opsmgr - musc@> $daniele.rant

Capturing your knowledge/intelligence should be SIMPLE

Daniele Muscetta Microsoft, MOM, MOM2005, OpInsights, OpsMgr2012, Personal, System Center Operations Manager 2012 November 22, 2014November 23, 2014Advisor, Operations Manager, opinsights, opsmgr, opsmgr2012, SCA, scom, sysctr, system center, System Center Advisor

Lately this blog has been very personal. This post is about stuff I do at work, so if you are not one of my IT readers, don’t worry.

For my IT readers, an interruptions from guitars and music on this blog to share some personal reflection on OpInsights and SCOM.

SCOM is very powerful. You know I have always been a huge fan of 2007 and worked myself on the 2012 release. But, compared to its predecessor – MOM – in SCOM it has always been very hard to author management packs – multiple tools, a lot of documentation… here we are, more than 6 years later, and the first 2 comments on an old post on the momteam blog still strike me hard every time I read it:

You would think that things have changed, but SCOM is fundamentally complex, and even with the advances in tooling (VSAE, MPAuthor, etc) writing MPs is still black magic, if you ask some users.

I already blogged about me exporting and MP and converting its event-based alerting rules to OpInsights searches.

Well, writing those alerting rules in SCOM needs a lot of complex XML – you might not need to know how to write it (but you often have to attempt dechipering it) and even if you create rules with a wizard, it will produce a lot of complex XML for you.

In the screenshot below, the large XML chunk that is needed to pick up a specific eventId from a specific log and a specific source: the key/important information is only a small fraction of it, while the rest is ‘packaging’:

I want OpInsights to be SIMPLE.

If there is one thing I want the most for this project, is this.

That’s why the same rule can now be expressed with a simple filter search in OpInsights, where all you need is just that key information

EventID=1037 Source=”Microsoft-Windows-IIS-W3SVC” EventLog=System

and you essentially don’t have to care about any sort of packaging nor mess with XML.

Click, click – filters/facets in the UI let you refine your criteria. And your saved searches too. And they execute right away, there is not even a ‘Done’ button to press. You might just be watching those searches pinned to tiles in your dashboard. All it took was identify the three key pieces of info, no complex XML wrapping needed!

Ok, granted – there ARE legitimate, more complex, scenarios for which you need complex data sources/collectors and specialized/well thought data shaping, not just events – and we use those powerful capabilities of the MMA agent in intelligence packs. But at its core, the simple search language and explor-ability of the data are meant to bring back SIMPLE to the modern monitoring world. Help us prioritize what data sources you need first!

PS – if you have no idea what I was talking about – thanks for making it till here, but don’t worry: either you are not an IT person, which means simply ignore this; or – if you are an IT person – go check out Azure Operational Insights!

Operations Manager 2012 Release Candidate is out of the bag!

Daniele Muscetta Microsoft, MOM, OpsMgr2012, System Center Operations Manager 2012 November 10, 2011July 22, 2019APM, opsmgr, opsmgr2012

Go read the announcement at http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2011/11/10/system-center-operations-manager-2012-release-candidate-from-the-datacenter-to-the-cloud.aspx

This is the first public release since I am part of the team (I started in this role the day after the team had shipped Beta) and this is the first release that contains some direct output of my work. It feels so good!

Documentation has also been refreshed – it starts here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh205987.aspx

The part specifically about the APM feature is here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh457578.aspx

Enjoy!

Repost: Useful SetSPN tips

Daniele Muscetta Microsoft, Networking, OpsMgr2007, Security, System Center Operations Manager 2007 October 19, 2011authentication, kerberos, opsmgr, OpsMgr2007, setspn, SPN, Windows

I just saw that my former colleague (PFE) Tristan has posted an interesting note about the use of SetSPN “–A” vs SetSPN “–S”. I normally don’t repost other people’s content, but I thought this would be useful as there are a few SPN used in OpsMgr and it is not always easy to get them all right… and you can find a few tricks I was not aware of, by reading his post.

Check out the original post at http://blogs.technet.com/b/tristank/archive/2011/10/10/psa-you-really-need-to-update-your-kerberos-setup-documentation.aspx

I have been chosen; Farewell my friends…

Daniele Muscetta Microsoft, OpsMgr2007, Personal, Rant, System Center Operations Manager 2007 July 7, 2011March 19, 2014alien, career, farewell, goodbye, HC, Health Check, life, Microsoft, opsmgr, OpsMgr health Check, scom, work

I have been in Premier Field Engineering for nearly 7 years (it was not even called PFE when I joined – it was just “another type of support”…) and I have to admit that it has been a fun, fun ride: I worked with awesome people and managed to make a difference with our products and services for many customers – directly working with some of those customers, as well as indirectly thru the OpsMgr Health Check program – the service I led for the last 3+ years, which nowadays gets delivered hundreds of times a year around the globe by my other fellow PFEs.

But it is time to move on: I have decided to go thru a big life change for me and my family, and I won’t be working as a Premier Field Engineer anymore as of next week.

But don’t panic – I am staying at Microsoft!

I have actually never been closer to Microsoft than now: we are packing and moving to Seattle the coming weekend, and on July 18th I will start working as a Program Manager in the Operations Manager product team, in Redmond. I am hoping this will enable me to make a difference with even more customers.

Exciting times ahead – wish me luck!

That said – PFE is hiring! If you are interested in working for Microsoft – we have open positions (including my vacant position in Italy) for almost all the Microsoft technologies. Simply visit http://careers.microsoft.com and search on “PFE”.

As for the OpsMgr Health Check, don’t you worry: it will continue being improved – I left it in the hands of some capable colleagues: Bruno Gabrielli, Stefan Stranger and Tim McFadden – and they have a plan and commitment to update it to OpsMgr 2012.

