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McCaw Rory

职业

System Center Training

If you are looking for more great information and the best technical training available on Operations Manager 2007, check out http://www.infrontconsulting.com/training.php.
10月13日

Cast Your Vote for new Features in SCOM

Microsoft recently launched a feedback portal for you to file bugs and/or suggestions for the next version of Operations Manager - located here:  https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgr/Feedback - All you need to do is be registered on Connect.


Take advantage of the "Vote" feedback mechanism to help prioritize the features that you would like Microsoft to work on based on your feedback.  For example, the scheduling of maintenance mode is something that many people has asked for, for the past two versions of the product. This new system allows you to cast your vote for the features that you would like to see.

 

The OpsMgr product group wants your feedback to help them understand what’s important to their customers. If there is one thing that Microsoft is GREAT at it’s listening to customers, understanding and clarifying feature requests and turning those into new features and functionality.

Another SCCM MP Irregularity

I have to wonder why the SCCM 2007 Management Pack makes use of Custom Field 6 to display a generic string that doesn’t provide any noticeable value to the operator.

image

Again, focusing on MP Best Practices, it would be great to see a common, recommend use of the Custom Fields. These can be extremely helpful when mapping SCOM alerts to fields in other operations frameworks such as ticketing systems. One challenge in SCOM is to find a field that consistently presents the name of the server that the alert was generated on. This to me could be a great use for custom fields.

For this and more great in-depth technical information on SCOM, look to the System Center training available at www.infrontconsulting.com/training.php.

ConfigMgr 2007 Component Health: Monitoring script error

If you have worked with the SCCM 2007 MP for Operations Manager 2007, you have likely seen this alert. This is one example of where great strides could be made in certain Management Packs to update and improve the knowledge included in the rule. A smart way to handle this is how the Exchange product group handles this but placing links to external KB knowledge in their newer MPs. This allows the product group that is responsible for the Management Pack to update a single online repository and all existing MPs benefit. It would be great to see this incorporated in the MP validation that an MP is run through prior to release.

One example of this is the following alert:

image

Here you can see that the highlighted text refers to a concept that isn’t even a part of SCOM but was a component of MOM 2005 and earlier versions of the product. It would also be great to see the resolution steps updated to refer to the new debugging cmd files StartTracing.cmd and StopTracing.cmd found in %ProgramFiles%\System Center Operations Manager 2007\Tools.

For this and more great in-depth technical information on SCOM, look to the System Center training available at www.infrontconsulting.com/training.php.

10月4日

Real World Customer Feedback on the MS50216 SCOM 2007 - Advanced Configuration & Administration Course

Here we go again! Another slam dunk disaster from Microsoft Learning though they can’t be held 100% accountable as this is a courseware library course so it’s not really a Microsoft Learning course but it is what Microsoft Certified Partners for Learning have available to them to deliver. Some feedback on this course material from a recent delivery (thank goodness the instructor new his stuff, as our instructor scores where FABULOUS)…

“Exercises didn’t explain why we were doing certain tasks. A better explanation of the steps in the labs are needed for better understanding or the course material.”

“No page numbers on the course manual”

“This course needs two main things:

1. Short quiz’s after each chapter.

2. Explanations about what each step in the labs do.”

“Tons of typos and simply incorrect instructions. Also, rather than just step by step instructions, how about adding ‘this is why you do this step’”

The good news is that you too don’t need to be disappointed with the Microsoft training offerings on System Center, look to the in-depth, technical training from Infront Consulting Group to provide you with the real-world knowledge that you require to be successful.

Rory McCaw, OpsMgr MVP

9月24日

New Connect Site for OpsMgr

Do you want to help in making the SQL MP better? If so, now is your time to provide feedback at the new Microsoft Connect site. Take the SQL MP Survey today! This is your chance to be heard!!

https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgr

9月23日

AlarmPoint Management Pack

Infront Consulting Group is about to release it’s AlarmPoint Management Pack. This is a Management Pack that Infront Consulting Group will be releasing for FREE. If this is something that your organization would be interested in, please contact sales[@]infrontconsulting.com.

