AVIcode in System Center

Hurrah! Finally System Center published AVIcode Intercept Studio as another System Center product: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/avicode.aspx. It's the first rather detailed news about AVIcode after acquisition. So now we can see that no "Intercept" anymore...now it's AVIcode 5.7....it's really funny that company become product...

BTW, I'm very happy that this acquisition happened! Congratulations!

OpsMgr: Deleting Cluster (Agentless Managed) entities after hosts have been retired

Hi!

Here is an interesting repost from System Center Central about clear decomissioning Windows Server Cluster from SCOM monitoring. It looks like that it describes pretty popular mistake of IT guys :) So, let's look what they offer to do (post of Pete Zerger):

The Problem

The company retired a clustered set of servers before I was able to remove the SCOM agent from them. They have been wiped and repurposed already, so there's no chance of getting them back.I am unable to remove the agents from the 'Agent Managed' list because I get a "Agent (hostname) is managing other devices and cannot be uninstalled. Please resolve this issue via Agentless Managed view in Administration prior to attempting uninstall again." There are cluster groups listed (as healthy, LOL!) in 'Agentless Managed' view that will not go away. I have right-clicked and hit 'Delete' and receive no error, but the entities will not delete.

How do I get rid of these entities so that I can finally delete the absent hosts?

How I meet Opalis

Hello!

Yesterday I started my activity related with the new System Center product: Microsoft System Center Opalis. This product is like a BizTalk but for Data Center Automation! It orchestrates actions across a lot of IT tools which are used in the datacenter. For example we can develop our own workflow which take some specific alert information from SCOM and than apply some recovery action using SCCM or something really more complicated!

The first useful links which are must-to-know for Opalis newby is the following:

1. http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/opalis.aspx - Opalis Home Page at System Center site. There you can find the official info about this product download trial version etc.

2. http://blogs.technet.com/b/charlesjoy - cool blog about Opalis N1 (author - Charles Joy)

3. http://blog.elmore.be/ - cool blog about Opalis and Integration Packs (author - Sebastien Morel)

Two blogs above provide a lot of integesting notes which could be useful if you want to develop your own workflows for Opalis, want to understand this solution better or develop your own Integration Pack (what is actually my case :) ).

Another interesting thing - you can find some sources on the Codeplex! Search by "Opalis" word and you will find comunity version of Opalis Integration Service and Integration Pack for the Active Directory.

XenServer Management Pack for SCOM

Hi!

SCOM platform becomes more and more popular out of the Microsoft universe :) I was very surprised when found in the news that the Management Pack for the Citrix XenServer solution has been released recently!

To be clear - XenServer is and open-source, Linux-based hypervisor and when Hermes Softlab decided to develop monitoring solution using the SCOM platform - it's a sign...sign which means that it's reasonable to build monitoring solutions for non-Microsoft applications and services using the Microsoft SCOM.

Of course they don't cover XenServer itself only - because it's not commercial and definitely can't bring any value to Hermes. They release MPs for XenApp and for XenDesktop solutions which are commercial and provide more interesting capabilities for datacenters.

It looks like that Microsoft was right when released cross-platform extensions for SCOM SP1 and then add it to SCOM R2 as an embedded option. Good decision, MS! :)

Icons sizes for Classes

Hi!

If you want to create your own images for management pack classes you should know image dimensions:
1. 16x16 - this icon is used in the details pane (e.g. in state view) when user choose specific object and in target picker (e.g. user create new monitor, rule... to extend MP capabilities)
2. 80x80 - this icon is used in diagrm view.

Pay attention that image files should be in PNG (or JPG) format - not old-school ICO!

MP to XML

Hi!

It's very often task for me when I discover third-party management packs to convert it from Sealed MP-format to original XML form. After that I can relax, open it in VS and review structure and code to understand how I should work with this management pack (yep...operations guide is just operations guide - not development guide :))
How to do it? Two options:
1. Use MP2XMLDumper tool which export MP from RMS directly to XML format.
2. User PS script from Boris Yanushpolsky which just conevrt MP to XML.

Option one is explained well there, option 2 is explained with some useful comments of SCOM MVP David Allen there. Review, download, convert and enjoy! :)

All-In-One SCOM VPC

Hi!

I've found nice article about deploying all-in-one VPC which includes Windows Server OS, DC Role, SQL Server and SCOM 2007R2. It includes some usefult tunings hints which might be useful!
http://ops-mgr.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!3D3B8489FCAA9B51!2271.entry?wa=wsignin1.0&sa=947412494

This is a blog about manageability

Hi!

This blog is a reflection of my "technical" side of work and personal development. Now I'm focused on software manageability aspects and some other ...-abilityes :) So to start I want to share interesting link to russian blog about Microsoft System Center Service Manager: http://blogs.technet.com/b/scsmru/