Center Forum had a nice run of posts going through the most popular commands in October.

 

On licensing I had a post on trying to explain the various types. Then I had a rant about the fact that Microsoft had changed the licensing of OpsMgr but had not seen fit to update the web site with the latest information. That was in May and it took some prodding with e-mails and explaining how, at least in the UK, they were probably breaking some laws. That seem to get them moving and in July the web site was fixed with the correct information. Come on Microsoft. You can do better than this!

For me it has been a busy year with constant customer work. Good for the finances and for improving my skills but not so great for posting. I have a pile of half written posts that I did not have time to finish off, or the post became moot due to a new update or someone else wrote about it. Must do better in 2009. All in all 2008 was a good year for Operations Manager, OpsMgr, MOM, SCOM or your favourite way of pronouncing it. The best I heard was hearing it pronounced as S-Com. Sounds more like an audio connection for a hi-fi.

 

AuthorMPs.com is back

Steve Wilson of Author MPs is back. Great news as the site provides really useful content. And registration is no longer needed.

http://www.authormps.com/dnn/Default.aspx

Posted 1/1/2009 – Happy New Year

First of all apologies!  As you know I have not added new content to this site for well over a year.  As some of you know I actually left the System Center family at Microsoft and moved on to other endeavors within Microsoft which meant I did not really have any time to dedicate to this site.  However I kept the site going since there was still great demand for the content (over 4000 registered users and counting).

Well after some time away from the team I am back working on Operations Manager and back contributing to this site.  My role has changed a lot and I am no longer focused on the guts of the product as I used to be.  However I am going to keep posting technical content to this site and I am aiming to post at least one or two new samples or articles each week.  I am going to focus mostly on samples and tutorials moving forward and I posted my first new content yesterday for those of you keeping track – this was a tutorial on using property bags in scripts focused on running against multiple instances of a class.

I will also be back on mail to my account (steve@authormps.com).  I will try my best to keep up with mail and respond where I can.  Don’t forget to use the Microsoft forums for your general questions.  Mail me if you have specific questions about the content on the site or want to see a sample of some feature / module.  I need to review the content on the site to make sure that it is up to date.  I will also be removing content that is now available on TechNet and redirecting you there so there is no duplication.  Give me a few weeks to get things organized.

Finally I have removed the requirement for you to register to get MP samples and tutorials.  I had originally put this in place so I could get an idea of how many people were using the site.  I may add some forum features later on at which point I will require registration again but for now – enjoy without the hassle of registering.

Thank you for using this site.  It’s great to be back again!

Steve

Although it seems like he has picked up US style spelling now he is in the States!