OpsMgr Agents and Gateways Failover Queries

Daniele Muscetta Microsoft, OpsMgr2007, System Center Operations Manager 2007 December 23, 2010agent, gateway, opsmgr, OpsMgr2007, queries, query, scom, SQL, System Center Operations Manager 2007, TSQL

The following article by Jimmy Harper explains very well how to set up agents and gateways’ failover paths thru Powershell http://blogs.technet.com/b/jimmyharper/archive/2010/07/23/powershell-commands-to-configure-gateway-server-agent-failover.aspx . This is the approach I also recommend, and that article is great – I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t done it yet!

Anyhow, when checking for the actual failover paths that have been configured, the use of Powershell suggested by Jimmy is rather slow – especially if your agent count is high. In the Operations Manager Health Check tool I was also using that technique at the beginning, but eventually moved to the use of SQL queries just for performance reasons. Since then, we have been using these SQL queries quite successfully for about 3 years now.

But this the season of giving… and I guess SQL Queries can be a gift, right? Therefore I am now donating them as Christmas Gift to the OpsMrg community

Enjoy – and Merry Christmas!

--GetAgentForWhichServerIsPrimary
SELECT SourceBME.DisplayName as Agent,TargetBME.DisplayName as Server
FROM Relationship R WITH (NOLOCK) 
JOIN BaseManagedEntity SourceBME 
ON R.SourceEntityID = SourceBME.BaseManagedEntityID 
JOIN BaseManagedEntity TargetBME 
ON R.TargetEntityID = TargetBME.BaseManagedEntityID 
WHERE R.RelationshipTypeId = dbo.fn_ManagedTypeId_MicrosoftSystemCenterHealthServiceCommunication() 
AND SourceBME.DisplayName not in (select DisplayName 
from dbo.ManagedEntityGenericView WITH (NOLOCK) 
where MonitoringClassId in (select ManagedTypeId 
from dbo.ManagedType WITH (NOLOCK) 
where TypeName = 'Microsoft.SystemCenter.GatewayManagementServer') 
and IsDeleted ='0') 
AND SourceBME.DisplayName not in (select DisplayName from dbo.ManagedEntityGenericView WITH (NOLOCK) 
where MonitoringClassId in (select ManagedTypeId from dbo.ManagedType WITH (NOLOCK) 
where TypeName = 'Microsoft.SystemCenter.ManagementServer') 
and IsDeleted ='0') 
AND R.IsDeleted = '0'


--GetAgentForWhichServerIsFailover
SELECT SourceBME.DisplayName as Agent,TargetBME.DisplayName as Server
FROM Relationship R WITH (NOLOCK) 
JOIN BaseManagedEntity SourceBME 
ON R.SourceEntityID = SourceBME.BaseManagedEntityID 
JOIN BaseManagedEntity TargetBME 
ON R.TargetEntityID = TargetBME.BaseManagedEntityID 
WHERE R.RelationshipTypeId = dbo.fn_ManagedTypeId_MicrosoftSystemCenterHealthServiceSecondaryCommunication() 
AND SourceBME.DisplayName not in (select DisplayName 
from dbo.ManagedEntityGenericView WITH (NOLOCK) 
where MonitoringClassId in (select ManagedTypeId 
from dbo.ManagedType WITH (NOLOCK) 
where TypeName = 'Microsoft.SystemCenter.GatewayManagementServer') 
and IsDeleted ='0') 
AND SourceBME.DisplayName not in (select DisplayName 
from dbo.ManagedEntityGenericView WITH (NOLOCK) 
where MonitoringClassId in (select ManagedTypeId 
from dbo.ManagedType WITH (NOLOCK) 
where TypeName = 'Microsoft.SystemCenter.ManagementServer') 
and IsDeleted ='0') 
AND R.IsDeleted = '0'


--GetGatewayForWhichServerIsPrimary
SELECT SourceBME.DisplayName as Gateway, TargetBME.DisplayName as Server
FROM Relationship R WITH (NOLOCK) 
JOIN BaseManagedEntity SourceBME 
ON R.SourceEntityID = SourceBME.BaseManagedEntityID 
JOIN BaseManagedEntity TargetBME 
ON R.TargetEntityID = TargetBME.BaseManagedEntityID 
WHERE R.RelationshipTypeId = dbo.fn_ManagedTypeId_MicrosoftSystemCenterHealthServiceCommunication() 
AND SourceBME.DisplayName in (select DisplayName 
from dbo.ManagedEntityGenericView WITH (NOLOCK) 
where MonitoringClassId in (select ManagedTypeId 
from dbo.ManagedType WITH (NOLOCK) 
where TypeName = 'Microsoft.SystemCenter.GatewayManagementServer') 
and IsDeleted ='0') 
AND R.IsDeleted = '0'
    

--GetGatewayForWhichServerIsFailover
SELECT SourceBME.DisplayName As Gateway, TargetBME.DisplayName as Server
FROM Relationship R WITH (NOLOCK) 
JOIN BaseManagedEntity SourceBME 
ON R.SourceEntityID = SourceBME.BaseManagedEntityID 
JOIN BaseManagedEntity TargetBME 
ON R.TargetEntityID = TargetBME.BaseManagedEntityID 
WHERE R.RelationshipTypeId = dbo.fn_ManagedTypeId_MicrosoftSystemCenterHealthServiceSecondaryCommunication() 
AND SourceBME.DisplayName in (select DisplayName 
from dbo.ManagedEntityGenericView WITH (NOLOCK) 
where MonitoringClassId in (select ManagedTypeId 
from dbo.ManagedType WITH (NOLOCK) 
where TypeName = 'Microsoft.SystemCenter.GatewayManagementServer') 
and IsDeleted ='0') 
AND R.IsDeleted = '0'


