OpsMgr Archives - Page 6 of 12

Update: SCOM web API

02/06/201707/01/2025
by Martin Ehrnst

Big updates:

I have made a lot of changes to the SCOM web API. As you can see from the picture above. Maintenance scheduling is added, which means you can create a new maintenance schedule in SCOM 2016. To the computer endpoints I have added the a possibility to get detailed information. This will list all related object to the server. Logical disks, network cards etc.

These are the API endpoints available at the moment:

Agents

Route	Description
[GET] API/Agents	Gets all agents
[GET] API/Agents/{id}	Get a single agent

Alerts

Route	Description
[GET] API/Alerts	Gets all open alerts
[GET] API/Alert/{id}	Get a single alert
[PUT] API/Alert	Update the specified alert with resolution state, TicketId
[GET] API/Alert/{ComputerName}	Get all alert from specific computer, use IncClosed=true to include open and closed alerts

Computer

Route	Description
[GET] API/Computer/Windows	Get all windows computers wit basic properties
[GET] API/Computer/Windows/{ComputerName}	Get A single windows computers with basic properties
[GET] API/Computer/Windows/{ComputerName}/Detailed	Get A single windows computers with hosted child objects
——	——
[GET] API/Computer/Linux	Get all Linux computers wit basic properties
[GET] API/Computer/Linux/{ComputerName}	Get A single Linux computer with basic properties
[GET] API/Computer/Linux/{ComputerName}/Detailed	Get A single Linux computers with hosted child objects

Maintenance

Route	Description
[POST] API/ComputerMaintenance	Put the specific computer object and all child in maintenance mode
[POST] API/ObjectMaintenance	Put the specific monitoring object and all child in maintenance mode
[POST] API/MaintenanceSchedule	Create a new maintenance schedule. SCOM 2016 ONLY

Object

Route	Description
[GET] API/MonitoringObject/{id}	Get a monitoring object and all child object

Examples

Create a new maintenance schedule by sending a post to /API/MaintenanceSchedule with a body including object id, start date and end date in UTC, optionally a comment.

#CREATE A MAINTENANCE SCHEDULE WITH TWO OBJECTS. Time in UTC

$body = @"
{
  "scheduleName": "new maintenance schedule",
  "id": "a43a5b09-5c32-8624-1427-73b8e1f05248",
  "StartTime": "2017-05-30T13:53:33.550Z",
  "EndTime": "2017-05-30T14:53:33.550Z",
  "comment": "TicketID"
}
"@


Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'http://localhost:64049/API/MaintenanceSchedule' -Method Post -Body $body -UseDefaultCredentials -ContentType 'Application/json'

Get details/related object from a computer:

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'https://host/API/Computer/windows/computer.fqdn/Detailed' -UseDefaultCredentials

Which will return something like this. Notice the relatedObjectsCount and relatedObjects

Automation

Web API for System Center Operations Manager

05/05/201707/01/2025
by Martin Ehrnst

The SCOM web API is updated, see this post

You will always find the latest SCOM Web API release on GitHub

System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is a widely used monitoring platform and one of its advatages is the ability to custom author monitoring through management pack development.
With a ‘cloud first’ approach most systems is able to do information exchange or integration through a web-based API, often reffered to as a REST API. SCOM have many ways to exchange information and the System Center Suite also have an integration platform call System Center Service Provide Foundation (SPF) which you can read more about here

To support a more light weight integration platform i decided to start my first C# project and develop a web-based API for SCOM that supported the daily used “functions”. Thanks to my colleague @RudiMartinsen i managed to create a working solution.

API Endpoints

[GET] Agents (Admin privileges required)
- Get all agents
- single based on Guid
[GET] Alerts
- Gets all alerts
- single based on Guid
- Single based on ComputerName
  - Include ‘closed’ with IncClosed=true
[PUT] Alerts
- Update a single alert with resolution state and/or ticket id
- Monitor generated alerts will be resett if 255 (closed) is sent as resolution state
[GET] WindowComputers
- Get all partial monitoring object from the Windows Computer class
- Single based on ComputerName
[POST] ComputerMaintenance*
- Maintenance mode a Windows Computer for a specific # minutes
[GET] MonintoringObject/{id}
- Get a single monitoring object based on ID (Guid)

I have uploaded the source project on GitHub and hopefully our community can continue to develop and introduce new features missing in this release.