For great, in-depth information on System Center technologies, check out our training at http://www.infrontconsulting.com/training.php. I look forward to meeting you in one of our classes!

Rory McCaw, Infront Consulting Group

You can also find this at www.systemcentercentral.com/blogs/rorymccaw

Health Service Heartbeat Failure

Are you confused by the Knowledge text in the Health Service Heartbeat Failure alert in SCOM you aren’t alone. If I didn’t work with SCOM everyday, I wouldn’t have a clue as to what was meant by …navigate to the “State Change Events” tab.


To get to the “State Change Events” tab, right click on the alert and select Open | Health Explorer. In Health Explorer, select the Health Service Heartbeat Failure alert that is in a critical state and on the right hand side of the Health Explorer dialog box, select the State Change Events tab. Scroll down in the details section in the lower left hand corner and you will find the recovery Restart Health Service.

Hope this helps to clarify things.

For this and more great in-depth information on System Center technologies, check out our training at http://www.infrontconsulting.com/training.php. I look forward to meeting you in one of our classes!

Rory McCaw, Infront Consulting Group

You can also find this post at www.systemcentercentral.com/blogs/rorymccaw 

Infront Consulting Group releases RightFax MP

Do you use SCOM in your organization? Are you interested in monitoring your RightFax servers with SCOM. Infront Consulting Group has just released their RightFax MP, a low cost Management Pack that provides insight into the health and availability of your RightFax servers and services and includes availability reporting.

If you are interested in more information on our RightFax MP, email sales[at]infrontconsulting.com.

For great, in-depth training on System Center technologies check out our training offerings at www.infrontconsulting.com/training.php.

Rory McCaw, Infront Consulting Group

You can also find this post at www.systemcentercentral.com/blogs/rorymccaw

8月17日

Moving my blog to www.systemcentercentral.com

I haven't been doing much in this blog space this year. It's been a busy year with a number of changes but it's time to start things back up again and in doing so, I will be posted my content to www.systemcentercentral.com/blogs/rorymccaw where you don't need an account to read my blog and learn new and interesting things about System Center technologies.
 
Check out www.systemcentercentral.com and become a registered user and part of the community for 'everything System Center' as the site is having a content for new registered users over the next couple of months with great prizes and give-aways drawn every two weeks!!
 
Also, if you are on twitter, check out my tweets at http://twitter.com/rorymccaw.
1月27日

Windows Defender - Manually update your client if auto-update fails

I ran into an issue today with Windows Defender on a client computer. Windows Defender wasn't able to download updates. When I clicked the Check for Updates button, I would receive the error:

"The Program can't download definition updates. Error Found 0x80240022"

This was on an otherwise healthy system with access to the internet. Automatic updates where working, though configured to be received by WSUS so I looked into manually downloadeding and installing the Windows Defender definitions which wasn't that intuitive but Windows KB article 923159 helped me find the following links. 

32 bit versions of Windows: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=70631

x64 version of Windows: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=70632

Itanium version of Windows: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=70633

1月21日

Question from our SCOM Training: Dynamic Groups in SCOM

Dynamic Groups in SCOM

Here’s a question/comment from one of Infront’s SCOM training attendees…

 

Hi Rory, I was in your SCOM classes in December in Dallas. I really enjoyed the class as you helped me out a lot by confirming the many eccentricities of the product—and that I’m neither insane nor inept when I can’t get it to do what I want.

 

I have made more progress on my scom implementation in the month since your class than I made in the past two years, and that includes the Christmas holiday.

 

That said, here’s another one I found:

 

I’m populating groups with windows servers based on principal name, leveraging our server naming convention. Simple enough.

 

Any windows computer whose principal name matches wildcard “*bizp*” is a production BizTalk server.

 

Except some of my servers are named SISBIZP*. And the query is, I’m not kidding, case-sensitive. I have to put an OR group in the query builder or I only get half my servers.