--xplat agents
select bme2.DisplayName as XPlatAgent, bme.DisplayName as Server
from dbo.Relationship r with (nolock) 
join dbo.RelationshipType rt with (nolock) 
on r.RelationshipTypeId = rt.RelationshipTypeId 
join dbo.BasemanagedEntity bme with (nolock) 
on bme.basemanagedentityid = r.SourceEntityId 
join dbo.BasemanagedEntity bme2 with (nolock) 
on r.TargetEntityId = bme2.BaseManagedEntityId 
where rt.RelationshipTypeName = 'Microsoft.SystemCenter.HealthServiceManagesEntity' 
and bme.IsDeleted = 0 
and r.IsDeleted = 0 
and bme2.basemanagedtypeid in (SELECT DerivedTypeId 
FROM DerivedManagedTypes with (nolock) 
WHERE BaseTypeId = (select managedtypeid 
from managedtype where typename = 'Microsoft.Unix.Computer') 
and DerivedIsAbstract = 0)

Got Orphaned OpsMgr Objects?

Daniele Muscetta Microsoft, OpsMgr2007, PowerShell, System Center Operations Manager 2007 December 17, 2010October 21, 2011agents, database, opsmgr, orphan, PowerShell, query, scom, script, SQL

Have you ever wondered what would happen if, in Operations Manager, you’d delete a Management Server or Gateway that managed objects (such as network devices) or has agents pointing uniquely to it as their primary server?

The answer is simple, but not very pleasant: you get ORPHANED objects, which will linger in the database but you won’t be able to “see” or re-assign anymore from the GUI.

So the first thing I want to share is a query to determine IF you have any of those orphaned agents. Or even if you know, since you are not able to “see” them from the console, you might have to dig their name out of the database. Here’s a query I got from a colleague in our reactive support team:

-- Check for orphaned health services (e.g. agent). declare @DiscoverySourceId uniqueidentifier; SET @DiscoverySourceId = dbo.fn_DiscoverySourceId_User(); SELECT TME.[TypedManagedEntityid], HS.PrincipalName FROM MTV_HealthService HS INNER JOIN dbo.[BaseManagedEntity] BHS WITH(nolock) ON BHS.[BaseManagedEntityId] = HS.[BaseManagedEntityId] -- get host managed computer instances INNER JOIN dbo.[TypedManagedEntity] TME WITH(nolock) ON TME.[BaseManagedEntityId] = BHS.[TopLevelHostEntityId] AND TME.[IsDeleted] = 0 INNER JOIN dbo.[DerivedManagedTypes] DMT WITH(nolock) ON DMT.[DerivedTypeId] = TME.[ManagedTypeId] INNER JOIN dbo.[ManagedType] BT WITH(nolock) ON DMT.[BaseTypeId] = BT.[ManagedTypeId] AND BT.[TypeName] = N'Microsoft.Windows.Computer' -- only with missing primary LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.Relationship HSC WITH(nolock) ON HSC.[SourceEntityId] = HS.[BaseManagedEntityId] AND HSC.[RelationshipTypeId] = dbo.fn_RelationshipTypeId_HealthServiceCommunication() AND HSC.[IsDeleted] = 0 INNER JOIN DiscoverySourceToTypedManagedEntity DSTME WITH(nolock) ON DSTME.[TypedManagedEntityId] = TME.[TypedManagedEntityId] AND DSTME.[DiscoverySourceId] = @DiscoverySourceId WHERE HS.[IsAgent] = 1 AND HSC.[RelationshipId] IS NULL;

Once you have identified the agent you need to re-assign to a new management server, this is doable from the SDK. Below is a powershell script I wrote which will re-assign it to the RMS. It has to run from within the OpsMgr Command Shell.
You still need to change the logic which chooses which agent – this is meant as a starting base… you could easily expand it into accepting parameters and/or consuming an input text file, or using a different Management Server than the RMS… you get the point.

$mg = (get-managementgroupconnection).managementgroup
$mrc = Get-RelationshipClass | where {$_.name –like “*Microsoft.SystemCenter.HealthServiceCommunication*”}
$cmro = new-object Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Monitoring.CustomMonitoringRelationshipObject($mrc)
$rms = (get-rootmanagementserver).HostedHealthService
$deviceclass = $mg.getmonitoringclass(“HealthService”)
$mc = Get-connector | where {$_.Name –like “*MOM Internal Connector*”}
Foreach ($obj in $mg.GetMonitoringObjects($deviceclass))
{
#the next line should be changed to pick the right agent to re-assign
if ($obj.DisplayName -match ‘dsxlab’)
{
Write-host $obj.displayname
$imdd = new-object Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ConnectorFramework.IncrementalMonitoringDiscoveryData
$cmro.SetSource($obj)
$cmro.SetTarget($rms)
$imdd.Add($cmro)
$imdd.Commit($mc)
}
}

$mg = (get-managementgroupconnection).managementgroup $mrc = Get-RelationshipClass | where {$_.name –like “*Microsoft.SystemCenter.HealthServiceCommunication*”} $cmro = new-object Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Monitoring.CustomMonitoringRelationshipObject($mrc) $rms = (get-rootmanagementserver).HostedHealthService $deviceclass = $mg.getmonitoringclass(“HealthService”) $mc = Get-connector | where {$_.Name –like “*MOM Internal Connector*”} Foreach ($obj in $mg.GetMonitoringObjects($deviceclass)) { #the next line should be changed to pick the right agent to re-assign if ($obj.DisplayName -match ‘dsxlab’) { Write-host $obj.displayname $imdd = new-object Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ConnectorFramework.IncrementalMonitoringDiscoveryData $cmro.SetSource($obj) $cmro.SetTarget($rms) $imdd.Add($cmro) $imdd.Commit($mc) } }

Similarly, you might get orphaned network devices. The script below is used to re-assign all Network Devices to the RMS. This script is actually something I have had even before the other one (yes, it has been sitting in my “digital drawer” for a couple of years or more…) and uses the same concept – only you might notice that the relation’s source and target are “reversed”, since the relationships are different:

the Management Server (source) “manages” the Network Device (target)
the Agent (source) “talks” to the Management Server (target)

With a bit of added logic it should be easy to have it work for specific devices.

