System Center Guide

OpsMgr Community,

If you are receiving alerts “Performance Module could not find a performance counter” in the Operations Manager Console, please perform thefollowing steps to disable the rule via override.

Note: When you run the Operations Console on a computer that is not a Management Server, the Connect To Server dialog box displays. In the Server name text box, type the name of the Operations Manager 2007 Management Server to which you want the Operations Console to connect.

1. Navigate to the Authoring Space in the Console.

2. Select “Rules” under “Management Pack Objects”.

3. Type “Performance Data Source Module” in the “Look for:” box and click “Find Now”. Be sure a Scope is not set or filtering the “Health Service” Target.

4. Find the rule, “Performance Data Source Module could not find a performance counter” under “Type: Health Service (2)”, right-click, select “Overrides”, “Disable the Rule”, “For all objects of type: Health Service”.

5. When prompted, “Are you sure you want to disable this rule for Health Service?” click “Yes”.

Microsoft is working on the long-term solution to address this problem.

Thanks, Justin Incarnato

Operations Manager Product Team Blog : "Performance Module could not find a performance counter" temporary workaround

The following is an early look at the architecture of Virtual Machine Manager v2, codename v.Next. While still approaching its Q2CY08 beta release, my personal viewing of the alpha product demos are indeed impressive!

Positioned as a heterogeneous virtual machine management solution, v.Next will support Virtual Server 2005, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX servers (with Xen server support in a future release).

Click the image above for a larger view.

As one with an entrepreneurial spirit, I often find myself defending the Microsoft market leader position and the tactics that they often must employ to maintain that position. Frankly, as a business owner, I’d prefer if the government took about ten paces back and gave a little more freedom for the pioneers of industry to reap the benefits of their labour.

Far too often with the US DOJ and the UE commissions, it seems that we allow industry icons to rise to that status level only to slap them in the face and say "STOP IT, IT’S NOT FAIR FOR THE OTHER FOLKS!"

Here’s a simple saying for those "other folks"… listen closely:

MAN UP, OR SHUT UP!

If you want to bitch about Microsoft’s dominance and unfair tactics, make a better product that makes those issues moot. What’s that? You already have a better product? THEN LEARN HOW TO MARKET IT BETTER! If there is nothing else that the industry can learn from Microsoft, it is how to market a solution. And don’t – for a minute – tell me that you can’t compete when Microsoft makes it free, or part of the OS, for %^&*-sake that is the whole premise of the open source movement!

To the members of the EU commission, all you’ve done today is weaken an already suffering IT market. I hope you’re happy with yourselves. By the way, did you produce you findings on a Microsoft or Linux platform; Microsoft Word or Open Office? What the hell, it doesn’t really matter these days. Open Office folks can open MS Office documents and vice-a-versa. The sad thing is that the EU penalised Microsoft today for things done 4 years ago – forget about advancements in cooperation in recent years.

Enough ranting on my behalf. Sorry… this announcement just makes me sick.

Since Microsoft recently announced their newfound commitment to interoperability standards to satisfy the EU commission, many have speculated whether this was another delay tactic by the Redmond, WA software giant.

However, tonight I was amazed to find the following text while attempting to download a file from the Microsoft website:

System Requirements

• Supported Operating Systems: Apple Mac OS X; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows XP

Anything in particular jump out you in that text? If not, forget it… this post isn’t for you. But those "in the know" will recognize that this is a significant departure from the normally non-Apple centric type applications. Could we be a few steps closer to open, cross-platform standards?

Through the concerted efforts of like-minded Microsoft Partner organizations, MicrosoftPartnerForums.com has officially launched this week! Here’s a copy of the welcome message on the site’s homepage. I think it explains it all:

Welcome to Microsoft Partner Forums! We’re glad you’re here. This site has been brought together by the combined efforts of Microsoft Partners like yourself that are interested in bettering their partner organizations and, as a result, improving the quality of solutions we provide to our customers.

The best place to start – as you can imagine – is in the forums. Please take a few minutes to review the 40+ forums available on a range of topics including achieving competencies, business development, press releases, job openings and even a place sound off your frustrations (with Microsoft that is). These forums will allow you to engage others partners with ideas and concepts, talk about what works and what doesn’t, and build a peer network of other like-minded Microsoft Partner professionals.

When you’re ready to being posting content, please create your account and profile. This will allow you full access to the forums and permit you to post new threads.

Lastly, consider subscribing to our RSS feed. This is the easiest way to stay up to date with new content posted to the forums.

We hope you’ll enjoy the site. And, again, thanks for stopping by – we hope to see more of you in the future.

Microsoft Partner Forums
Site Administration Team

I’m happy to be a part of MicrosoftPartnerForums.com and truly believe that it will fulfil a long-standing void in the Microsoft Partner community.

Wow… this could be the day that changes the computer world forever. Microsoft Corp. today announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors.

In short, 30,000 pages of protocol details exposed, commitment not to sue developers who expand upon those, new APIs for the Office products to other formats and to permit users to set those formats as defaults and lastly, launching the Open Source Interoperability Initiative – "to promote and enable more interoperability between commercial and community-based open source technologies and Microsoft products".

Does that mean I can quit feeling guilty about running this blog off Linux and open source software?

Read the full press release

J.C. Hornbeck, Manageability Knowledge Engineer, has just posted the following list of Manageability Solution Accelerators (SA) available from Microsoft.

Alert Tuning Solution Accelerator 2.0

This solution accelerator provides best-practice guidance to help reduce the number of non-critical alerts generated by the deployment of Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 Management Packs.

