SCOM Archives - Page 14 of 15

First look at SquaredUp’s new Visio plugin

30/04/201507/01/2025
by Martin Ehrnst

A short while ago i implemented SquaredUp – a dashboard solution for OpsMgr in the company i work for. A few days ago, they released a new version (2.1) which includes a new Visio plugin. In short, this plugin allows you to add Monitored Objects to your Visio diagram, and show it’s health state the way you like it.

In this short write up i will show you how i created one of our wall monitors. But the first thing you need is SquaredUp installed (download and test :).

In MS Visio, start out with a basic diagram, or one of your existing ones. This is my start.

Next, you will have to add data to your shapes. SquaredUp relies on Object ID from OpsMgr. You can find this, either through Powershell or maybe it is easier to navigate to the object in Squared Up, since thats where you already are. Label: ScomID, value: <yourscomid>
Repeat this for all your objects you want to display.
(PS: if you have all your objects in a group, you can export group members from SquaredUp, and import to visio)

After all this is done. Export your Visio drawing in to .SVG. Now you create a new dashboard in SU with a Visio section. You can choose to color replace, or add an icon (which you also could with image plugin)

After all is done. This is how our dashboard look like. Exchange all green

The possibilities are “endless” this is how our wall monitor look like. The green shade represent the overall group state.

MPAuthoring

Creating seed discovery with Silect MP Author

21/04/201507/01/2025
by Martin Ehrnst

FYI: This is now a built in feature in MPAuthor SP4

As a System Center Operations Manager Engineer (or what ever your title is) you are probably some what familiar with developing your own management packs, and if not, you most likely will end up in a situation where a colleague or a client want you to monitor his or hers custom developed application, or your environment requires you to do some MP development. There are many solutions out there to do the dirty work for you, and they are all good in their own ways. You can use the Authoring functions in your OpsMgr console (basic stuff available), Developers can use Visual Studio etc. My personal favorite is MP Author from Silect. This software is GUI oriented and will help you create management packs for any SW you want. Although, it has it limitations, it is also possible to edit the XML created through it’s wizard.

One of the things that is not possible to do in MP Author’s GUI is to create a seed class/discovery. If you’re not familiar with this concept there are many good articles available on the internet, but in short terms you create a class and discovery to find the smallest bit of your application (ie. registry key) and then target your other discoveries to the seed class.

In my case i had to develop a management pack that was print server related. I created a new target and discovery in MPAutor which would run against Windows Computer class. This discovery runs a WMI query for Print and Document services.

SELECT Name FROM Win32_ServerFeature WHERE ID=261

261 is the ID for Print and Document Services role installed (in this case) on all servers we would like to monitor.

Now, our seed discovery is created, and it is time to create discovery for your application it self.

I create a new registry target to find the “rest” of my application, base class now is Windows Local Application

You could think our full discovery is finished now, but as you can see, our second discovery is targeted Windows Computer class.

I wan’t this to target all computers that are running this application, “AdatumDemoApp.Seed” time for some .XML editing. Click “Edit XML” for your full discovery, and change this line:

Target="Windows!Microsoft.Windows.Computer

Target="AdatumDemoApp.Seed"

Wich is the name of the target you created (not the discovery name)
Look your discovery is now targeted your seed class. Time to import in your demo environment and see what’s not working 🙂

Operations Manager

HealthServiceStore.edb file growth

25/03/201507/01/2025
by Martin Ehrnst

A while back i got an alert that system drive on one of our monitored servers was full. When examining what was consuming disk space I noticed that HealthServiceStore.edb, located in the agent’s Health Service State folder was way to large.

HealthServiceStore.edb is where the result of every workflow that runs on this agent is stored and sent to your Management Server(s). An agent running a lot of performance counters (Exchange, SQL etc) will probably have a larger database file than your average file server.

At first, i tried to flush the agents cache wich did not work. The next thing i tried was to run the “online store maintenance” task from OpsMgr console, this task will run a de-fragmentation of the database file.

You can follow the result in the event log, HealthService (7404) Health Service Store: Online defragmentation is beginning a full pass on database ‘<C:\Program Files\Microsoft Monitoring Agent\Agent\Health Service State\Health Service Store\HealthServiceStore.edb>’.

Did this work? No, my database file was still huge.
The next thing to do, is to perform a “Dirty Defrag” on the DB file. To do this,

open your favorite shell and navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Monitoring Agent\Agent\Health Service State\Health Service Store
Stop Healthservice.exe (Microsoft Monitoring Agent)
Run esentutl /r edb (recovery mode)
Start defragmentation by running esentutl /d HealthServiceStore.edb

Your healthservicestore.edb should now have a normal size.

Do you have anything to include, please comment.

First look at SquaredUp’s new Visio plugin

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Creating seed discovery with Silect MP Author

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HealthServiceStore.edb file growth

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