$mg = (get-managementgroupconnection).managementgroup
$mrc = Get-RelationshipClass | where {$_.name –like “*Microsoft.SystemCenter.HealthServiceShouldManageEntity*”}
$cmro = new-object Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Monitoring.CustomMonitoringRelationshipObject($mrc)
$rms = (get-rootmanagementserver).HostedHealthService
$deviceclass = $mg.getmonitoringclass(“NetworkDevice”)
Foreach ($obj in $mg.GetMonitoringObjects($deviceclass))
{
Write-host $obj.displayname
$imdd = new-object Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ConnectorFramework.IncrementalMonitoringDiscoveryData
$cmro.SetSource($rms)
$cmro.SetTarget($obj)
$imdd.Add($cmro)
$mc = Get-connector | where {$_.Name –like “*MOM Internal Connector*”}
$imdd.Commit($mc)
}

$mg = (get-managementgroupconnection).managementgroup $mrc = Get-RelationshipClass | where {$_.name –like “*Microsoft.SystemCenter.HealthServiceShouldManageEntity*”} $cmro = new-object Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Monitoring.CustomMonitoringRelationshipObject($mrc) $rms = (get-rootmanagementserver).HostedHealthService $deviceclass = $mg.getmonitoringclass(“NetworkDevice”) Foreach ($obj in $mg.GetMonitoringObjects($deviceclass)) { Write-host $obj.displayname $imdd = new-object Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ConnectorFramework.IncrementalMonitoringDiscoveryData $cmro.SetSource($rms) $cmro.SetTarget($obj) $imdd.Add($cmro) $mc = Get-connector | where {$_.Name –like “*MOM Internal Connector*”} $imdd.Commit($mc) }

Disclaimer

The information in this weblog is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights. This weblog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely my own personal opinion. All code samples are provided “AS IS” without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.

OpsMgr Event IDs Spreadsheet

Daniele Muscetta Microsoft, OpsMgr2007, System Center Operations Manager 2007 June 22, 2010June 23, 2010EventID, eventlog, events, Excel, opsmgr, OpsMgr2007, scom, Spreadsheet

I work in support (mostly with System Center Operations Manager, as you know), and I work with event logs every day. The following are typical situations:

I get a colleague or a customer telling me “I am having a problem and the SCOM agent is showing 21037 events and 20002 events. What’s wrong with it?”
I want to tune an OpsMgr environment and reduce load on the database by turning off a few event collections, as my friend Kevin Holman suggests here http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/archive/2009/11/25/tuning-tip-turning-off-some-over-collection-of-events.aspx .
I am analyzing, sorting and grouping Events with Powershell like I have written on my blog lately http://www.muscetta.com/2009/12/16/opsmgr-eventlog-analysis-with-powershell/ but I can’t read those long descriptions properly.
I exported an EVT from a customer environment and I load it on a machine that does not have OpsMgr message DLLs installed – all I see are EventIDs and type (Warning, Error) – but no real description – and I still want to figure out what those events are trying to tell me.

Getting to the point: I, like everyone – don’t have every OpsMgr event memorized.

This is why I thought of building this spreadsheet, and I hope it might come in handy to more people.

The spreadsheet contains an “AllEvents” list – and then the same events are broken down by event source as well:

When you want to search for an events (in one of the situations described above) just open up the spreadsheet, go to the “AllEvents” tab, hit CTRL+F (“Find”) and type in the Event ID you are searching for:

And this will take you to the row containing the event, so you can look up its description:

The description shows the event standard text (which is in the message DLL, therefore is the part you will not see if opening an EVT on another machine that does not have OpsMgr installed), and where the event parameters are (%1, %2, etc – which will be the strings you see in the EVT anyway).

That way you can get an understanding of what the original message would have looked like on the original machine.

This is just one possible usage pattern of this reference. It can also be useful to just read/study the events, learning about new ones you have never encountered, or remembering those you HAVE seen in the past but did not quite remember. And of course you can also find other creative ways to use it.

You can get it from here.

A few last words to give due credit: this spreadsheet has been compiled by using Eventlog Explorer (http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2008/04/02/eventlog-explorer.aspx ) to extract the event information out of the message DLLs on a OpsMgr2007 R2 installation. That info has been then copied and pasted in Excel in order to have an “offline” reference. Also I would like to thank Kevin Holman for pointing me to Eventlog Explorer first, and then for insisting I should not keep this spreadsheet in my drawer, as it could be useful to more people!

