Copy SCOM View Data to Excel

 I come across this post regarding SCSM and thought it worth pointing out that it works in SCOM as well.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2010/03/03/hidden-feature-export-data-to-excel-from-a-view.aspx

Go to a view (State or Alerts) and do Ctrl-A to select all the rows. Ctrl-C to copy and then paste the results into Excel. Instant spread sheet of the data in the view.  A lot easier than using PowerShell to export the data to CSV and then bring it into Excel. And it also brings in the column names as well.
This works best when not using the Group Items By feature. If the group by is closed then only the titles get copied and you cannot expand them in Excel. If they are expanded in SCOM then all the data will be copied but the Group Items By will just be another row in the spread sheet.
This does not work on performance views or any of the views in the Authoring area.

How to Create a New Override MP

 This is something that an OpsMgr admin does on a regular basis but I have added some additional bits to the process.

When a new override management pack is needed then the following steps are required.

If there is a specific alert that needs to be overridden then click on that alert and in Alert Details click on the Alert Rule/Alert Monitor.  This will show which Management Pack the alert was generated by.

 For example - the SQL Server 2008 (Monitoring) management pack.

It is best practice to create an override Management Pack for the sealed MP and put the overrides for the sealed MP into that MP. I prefer to create a new MP in the Administration tab so I can control the process rather than create the MP on the fly when overriding an alert.

Note that unsealed MPs do not need a separate MP as the override will be written directly into the MP.

Go to the Administration  tab and click on Management packs.

 In this case I have filtered the MPs to the SQL 2008 ones. 

 

 Double click on the SQL Server 2008 (Monitoring) MP.

The 2 important fields are ID and Name. The ID must match the filename of the MP and the Name will be the name that shows up in the list of MPs.

Highlight the Name and copy (Ctrl C).

 

This will give you the name of the MP – SQL Server 2008 (Monitoring).

Close the dialogue box.

Right click in the Management Pack area and chose Create Management Pack.

 

This will start the Create a Management Pack Wizard

 

 Paste the name that was copied into the Name field and add Overrides.

Some organizations put Overrides at the beginning of the name so that they show up in the MP list together. It is easy to find all MPs with overrides in the name using the Find search box on the tool bar. Therefore I do not think that  it is necessary to put the word overrides at the beginning. Putting it at the end means that the override MP shows up in the MP list next to the sealed MP so that you know that there are overrides for that MP.

 

 Note that it creates the ID name for you. But importantly does not include numbers. When the MP is created it is checked in the console to make sure it is unique. If the 2012 one was done next it would create an MP with ID of SQL.Server.Monitoring.Overrides0. This can be fixed later to match the version with the name.

The version can be any number but leave it at 1.0.0.0 for now.

 

 If you click Edit to add knowledge you will get this error message.

 

In order to edit Knowledge you must have Visual Studio Tools for Office runtime installed along with Word on the computer that is running the console.

 Once it is created it can be seen in the console. It can now be used for overrides but the following steps are recommended before you create overrides. If you go to the Monitoring pane you will see a new View folder with the name of the MP.

 

 All new MPs created in the console create a top level folder so that views can be created underneath. As this will only be used for overrides the empty view is not necessary and clutters the console.

Highlight the folder and press Delete.

 

Click yes.

 As noted earlier the MP created does not have 2008 in the file name. When the 2012 MP is made it will have a very similar name. I have found it is better to rename the filename to have 2008 in the name to make it easier to distinguish files outside of the console.

Go back to the Administration pane and click Management Packs.

Click on the new management pack and right click to Export Management Pack.

 

 Once exported open the MP in a text editor.

 The contents will now look like this.

 

 The key fields are ID and Name.

The ID has to be a unique name for the Management Group and MUST match the name of the file. If these two do not match you will not be able to import it back into the Management Group.

The Name is the friendly name that is seen in views and can be left.

Change the contents of the ID field from SQL.Server.Monitoring.Overrides to SQL.Server.2008.Monitoring.Overrides.

You must also change the Display String Element to match otherwise you will get a message like this.

 

The highlighted text shows that it is the Display String Element in the Language section that is wrong as it still refers to the original name.

 Change the version number to 1.0.0.1 to show that the view has been removed, that the file name has changed.