 

Read the rest of the article at http://www.infrontconsulting.com/resources.php. The article name is Dynamic Groups.

 

For in-depth, technical training on System Center technologies including Operations Manager, look to http://www.infrontconsulting.com/events.htm.

1月8日

Exchange 2007 MP Hotfixes

Exchange 2007 MP Hotfixes

Are you interested in monitoring Exchange 2007 with SCOM and the latest Exchange 2007 MP? This can be found in the Operations Manager MP Catalog at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/opsmgr/cc539535.aspx. The MP itself (version 6.0.6461.0, released Dec 8, 2008) can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1a83e112-8677-4e03-83c3-f1b7ebfc3a4b&displaylang=en&displaylang=en.

In the Overview section, the text calls out three (3) hotfixes that are required for this MP and that should be installed prior to importing the MP. Are you looking for KB950853…

Read the rest of the article at http://infrontconsulting.com/resources.htm. The article is titled Hotfix 950853.

For in-depth, technical training on System Center technologies including Operations Manager, look to http://www.infrontconsulting.com/events.htm.

12月28日

Installing the Visual Studio Tools for Office in SCOM...

Installing the Visual Studio Tools for Office Runtime... it should be easier than this!

I finally got the opportunity over the holidays with a little downtime, too much turkey, and all the time I can spend with my son’s toy car sets (with or without my son) to deal with one of those little pesky annoyances that’s been bugging me for a while but that wasn’t a priority.... installing the Visual Studio Tools for Office runtime on the Root Management Server (RMS) in our lab. Without this, you receive the following message when you attempt to update company knowledge content.

Read the rest of the article at http://infrontconsulting.com/resources.htm

For in-depth, technical training on System Center technologies including Operations Manager, look to http://www.infrontconsulting.com/events.htm.

12月7日

Canadian Politics, specifically Canadian Politicians Need to be Better Losers

Toronto Maple Leafs Win Stanley Cup!!!


Canada was stunned Monday when it was announced that The Stanley Cup will be awarded to the Toronto Maple Leafs, possibly as early as December 16th.


The cup will be stripped from from 2008 playoff champions the Detroit Red Wings and be awarded to the Leafs, who didn't even make the playoffs.

How is this possible, Canadians ask?

Well, the Leafs have formed a coalition with eastern conference semifinalists the Montreal Canadians, and conference quarter finalists the Ottawa Senators, now outnumbering the Red Wings.

According to current Leaf coach Ron Wilson "the Red Wings have lost the confidence of the league and should hand the cup over immediately to our coalition".

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is cutting short a European trip to try to resolve the unprecedented hockey crisis that could force a second playoff series, or see an opposing team coalition take the cup.

Note: I claim no ownership for the above statement. The above statement was received via email with no source noted to reference.

12月3日

64-bit Woes, not Wows!

It is 2008 right? 64-bit operating systems have been out for how long now? 4+ years? It still amazes me, the lack of support, particularly on the desktop side for 64-bit applications and drivers. One of the things we struggle with regularly is being able to demostrate server-side technology to customers and yet still use the notebook on which we run the demonstrations as our everyday notebook. Now to demo a number of Microsoft technologies, we run Windows Server 2008 on our notebooks but in order to run hyper-v, you need to install the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008. The benefit, outside of being able to run the demonstrations is that the OS sees more system memory than XP or Vista, both of which see between 3.1 and 3.3 GBs of RAM instead of the full 4GBs but the downside is the inability to use different applications and drivers for devices like scanners and printers.
 
To, I sent an Office Groove invite to a colleague who is running a 64-bit o/s only to leave the Groove, a Microsoft acquired application doesn't support 64-bit. Come on folks, let's please change this!!
 
 
12月1日

Training or Marketing, you decide

I am a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) or at least I hold that designation and have for 10+ years. I truly love to present and deliver training, it's a passion of mine for sure.
 
As a religious MSDN reader, I like you receive emails from Microsoft (MSDN specifically) about the different 'stuff' that's going on. I received one today and almost fell off my chair laughing at one particular section...
 