Audit Collection Services Database Partitions Size Report

Daniele Muscetta Coding, Microsoft, OpsMgr2007, System Center Operations Manager 2007 May 5, 2010May 4, 2011ACS, Audit, opsmgr, OpsMgr2007, queries, query, report, reporting, scom, SSRS

A number of people I have talked to liked my previous post on ACS sizing. One thing that was not extremely easy or clear to them in that post was *how* exactly I did one thing I wrote:

[…] use the dtEvent_GUID table to get the number of events for that day, and use the stored procedure “sp_spaceused” against that same table to get an overall idea of how much space that day is taking in the database […]

To be completely honest, I do not expect people to do this manually a hundred times if they have a hundred partitions. In fact, I have been doing this for a while with a script which will do the looping for me and run that sp_spaceused for me a number of time. I cannot share that script, but I do realize that this automation is very useful, therefore I wrote a “stand-alone” SQL query which, using a couple of temporary tables, produces a similar type of output. I also went a step further and packaged it into a SQL Server Reporting Services Report for everyone’s consumption. The report should look like the following screenshot, featuring a chart and the table with the numerical information about each and every partition in the database:

You can download the report from here.

You need to upload it to your report server, and change the data source to the shared Data Source that also the built-in ACS Reports use, and it should work.

[NOTE/UPDATE May 4th 2011: This report has a few bugs. I have posted the updated query on http://www.muscetta.com/2011/05/04/improved-acs-partitions-query/ . I am sorry I can’t provide a ready made report with the fix right now. Make sure you understand this and don’t implement it without testing.]

Enjoy!

A few thoughts on sizing Audit Collection System

Daniele Muscetta Cross Platform, Microsoft, MOM, OpsMgr2007, Security, System Center Operations Manager 2007 March 18, 2010August 29, 2019ACS, Audit, opsmgr, OpsMgr2007, queries, query, scom, sizing, TSQL

People were already collecting logs with MOM, so why not the security log? Some people were doing that, but it did not scale enough; for this reason, a few years ago Eric Fitzgerald announced that he was working on Microsoft Audit Collection System. Anyhow, the tool as it was had no interface… and the rest is history: it has been integrated into System Center Operations Manager. Anyhow, ACS remains a lesser-known component of OpsMgr.

There are a number of resources on the web that is worth mentioning and linking to:

SecureVantage ACS Resource Kit http://www.securevantage.com/Products/ACSResourceKit.aspx
Securevantage has also some very nice online training “Master Classes” http://www.securevantage.com/ACSTraining.aspx
Old-ish Overview http://opsmgr2007.wikidot.com/system:audit-collection-services
Old-ish post by kevin http://blogs.technet.com/kevinholman/archive/2008/03/07/acs-internals-part-1.aspx
ACS Reports for Win2008 http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2009/05/08/acs-reports-for-windows-2008-and-windows-2008-r2.aspx
ACS for Cross-Platform http://blogs.msdn.com/scxplat/archive/2009/12/17/cross-platform-audit-collection-services-released.aspx
Jimmy Harper’s Custom ACS Reports http://blogs.technet.com/jimmyharper/archive/2009/12/10/some-custom-acs-reports.aspx

and, of course, many more, I cannot link them all.

As for myself, I have been playing with ACS since those early beta days (before I joined Microsoft and before going back to MOM, when I was working in Security), but I never really blogged about this piece.

Since I have been doing quite a lot of work around ACS lately, again, I thought it might be worth consolidating some thoughts about it, hence this post.

Anatomy of an “Online” Sizing Calculation

What I would like to explain here is the strategy and process I go thru when analyzing the data stored in a ACS database, in order to determine a filtering strategy: what to keep and what not to keep, by applying a filter on the ACS Collector.

So, the first thing I usually start with is using one of the many “ACS sizer” Excel spreadsheets around… which usually tell you that you need more space than it really is necessary… basically giving you a “worst case” scenario. I don’t know how some people can actually do this from a purely theoretical point of view, but I usually prefer a bottom up approach: I look at the actual data that the ACS is collecting without filters, and start from there for a better/more accurate sizing.

In the case of a new install this is easy – you just turn ACS on, set the retention to a few days (one or two weeks maximum), give the DB plenty of space to make sure it will make it, add all your forwarders… sit back and wait.

Then you come back 2 weeks later and start looking at the data that has been collected.

What/How much data are we collecting?

First of all, if we have not changed the default settings, the grooming and partitioning algorithm will create new partitioned tables every day. So my first step is to see how big each “partition” is.

But… what is a partition, anyway? A partition is a set of 4 tables joint together:

dtEvent_GUID
dtEventData_GUID
dtPrincipal_GUID
dtSTrings_GUID

where GUID is a new GUID every day, and of course the 4 tables that make up a daily partition will have the same GUID.

The dtPartition table contains a list of all partitions and their GUIDs, together with their start and closing time.

Just to get a rough estimate we can ignore the space used by the last three tables – which are usually very small – and only use the dtEvent_GUID table to get the number of events for that day, and use the stored procedure “sp_spaceused” against that same table to get an overall idea of how much space that day is taking in the database.

By following this process, I come up with something like the following:

