Finally, Microsoft/System Center team published the much awaited Management Pack for SCOM 2016 and Hyper-V 2016.
Here is the link to download and get Hyper-V 2016 monitored in your environment. LINK.
Category: SCOM
SCOM Agent Version Addendum Management Pack
Earlier this week, Microsoft’s Kevin Holman published an excellent article and SCOM Management Pack that addresses the issue with SCOM 2012 and agent updates. Please have a read, and consider installing this MP to help alleviate the issues SCOM 2012 has created when it comes to understanding which version your SCOM agent is on….
Step-by-Step – SCOM 2012 R2 Update Rollup 12 (UR12) Install Procedure
My personal notes for installing SCOM 2012 R2 Update Rollup 12, Step-by-Step. UR12 (Update Rollup) has a lot improvements, please see below the many updates being provided in this UR. One thing to mention, UR12 also has resolved an issue with respect to Reporting — please see notes below. Also, it is rather nice to see updates (still) being pushed out for SCOM 2012R2 along with other System Center 2012 products.
It is highly recommended to upgrade your lab/Dev environments first before upgrading your Production environment(s). The step by step procedures below are the steps I took and in no way shape or form do I accept responsibility for any data loss, and/or issues within your environment. It is advised to always take a backup of your SQL databases and/or snapshots of your SCOM environment(s). Please take these notes as suggestions. Always refer to Microsoft’s KB (posted below) for full documentation steps.
Here are the key updates for UR12 (source Microsoft):
Issues that are fixed in Operations Manager Update Rollup 12
- When you try to upgrade System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager Reporting Server to System Center 2016 Operations Manager reporting server, the upgrade fails for the following configuration:
- Server A is configured as System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager including Management Server.
- Server B is configured as System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager, including Operations Manager Database (OpsMgrDB), Operations Manager Data Warehouse (OpsMgrDW) and Operations Manager Reporting Server.
- Recovery tasks on “Computer Not Reachable” messages in the System Center Operations Manager Monitor generate failed logons for System Center Operations Manager Agents that are not part of the same domain as the Management Groups.
- When a Management Server is removed from the All Management Servers Resource Pool, the monitoring host process do not update the Type Space Cache.
- SHA1 is deprecated for the System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager Agent and SHA2 is now supported.
- Because of incorrect computations of configuration and overrides, some managed entities go into an unmonitored state. This behavior is accompanied by event 1215 errors that are logged in the Operations Manager log.
- IntelliTrace Profiling workflows fail on certain Windows operating system versions. The workflow cannot resolve Shell32 interface issues correctly.
- There is a character limitation of 50 characters on the custom fields in the notification subscription criteria. This update increases the size of the limitation to 255 characters.
- You cannot add Windows Client computers for Operational Insights (OMS) monitoring. This update fixes the OMS Managed Computers wizard in the System Center Operations Manager Administration pane to let you search or add Windows Client computers.
- When you use the Unix Process Monitoring Template wizard to add a new template to the monitor processes on UNIX servers, the monitored data is not inserted into the database. This issue occurs until the Monitoring Host is restarted
Install Procedure
Once you are ready to begin your upgrade, it is recommend you do the following server/roles in the order below:
- Install the update rollup package on the following server infrastructure:
- Management server or servers
- Audit Collection Services
- Gateway servers
- Web console server role computers
- Operations console role computers
- Reporting Services
- Agent Updates
- Apply SQL scripts.
- Manually import the management packs.
- Apply the agent update to manually installed agents, or push the installation from the Pending view in the Operations console.
Once you have downloaded the rollup files, I like to extract and only keep the language I need, in this case, ENU (English). You will need to install these with Administrative rights, I like to use PowerShell as Local Administrator. It really does frustrate me, as there is no indication that the rollup installed correctly, (other than looking at the file version number change via File Explorer).
Personally, I prefer to execute the MSP files via PowerShell (RunAs Administrator) console.
Again, the order needs to be:
- Management Servers
- Audit Collection Services
- Gateway Servers
- Web Console Role Servers
- Operations console role computers
- Reporting Services
- Agent Updates
Once the updates are installed, server(s) are rebooted, etc., you will now need to apply the SQL scripts. First update the Data Warehouse, then followed by the OpsMgr DB.
The scripts can be found here, “%SystemDrive%\Program Files\System Center 2012 R2\Operations Manager\Server\SQL Script for Update Rollups”
Please note, the user executing these scripts needs to have read and write permissions to the database(s).
Execute the SQL queries in the following order:
- UR_Datawarehouse.sql
- update_rollup_mom_db
Once you have successfully executed the SQL scripts, you will now need to import the updated Management Packs (MP). These MPs can be found here, “%SystemDrive%\Program Files\System Center 2012 R2\Operations Manager\Server\Management Packs for Update Rollups“.
You will need to import the following MPs, please see below:
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.TFSWISynchronization.mpb, which has the following dependencies:
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.AlertAttachment.mpb, which should be installed from the System Center Operations Manager 2012 R2 media.
