Download: Link

The System Center Operation Manager 2007 Administration Resource Kit provides the following features to aid in management group administration:

• Scheduled Maintenance Mode – Ability to schedule and manage maintenance mode in the management group.
• Clean Mom – Helps remove all installed R2 components.
• MP Event Analyzer – MP Event Analyzer tool is designed to help a user with functional and exploratory testing and debugging of event based management pack workflows like rules and monitors.

Feature Summary:

• Ability to schedule Maintenance mode for “run once”, daily, weekly, and monthly schedules
• Ability to removal all OpsMgr 2007 R2 files from a system
• Ability to debug event based management pack workflows

Download: SubscriptionCopier.zip

Guide: SubscriptionCopierGuide.pdf

Subscriptions copier is a simple tool for copying subscriptions and helping with alert escalation. I created this tool after multiple customers have asked me why they couldn’t copy an existing subscription.

I have found that customers are not using subscriptions to their full potential; most customers only setup one subscription. While this works for some, I think that all alerts should be actionable. If an alert has not had some type of action taken in a given time, the alert e-mail should be re-sent or escalated to someone who can take action on it. A ticketing system such as SCSM would also fulfill this function, but few customers have their SCOM system linked to a ticketing system.

You want to make a copy of the Windows Server Team subscription and send alerts to the Windows Server Team’s manager, if they not closed within one hour. To do this today is a very manual process. You would have to open up the subscription and take a screenshot of the configuration. Then create a new subscription with the same configuration and add the Windows Team Manager to the recipients. While this works, there is a possibility that you don’t select that exact same criteria and accidently send the windows team manager an informational alert in the middle of the night that the windows team never even saw.

So let’s show how this is done with the subscription copier tool:

As you can see we have 3 subscriptions

Step 1: Launch the Subscription Copier Tool

Step 2: Type in the name of your root management server

Step 3: The tool will then open

Step 4: Select the Subscription you would like to copy from the drop down.

Step 5: Select how may copies you would like to make. (In this scenario we will only create one.)

Step 6: Select how many minutes in between re-alerts. In this scenario we will leave it at the default of 0 (This will be used in scenario 2)

Step 7: Check this box if you want the copied subscription enabled. (In this scenario we are leaving it unchecked because we need to make some changes before it is enabled.)

Step 8: Click Create

Step 9: You should see a message telling you that the subscription was create successfully.

Step 10: Open the SCOM console and refresh the subscriptions screen. You should see the copied alert under the subscriptions screen.

Now back to our scenario we want to alert the windows team manager if an alert has stayed open for longer than one hour.

We go to the properties of the copied alert.

Change the name to “Windows Server Team (Escalated to manager after one hour)” and click next

As you can see all of our criteria has been copied from the original subscription.

Click Next

Remove the Windows Team E-Mail and add Windows Server Team Manager to the subscribers

On the channels screen set the alert aging to 60 minutes. This will only send alerts that have been open for longer than 60 minutes to the Windows Server Team Manager

On the Summary Page click “Enable this notification subscription.”

Then click Finish

You want a subscription to re-alert on open alerts every 10 minutes for one hour. To do this today you would have to open up the subscription and take a screenshot of the configuration. Then create six new subscriptions with the same configuration and set the delay by adding an extra ten minutes to every subscription. This could take up to 10 minutes manually. If you were to do this for every subscription in your environment it could take many hours.

So let’s see how this is done with the subscription copier tool

Step 1: Launch the Subscription Copier Tool

Step 2: Type in the name of your Root Management server

Step 4: Select the Subscription you would like to copy from the drop down.

Step 5: Select how may copies you would like to make. In this scenario we will create six.

Step 6: Select how many minutes between each re-alert. In this scenario we will set it to 10 minutes.

Step 7: Check the enabled box to enable the 6 subscriptions we are going to create.

