The IT Crownd

Now this is something I am quite pleased with however after coming up with the idea and Googling I found plenty of other cleverer people had come up with this before me! Here's one very good example: http://operatingquadrant.com/2009/08/15/scom-automatically-starting-maintenance-mode-when-servers-are-rebooted-for-patching/ Anyways one of the maybe overlooked aspects of SCOM notification is that you can run commands, meaning that an event/alert can then trigger a series of scripted actions.  Really cool. What the blog above explains is how to use this feature to check for an event signalling that the Windows server is going to reboot this is event ID 22 from Windows Update.  I use event ID 1074 as we do not reboot our servers automatically when patching, we do however use Citrix and some of these servers have a reboot scheduled.  Event 1074 is raised by USER32 in the SYSTEM log when a scheduled reboot is attempted.  So you can now safely put your...

Ok a bit late but still happy new year!

So one of the attractive features of CU5 was the ability to now use SQL 2008 R2. I also found that Windows reporting was now no longer working - after a quick Google I found that the new reporting pack was only compatible with 2008 Report Services. I was running 2005.  Now before I get going I'd like to point out I am NOT a SQL guy.  I know a bit about databases, enough to get me in trouble but I am NOT a SQL guy. Ho hum.  Time for a SQL upgrade then.  With my paperwork and Change Request (ITIL rules here) in place I dutifully made backups off all the DBs running on the SQL 2005 box. I followed the Microsoft documentation : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd789004.aspx which basically says run, SRSUpdateTool.exe, then run the SQL upgrade and then run SRSUpdateHelpr.msi and finally re-run SRSUpdateTool.exe This all sounded pretty simple, next, next and finish.  I'll have me a shiny new SQL install in no time. A week later and I finally ...

Ok so we've been running SCOM with CU5 for a couple of months now and things are working nicely. We do have a recurring issue when notifications fail, there is not alerting/events raised for this notification just stops.  So we do reboot the services every now and again - no biggy.  However this is a bit annoying. Anyways I followed Kevin Holman's excellent blog here... http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2011/08/03/opsmgr-2007-r2-cu5-rollup-hotfix-ships-and-my-experience-installing-it.aspx plenty to read and although it is cut-n-paste job from CU4 (and CU3) it does show how Microsoft are working towards a standard process for upgrading SCOM.   Shame we are nearly at RTM for 2012! We had no surprises and thing went very smoothly. Upgrading the SQL box to 2008 R2 from 2005 was a very different matter...

I'm alive.  Honest.  Just very busy. Struggling to get net 4.0 to install....grrrr....

Currently the implementation of our Exchange 2010 SP1 installation is holding my time from Blogging about stuff. I am still active and hopefully will have some things to write about...VDI and FusionIO come to mind..:) Or even the install of CU5 for Ops Manager...just gotta get the time... Oh and if you read these pages please comment it would be good to get your views on things too.

Ok so we've been running this little test environment (see previous post) for about two weeks (almost out of the trial license (15days!)) To recap we have a SCOM environment consisting of an SQL server, a RMS server and a MS server, so a pretty simple set up infact I only have an MS server as it is advised to not have users connecting to the web console on the RMS. Also will post something about getting Kerberos working in this environment as it does - since R2 anyways so you do not need to have the web console running on the RMS - and if you have the excellent SaVision LivesMaps (which we do) then you can use the same kerberos technique to get SSO working on that too - despite what the SaVision instructions say! We also have a software Serial-over-Ethernet solution to provide connection to the SMS modem which is in a location with a signal :) this has a second benefit of failing over if the RMS is taken out for some reason. So here's how we do it: I found the most su...