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.Visualization.Library.mpb
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.Visualization.Component.Library.mpb
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.ClientMonitoring.Library.mp
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.DataWarehouse.Report.Library.mp
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.ClientMonitoring.Views.Internal.mp
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.Apm.Infrastructure.mpb
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.Apm.Library.mpb
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.Apm.Library.Resources.(LANGUAGECODE_3LTR).mpb
- Microsoft.Windows.InternetInformationServices.2016.mp (this MP has to be downloaded separately from the Microsoft Update Catalog) which has the following dependency:
- Microsoft.Windows.Server.2016.Discovery.mp (this MP has to be downloaded separately from the Microsoft Update Catalog)
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.Visualization.Library.mpb
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.Advisor.mpb
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.Advisor.Internal.mpb
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.2007.mp
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.Advisor.Resources.(LANGUAGECODE_3LTR).mpb
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.SyntheticTransactions.Library.mp
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.OperationsManager.Library.mp
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.OperationsManager.Internal.mp
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.Apm.Web.IIS10.mp, which has the following dependencies:
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.ClientMonitoring.Internal.mp, which has the following dependency:
- Microsoft.SystemCenter.OperationsManager.AM.DR.2007.mp
Once the MPs have been imported, you should now go back to your Pending Management view, under the Administrations pane, and update all servers.
And that is that! You are now on the latest and greatest System Center release for SCOM 2012 R2 Update Rollup 12!
Installing SCOM 2016 License Key
Launch the PowerShell console, and Run as Administrator:
Import-Module OperationsManager Set-SCOMLicense -ProductId "XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX" Start-Sleep -s 10 Restart-Service healthservice, omsdk, cshost
Don’t forget, in order for the Product Key to be applied, you will need to restart all SCOM Services, (or you can run the code above (there is a 10 second delay after the key is applied before the services are restarted)):
- Microsoft Monitoring Agent (healthservice)
- System Center Data Access Service (OMSDK)
- System Center Management Configuration (cshost)
Cheers!
System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2016 – Requirements for Windows Server 2016 via PowerShell
The following PowerShell code is to install all the necessary IIS components for System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2016 Web Console on Windows Server 2016.
Import-Module ServerManager Add-WindowsFeature Web-Server, Web-WebServer, Web-Common-Http, Web-Default-Doc, Web-Dir-Browsing, Web-Http-Errors, Web-Static-Content, Web-Health, Web-Http-Logging, Web-Log-Libraries, Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Performance, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Security, Web-Filtering, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-App-Dev, Web-Net-Ext45, Web-Asp-Net45, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Mgmt-Tools, Web-Mgmt-Console, Web-Mgmt-Compat, Web-Metabase, NET-Framework-45-Features, NET-Framework-45-Core, NET-Framework-45-ASPNET, NET-WCF-Services45, NET-WCF-HTTP-Activation45, NET-WCF-TCP-PortSharing45, WAS, WAS-Process-Model, WAS-Config-APIs, web-asp-net -restart
You can also find this in Microsoft’s TechNet Gallery, HERE.
Dual-Homing OMS/Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA) — Questions
Earlier this week, I posted on how the OMS/Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA) can be dual-homed for multiple OMS Workspaces.
A good question from the community came up (thank you @ Manoj Mathew), “Have you noticed any performance impacts on the Agents when they are multi homed to OMS?“
In the OMS Query below — making use of OMS’ Log Analytics, I checked the performance data in the last 48 hours. Unfortunately I cannot go any further, since the MMA was deployed earlier in that day, and the second OMS workspace was added later that afternoon.
There are a few spikes in the Memory and CPU, but this is also a result of a few factors:
- Initially there is a high level of CPU/Memory usage as OMS did its stuff when the MMA/OMS made friends and synced up their data/solutions
- There is a small spike when the second OMS workspace was added but this is minimal at best
- This server was being patched with 90+ Windows Server OS patches around 8PM.
The query I used to collect the data is here,
Computer="COMPUTERNAME.FQDN" Type=Perf (CounterName="Available MBytes" OR CounterName="% Processor Time") (ObjectName=Memory OR ObjectName=Processor)
A second question being asked here is, “how many OMS Workspace IDs can be added to “dual-home” the MMA agent?“
Unfortunately I only have 3 OMS Workspace’s to work with at the moment in this environment, but with that said, I can surely say a minimum of 3. If you have the ability to test more than 3, I would love to find out!
Dual-Homing OMS/Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA)
Today I learned that the MMA (Microsoft Monitoring Agent) has the ability to be “dual-homed“. Similar to what we have seen in the past with the System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) agent and dual-homing it to multiple SCOM environments/Management Groups, the same can be said for the Operations Management Suite (OMS)/MMA agent. By going into the MMA properties, you can add multiple OMS Workspace IDs. This is great if you want the Computer reporting to multiple OMS Workspaces and/or Azure Subscriptions, as was the case for me today.