Partition ID	Status	Partition Start Time	Partition Close Time	Rows	Reserved KB	Total GB
9b45a567_c848_4a32_9c35_39b402ea0ee2	0	2/1/2010 2:00	2/1/2010 2:00	29,749,366	7,663,488	7,484
8d8c8ee1_4c5c_4dea_b6df_82233c52e346	2	1/31/2010 2:00	2/1/2010 2:00	28,067,438	9,076,904	8,864
34ce995b_689b_46ae_b9d3_c644cfb66e01	2	1/30/2010 2:00	1/31/2010 2:00	30,485,110	9,857,896	9,627
bb7ea5d3_f751_473a_a835_1d1d42683039	2	1/29/2010 2:00	1/30/2010 2:00	48,464,952	15,670,792	15,304
ee262692_beae_4d81_8079_470a54567946	2	1/28/2010 2:00	1/29/2010 2:00	48,980,178	15,836,416	15,465
7984b5b8_ddea_4e9c_9e51_0ee7a413b4c9	2	1/27/2010 2:00	1/28/2010 2:00	51,295,777	16,585,408	16,197
d93b9f0e_2ec3_4f61_b5e0_b600bbe173d2	2	1/26/2010 2:00	1/27/2010 2:00	53,385,239	17,262,232	16,858
8ce1b69a_7839_4a05_8785_29fd6bfeda5f	2	1/25/2010 2:00	1/26/2010 2:00	55,997,546	18,105,840	17,681
19aeb336_252d_4099_9a55_81895bfe5860	2	1/24/2010 2:00	1/24/2010 2:00	28,525,304	7,345,120	7,173
1cf70e01_3465_44dc_9d5c_4f3700dc408a	2	1/23/2010 2:00	1/23/2010 2:00	26,046,092	6,673,472	6,517
f5ec207f_158c_47a8_b15f_8aab177a6305	2	1/22/2010 2:00	1/22/2010 2:00	47,818,322	12,302,208	12,014
b48dabe6_a483_4c60_bb4d_93b7d3549b3e	2	1/21/2010 2:00	1/21/2010 2:00	55,060,150	14,155,392	13,824
efe66c10_0cf2_4327_adbf_bebb97551c93	2	1/20/2010 2:00	1/20/2010 2:00	58,322,217	15,029,216	14,677
0231463e_8d50_4a42_a834_baf55e6b4dcd	2	1/19/2010 2:00	1/19/2010 2:00	61,257,393	15,741,248	15,372
510acc08_dc59_482e_a353_bfae1f85e648	2	1/18/2010 2:00	1/18/2010 2:00	64,579,122	16,612,512	16,223

If you have just installed ACS and let it run without filters with your agents for a couple of weeks, you should get some numbers like those above for your “couple of weeks” of analysis. If you graph your numbers in Excel (both size and number of rows/events per day) you should get some similar lines that show a pattern or trend:

So, in my example above, we can clearly observe a “weekly” pattern (monday-to-friday being busier than the weekend) and we can see that – for that environment – the biggest partition is roughly 17GB. If we round this up to 20GB – and also considering the weekends are much quieter – we can forecast 20*7 = 140GB per week. This has an excess “buffer” which will let the system survive event storms, should they happen. We also always recommend having some free space to allow for re-indexing operations.

In fact, especially when collecting everything without filters, the daily size is a lot less predictable: imagine worms “trying out” administrator account’s passwords, and so on… those things can easily create event storms.

Anyway, in the example above, the customer would have liked to keep 6 MONTHS (180days) of data online, which would become 20*180 = 3600GB = THREE TERABYTE and a HALF! Therefore we need a filtering strategy – and badly – to reduce this size.

[edited on May 7th 2010 – if you want to automate the above analysis and produce a table and graphs like those just shown, you should look at my following post.]

Filtering Strategies

Ok, then we need to look at WHAT actually comprises that amount of events we are collecting without filters. As I wrote above, I usually run queries to get this type of information.

I will not get into HOW TO write a filter here – a collector’s filter is a WMI notification query and it is already described pretty well elsewhere how to configure it.

Here, instead, I want to walk thru the process and the queries I use to understand where the noise comes from and what could be filtered – and get an estimate of how much space we could be saving if filter one way or another.

Number of Events per User

–event count by User (with Percentages)
declare @total float
select @total = count(HeaderUser) from AdtServer.dvHeader
select count(HeaderUser),HeaderUser, cast(convert(float,(count(HeaderUser)) / (convert(float,@total)) * 100) as decimal(10,2))
from AdtServer.dvHeader
group by HeaderUser
order by count(HeaderUser) desc

In our example above, over the 14 days we were observing, we obtained percentages like the following ones:

#evt	HeaderUser Account	Percent
204,904,332	SYSTEM	40.79 %
18,811,139	LOCAL SERVICE	3.74 %
14,883,946	ANONYMOUS LOGON	2.96 %
10,536,317	appintrauser	2.09 %
5,590,434	mossfarmusr	…

Just by looking at this, it is pretty clear that filtering out events tracked by the accounts “SYSTEM”, “LOCAL SERVICE” and “ANONYMOUS”, we would save over 45% of the disk space!

Number of Events by EventID

Similarly, we can look at how different Event IDs have different weights on the total amount of events tracked in the database:

–event count by ID (with Percentages)
declare @total float
select @total = count(EventId) from AdtServer.dvHeader
select count(EventId),EventId, cast(convert(float,(count(EventId)) / (convert(float,@total)) * 100) as decimal(10,2))
from AdtServer.dvHeader
group by EventId
order by count(EventId) desc

We would get some similar information here:

Event ID	Meaning	Sum of events	Percent
538	A user logged off	99,494,648	27.63
540	Successful Network Logon	97,819,640	27.16
672	Authentication Ticket Request	52,281,129	14.52
680	Account Used for Logon by (Windows 2000)	35,141,235	9.76
576	Specified privileges were added to a user’s access token.	26,154,761	7.26
8086	Custom Application ID	18,789,599	5.21
673	Service Ticket Request	10,641,090	2.95
675	Pre-Authentication Failed	7,890,823	2.19
552	Logon attempt using explicit credentials	4,143,741	1.15
539	Logon Failure – Account locked out	2,383,809	0.66
528	Successful Logon	1,764,697	0.49

Also, do not forget that ACS provides some report to do this type of analysis out of the box, even if for my experience they are generally slower – on large datasets – than the queries provided here. Also, a number of reports have been buggy over time, so I just prefer to run queries and be on the safe side.

Below an example of such report (even if run against a different environment – just in case you were wondering why the numbers were not the same ones :-)):

The numbers and percentages we got from the two queries above should already point us in the right direction about what we might want to adjust in either our auditing policy directly on Windows and/or decide if there is something we want to filter out at the collector level (here you should ask yourself the question: “if they aren’t worth collecting are they worth generating?” – but I digress).

