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SCOM 2012: Overview link blog

This post will be my (and hopefully yours) one stop to post all the relevant info to SCOM 2012. I will try to generate an overview of all the different steps you need to start from scratch and continue to build your environment to a level that suites your environment.

If you feel there are things missing or you’ve found dead links please do not hesitate to leave a comment and I will update this post. This post has grown out of my favourite list of SCOM related topics and info I found on forums, technet and blogs.

Note:

    • I’ll sometimes post more than 1 link at a topic so you can combine the different blogposts to get the bigger picture.
    • Most of the info is relevant for SCOM 2012 and SCOM 2012 SP1 (if there’s specific info for a specific version it will be pointed out.)
    • This is a link post to relevant info I found on the web. All credits and copyright belong to the respective authors.

SCOM 2012 R2:

General information:

This section lists all links that will give you a general overview of SCOM.

Design and Topology

This section lists all links that will help and guide you to make a proper design and take the correct decisions concerning topology

How to install

This section lists all links to the install walkthroughs and possible issues.

Configuring scom

This section lists all links to help you quickly setup scom after you have succesfully installed it.

 

Specific configuration

This section lists all the different aspects of SCOM that need additional installation or configuration

Dashboards

ACS

APM (Application Performance Monitoring)

Gateway configuration

Network Monitoring

Azure Monitoring:

Management pack basics

This section lists all the links to give you the basics about management packs

 

Management pack advanced

This section liste all the links to the more advance management pack tips and tricks.

Community Management packs

A list of must have community management packs to increase your productivity and solve some gaps and functionalities in scom.

Note: These management packs are written by members of the community so no warranty is given. Test before you use in production!

Integration possibilities

This section lists links to different integration possibilities between the different System Center products.

 

Usefull blogs and sources for this list (In random order of importance)

Note: System Center Blogs: Now on iPhone, Android and Windows Phone

Tips & Tricks

Cool Showcases with SCOM

Partner solutions for SCOM (in random order)

Videos

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LiveMeeting 22/11/2012: System Center Products better together…

 

On the 22th of November I’m hosting a LiveMeeting on how to integrate the different System Center products.

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We’ll go over the different steps to integrate the different System Center products to get past the standard “just monitor it” scenario with SCOM but truly integrate the different products together.

All the products will be positioned within the System Center stack and integrations will be showcased.

If you are looking for a session to convince your boss to install more system center products or just want to convince yourself of the force of system center products brought together…

Look no further this is your session.

Register here:https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032533093&Culture=en-us&community=0

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Scom 2012 Visio Stencils

 

Larry Rayl a senior consultant at Catapult Systems has created and posted a nice set of SCOM 2012 Visio Stencils creating the possibility to even further customize your SCOM 2012 Visio designs.

There are some really specific Visio stencils in there which were not available out of the box in Visio or in the old Scom 2007 visio stencils.

A pretty cool addition to your standard toolkit if you ask me!

toolkit-white

Check the original blog post here: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/lrayl/archive/2012/11/13/system-center-2012-operations-manager-2012-stencil.aspx

Download them from SystemCenterCentral here: http://www.systemcentercentral.com/Downloads/DownloadsDetails/tabid/144/IndexID/96587/Default.aspx

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SCOM: Cannot locate resource ‘momr2db.xaml’

 

This afternoon my colleague Alex Smits asked for pointers on a strange problem he faced when he wanted to install a SCOM 2012 reporting server on a previous SCOM 2007 reporting server for a side by side migration.

As soon as he clicked the install button on the Scom 2012 install screen the following error message appeared and the install was aborted:

clip_image001

There was no log written to the machine because in fact the install just did not kick off yet . There were also no indications in the event viewer so we were completely troubleshooting blind on this one.

After some time Alex managed to get the reporting server installed on the machine after taking a backup of the old reporting dbase and then completely removing the SCOM 2007 reporting server dbase components of this server.

After this the install passed the error message and installed perfectly.

I hope we save you some valuable troubleshooting time by finding this out…

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SCOM 2012: shortcut tip

 

NOTE: This blogpost is part of a series of tips and tricks. You can find more tips and tricks on the central blogpost located here; http://scug.be/dieter/2012/10/07/scom-tips-and-tricks-series/

Just a small shortcut tip this time.

As part of the unified console the shortcuts to the tabs in scom have been included in the SCOM 2012 console.

I find this personally particularly handy when you want to switch between the different tabs while browsing through the console.

CAUTION: You’ll need access to the tabs to be able to open them.

So just pressing CTRL + a number will open the tab.

TIP: If you don’t know the exact number there’s always a way to get it by hovering over the specific tab. SNAG-0128

No point in using the shortcut when you hover over the tab but you might remember it the next time and save yourself that nanosecond of valuable SCOM time Smile

 

CTRL+ 1: SNAG-0129

CTRL+ 2:SNAG-0130

CTRL+ 3: SNAG-0131

CTRL +4: SNAG-0132

CTRL +5: SNAG-0133

 

Stay tuned for more tips and tricks in the series.

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System Center 2012 RU3 released

 

Today the RU (Rollup) package 3 for System Center 2012 was released.

Improvements for the different products in the suite included minor fixes for DPM / SCOM and SCSM.

All the RU packages are cumulative so if you install RU3 the previous fixes are also included.