 

 Do a File Save As and ensure that the file name is the same as the ID.

  Import the new MP into the Management group.

 As this has a unique name (ID) it does not overwrite the original MP.

 

The 1.0.0.0 MP can now be deleted and the new MP is ready for overrides.

 Rather than going through the whole process again for the SQL Server 2012 overrides the existing XML file can be edited by changing 2008 to 2012 in the 4 lines highlighted.

 

Do a file save as SQL.Server.2012.Monitoring.Overrides.xml and the new MP can be imported in.

 

 This template can now be used for any new override MP.

 

 When a new MP is need replace FILENAME with the name of the file which reflects the MP name and must be unique with no spaces and in the 2 Name fields replace MPNAME with a friendly name.

 Here is the text file to use as a template.  

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<ManagementPack ContentReadable=”true” SchemaVersion=”2.0″ OriginalSchemaVersion=”1.1″ xmlns:xsd=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema” xmlns:xsl=”http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform” >
   <Manifest>
      <Identity>
         <ID>FILENAME.Overrides</ID>
         <Version>1.0.0.1</Version>
      </Identity>
      <Name>MPNAME Overrides</Name>
      <References>
         <Reference Alias=”SystemCenter”>
            <ID>Microsoft.SystemCenter.Library</ID>
            <Version>7.0.8432.0</Version>
            <PublicKeyToken>31bf3856ad364e35</PublicKeyToken>
         </Reference>
      </References>
   </Manifest>
   <LanguagePacks>
      <LanguagePack ID=”ENU” IsDefault=”false”>
         <DisplayStrings>
            <DisplayString ElementID=”FILENAME.Overrides”>
               <Name>MPNAME Overrides</Name>
            </DisplayString>
         </DisplayStrings>
      </LanguagePack>
   </LanguagePacks>
</ManagementPack> 

NOTE – when copying this text ensure that the quotation marks are the straight ones (“”) and not the curly ones(“ “). This can happen when copying and pasting from certain programs and web pages.

 

MMS 2013 Videos

In the old days you had to attend MMS to see the sessions and a few months later they would send a DVD (or 2) with all the sessions so you could catch up on the ones that you missed. If you were lucky you could get some extra DVDs to hand out or if you were not there pick up one from a friend. These days the videos are all online and in fact most of them were up 1 to 2 days after they were recorded. Absolutely brilliant. They can be watched online at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MMS/2013.

You can also download the videos to watch offline from the same source. You have a choice of formats to download these files. It is handy as I am working at a site where I need to go by train and the hour journey is enough to watch a video – especially when you change the speed to do 1.4x.

If you want to down load all of them it is a bit tedious but a few people have presented PowerShell scripts to help.

Stefan Stranger (ex MVP and now at Microsoft) has a couple.

Videos

http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_stranger/archive/2013/04/14/download-mms-2013-videos-from-channel-9.aspx

List of sessions as an Excel spreadsheet

http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_stranger/archive/2013/04/03/retrieving-mms-2013-content-sessions-using-powershell.aspx

I used this one below to download the files and Stefan’s above to get the sessions as an Excel file.

http://blog.scomfaq.ch/2013/04/10/mms-2013-download-sessions-offline-viewing/

Note that these scripts  all need PowerShell v3.

This downloads the media files as WMV files. Before I used the script I had downloaded a few as MP4 which was handy for my tablet.

An interesting one was this one which gave you a menu of what format you wanted to download the files in.

http://infoworks.tv/2013/04/09/mms-2013-session-video-download-script-2-0-rtw/

But from comments it does not work and it did not work for me. The author is aware of it and has said he will fix it when he gets time. There was another comment that posted some PowerShell that was supposed to fix the problem. I never got around to trying it as I had already started with the other script.

This is a big help to those of us who did not manage to get across to Las Vegas for the MMS. A big thanks to Channel  9 for making these available.

v.Next = 2012

I attended the event “War on Cost” run by Inframon on Friday 5th. There was a whole bunch of Microsofties from Redmond there on their way to TechEd. It was great hearing some of the stuff that will be coming out. As soon as they said that the new products are going to be called 2012 (SCOM, SCCM and SCVMM) I knew that there was going to be a delay. Microsoft name the products based on their financial year which is July to June and not the calendar year. That means anything that has 2012 in the title will not be released until at least July 2011.

