I’m just back in the Netherlands for a couple of hours after a 4 day stay in Seattle and Redmond. Last 2 days I worked very close with the Microsoft OpsMgr 2007 product team for the second release (R2) of OpsMgr 2007.
I can share a couple of things that are currently in beta 1 which is publicly available for download.

The key investments of Microsoft for this second release are:
• Cross platform monitoring
• Service level tracking
• Better Usability
• Performance and scalability

Regarding usability the performance of the console has been improved a lot. Other thing regarding this investment is that the workflow of configuration notification channel and subscribers is changed and much easier. Note the extensions in the administrator console:

Other new feature regarding notification is that you can subscribe to an alert right from the monitoring pane:

This was in MOM2005, removed in OpsMgr and OpsMgr Sp1 but now is back.

Other thing that is improved is that you can now download the latest management pack from the Microsoft online catalog through the console and that a dependency like missing library are noted and can be resolved automatically by adding them as well.

With the cross-platform features you see the following extensions in the console:

The Unix/Linux logfile and service mentioned above are new monitoring templates.

Let’s look at the UNIX/Linux logfile monitoring template wizard:

With this monitor you can monitor for text that occur in a logfile. In this example my logfile is in the /tmp/testlogdirectory and with the expression; .*test.* I say look for anything which has the word test in it.
To test that your expression is successfully configured you have the Expression test feature. So I tested it with a sample !!!123 test 123 !!! in this case but it will also work with !!!123test123!!!.

Unfortunately this test option is not available with basic Windows log monitoring. In my previous post I mentioned that the prerequisite checker is a bit confused because of SQL 2005 and the hotfix warning you have while running SQL 2008. This is not likely to change in the RTM.

That’s it for now; watch my blog for future posts. We keep in touch!

Introduction
Earlier I announced that Microsoft will release R2 of System Center Operations Manager 2007.
Main new features are cross platform- and service level monitoring. With INOVATIV we are involved in the Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) with Microsoft Corp. and my customer in the Netherlands.

With a RDP the pre-code is tested in customer environments. The feedback given by me and the customer helps Microsoft to build the Release To Manufacturer (RTM) at the end.
Upcoming days I will be at Microsoft Redmond spending two days about this new release which is currently still beta, the RTM is scheduled for May 2009.

OpsMgr R2 on Windows Server 2008 and SQL 2008
For my customer we will design and implement a high availability environment for monitoring around 1000 servers with OpsMgr R2.
All servers which will be used for the OpsMgr R2 solution will be installed with Microsoft latest operating system Windows Server 2008.
With the R2 release, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is now supported for OpsMgr and we will using it to host the OperationsManager- and Data Warehouse databases.

I already tested OpsMgr R2 with beta 1 on Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 in a virtual environment. The installation of the first management server (Root Management Server) went fine. The prerequisites I had to make where installing IIS 7 with ASP the installation of ASP AJAX extension required for the health explorer in the web console and SQL Server 2008 with Database- and Reporting Services.

Funny to see is that the prerequisite checker is passing the SQL 2005 requirement and service pack and is warning for a update that is required for SQL 2005 Reporting Services.

In Redmond I will ask the product team if anything will be changed in this checker.

Like said above the installation of the Root Management Server went fine. Unfortunately that was not the case for OpsMgr R2 Reporting.
I could complete the setup wizard but after the ‘Enabling my reports’ step it performed a rollback action and the setup failed.

When checking the log I found the following errors:
2009-02-06T13:52:51.4703524+01:00 Warn: Message:SRSPolicySetter WebException Exception: The request failed with HTTP status 503: Service Unavailable

When navigating to the default Reporting Services webpage I found the same error:

I checked the same page before the installation of OpsMgr R2 reporting and it was running healthy before.

I forwarded the issue to the product team and hope to have more answers this week. My thought is that IIS 7, required for SQL Reporting Services is causing the problem. IIS 7 is much more hardened then IIS 6 and my guess is that the default security settings are blocking the installation.