An overview per product:

Source the official mom team blog (=> bookmark this valuable blog!) http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2012/10/10/system-center-2012-update-rollup-3-ur3-released.aspx

You can find more details and instructions for obtaining and installing the update rollup on the associated KB article here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2756127

 

Update Rollup 3 for System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 (KB2751230)

Issue 1
After you upgrade System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 to System Center Data Protection Manager 2012, the tape management report does not display overdue tapes.
Issue 2
System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 Client Protection does not scale to the limits that are expected.
Issue 3
When you try to specify a client computer name in the DPMServerName attribute by using Windows PowerShell, Windows PowerShell crashes.
Issue 4
When the name of a Microsoft SharePoint site collection contains a space, and you perform a SharePoint item-level recovery operation in System Center Data Protection Manager 2012, the operation fails.
Issue 5
After you rename a SharePoint site in System Center Data Protection Manager 2012, you cannot restore the site.
Issue 6
The SharePoint Recovery Point Status Report displays incorrect data in System Center Data Protection Manager 2012.
Issue 7
A bare metal recovery fails in certain situations.

Update Rollup 3 for System Center Operations Manager 2012 (KB2750631)

Issue 1
When you use the 32-bit version of Windows Internet Explorer to start a web console, the Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Presentation.Controls.SpeedometerGaugeUIController controller does not work correctly.
Issue 2
When you run a Windows PowerShell cmdlet, you receive the following error message:

Get-BPAModel is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet.

Issue 3
When you try to change a URL in the “web application availability monitoring” template instance, the change is not applied.

Update Rollup 3 for System Center Service Manager 2012 (KB2750615)

Issue 1
When you open or close the Incident form in the System Center Service Manager 2012 console, a memory leak occurs.
Issue 2
When form control objects are rooted in the Garbage-Collected (GC) Heap, the System Center Service Manager 2012 console crashes, and you receive an OutOfMemoryException exception.
Issue 3
After you change the SharePoint site language to Turkish in the System Center Service Manager 2012 portal, the display strings are displayed in English unexpectedly.
Issue 4
When you open the System Center Service Manager 2012 console by using a Citrix application, and then you open the Incident form, you experience slow performance.

 

Check out the blog post of kevin Greene on how to deploy this update: http://kevingreeneitblog.blogspot.ie/2012/10/scom-2012-deploying-cumulative-update.html

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LiveMeeting 20th September: Management pack tuning wars

 

Missed my session at the Experience days last June? No fear I’ll rerun my session during a live meeting the 20th of September. It will be packed with demos of the new wave of authoring tools which will make your life much easier in maintaining, creating and upgrading your management packs in the SCOM environment.

The abstract of this LiveMeeting:

Do you feel like installing, maintaining and developing management packs feels like a mission? Why not make it a mission! Join me in this session to efficiently tune and create your own management pack with military precision and no room for failure. Get the right tools to arm yourself for the job, get the best approach and fire away. The new secret weapon in Management pack authoring will be revealed and showcased so you can complete every management pack design mission quick and effectively. Attention!

Make sure to sign up here:

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032523394&Culture=en-us&community=0

 

In addition Microsoft BELUX is launching the “Technet Tuesdays and Thursdays”. Two days in the week filled with LiveMeetings + you’ll get 50 MVA (Microsoft Virtual Academy points) when attending.

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Check out the full list of LiveMeetings here to receive all the info you need first hand from the experts in the field: http://technet.microsoft.com/nl-be/bb291010/

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SCOM 2012: Error 0x80131500 when installing Reporting server

 

Today I received a rather strange error message when I wanted to install a reporting server in an already existing OM 2012 environment.

Symptoms:

The install took ages and was running on “Creating SRS source” forever however it was still running.

After 2 hours it gave an error and rolled back to the original situation.

After going over the prerequisites again it failed again. Rebooted the machine, checked everything again but no dice.

SNAG-0084

The error message was: Exception Error Code: 0x80131500. The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state.

Solution

Turned out that there were proxy settings filled in in Internet Explorer. Apparently the install process is using these proxy settings to connect to the IIS in the background. However my user did not have rights on the proxy. Therefore the connection was denied and the install could not continue. Removing the Proxy settings resolved the issue and Reporting was installed successfully.

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System Center 2012 CU2 available

 

Microsoft is continuously developing and improving the System Center 2012 suite. A proof is the recent release CU2.

The majority of fixes are for DPM, Service manager and orchestrator but other minor fixes are also available for SCOM.

For a detailed overview of all the problems this CU2 fixes take a look here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2706783/en-us

Download for

DPM: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30413

SCOM: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30421

As more blog posts about installing CU2 emerge I’ll update the list below:

Kevin Greene already wrote a detailed blog post about installing the CU2 update on a SCOM installation: http://kevingreeneitblog.blogspot.be/2012/07/scom-2012-deploying-cumulative-update.html

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SCOM: Install both SCOM2007R2 and SCOM2012 console

 

In this blog post I’m going to show you how you install both consoles on your workstation. I visit a lot of customers lately who have either SCOM2007R2 or SCOM2012 installed. So I recently also installed the SCOM2012 management console on my laptop to have them both on my machine.

By default it’s not possible to install the SCOM2012 console on a workstation which have already SCOM2007R2 installed.

It will propose to upgrade the existing console but unfortunately there’s no option to install side by side.

SNAG-0049

So first upgrade the SCOM2007R2 console to SCOM2012.

Afterwards you need to reinstall the SCOM2007R2 console:

SNAG-0054

Select only the “User interfaces” option which is in fact the SCOM console:

SNAG-0055

So after you’ve installed open up the 2 consoles.

CAUTION: Because you have performed an upgrade the old connection to the SCOM2007R2 management group were still saved. So connect towards your new SCOM2012 management group and you’re all set:

SNAG-0056

So fill in your new server and hit connect:

SNAG-0057

Success!

SNAG-0058

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