Installation

There are two versions of the API. One without user impersonation and one where this is available. To install the version with user impersonation enabled. Do the following on a SCOM Management server

Download the project or .zip file from GitHub
Copy the required .dll from your management server (\Operations Manager\Server\SDK Binaries) to the web api Bin folder
- Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Core.dll
- Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.OperationsManager.dll
- Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Runtime.dll
Create a new web site and set physical path to where you extracted the files

Enable windows authentication (and basic if you want)
Set your Application pool to use network service identity

Examples

Using powershell here are a few examples on how you can use the API

Get Alerts

#Get all alerts
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'http://localhost:64049/Api/alerts' -UseDefaultCredentials

#Get a single alert
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'http://localhost:64049/Api/alerts?id=4a6f29e3-f4b5-4883-a3f2-97eb3be50c12' -UseDefaultCredentials

#Get alerts specified with computername
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'http://localhost:64049/Api/alerts?ComputerName=COMPUTERNAME.fqdn' -UseDefaultCredentials

Put a computer in to maintenance

PS C:\Users\...> $json = @"
{
    "DisplayName": "COMPUTERNAME.fqdn",
    "Minutes": 10,
    "comment": "I believe this is working"
}
"@

Invoke-RestMethod -Method POST -Uri 'http://localhost:64049/API/ComputerMaintenance' -Body $json -UseDefaultCredentials -ContentType 'Application/json'

Returns

DisplayName           Minutes EndTime                      comment                  
-----------           ------- -------                      -------                  
COMPUTER NAME.fqdn      10 2017-05-05T08:42:56.5938294Z I believe this is working

Get a monitoring object

#Get a monitoring object
Invoke-restmethod -uri 'http://localhost:64049/API/MonitoringObject/cb191c1a-47dc-3c51-3686-9f66dd59f187' -UseDefaultCredentials


displayName : D:
healthState : Success
inMaintenance : False
stateLastModified : 23.03.2017 15.39.23
classes :
path : MyComputerHostingThisDisk.fqdn

Limitations*

SCOM .dll files will need to copied manually in to the web api application folder as I assume im not allowed to redestribute these.

Operations Manager

SCOMpercentageCPUTimeCounter cause CPU Spike

13/03/201707/01/2025
by Martin Ehrnst

To be honest this have existed for years, and written about back in 2014. Now, in 2017, SCOM 2016 UR2 is released the problem remains. Perhaps with greater consequence due to virtualization.

If you’re unfamiliar with the problem SCOMpercentageCPUTimeCounter.vbs (.ps1 in SCOM 2016) is a script included in the “System Center Core Monitoring” management pack, and is used as the data source for a rule and a monitor to determinate agent health by gathering ‘HealthService’ CPU usage. The rule and monitor are set to run at a fixed interval of 321 seconds (I assume the person who wrote the MP just tapped 3-2-1 on their numpad 🙂 ) and sync time set to 00:00

[supsystic-tables id=1]

If you want to look at the actual code you will find the data source on SystemCenterCore.com

Running this script every 5 minutes isn’t exactly a problem when you have physical servers or a small amount of virtual machines on your Hypervisor. But if you run 100 or 300VM’s on one host and each single VM start this script simultainiasly it will create it creates unnecessary load on your host. If this host is overcommitted as well CPU wait time could cause a ‘freeze’ on your tenant machines as well.

To illustrate the problem, I have attached a graph, that clearly show spikes during script execution.

On a monitored computer you will see a cscript.exe process executing the following command line “c:\windows\system32\cscript.exe” /nologo “SCOMPerventageCPUTimeCounter.vbs

Unfortunately out of the box there isn’t much to do. Sync time and interval is the only overridable parameters, and these will only help reduce the load on the agent machine itself. So if you experience CPU utilization peaks due to this script, I see only two options

Disable the rule and monitor
- Then you will have to rely on the CPU utilization monitor from the operating system management pack
Create a new rule and monitor, using SpreadInitializationOverInterval parameter
- Reduces load as executions occurs randomly within the set interval
- Requires authoring skills, but possible. Some information here.

To not let this go into oblivion, I have left feedback on Operations Manager user voice. Hopefully, Microsoft will make some changes in the future. If you have suggestions or other experience please let me know and i will update accordingly.

Update: SCOM web API

Big updates:

Agents

Alerts

Computer

Maintenance

Object

Examples

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Web API for System Center Operations Manager

API Endpoints

Installation

Examples

Get Alerts

Put a computer in to maintenance

Get a monitoring object

Limitations*

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SCOMpercentageCPUTimeCounter cause CPU Spike

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