Also, a permutation of the above two queries should let you see which user is generating the most “noise” in regards to some events and not other ones… for example:

–event distribution for a specific user (change the @user) – with percentages for the user and compared with the total #events in the DB
declare @user varchar(255)
set @user = ‘SYSTEM’
declare @total float
select @total = count(Id) from AdtServer.dvHeader
declare @totalforuser float
select @totalforuser = count(Id) from AdtServer.dvHeader where HeaderUser = @user
select count(Id), EventID, cast(convert(float,(count(Id)) / convert(float,@totalforuser) * 100) as decimal(10,2)) as PercentageForUser, cast(convert(float,(count(Id)) / (convert(float,@total)) * 100) as decimal(10,2)) as PercentageTotal
from AdtServer.dvHeader
where HeaderUser = @user
group by EventID
order by count(Id) desc

The above is particularly important, as we might want to filter out a number of events for the SYSTEM account (i.e. logons that occur when starting and stopping services) but we might want to keep other events that are tracked by the SYSTEM account too, such as an administrator having wiped the Security Log clean – which might be something you want to keep:

of course the amount of EventIDs 517 over the total of events tracked by the SYSTEM account will not be as many, and we can still filter the other ones out.

Number of Events by EventID and by User

We could also combine the two approaches above – by EventID and by User:

select count(Id),HeaderUser, EventId

from AdtServer.dvHeader

group by HeaderUser, EventId

order by count(Id) desc

This will produce a table like the following one

which can be easily copied/pasted into Excel in order to produce a pivot Table:

Cluster EventLog Replication

One more aspect that is less widely known, but I think is worth showing, is the way that clusters behave when in ACS. I don’t mean all clusters… but if you keep the “eventlog replication” feature of clusters enabled (you should disable it also from a monitoring perspective, but I digress), each cluster node’s security eventlog will have events not just for itself, but for all other nodes as well.

Albeit I have not found a reliable way to filter out – other than disabling eventlog replication altogether.

Anyway, just to get an idea of how much this type of “duplicate” events weights on the total, I use the following query, that tells you how many events for each machine are tracked by another machine:

–to spot machines that are cluster nodes with eventlog repliation and write duplicate events (slow)

select Count(Id) as Total,replace(right(AgentMachine, (len(AgentMachine) – patindex(‘%\%’,AgentMachine))),’$’,”) as ForwarderMachine, EventMachine

from AdtServer.dvHeader

–where ForwarderMachine <> EventMachine

group by EventMachine,replace(right(AgentMachine, (len(AgentMachine) – patindex(‘%\%’,AgentMachine))),’$’,”)

order by ForwarderMachine,EventMachine

Those presented above are just some of the approaches I usually look into at first. Of course there are a number more. Here I am including the same queries already shown in action, plus a few more that can be useful in this process.

I have even considered building a page with all these queries – a bit like those that Kevin is collecting for OpsMgr (we actually wrote some of them together when building the OpsMgr Health Check)… shall I move the below queries on such a page? I though I’d list them here and give some background on how I normally use them, to start off with.

Some more Useful Queries

–top event ids
select count(EventId), EventId
from AdtServer.dvHeader
group by EventId
order by count(EventId) desc

–which machines have ever written event 538
select distinct EventMachine, count(EventId) as total
from AdtServer.dvHeader
where EventID = 538
group by EventMachine

–machines
select * from dtMachine

–machines (more readable)
select replace(right(Description, (len(Description) – patindex(‘%\%’,Description))),’$’,”)
from dtMachine

–events by machine
select count(EventMachine), EventMachine
from AdtServer.dvHeader
group by EventMachine

–rows where EventMachine field not available (typically events written by ACS itself for chekpointing)
select *
from AdtServer.dvHeader
where EventMachine = ‘n/a’

–event count by day
select convert(varchar(20), CreationTime, 102) as Date, count(EventMachine) as total
from AdtServer.dvHeader
group by convert(varchar(20), CreationTime, 102)
order by convert(varchar(20), CreationTime, 102)

–event count by day and by machine
select convert(varchar(20), CreationTime, 102) as Date, EventMachine, count(EventMachine) as total
from AdtServer.dvHeader
group by EventMachine, convert(varchar(20), CreationTime, 102)
order by convert(varchar(20), CreationTime, 102)

–event count by machine and by date (distinuishes between AgentMachine and EventMachine
select convert(varchar(10),CreationTime,102),Count(Id),EventMachine,AgentMachine
from AdtServer.dvHeader
group by convert(varchar(10),CreationTime,102),EventMachine,AgentMachine
order by convert(varchar(10),CreationTime,102) desc ,EventMachine

–event count by User
select count(Id),HeaderUser
from AdtServer.dvHeader
group by HeaderUser
order by count(Id) desc

–to spot machines that write duplicate events (such as cluster nodes with eventlog replication enabled)
select Count(Id),EventMachine,AgentMachine
from AdtServer.dvHeader
group by EventMachine,AgentMachine
order by EventMachine

–to spot machines that are cluster nodes with eventlog repliation and write duplicate events (better but slower)
select Count(Id) as Total,replace(right(AgentMachine, (len(AgentMachine) – patindex(‘%\%’,AgentMachine))),’$’,”) as ForwarderMachine, EventMachine
from AdtServer.dvHeader
–where ForwarderMachine <> EventMachine
group by EventMachine,replace(right(AgentMachine, (len(AgentMachine) – patindex(‘%\%’,AgentMachine))),’$’,”)
order by ForwarderMachine,EventMachine