Training

How to Convince Your Manager to Send You to Training

Microsoft Learning has recently conducted research to show the value of IT training. Use our research results as a powerful weapon when negotiating training opportunities with your manager. Our research shows that training leads to improved team productivity, reduced downtime, and increased employee satisfaction and loyalty. Find out more about the research data and Microsoft Certified Partners for Learning Solutions.

 
The burb above intrigued me as I agee that IT training is valuable. Working as a consultant, I am always learning and trying to stay on top of technology and all of the changes and as you know, it's hard. Technology changes so quickly, it's difficult to stay current so I value any opportunity that I have to take quality training and that's where I think this gets funny and where the disconnect is that the marketing folks in Redmond or the Microsoft Learning folks just don't seem to see.
 
At the following link (http://www.microsoft.com/learning/cpls/reasons/default.mspx) you can read how "Microsoft Certified Partners for Learning Solutions are the only training companies that meet the Microsoft international standards of excellence."  I am not sure about you, but there is no chance that you would find me taking a class at a Microsoft CPLS unless the trainer actually had real world experience with the technology that the training was on. I am not just looking to have the book read to me or presented articulately, I want to know what works and what doesn't work and what the trainer has seen. At the same time, I want to know that the training material is current to the 'version' or 'service pack' level of the application or operating system that I will be or am working with and this is where I see two glaring disconnects in the current training model.
 
Disconnect 1: Full time trainers (certified or not) are full time trainers. Don't get me wrong, some of these folks are great instructors and most of them are great people but they bring little to no real world examples or experience with them to the classroom.
 
Disconnect 2: The quality of the Microsoft curriculum 'in my opinion' has not improved. If anything, there are more and more gaps where curriculum just doesn't exist or if it does the labs either don't work or are extremely problematic. Now, in Microsoft's defense, I understand that over the last 4 years Microsoft's courseware, particularly the classroom setup dynamics have changed and have moved from a physical server installation to a Virtual PC installation and now with some of the more recent releases are using Hyper-V as a platform. That taken into account, the technical depth and product coverage has seemed to slip. Hindsight being what it is (100% right) I would have thought that during the downturn in the training market after the tech bubble burst in the early 2000's that Microsoft would have taken this opportunity to invest in building more technical curriculum to increase interest and help drive demand.
 
As an organization Infront Consulting Group, identified the gaps in Microsoft's training space and seized the opportunity to develop high-quality, in-depth, deep technical content in the System Center area and have received high praise from the folks that have attended the training. Mindsharp is another company that has done the same in the SharePoint space.
 
I still find it funny though how market research can be construed or miscontrued and a fact such as "...Our research shows that training leads to improved team productivity, reduced downtime, and increased employee satisfaction and loyalty." can be spun to imply that only training from a Microsoft CPLS will provide these benefits. 
 
What we hear from the people that attend our training and what I heard back when I was an MCT still rings true, it's not the materials that make that class it's the trainer delivering the class and what that person brings with them to the class.
 
That said, if you are in a position where your manager 'just doesn't get it' and you need some ammunition to convince him or her of the value of training, I hope the following helps...
 

Special benefits for IT managers

Learning can help you:

Improve team productivity

Studies show that for each new individual who is trained and certified, team performance increases—every time. Customers report a nine percent increase in productivity after training. In other words, your team gets an extra month of productivity per year.

Reduce downtime

Forty percent of operational downtime is due to a significant lack of training on core systems. After training, 55 percent of workers report a significant increase in the quality of their work.

Increase employee satisfaction and loyalty

Forty-three percent of hiring managers say that investing in employee development reduces turnover, probably because employees have increased job satisfaction and feelings of increased engagement.

Customize learning solutions

Look for customized learning plans that meet your team's specific training needs and schedule—the learning plans may even be delivered right at your office.

 

 

Good luck with your training and education!! For in-depth System Center training, check out www.infrontconsulting.com/events.htm.

