Authoring PRO-Enabled Management Packs

Patrick Pendergast (SCVMM Program Manager) has posted that there is a document out to help create PRO enabled MPs.

http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm/archive/2009/08/25/writing-pro-enabled-management-packs.aspx

This is a 32 page document starting with explaining what PRO is.

Physical Resource Optimization (PRO) is extended through a System Center Operations Manager 2007 management pack.

PRO enables you to  augment the available knowledge in the management packs to make recommendations or take actions that take advantage of the additional capabilities available when workloads are running in a virtualized environment.

PRO relies on Operations Manager 2007 to monitor and collect performance data from hosts and virtual machines within an environment.

Nice diagram showing how it all fits together.

This document goes into a lot of XML and so is not for the faint hearted!

VMM 2008 R2 RTMs

Good news for virtualisation management fans as System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SC VMM) 2008 R2 has now been released and general availability is for 1st Oct.

http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2009/08/24/system-center-virtual-machine-manager-vmm-2008-r2-rtms.aspx

The post mentions a webcast coming up in September.

…upcoming TechNet session ‘Technical Overview of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2’. Presented by our Technical Product Manager Kenon Owens, it will be chocked full of new and cool VMM 2008 R2 items. Go here to register for this Wednesday, September 09, 2009 (10:00 AM Pacific) event.

180 day eval available now at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=292de23c-845c-4d08-8d65-b4b8cbc8397b&displaylang=en. 3 files to download – about 3 GB.

Feature list

• Live migration
• Clustered Shared Volume (CSV) support that enables multiple Highly Available Virtual Machines (HAVM) per LUN.
• Hot add of storage
• Support for VMware vSphere 4 (VMware VI3 feature parity only)
• SAN Migration into and out of clustered hosts
• Processor flexibility
• Network optimization
• Quick storage migration
• Maintenance mode for hosts
• Support for third party cluster file system, Sanbolic Melio FS
• Support for third party storage class resource, Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows
• Expanded support for iSCSI SANs
• Support for VMware port groups for virtual switches
• Support for Virtual Machine permissions assigned in Hyper-V
• Dynamic policy based load balancing

 

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Host Management

• VMM 2008 R2 creates and manages virtual machines running on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V hosts. When you add a host that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 that does not have Hyper-V enabled, VMM 2008 R2 automatically enables the Hyper-V role on the host.
• VMM 2008 R2 supports the following new features of Windows Server 2008 R2:
  • Live migration between Windows Server 2008 R2 clustered hosts. With live migration, you can migrate a virtual machine from one node of a Windows Server 2008 R2 failover cluster to another node in the same cluster without any downtime. Because the virtual machine does not experience any downtime, the move is completely transparent to the users that are connected to the virtual machine.
  • Network optimization detection during virtual machine placement. VMM 2008 R2 supports both Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) and TCP Chimney, which are Windows Server 2008 R2 features that improve network performance for virtual machines.
  • Network adapters that support the VMQ feature are able to create a unique network queue for each virtual network adapter and then connect that queue directly to the virtual machine’s memory. This connection routes packets directly from the hypervisor to the virtual machine, bypassing much of the processing in the virtualization stack.
  • Network adapters that support the TCP Chimney feature are able to offload the processing of network traffic from the networking stack. Both of these features increase network performance and reduce CPU utilization.
  • Hot addition and removal of virtual hard disks (VHDs). In Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V allows users to add and remove VHDs from a virtual machine while it is running.

Windows Server 2008 R2

RTM was with Windows 7 but it is now available for download on (at least TechNet Plus) and MSDN. This means that System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 is not far away. This is probably the one System Center family member that has most synergy with OpsMgr. For more info about SCVMM R2 there is a webcast on 7th Sept.

Windows Server 2008 R2 is unique in that it is the first OS from Microsoft that is 64 bit only. That should trigger more applications to be 64 bit only. A 180 demo VHD for Hyper-V can be downloaded from here.

The SQL Server Service Broker or Database Mirroring transport is disabled or not configured

The alert “The SQL Server Service Broker or Database Mirroring transport is disabled or not configured” is one that pops up in new installations quite frequently. A typical answer is to look at the Broker part and check if it is set as in this post.

With SQL 2008 you do not have to run the SQL query as it is shown in the properties of the database. Open SQL Server Management Studio, select OperationsManager database and right click and chose Properties.  Click Options and scroll down and there is a section called Service Broker.

On my default install this is set to true anyway. But the clue is in the alert. In the alert details it says “The Database Mirroring protocol transport is disabled or not configured.”  Back in the database properties under Mirroring we can see that the database has not been configured for mirroring.

If you select Configure Security you will see the following error message.

In my test environment the database had defaulted to Simple Recovery Model. There are three – Simple, Full and Bulk-Logged. This is fine for a test environment  but is unlikely in a production environment. With the Recovery Model at Simple you will need to override this SQL MP alert. It would have been nice if they had created two rules for this instead on just the one.

July 2009 Roundup

 

Anders used to do a monthly blog post called Links During Month. He has not done one for a while and so I thought that I would have a go to summarise all the new stuff for one month. I can see why he gave it up. It is quite time consuming!

The big news is that R2 is finally available. even though it went RTM in May. Although it did take a few days before it was available at all the download sites.

Could the delay in posting be due to the other July news that the OpsMgr licensing has changed. Again! Microsoft’s financial year starts on 1st July. Coincidence? See Emma’s posts on the changes from 1st July and about transitioning existing SC suite licences to the new version.

New Reporting Guide released. This is different to the Report Authoring Guide which had previously been released.

TechNet Virtual Labs available

• R2 Intro
• R2 Advanced
• Monitor Windows 2008, SQL 2008 and Exchange 2007
• MP Authoring for IT Pros Intro
• MP Authoring for IT Pros Advanced

Management Pack University Videos

Management Pack University is a training course aimed at developers working on building management packs for System Center Operations Manager 2007. These training videos walk you through the full process of development of a management pack.

MPs

• Cameron Fuller sample MP to alert on servers that have not been activated
• Raphael Burri – Scheduled Task MP (Version 1.1.1.1)
• SQL Management Pack (v6.0.6648.0)
• ISA 2006 Management Pack (v6.0.6648.0)
• Windows 2003 and 2008 Group Policy (v6.0.6648.0)
• Windows HPC Server 2008 (v2.1.1704.0)
• BridgeWays Management Pack for VMware ESX
• OpsManJam for SCCM OSD, Extended II3 2003, Extended Windows Server OS and Extended AD management packs

Connectors released

• - Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connector for IBM Tivoli Enterprise Management Console
• - Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connector for HP Operations Manager (formerly HP OpenView Operations)
• - Operations Manager 2007 R2 Connector for BMC Remedy Action Request System (ARS)
• - Operations Manager 2007 R2 Universal Connector

Jalasoft – NetIQ Aegis Adapter

Community connector – Nagios

Tools

GreenMachine R2 updated.

Visio 2007 Add-In for R2 released. 11 min video demonstration. Use Visio instead of the OpsMgr console!

As an added bonus Windows 7 and Windows 2008 Server R2 RTMed but availability will not be until August.

And finally Brad Anderson who took over the System Center Management Division a couple of years ago must be doing well as he has been promoted.