Network Bandwidth Utilization for the various OpsMgr 2007 Roles

http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2007/10/22/network-bandwidth-utilization-for-the-various-opsmgr-2007-roles.aspx

A good read.

System Center Operations Manger 2007 Service Pack 1 release plan

The Operations Manager team is making good progress on readying the first Service Pack for the OpsMgr 2007 product. The high level themes of this service pack are:
· Address critical customer initiated issues including roll-up of all hotfixes
· Make the product easier to support
· Make the product easier to use
· Make the product easier to deploy

The first opportunity for our customers to utilize SP1 will be coming up in early November when the Release Candidate version of SP1 will be made available. This Release Candidate (RC) has undergone extensive testing for quality, stability and performance. We will be making this RC publically available and encourage customers to make use of it for all their environments, except for production environments where pre-release code is not appropriate.


The reasons the product team is making the RC of the Service Pack generally available are:
· To give customers evaluating OpsMgr 2007 advance access to the SP to aid in their evaluation and proof of concept deployments
· To give current OpsMgr 2007 customers that may have hotfixes in their environment an opportunity to test the Service Pack and provide feedback on it
· Ultimately to make sure that the final RTM release of the Service Pack is of the highest possible quality.

Release Candidate details:
· This will be publicly available release. In early November 2007, a link from our home page on www.microsoft.com/opsmgr will help customers find the SP once it is posted.
· This release will be supported. Support options include:
o Newsgroups – there will be a dedicated SP1 newsgroup
o Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) – you can use your standard support options to get support on this edition
o While CSS support is fully available, the product team is not pledging to provide Hotfixes on the RC, rather hotfix candidates would be incorporated into the final RTM version.
o Support for the RC will end 30 days after the RTM version is released.
· This release is fully upgradable to the final RTM version of the Service Pack.
Final RTM details:
· To provide for sufficient time to get feedback on the Release Candidate the final (RTM) release of the Service Pack 1 release is targeted for mid-February 2008.
· This version of the Service Pack will be able to be applied to upgrade the originally released RTM version of Operations Manager 2007 and it will also upgrade Operations Manager 2007 running the Release Candidate of SP1.
More details on what is fixed and enhanced in SP1 will accompany the Release Candidate version along with instructions on how to upgrade your deployment.yes we

TechNet System Center Operations Manager 2007 Tools and Utilities Page is liv

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/opsmgr/bb625978.aspx

System Center Operations Manager 2007 Resource Kit tools released to the download center

The first set of resource kit tools for Operations Manager 2007 have been released to the download center. They will be soon referenced from the TechNet TechCenter for OpsMgr too (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/opsmgr/default.aspx)

New Changes in SP1 Setup, Ops Manager 2007

Starting with OpsMgr 2007 SP1 build 6222 a new wizard is added at the end of RMS setup that will walk you through backing up your encryption keys. This procedure is important because in case of a disaster when customers rebuild their environment they will need the encryption keys to reattach their databases and access the run as accounts\profiles that have been encrypted with this key. In RTM, this was a command line tool and many customers did not recognize the importance of this step. Therefore, for SP1 we have made this a part of our setup.

System Center Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack Update

Brief Description
The Microsoft System Center Operations Manager Management Pack update is an update to the previously released System Center Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007. This update addresses few enhancements, updated content for rules and monitors and bug fixes.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=09f74984-7e9d-42ef-8b38-ad770b084363&displaylang=en

OpsMgr 2007 Alerts on Your Mobile Device!

from the myITforum.com forums:

I find it amazing that after working with System Center Operations Manager 2007 for the past year, training all the other Microsoft partners on it, reading countless volumes of whitepapers and guides on OpsMgr, that in all that time I’ve not once seen or heard a single thing about the Mobile Console.

What? There’s a mobile console? Yup! You bet your arse there is.

Just fire up your web browser and connect to your standard OpsMgr Web Console. Now, add /mobile to the end of the URL. You’ll have mobilized alerts with associated knowledge and response actions. All within the palm of your hand! Supply this URL on your Windows Mobile device and go hit the local pub. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be alerted.

Tomorrow's TechNet Webcast:

System Center Operations Manager 2007: Install and MP Migration

http://www.myitforum.com/forums/calendar.asp?eventID=38&caldate=2007-08-01

All WebCasts for August (a couple more OpsMgr in the mix):

http://www.myitforum.com/forums/calendar.asp?calendarID=1&calDate=2007-08-01

Reskit Tools for Ops Mgr

In the next couple of week, TechCenter download site will be releasing Reskit tools in a series of reskit tool for OpsManager

1. AD Integration sample. This is a sample script that can be used to automate the process of periodically querying a customer CMDB SQL DB and populating/updating a security group that can be used to assign agents to Management Groups and Management Servers via AD Integration. This simplifies the AD integration configuration in MOM since it is just a simple LDAP query for each Management Server to include all members of the security group.

2. Data Warehouse grooming policy adjustment tool. This is a command line utility that can be used to adjust the data retention settings for individual datasets in the Data Warehouse (there’s currently no UI for this in the product).