 
11月28日

Monitoring Team Foundation Server 2008 with OpsMgr (SCOM)

Are you interested in monitoring Team Foundation Server 2008 with OpsMgr 2007, if so you will want to check out the newly released MP at  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=28c745b5-28cc-474a-a5fd-944c246d7727&displaylang=en,  You can also find the MP in the System Center Operations Manager Catalog. Search for it by selecting "System Center Operations Manager 2007" and entering TFS as a keyword.
 
Note that you will require both the SQL MP and the ASP.NET MPs in order to utilize the TFS MP.
 
One of the nice new features that you will notice is the ability to run the BPA against targeted TFS Servers from Operator Console.
 
For more great, in-depth information on Operations Manager 2007 and soon MP Development and Report Authoring as well as cross platform coverage with OpsMgr R2, check out our training at www.infrontconsulting.com/events.htm.
11月11日

Ops Mgr SP1 Documentation

 
For in-depth, technical training on SCOM and other System Center technologies, spend your time wisely with an instructor that comes with hands-on, field experience and answers to your production problems by attending training from Infront Consulting Group. Check out our schedule at http://www.infrontconsulting.com/events.htm. Your time is valuable, don't waste it taking training from someone that has never deployed or supported the technology you need to learn. Trust an expert, trust Infront. 
11月4日

US Election

Well, if you are not American and feel a little left out not being able to vote in the US election. Check this out and see what the rest of the world would like to see as a result.

http://www.iftheworldcouldvote.com/

10月3日

Operations Manager Support Statement

From time to time, I am asked if a given operating system or application is support in SCOM and I always look to the official support statement to provide the answer. This can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb309428.aspx. This doesn't mean that the operating system or application will not work if it's not on this list, simply that it is not supported which is something to be mindful of when planning your SCOM architecture.
 
For great training on System Center, check out http://www.infrontconsulting.com/events.htm.
9月25日

Resolving Friendly Names to SCOM GUIDs

Have you ever created a rule, monitor, task or group in the Operations console and then exported the unsealed MP and tried to find the rule, monitor, task or group? If you have, you will have noticed that when you create an MP element such as a rule, monitor, task or group in the Operations Console, it’s assigned a name with a unique GUID in the MP and this can make it hard to search for. Let’s explore this a little further.

In the Operations Console, create a new rule named Domain Admin Membership Change. Export the unsealed MP from the Operations Manager Console and open the xml document in Notepad. (Or any xml editor)

<Monitoring>

<Rules>

<Rule ID="MomUIGeneratedRule2a5e0cd6c818445b9e62c8d4992127ce" Enabled="true" Target="Windows!Microsoft.Windows.Server.2003.OperatingSystem" ConfirmDelivery="true" Remotable="true" Priority="Normal" DiscardLevel="100">

<Category>SecurityHealth</Category>

<DataSources>

<DataSource ID="DS" TypeID="MicrosoftWindowsLibrary6062780!Microsoft.Windows.EventProvider">

<ComputerName>$Target/Host/Property[Type="MicrosoftWindowsLibrary6062780!Microsoft.Windows.Computer"]/NetworkName$</ComputerName>

<LogName>Security</LogName>

Look for the Rule ID in this example, highlighted above. This is the name assigned to the rule by the Operations Console. You can see that this name matches the friendly name of Domain Admin Membership Change that you entered when creating the rule in the Operations Console.

<DisplayString ElementID="MomUIGeneratedRule2a5e0cd6c818445b9e62c8d4992127ce">

<Name>Domain Admin Membership Change</Name>

The Command Shell can also be used to resolve the friendly name known as the DisplayName property to the GUID by running the following command:

Get-rule | where-object {$_.DisplayName –eq “Domain Admin Membership Change”} | format-list Name

The result of this command can be seen below.

clip_image002

This can be useful in helping you to correlate the friendly name that you assigned to a rule to the ‘Name’ property that the Operations Manager console assigned to the rule when you created it.