I’ll keep you all posted in this very interesting project! If you want to test OpsMgr R2 for yourself please download the beta code here and provide your feedback as well to the OpsMgr R2 product team!

I'm pleased to announce that Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 is now supported on the following ConfigMgr / SMS scenarios:

· System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 (with SQL Reporting Services)
· System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1
· System Center Configuration Manager 2007 RTM
· Systems Manager Server 2003 Service Pack 3

No additional hotfixes are required.

A question I often get is; does ConfigMgr integrate with Active Directory? The answer is a tricky one since you can say; yes and no.

My perspective of integration is a two way dynamic process between multiple applications. The most common use of Active Directory with ConfigMgr is discovery and to extend the Active Directory schema. The extension allows ConfigMgr to publish data in a container named ‘System Management’ which is a sub of the Active Directory System container.

The System Management container is not created by default so this should be done by hand with the ADSIEDIT tool.
All site system computer accounts must have rights on this sub-container to publish their data. An important note on this subject; also Secondary Site and rights are only required on the sub-container, not the System container and all child objects.

The advantage of using the Active Directory this way is that clients can locate the ConfigMgr server through Active Directory. If you don’t want to extend the schema you must configure a Server Locator Point in WINS and a Management Point in DNS or you should provide the path to the server in the commandline when installing the ConfigMgr client.

You want my advice…., always extend the schema! By the word ‘Schema’ most administrator get a frightened look on their face but believe me I have never faced any issues and so are some other consultants or program managers of Microsoft.

The following article of Microsoft helps you to decide whether or not to extend the schema:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb694066.aspx
This article describes how to extend the schema:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680608.aspx

The ConfigMgr Management Point data in Active Directory:

So this is an example of one way integration; ConfigMgr publishing data in Active Directory. There is also another advantage of using Active Directory data in ConfigMgr.

In an earlier post I already talked about deploying ConfigMgr packages through Active Directory groups. This is a great example and also the use of the ConfigMgr discovery methods like; Active Directory System Discovery, User discovery, System Group discovery and Security Group discovery.
With these discovery methods you can query the entire domain of a specific Organisational Unit to discover systems in your organizations. When they are discovered you can deploy the ConfigMgr client to them so they can be managed with ConfigMgr.

Active Directory System discovery method in ConfigMgr:

We discussed two ways of using Active Directory, why is not fully integrated then? Well it is not dynamic. Especially for the last example, when you for instance delete a computeraccount object in Active Directory it will remain in the ConfigMgr database. So there is no dynamic / pro-active integration there.
Microsoft is aware of this and to get more grip on this you can configure the; Delete Aged Discovery Task in ConfigMgr.

This task will delete only the resources that have not been updated by any discovery method for the designated period that you can configure (Let's say 14 days). So the workstations will remain in the collection until that task runs, with the assumption nothing else has discovered them.
The task is located under: Site Database, Site Management, Your Site, Site Maintenance and then Tasks.
As you can see, the task is enabled by default and set to delete data older than 90 days.

So is there integration well yes and no. It’s more of what your perspective of integration is.

In Barcelona it was already announced but today I can share that beta 1 of OpsMgr R2 is released! It is available at Microsoft Connect!

So what's new and improved in R2:

- Extends end to end monitoring of distributed applications to any workload running on Windows, Unix and Linux platforms.

- Maximize availability of virtual workloads with integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

- Improved management of applications in the data center . Delivers on the scale requirements of URL monitoring of your business.

- Meet agreed service levels with enhanced reporting showing application performance and availability.

- More efficient problem identification and action to resolve issues.

- Increased speed of access to information and functionality to drive management . Faster load times for views and results.

- Improved and simplified management pack authoring experience The Operations Manager 2007 R2 beta integrates the functionality delivered
within the Cross Platform Extensions Beta. New betas of the Interoperability Connectors will available shortly through the Operations Manager R2 Connect program.