–which user and from which machine is target of elevation (network service doing “runas” is a 552 event)
select count(Id),EventMachine, TargetUser
from AdtServer.dvHeader
where HeaderUser = ‘NETWORK SERVICE’
and EventID = 552
group by EventMachine, TargetUser
order by count(Id) desc

–by hour, minute and user
–(change the timestamp)… this query is useful to search which users are active in a given time period…
–helpful to spot “peaks” of activities such as password brute force attacks, or other activities limited in time.
select datepart(hour,CreationTime) as Hours, datepart(minute,CreationTime) as Minutes, HeaderUser, count(Id) as total
from AdtServer.dvHeader
where CreationTime < ‘2010-02-22T16:00:00.000’
and CreationTime > ‘2010-02-22T15:00:00.000’
group by datepart(hour,CreationTime), datepart(minute,CreationTime),HeaderUser
order by datepart(hour,CreationTime), datepart(minute,CreationTime),HeaderUser

Create a Script-Based Unit Monitor in OpsMgr2007 via the GUI

Daniele Muscetta Coding, Microsoft, MOM, OpsMgr2007, Personal, System Center Operations Manager 2007 May 10, 2007August 29, 2019"Management Packs", authoring, Console, GUI, management pack, monitor, MP, MPs, opsmgr, scom, script, System Center Operations Manager 2007, Tools

Warning for people who landed here: this post is VERY OLD. It was written in the early days of struggling with OpsMgr 2007, and when nobody really knew how to do things.
I found that this way was working – and it surely does – but what is described here is NOT the recommended way to do things nowadays. This post was only meant to fill in a gap I was feeling existed, back in 2007.
But as time passes, and documentation gets written, knowledge improves.
Therefore, I recommend you read the newly released Composition chapter of the MP Authoring Guide instead
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff381321.aspx – and start building your custom modules to embed scripts as Brian Wren describes in there, so that you can share them between multiple rules and monitors.
This said, below is the original post.

There is not a lot of documentation for System Center Operations Manager 2007 yet.
It is coming, but there’s a lot of things that changed since the previous release and I think some more would only help. Also, a lot of the content I am seeing is either too newbie-oriented or too developer-oriented, for some reason.

I have not yet seen a tutorial, webcast or anything that explains how to create a simple unit monitor that uses a VBS script using the GUI.

So this is how you do it:

Go to the “Authoring” space of OpsMgr 2007 Operations Console.
Select the “Management Pack objects”, then “Monitors” node. Right click and choose “Create a monitor” -> “Unit Monitor”.

You get the “Create a monitor” wizard open:

Choose to create a two-states unit monitor based on a script. Creating a three- state monitor would be pretty similar, but I’ll show you the most simple one.
Also, choose a Management pack that will contain your script and unit monitor, or create a new management pack.

Choose a “monitor target” (object classes or instances – see this webcast about targeting rules and monitors: www.microsoft.com/winme/0703/28666/Target_Monitoring_Edit… ) and the aggregate rollup monitor you want to roll the state up to.

Choose a schedule, that is: how often would you like your script to run. For demonstration purposes I usually choose a very short interval such a two or three minutes. For production environments, tough, choose a longer time range.

Choose a name for your script, complete with a .VBS extension, and write the code of the script in the rich text box:

As the sample code and comments suggest, you should use a script that checks for the stuff you want it to check, and returns a “Property Bag” that can be later interpreted by OpsMgr workflow to change the monitor’s state.
This is substantially different than scripting in MOM 2005, where you could only launch scripts as responses, loosing all control over their execution.

For demonstration purpose, use the following script code:

On Error Resume Next
Dim oAPI, oBag
Set oAPI = CreateObject(“MOM.ScriptAPI”)
Set oBag = oAPI.CreateTypedPropertyBag(StateDataType)
Const FOR_APPENDING = 8
strFileName = “c:\testfolder\testfile.txt”
strContent = “test ”
Set objFS = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
Set objTS = objFS.OpenTextFile(strFileName,FOR_APPENDING)
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
Call oBag.AddValue(“State”,”BAD”)
Else
Call oBag.AddValue(“State”,”GOOD”)
objTS.Write strContent
End If
Call oAPI.Return(oBag)

[edited on 29th of May as pointed out by Ian: if you cut and paste the example script you might need to change the apostrophes (“) as that causes the script to fail when run – it is an issue with the template of this blog.] [edited on 30th of May: I fixed the blog so that now post content shows just plain, normal double quotes instead than fancy ones. It seems like a useful thing when from time to time I post code…]

The script will try to write into the file c:\testfolder\testfile.txt.
If it finds the file and manages to write (append text) to it, it will return the property “State” with a value of “GOOD”.
If it fails (for example if the file does not exist), it will return the property “State” with a value of “BAD”.

In MOM 2005 you could only let script generate Events or Alerts directly as a mean to communicate their results back to the monitoring engine. In OpsMgr 2007 you can let your script spit out a property bag and then continue the monitoring workflow and decide what to do depending on the script’s result.

So the next step is to go and check for the value of the property we return in the property bag, to determine which status the monitor will have to assume.

We use the syntax Property[@Name=’State’] in the parameter field, and we search for a content that means an unhealthy condition:

Or for the healty one:

Then we decide which status will the monitor have to assume in the healty and unhealty conditions (Green/Yellow or Green/Red usually)

Optionally, we can decide to raise an Alert when the status changes to unhealthy, and close it again when it goes back to healty.

Now our unit monitor is done.
All we have to do is waiting it gets pushed down to the agent(s) that should execute it, and wait for its status to change.
In fact it should go to the unhealthy state first.
To test that it works, just create the text file it will be searching for, and wait for it to run again, and the state should be reset to Healthy.

Have fun with more complex scripts!