OpsMgr will have a public beta in Q2 2011, RC in Q3 and RTM in Q4 (probably about Oct/Nov) – this is calendar year and not Microsoft financial year. Key points are that OpsMgr now has the networking technology from EMC Smarts that they announced a few years ago at a previous MMS, that you can do an in place upgrade from 2007 and at the moment the console looks very similar to 2007. With it being a year away from RTM a lot can change.

They were also very keen to keep a cadence going with the Cumulative Updates being released every quarter and they mentioned that new features could be added as part of the CU. I asked about certificates and DMZ scenarios in 2012 but it seems there will be little change in that area. Which is doubly annoying. Not only is it one of the trickiest areas for organisations to get right but as DMZ agents are often manually installed a quarterly CU means a lot of work to keep them up to date.

ConfigMgr 2012 takes on the System Center style console which is supposed to improve console performance. Flattening the hierarchy and better performance seem to be key areas. Having not looked at it for a while 2012 looks good.

Later this month Opalis 6.3 gets released with connectors for all the System Center products and a new improved one for OpsMgr. Microsoft is working their way through this product to make it more of a Microsoft product. The demos looked pretty good and it looks like another great buy for Microsoft and provides a glue that can link all the System Center products and provide Run Book style automation or even link into other systems. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

I have seen the AViCode stuff before but it was nice to see it demoed now that Microsoft have purchased it. A great tool for monitoring and analysing code and performance problems with web sites – especially .Net.

I am sure these will all be covered at TechEd in more depth so expect more announcements. The main thing that I took away from the day is that I will not be going to the MMS in March as it is too soon to get up to speed on the new version of OpsMgr. A shame as I have gone every second year to coincide with the major releases of the product.

3 New System Center RTMs

As expected there have been announcements at this years MMS. The System Center team try and focus their release efforts around this event.

So we have

System Center Data Protection (DPM) 2010 – http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/data-protection-manager.aspx

and

System Center Essentials 2010 (SCE 2010) – http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/essentials.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenteressentials/archive/2010/04/19/sc-essentials-2010-is-released-to-manufacturing.aspx

Info on both here – http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2010/04/19/the-right-tools-for-the-job-sce-2010-dpm-2010.aspx

The biggie that ties them all together and was expected last year.

System Center Service Manager 2010 – http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/service-manager.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_stranger/archive/2010/04/21/download-microsoft-system-center-service-manager-2010-eval.aspx

http://wmug.co.uk/blogs/aquilaweb/archive/2010/04/21/service-manager-2010-rtm-eval.aspx

And some additional tools and visualisation for OpsMgr.

Following last Friday’s Office 2010 RTM. This release consists of two downloads:

1. Visio 2010 Add-in and Operations Manager 2007 R2

2. SharePoint 2010 Visio Services Data Provider

What’s new:

In addition to all the great functionality we added in the original Visio 2007 add-in, this adds,

•The Visio 2010 Add-in fully integrates the Visio 2007 add-in functionality into the Visio 2010 ribbon for a seamless user experience.
•The SharePoint 2010 Visio Services Data Provider leverages the power of Visio Services to provide the ability display Visio diagrams as live dashboards in SharePoint pulling health state directly from Operations Manager.

http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2010/04/20/visio-and-sharepoint-2010-extensions-for-operations-manager-have-shipped.aspx

This lot will take some digesting.

MMS DVD

My DVD finally arrived today so I can catch up with all the sessions that I missed. The MMS was 27th April to 1st May so it has taken 11 weeks. Soon to be time for the next MMS!

MMS Keynote – Brad Anderson

Brad Anderson did this morning’s keynote. This was more focused than yesterdays but was still quite low energy with not much excitement or feedback from the audience. Most of his talk was futures and about focusing on the client and end up with a demo of the next version of Config Manager showing that an application can be set to follow a user on a number of devices and use different ways of presenting that app depending on the device. If the PC is the users primary device then it installs, if it is not a primary device then a Remote App session shortcut is presented and on some devices they will just get a message saying that the subscribed app is not available on this device.