Step 8: Click Create

Step 9: It will take a short time as the copies are created. After it completes you should see a message telling you that 6 subscription copies were created at a 10 minute interval.

Step 10: Open the SCOM Console and refresh the subscriptions screen.

You should now see the copied subscriptions created by the tool.

• When creating multiple copies with a re-alert interval. Set your subscription criteria to only include only

Reason: When your subscription criteria includes closed alerts, the closed alerts get delayed and you will get some a bunch of extra closed alerts that you won’t want.

• If you have subscriptions with duplicate names you will get an error of “An entry with the same key already exists”.

Workaround: Delete subscription(s) with duplicate name

• Copied subscriptions with a delay set. The delay doesn’t interval doesn’t get copied.

Workaround: Manually set the delay on copied subscriptions

SCOM 2007 R2 CU4 has been released to the web.  You can download it here

CU 4 contains a fix that I have been waiting for since SCOM 2007 RTM.  It has the ability for the RMS to recover from a SQL disconnect, restart, or failure.  This is obviously super important for a monitoring system.  

Automatic recovery of Health Service in a SQL Server failure scenario
After SQL Server goes offline, Health Service of Root Management Server (RMS) stops responding. For example, Health Service stops responding after SQL Server disconnects, restarts, or fails. To recover from this issue when SQL Server is available again, you must restart Health Service. 

By default, this automatic recovery feature is disabled. The DALInitiateClearPoolSeconds setting controls when RMS drops the current connection pool and when RMS tries to reestablish an SQL connection. We recommend that you set this setting to 60 seconds or more to avoid performance issues. To configure this recommended setting, set the following values:

• SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\DAL\DALInitiateClearPool = true
• SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\DAL\DALInitiateClearPoolSeconds = 60

*Note* To apply the DALInitiateClearPoolSeconds setting, restart Health Service of RMS.

Kevin Holman has done a nice job providing step-by-step instructions on CU4.  Link

When I wrote SCOM VBScripts in the past, it was easy to test the script and see if I was getting the right output. 

I would simply run the cscript command from the command prompt to get the output.

C:\temp2\cscript count.vbs "c:\temp2" 4

But now with a similar SCOM PowerShell script I get useless output.

PS C:\temp2\ .\filecount.ps1 -Folder ‘C:\temp2′ -FCount 5

To fix this I have to add a simple line of code to the end of my PowerShell script

$api.Return($bag)

Now I can see the same output that my VBScripts gave me in the past.

Don’t forget to comment the line out after you are done testing.

I decided I needed to re-install my lab environment.  I wanted to keep all of the firewalls on during the install process and only open the ports that are actually needed. I installed SQL using a named instance as many customers use a SQL 2008 cluster.

After I installed the SCOM database on the SQL 2008 server with all firewalls on.  I created a firewall rule to let port 1433 allow connections.  As specified in the Supported Configurations doc

Root management server 1433 —> OperationsManager database

I also setup a firewall rule to allow port 1434 back to the RMS server from the SQL Instance Server. (Also in the guide)

Root management server 1434 UDP < — OperationsManager database

I start the install of SCOM to the RMS server.  I unchecked Database as my database is already install the on the SQL instance.

I typed in my SC Database Instance Name and clicked Next

But I got this error “Setup cannot location the SC database”

So I enabled firewall logging to see what was getting dropped blocked by setting the firewall to log dropped packets.

In the SCOM setup I clicked back and then next.

I checked the firewall logs in %systemroot%\system32\Logfiles\Firewall\pfirewall.log  and it looks like UDP port 1434 is being dropped

I create another rule on the SQL server to enable UDP port 1434

In the SCOM setup I click back and next again.

Once again same failure.  “Setup cannot location the SC database”

Back to the firewall logs.  It now needs TCP port 62756 (Not in the guide)

I create another rule on the SQL server to enable TCP port 62756

After that rule is enabled I am able to continue on a install SCOM successfully with all of the windows firewalls still on.