3. Effective Configuration Viewer. This is a basic GUI tool that allows the user to select an ME and view rules and monitors being implemented after all overrides have been applied.

4. MOMClean. Command line tool to remove MOM components for servers and clients when they can’t be removed in the normal ways.

5. Ops Mgr Inventory tool. This is primarily intended for use by CSS to capture customer MOM configuration when diagnosing problems.

6. Sample Ops Mgr Vista Gadget.
7. AEM Validation tool. This is a command line tool that injects a specific fault into a process in order to test end-to-end functionality of AEM.

8. AEM Reporting MP. This MP will map known generic errors to specific applications for more meaningful AEM reporting.

9. PowerShell script to set action account on groups of agents.

Make sure customers know about and read this document below.

Do What every it takes, but stress the importance of having ready the doc and implemented a backup of the root management servers encryption key.

Operations Manager 2007 Backup and Recover Guide.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/opsmgr/default.aspx

Root Management Server
The Root Management Server is the central point of configuration management and overall health monitoring of the entire managed environment. This is the first Management Server installed for a Management Group. The most important component of the Root Management Server that must be backed up is the Root Management Server encryption key, which holds all the Run As Account information defined in the Management Group.

Note: Without a backup of this key, you would need to re-enter your entire Run As Accounts if you need to rebuild the Root Management Server.

From: Marten

Announcing System Center Remote Operations Manager 2007

System Center Remote Operations Manager 2007 is the final name for the managed service solution that uses Operations Manager 2007 to provide remote managed services to many SMB customers who each have a System Center Essentials 2007 server installed at their premises.

Remote Operations Manager Deployment Guide

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=33D66740-8F86-4AE5-9146-E8E180503384&displaylang=en

Latest updates in documentation:

· Operations Manager 2007 Design Guide is now available at http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/4/d/74deff5e-449f-4a6b-91dd-ffbc117869a2/OpsMgr2007_DesignGuid.doc

· MP guides now include: SharePoint Portal Server, Information Worker, and SharePoint Services. Authoring guidance is also included. See the “Management Pack Guides” section below. For the latest list of 2007 MPs and guidance go to http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/mom/catalog/catalog.aspx?vs=2007

Hands On Labs from MMS 2007 are live on TechNet

System Center Operations Manager 2007: Advanced Topics Virtual Lab
TechNet
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6949282

System Center Operations Manager 2007: Introduction Virtual Lab
TechNet
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6949283

System Center Operations Manager 2007 Technical Walkthrough

Want to get a better understanding of how to architect, deploy, administer, and operate Operations Manager 2007? Walk through this online course designed to help you get ramped on using Operations Manager 2007.

RTW of the SMS2003 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

Here is the RTW of the SMS2003 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BDCA74EE-D493-4F68-BDDD-AC7EE38D8745&displaylang=en


The Public RTW of the English SMS 2003 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007.

32-bit Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2007 MP support for MOM 2007(Operations Manager 2007)

For your information, there is currently a MP for Exchange 2007 for MOM 2005 SP1. This can be converted to a OpsMgr 2007 with some tools from the MOM 2005 ResKit and from the OpsMgr 2007 RC2 installation media. Here are the steps:
Mgmt Pack Convert from 2005 to 20071) Export them from MOM2K5 with Administrator Console2) Use MP2XML from MOM2K5 resource kit to convert the AKM file into a XML file3) Use MPConvert from Ops Mgr installation media to convert the MOM2K5 XML file into a Ops Mgr XML file4) Use Ops Mgr Operator Console to import the XML file as a management pack
Next, i used a 32-bit version of Exchange 2007 Eval edition. All worked well, but then i saw no updates or any information on the Exchange 2007 show up on my OpsMgr 2007 Console.
So i thought it was because i was running a 32-bit version of Exchange. Later i found out, even the 64-bit version of Exchange would have issues. Here are some more details from Microsoft.

---------------------------------
32-bit Exchange 2007: This is not officially supported, I believe there are some RTM builds out there (for demo purposes, or to run in a VM). The final word is that Exchange 2007 is 64-bit only.
Exchange 2007 converted on OM 2007: There are a number of issues with the conversion, and the test team is looking at the details (even if it converts and imports – it currently doesn’t work).
Some of the issues may be related to the fact the MOM 2005 Exchange 2007 MP runs on a 32-bit (emulation) MOM agent monitoring the 64bit Exchange server, while the converted MP with OM 2007 uses an 64-bit agent to monitor Exchange 2007. In theory, all should be fine since the helper object (accessing the hosted Powershell) is available in 32 and 64bit, however that the theory only. There may also be some registry issues (looking up the keys in the 32 bit emulation registry). Our team is working with the Exchange team to resolve.

The bottom line is that we have to see what the investigation brings. Right now the plan is to deliver a converted Exchange 2007 MP for OM 2007 RTM
--------------------------------------------------

To summarize:
1. MP for Exchange 2007 won't work in MOM 2007 (Ops Mgr 2007) until RTM (in March 2007, i think)
2. MP for Exchange 2007 works well on MOM 2005 SP1.
3. Forget about 32-bit Exchange 2007, unless you wanted to do a quick Exchange 2007 ONLY demo.