{"id":2963,"date":"2012-04-11T10:56:09","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T08:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/contoso.se\/blog\/?p=2963"},"modified":"2012-04-11T10:56:09","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T08:56:09","slug":"building-groups-in-operations-manager-with-a-bit-of-orchestrator-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/contoso.se\/blog\/?p=2963","title":{"rendered":"Building groups in Operations Manager, with a bit of Orchestrator magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

In many scenarios you have a list of servers, a database query result or a place in your Active Directory that contains servers that you want to monitor in some special way. Often you need the machines in a group in Operations Manager so you can for example create overrides, maintenance mode and views for that group. It is a pretty\u00c2\u00a0boring\u00c2\u00a0work to build the group manually and then to keep the group updated.<\/p>\n

A way to get the Operations Manager group in sync with the machine list is to use a runbook that creates a management pack including a group based on the list. This set of example runbooks reads a list of machine, creates a management pack with a group that includes the machines. The list of servers could be generated by another runbook or another tool. The last runbook also imports the management pack into Operations Manager.<\/p>\n

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This first runbook execute the following steps. In general this runbook checks if the machines in the list has a Operations Manager agent, if they are monitored by Operations Manager<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Delete File. Deletes old Machines_IDS.txt file if it exists. Machines_IDS.txt is used later in the runbook and needs to be blank before we begin<\/li>\n
  2. Get Lines. Read all lines in the list. The list is simple a text file with servers, one server per row<\/li>\n
  3. Get Monitor. Check if Operations Manager have a Microsoft.Windows.Computer monitor for the servers in the text file<\/li>\n
  4. Append Line. For each machine that has a monitor, we write the machine name to a temporary file. This is the same file as step one deleted any old version of<\/li>\n
  5. Junction. We merge multiple threads together<\/li>\n
  6. Invoke Runbook. Trigger next runbook<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
    The second runbook executes the following steps. In general it builds the management pack file in XML<\/div>\n
    \n
      \n
    1. Delete File. Deletes old MP files<\/li>\n
    2. Modify Counter. We use a counter to keep track of the management pack version number. This step adds one to that counter value<\/li>\n
    3. Get Counter Value. Get the counter value for the same counter as in step 2<\/li>\n
    4. Append Line. This steps writes the first half of the XML code that needs to be in the management pack. The GroupInstanceID is a random ID that the Operations Manager console generated when I test created a group in the console. You could replace that and all the other names in the management packs.
      \n      \"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
    5. Read Line. This step reads every machine that we wrote in the machine list in the first runbook, step 4,<\/li>\n
    6. Append Line. This steps writes all the machines from step 5 into the management pack file
      \n      \"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
    7. Junction. We merge multiple threads together<\/li>\n
    8. Append Line. Writes the end of the management pack, some more XML<\/li>\n
    9. Invoke Runbook. Starts the last runbook and pass the path to the management pack file<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      The last runbook inports the management pack file into Operations Manager<\/div>\n
      <\/div>\n
      \"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
      \"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
      <\/div>\n<\/div>\n

      The result is that each time you run this set of runbooks they will generate a new management pack version with a group that includes all the machines from your list, that has a agent. The management pack is imported into Operations Manager and you can use the updated group. You could include a step to seal the management pack too.\u00c2\u00a0You can download my runbook example here,\u00c2\u00a020120410_GroupSync_WOLF<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Please note that this is provided \u00e2\u20ac\u0153as is\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with no warranties at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      In many scenarios you have a list of servers, a database query result or a place in your Active Directory that contains servers that you want to monitor in some special way. Often you need the machines in a group in Operations Manager so you can for example create overrides, maintenance mode and views for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[61,60,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/contoso.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2963"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/contoso.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/contoso.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/contoso.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/contoso.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2963"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/contoso.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2975,"href":"http:\/\/contoso.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2963\/revisions\/2975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/contoso.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/contoso.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/contoso.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}