Service Manager was demoed and that is building up for a release next year.

My old colleague, Jeff Wettlauffer, demonstrated the new OS upgrade method of SCCM installing Windows 7 RC on XP but keeping all the data on the PC without having to copy the data up to a server and back down. Also showed the app compatibility toolkit and then getting that old app to run on Med-V which is basically a copy of Virtual PC with XP but seamless so that the user only sees the app.

The most interesting demo was the new System Center Online tool which builds on WSUS and is like a web based version of WSUS, ForeFront and Config Manager in the cloud that you can log onto and then start managing your desktops with this tool. No servers to buy and no software to buy, install configure and look after. I can see this being very popular in small organisations if they get the pricing right.

Key dates for next major versions

For 2011

• System Center Operations Manager
• System Center Configuration Manager
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager
• System Center Service Manager

For 2010

• System Center Service Manager
• System Center Data Protection Manager
• System Center Online Desktop Manager
• System Center Essentials

See slide http://www.scom2k7.com/system-center-roadmap/

No mention of System Center Capacity Manager!

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.

 

OpsMgr SP2 Beta 1 on Connect

If you have been reading any other OpsMgr blogs you will know this by now but Beta 1 of OpsMgr SP2 is now available from Connect. No mention of a SCE version.

There are three downloads.  A highlights document (Word – 69 pages – if that is the highlights what is the full document going to be like! Most of it appears to be about Xplat), release notes (HTML) and the download exe which is 1,126.42 MB. If you are downloading this one make sure you have a fast connection!

Some bits that have intrigued me from the highlights:-

You can browse the management pack catalog directly from the wizard and import it directly or save it to a file.
A new template you can use to easily create process monitors.
In the Windows Service management pack template, you can use wildcards when you specify the service name that you want to monitor.
The Health Explorer has been added to the Web console. (Much need if you use the web console as that is the best way to find information on monitors.)
You can install the Operations Manager 2007 R2 databases on SQL Server 2008.
When you create a dashboard view a search tool helps find the views you want quickly. In addition, the search also includes views that you have created in your My Workspace. (That last one is great as that has frustrated me before.)
You can put a whole computer into Maintenance mode. This automatically puts the Health Service and the associated Health Service watcher into maintenance mode, which suppresses all alerts on that computer. (Hurrah!)
In Operations Manager 2007 R2, the Operations console performance has been greatly improved. These improvements are most evident in: 
• Opening new views in the monitoring space
• Pivoting between views
• Selecting multiple items in the results view and rendering the details pane more quickly
• Indicating that a view is in the progress of loading
(Well we will see about those! But any improvement in performance is greatly welcomed.)
The notification feature has been restructured to make it easier to configure.
You can create a new subscription directly from an alert and to add the parameters from the selected alert to an existing subscription. (This will save messing around with all those PowerShell solutions.)
Support has been added to natively monitor IIS 7 without having to enable the backward compatibility APIs or legacy management features
Operations Manager 2007 R2 supports monitoring as many as 2,000 URL monitors per management server.
The new version of the authoring console adds several user interface enhancements, and now includes the ability to edit any element in a management pack.
(And one that I have blogged (complained) about in April and Kevin Holman has blooged about. ) Reporting – it is easier to find the objects that you need to customize a report. The object picker has been enhanced to enable search and filtering by name or class of object, which makes it easier to find the objects.

So I now need to find the time to download the beta and get it installed and see if all the promises above are worth the upgrade. This is a beta so there will be bugs and performance improvements are generally done near the release but it certainly looks interesting.

And as I mentioned before it is not a free upgrade unless you have Software Assuarnce. And to confirm that they say on the site:-

“R2 is a new version of Operations Manager 2007 and it is not a free upgrade”

New Look System Center

As Stefan has mentioned that the System Center logo and look and feel has changed. Although the individual product sites still have the original look.

http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/default.aspx

And the Vista Search gadget has also been updated with the new look. See Stefan’s post what what is new.

Download at http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=49e26ad0-113d-4f3d-a711-57f6530c75d9

But Microsoft are not the only one. Quest has pulled together all their System Center products into a single landing page.

http://www.quest.com/landing/?ID=1380&AdCode=eCard_System_Center_eXc_List_LP