For more of this type of technical information on Ops Mgr 2007 check out our training at www.infrontconsulting.com/events.htm.

9月1日

PowerShell script doesn't run "The file foo.ps1 is not digitally signed. The script will not execute on the system."

If you receive the following error when attempting to run a PowerShell script “The file foo.ps1 is not digitally signed. The script will not execute on the system.”

clip_image002

To resolve this, locate the ps1 file in Windows Explorer and right click on the file and select Properties.

clip_image004

In the Properties dialog box, click Unblock and click OK.

8月23日

Detailed MP Breakdown with MPViewer

Detailed MP Breakdown with MPViewer

Are you interested in seeing a detailed MP breakdown with MPViewer of the following MP elements?

·         Rules (include things such as event ID or performance counter name)

·         Monitors

·         Tasks

·         Discoveries

·         Recoveries

·         Diagnostics

·         Views

 

If so, check out http://www.opsmanjam.com/OpsManJam%20Library/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=/OpsManJam%20Library/MPViewer%20Dumps&FolderCTID=&View={C9321DFE-CF3E-4F57-8873-3D4C1F6609F4}.

David St. Clair, a fellow Operations Manager consultant at Infront Consulting Group brought this to my attention. Thanks David!

Looking for great training on Operations Manager, check out www.infrontconsulting.com/events.htm. You will leave with a comprehensive understanding of Operations Manager as our training is delivered by consultants active in the field that understand the challenges you face implementing an operations management application.

 

7月8日

Because of an error in data encryption, this session will end. Please try connecting to the remote computer again.

This one is stumping me. I've just built a new Windows Server 2008 system with Hyper-V and everytime I attempt to connect to the server be it from an XP or Vista box, I get the following error.

dataencryption error

This is now also happening with I RDP into one of the guest running on the server. I am still looking for the setting to disable to allow me to connect remotely. If you know, I'd love to hear from you!

Ops Mgr 2007 Installation Woes

Could not get SQL Server instance names.

Prerequisite check failed: SQL Server SP1 is not installed.

Well, yesterday marked another day of new and interesting, undocumented features in software. This was a new error for me that in all of the installs I have done, I have not encountered. My install of Ops Mgr 2007 SP1 slipstream failed the prerequisite check stating that SQL 2005 SP1 wasn’t installed.

My install was pretty straight forward, one server OPSSQL as the database, data warehouse and Ops Reporting server with SQL 2005 SP1 and SQL RS SP1 installed and one server OPSRMS as the Management Server, Console (Web, Ops, & Command Shell).

So as installs go, I start the installation on OPSSQL and get the following error at the prerequisite checker...

cant install opsmgr

So the next logical step was to confirm that SQL was installed and that I have applied SP1 which I new I had as I just finished the installation. This can be done by opening SQL Management Studio and running a couple of SQL queries such as USE MASTER SELECT @@VERSION, the output of which you can see below.

sqlversion1

Alternatively, you can run select serverproperty('productversion'), serverproperty('productlevel'), serverproperty('edition') and get the following result...

sqlversion2

As you can see, SQL 2005 SP1 was clearly installed. The next place to look for information on troubleshooting this was the log file MOMn.log where n is the number of install attempts you have made. You can see from this that I was at lucky number 7. This file can be found in C:\Documents and Settings\<logged on user>\Local Settings\Temp\. The string to search for in the log file is value=3 but this was to no avail.

logfile

So this is where it gets even more interesting but also where the solution lies. The beautiful thing about software is that there is always more than one way to arrive at a final destination!! So, the next step was to try to install the database without running SetupOM.exe by using the CreateDB.exe found in the SuppportTools folder on the OpsMgr2007 installation media and this worked like a charm! I had to run this once to install the OperationsManager DB and again to install the OperationsManagerDW but it ran like a champ on the OPSSQL server and then I was able to run SetupOM.exe on the OPSRMS server and complete the installation of the RMS and consoles.

For this and more great real world insight into Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Powershell and Softgrid, check out www.infrontconsulting.com/events.htm.

 
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