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Incident Management in System Center Service Manager

December 28, 2008 / 1 Comment on Incident Management in System Center Service Manager

I have been testing Incident Management (IM) with focus on the notification part of IM in System Center Service Manager beta 1.

The main goal of the IM process is to get back to a normal service operation as quickly as possible and to minimize the impact on the business, in other words ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained. “Normal service operation” is defined within Service Level Agreement (SLA).

 In my test environment I built the following workflow:

Incident templates can be utilized to achieve IM flexibility. Incident templates include common settings for different types of incidents. For example when a service desk receives a call from a user who can´t access a network folder, the service desk operator can then apply the network issue incident template and make sure all the necessary information is collected from the user reporting the incident. The templates also guarantee that incidents are configured with correct owner, category, priority and other related items.

System Center Service Manager has a connector to System Center Configuration Manager that synchronizes hardware information and other relevant information to Service Manager. When a service desk creates an incident and selects which machine the affected user is working from, the service desk can see all information synchronized from Configuration Manager.

In Service Manager there are a number of workflows out of the box and you can also create your own. One of them is Incident Change.

In my test environment I built the following four workflows:

1. One workflow sends e-mail to the affected user when new incidents are created. It is always good for the user to have the incident ID and to know which service desk has begun working on the incident.

2. One workflow sends an e-mail notification to the operator who is configured as “assigned to” in the incident. If it is not the same operator creating the incident who will be working on it, it is good to send a notification.

3. One workflow sends an e-mail notification to the operator who is configured as “assigned to” in the incident. If another operator adds a comment or information to the incident a notification will be sent to the operator who is assigned to the incident.

4. One workflow sends an e-mail notification to both the affected user and the operator who is configured as “assigned to” in the incident.

Service Manager synchronizes information from Active Directory through an AD connector so e-mail addresses and other account information already exists in Service Manager. Here we don’t have to create recipients the same way as we do with subscribers in Operations Manager.

It is reasonably easy to configure incident templates and notifications based on them. There are a couple of scenarios where I could see a need of more detailed criteria parameters. But as this is Service Manager beta 1 I guess we will see a lot more features in the RTM version. I think that the biggest obstacle will not be to how to configure Service Manager but instead how to plan and design all your workflows before you can input them into Service Manager.

Query a database with a monitor

December 20, 2008 / 3 Comments on Query a database with a monitor

I have seen a number of questions about how to run queries against a database and verify the answer. One way is to run a script inside a monitor. In this blog I wrote how to setup a script in a two state monitor. The script in this post will count number of  fields, if there are more then five, status of the monitor will be changed. Note that counting starts at 0 with fields collection.

 Const adOpenStatic = 3
Const adLockOptimistic = 3

Set oAPI = CreateObject(“MOM.ScriptAPI”)
Set oBag = oAPI.CreatePropertyBag()

Set objConnection = CreateObject(“ADODB.Connection”)
Set objRecordSet = CreateObject(“ADODB.Recordset”)

objConnection.Open _
“Provider=SQLOLEDB;Data Source=R2B1;” & _
“Trusted_Connection=Yes;Initial Catalog=ContosoConfiguration;” & _
“User ID=CORP\Administrator;Password=;”

objRecordSet.Open “SELECT * FROM roles”, _
objConnection, adOpenStatic, adLockOptimistic

varNo = objRecordSet.Record.Count

If varNO > 5 Then
Call oBag.AddValue(“SQL_Status”,”Error”)
Else
Call oBag.AddValue(“SQL_Status”,”Ok”)
End If

Call oAPI.Return(oBag)

Microsoft TechDays 2009

December 20, 2008

Björn Axell (also Ops Mgr MVP) and I will deliver two sessions at TechDays 2009 in Västerås/Sweden. Our sessions are

  • Operations Manager 2007 och System Center Essentials Tips and Tricks
  • Managing Unix/Linux with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform

In our first session we will be showing a lot of tips and tricks from the real world, answers to common questions, and ways to work with the products to get more out of them. In our second session we will be showing how you can monitor non Microsoft boxes with Operations Manager 2007 R2. Of course there will be a lot of demos.

You can find more info about the event here. 

Alert Level and Alert Severity

December 12, 2008 / 1 Comment on Alert Level and Alert Severity

In MOM 2005 we had seven (10,20,30,40,50,60,70) alert severities. In Ops Mgr 2007 we only have three, critical, information and warning. If you convert a management pack or download a converted management pack you can see in the XML code that for example a rule is genering an alert with AlertLevel 50. If you want to create new views and notification subscriptions for that alert you need to know how alert level is translated to alert severity in Ops Mgr 2007. I did a test with a rule from a converted Biz Talk management pack. I trigged the same rule, but between each test I changed alert level.

Alert Level 70  Critical Alert Severity
Alert Level 60  Critical Alert Severity
Alert Level 50  Critical Alert Severity
Alert Level 40  Critical Alert Severity

Alert Level 30  Warning Alert Severity

Alert Level 20  Information Alert Severity
Alert Level 10  Information Alert Severity

All alert had low priority.

Review a Generic Text Log with Ops Mgr Reporting

December 7, 2008 / 2 Comments on Review a Generic Text Log with Ops Mgr Reporting

I received a question about reviewing log files with Operations Manager reporting. There are rule to collect text log, but not out of the box report to look at the result. In this scenario you don’t want an alert based on the content of the log file, you only want to collect it and review it.