Simply launch the MMA agent, and within the Azure Log Analytics (OMS), add your OMS Workspace ID here.
Note, this works for the MMA version, 8.0.11030.0 — Windows. Has not been tested against the Linux Agent.
Installing SQL 2016 for System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2016 – Step-by-Step
The following is a guide on how to install SQL 2016 for your System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2016 environment. I will be installing SQL 2016 on a brand-new server with Windows Server 2016 installed.
To begin, I am going to set the following accounts as a Local Administrator on the server. Also, I am going to be creating two SQL instances, one for the Operations database, and the other for the Data Warehouse. Since this is for my personal lab, I am not dedicated storage/drives for the databases.
| Domain\Account | Description |
| domain\SCOM_AA | SCOM Action Account |
| domain\SCOM_DA | SCOM Data Access/SDK Account |
| domain\SCOM_SQL_READ | SCOM SQL Reader |
| domain\SCOM_SQL_WRITE | SCOM SQL Writer |
| domain\SQL_SA | SQL Service Account |
Next, let’s run the setup wizard as the SQL_SA account to make life easier down the road…
First thing I noticed, between SQL 2012/2014 and SQL 2016, a few changes/features have been removed/added. One that stands out is, the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) console is no longer here. Hmm.. I guess we can always connect to the databases from a console on another server/PC.
As mentioned, I am dedicated an instance for the Operations DB, and one for the Date Warehouse DB.
Setting the SQL Server Agent to Automatic, and specifying the service accounts for the two services.
Keeping the database engine collation as default, “SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS“.
Here, I am adding all the SCOM/SQL service accounts and SQL service accounts as SQL server administrators.
Nice! This is new for SQL 2016 — being able to create TempDB‘s. Since my VM has 8 vCPU’s, looks like SQL 2016 picked up on that, and has decided to create a one-to-one relationship. Great, let’s get started within the installation…
Perfect! No errors. Keep in mind, we will need to repeat these steps to create the Data Warehouse instance.
Great! Now we can go ahead with the SCOM 2016 installation! See HERE, for that post.
If you need to install the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), continue reading…
Monitoring Windows Server 2016 Nano Server with SCOM 2016
The following post is intended to demonstrate how to monitor your Windows Server 2016 — Nano Server, via System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2016.
Also, a quick note, the SCOM team released the Windows Server 2016 Operating System Management Pack today, see HERE for the download/MP. One of the many updates to this MP (version 10.0.8.0) is the added compatibility of the Nano agent! So without further ado, let’s try installing the SCOM 2016 agent on a Nano server!
To begin, I have an out-of-the-box Windows 2016 (No UI) VM. I gave it 1GB of memory, and 2 vCPU’s.
Once the VM is online, first things first, we need to add this machine to our domain, unless you want to go the DMZ/Certificates route…. For simplicity, I am adding the Nano server to my domain, same domain as the SCOM Management Server(s) — The Nano Server and SCOM Management Server MUST be on the same domain. Same network space, etc. etc.
Assuming the above is completed, let’s begin with assigning a static IP address to the server. However, before we do this, we need to get the name of the Network Adapter(s).
Network Adapter Information
Get-NetAdapter Get-NetIPConfiguration
These cmdlets will give us the network adapter name and current settings. As you can see below, the domain controller/DHCP has already given our server a dynamic IP (10.10.10.50). We want to change this….
Assign Static IP
New-NetIPAddress -InterfaceIndex 2 -IPAddress 10.10.10.37 -PrefixLength 24 -DefaultGateway 10.10.10.1
By default, the -PrefixLength 24, will assign the subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.
Next, since this is Active Directory, we want to assign the DNS Server(s) to our Network Adapter.
Assign DNS Server(s)
Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceIndex 2 -ServerAddresses 10.10.10.30, 10.10.10.31
If you only have one DNS/DC server, then remove the second entry.
Now that we have communication with the domain controllers, now we can add our machine to the domain.
First, let’s change the server name from its random default, to something we like. I am going to go with “NANO01“.
Change Server Name
Rename-Computer -NewName "NANO01" -Restart
Next, we can now add the server to the domain.
Add Server to Domain
Add-Computer -DomainName "RaviLocal.com" -Restart
To quickly verify our server has been added to AD, we can take a looking at the AD Users and Computers UI:
Great, there it is! Now we can go ahead and deploy our Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA)/SCOM Agent.
Deploy SCOM 2016 Agent
Since I am taking the lazy approach, I will be deploying the agent via SCOM console. If you want to make use of PowerShell, see Microsoft’s TechNet article HERE.
Great, MMA deployed as expected! Quickly verify it is now communicating with SCOM:
All good!
Happy SCOM’ing 2016!
Commonly used SCOM SQL queries
An incredibly awesome blog post by Kevin Holman and commonly used SQL queries with respect to System Center Operations Manager, SCOM. Please visit this link HERE for those SQL queries.
SCOM & Other Geeky Stuff 