Start by creating a Collection Rule/Generic CSV Text Log rule. Configure it to collect everything from the file on the expression page, in my example (for a CSV log file)

Parameter Name: Params/Param[1]
Operator: Matches Wildcard
Value: *
Directory: C:\LogFiles\
Pattern: logfile.log
Separator: ,

To review the data we will use the Custom Event report. Unfortunately there is a known issue regarding this, the report does not display data where filter rules includes a parameter between 1 and 20, such as Parameter 1. To fix this you have to install hotfix 954823.

To review the log file with the Custom Event report choose to filter object equals FQDN of the machine with the log file, object type equals Windows Computer, Category equals 3 and Channel equal GenericCSVLog.

Timed Script Two State Monitor

November 29, 2008 / 2 Comments on Timed Script Two State Monitor

This is an example how to use a timed script two state monitor to monitor a file exists. If the file exists the monitor is healthy.

  1. Create a Timed Script Two State Monitor, input suitable name, scheudle, target and description.
  2. Input this script below
  3. As unhealthy expression input “Property[@Name=’Status’] equals Error”
  4. As healthy expression input “Property[@Name=’Status’] equals Ok”
  5. Configure alerts and then your done.

Dim oAPI, oBag
Set oAPI = CreateObject(“MOM.ScriptAPI”)
Set oBag = oAPI.CreatePropertyBag()
Set objFSO = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
strFile = “C:\myfile.log”
If objFSO.FileExists(strFile) Then
Call oBag.AddValue(“Status”,”Ok”)
Call oAPI.Return(oBag)
Else
Call oBag.AddValue(“Status”,”Error”)
Call oAPI.Return(oBag)
End If

Ops Mgr 2007 R2 Beta 1

November 21, 2008 / 3 Comments on Ops Mgr 2007 R2 Beta 1

Beta 1 of Ops Mgr 2007 R2 has been released to the connect website. You can download the beta there and start evaluating it. On the system center team blog there is a good post about R2 and all the news. Below you can see and read about some of the news in R2. One of the first things I noticed is how fast everything in the console is.

When you import new management packs you can select “Download Management Packs”. With that you can import directly from the system center ops mgr 2007 catalog. The wizard will show you which MPs are in the catalog and if they are newer then the version you have installed.

 

When you right-click an alert you get the option to create a notification based on that alert. It looks almost as the “create rule wizard” in Outlook. There are a number of criteria and conditions you can use when creating a new subscription. 

 

 

Under the Authoring workspace there are a number of new management pack templates, including a couple of Linux and UNIX machines.

 

There are also a number of new objects under management pack objects, for example Service Level Tracking. Service Level Tracking enables you to follow the performance and availability objects/services in your environment. You can create monitors to monitor your commitments, service level objective goals.

 

Under the administration workspace there is a number of news. One of the important features of R2 is support for Unix and Linux servers. When you run the discovery wizard you can now choose to discover Unix and Linux computers. When creating smtp notification channels you can select importance for your notification.

 

On the R2 beta CD there is a new version of the Authoring Console too.

Notes from the Ask The Experts Booth

November 8, 2008

During TechEd EMEA I have been working in the Ask the Expert booth, discussing Operations Manager. There have been some really good questions during the week.

Q: What´s new in Operations Manager 2007 and when will it be released? A: I wrote a post about R2 yesterday, read it here. R2 will be RTM around May/MMS 2009.

Q: Can I monitor multiple forests with Operations Manager? A: Yes you can. The new AD MP supports multiple forests. Andy has a good summarize about the new AD MP here.

Q: Where do I start with Operations Manager 2007? A: If you want to read a book, I recommend this book. If you want to read online, you will find all MSFT documents regarding Operations Manager here. Microsoft have also released a new version of their course, more info here. If you want to download an evaluation copy you can do that here.

Of course there were also a lot of questions about cross platform and monitoring non Microsoft devices with Operations Manager. In this demo Barry Shilmover uses Ops Man to manage an application that is spread across SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Apache, and IIS, hosted on Windows, Solaris, Suse, and Redhat. You can also read about the cross platform extension in this blog post.

System Center Service Manager Roadmap

November 8, 2008

Yesterday I attend at Michael Nappi session “System Center Service Manager Product Overview”. During this the roadmap of Service Manager was shown.

  • 2008 H2, Beta 1 (early December or end of November, will not include the self-service IT portal)
  • 2009 H1, Beta 2 (summer 2009, will include the self-service IT portal and will also be feature complete)
  • 2009 H2, RC
  • 2010 H1, RTM

Service Manager three big investments areas are:

Automated MOF/ITIL process

  • Incident Management
  • Self-Service IT Portal
  • Change Management

System Center Integration

  • System Center Configuration Manager
  • System Center Operations Manager
  • Active Directory

Extensible platform

  • Publik SDK
  • Linked framework
  • Management pack extensibility

Ops Mgr 2007 R2

November 6, 2008

R2 will include a number of new things. One of the really big news in Ops Mgr 2007 R2 is cross platform capabilities. In this demo Barry Shilmover uses Ops Man to manage an application that is spread across SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Apache, and IIS, hosted on Windows, Solaris, Suse, and Redhat. Other news are integrated service level reports and dashboard, better performance and a number of improvments in the console for example new monitoring templates.

The Operations Manager 2007 R2 Beta will be available for download end of November. You can read more about Ops Mgr R2 here.

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