Autoticketing Solution Accelerator 2.0

Provides guidance on how to integrate Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 with trouble-ticketing systems. It also provides technical guidance with taxonomy standards, database/property mapping, MOM Connector Framework, and code samples.

Business Desktop Deployment 2007

Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007 is THE best-practice set of comprehensive guidance and tools from Microsoft to optimally deploy Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system.

Business Desktop Deployment 2.5, Enterprise Edition

Provides download planning, building, and technical guidance, templates, and scripts to facilitate deployment of Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Office Professional Edition 2003 through Zero Touch deployment. The Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) Enterprise Edition follows the best practices of a multinational bank with more than 15,000 employees on five continents using multiple data centers. This solution shows how both Zero Touch and Light Touch deployments are performed in that organization.

Business Desktop Deployment 2.5, Standard Edition

The Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) Standard Edition is best-practice guidance for desktop deployment using limited tools and requiring basic infrastructure. The Standard Edition is targeted at companies with 250 or more PCs that want to reduce deployment time and effort by increasing the level of automation. It allows administrators to deploy desktops with Light Touch interaction at the target PCs. This solution also helps organizations to move to a managed environment with standardized desktop images.

Desired Configuration Monitoring 2.0

A tool that automates the configuration management audits between desired or defined configuration settings and actual configuration settings. DCM accomplishes this by allowing the user to define desired hardware, operating system, and application configuration settings in multiple configuration data sources. Then, using the supplied auditing engine, DCM compares desired settings with actual settings and reports configuration compliance.

Managing the Windows Server Platform: Testing Guide

Gives organizations using Microsoft Solutions for Infrastructure and Management (MSIM) to manage their Microsoft Windows Server 2003 environments a plan and strategy for designing and implementing testing solutions for a test lab environment.

Medium Business Guide for Pilot Deployment and Migration

This solution provides technical guidance to help medium businesses plan, migrate, test, and implement the new environment using a pilot deployment.

Medium Business Solution for Patch Management

This solution provides technical guidance to help medium businesses implement a centralized patch management solution, using Software Update Services to keep servers and client computers up to date.

Microsoft Assessment and Deployment Solution

The Microsoft Assessment and Deployment Solution (ADS) is an automation tool designed for partners and customers to quickly assess, propose, plan and deploy infrastructure software for midsize businesses. ADS provides auto-generation of proposals and reports with network diagrams, project proposals and implementation guides specific to the assessed networks.

Multiple Management Group Rollup Solution Accelerator 2.0

Provides the capability to store long-term operational data based on multiple Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 management groups. This capability provides the business with information to analyze infrastructure reliability, capacity, and overall behavior. It also provides operational guidance on setup and configuration.

Notification Workflow Solution Accelerator 2.1

Provides more effective notification of critical alerts using an advanced subscription mechanism that includes criteria such as server ownership, application ownership, schedule, and exceptions. It also provides automation using SQL Server Notification Services and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005.

Patch Management Using SMS 2003 Solution Accelerator

Enables customers to more effectively assess their environment. It helps them identify Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 managed and unmanaged Virtual Server 2005 and Virtual PC 2004 installations, Microsoft SQL Server installations and instances, and component-level details for Microsoft Office—including source paths and installation dates. It addresses reduction of risk through identification of machines in the SMS unmanaged space, sample automation script usage, and reporting.

Patch Management Using Software Update Services Solution Accelerator

Provides architectural, developmental, operational, and test guidance for deploying software updates to operating systems and installed applications using Microsoft Software Update Services (SUS). It offers conceptual information, design and configuration best practices, and details of the operational practices required for success.

Service Continuity Solution Accelerator 2.0

Provides best-practice guidance and automation to help customers minimize downtime of Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) in the event of an infrastructure failure or geographical disaster. It also provides automation through scripts, database synchronization, and reports.

Software Updates for Dell Server Hardware Using SMS 2003 Solution Accelerator 1.0

Provides guidance on how to leverage the Dell Updates tool in Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) for software updates of Dell server hardware. It also includes automation/guidance for patching Dell servers in a file/print cluster configuration via SMS 2003.

Windows Server Deployment Solution Accelerator 1.0

Facilitates the deployment of Windows Server 2003 operating system across well-connected networks within an enterprise IT infrastructure. It provides guidance and scripts to successfully complete the initial deployment, as well as guidance to maintain the solution within a production environment for subsequent deployments as a part of normal day-to-day operations.

Jeff Wettlaufer talks with NetworkWorld’s Mitchell Ashley about how System Center technologies are strengthened and improved with Windows Server 2008.

Listen to the podcast here

So, I was recently invited to participate in the Microsoft IT Professionals Advisory Council and have actually found it quite an interesting approach by the normally distant company. Each month the council members are asked to perform one or more tasks associated with the program. This month’s task was to blog about our worst experience with a Microsoft product. They asked us to provide the following details in the blog entry:

• What has been the most painful experience you have had with Microsoft products?
• What Microsoft product(s) did this experience involve?
• During what stage of the product lifecycle did you face this issue?
• How did you identify the problem?
• How did you troubleshoot the problem?
• What resources did you use to solve the issue?
• What was the timeframe to solve the issue?
• How did this impact your organization’s perception of your credibility?

This is quite a door to leave wide open. Who knows what will walk through it. However, I congratulate Microsoft on their willingness to have brutal honest from the community of users. This is certainly a step in the right direction. Top form!

Beta Announcement: Project Hana (MOF v4)

Interested in improving your IT Service Management?  Optimise your IT Processes with Hana (MOF v4).

Hana guidance provides a structured approach for IT process optimisation.  Hana integrates MSF and MOF, plus extends the guidance to include planning and governance. Hana enables you align IT with your business goals, deliver IT as a service, and leverage compliance activities to optimise your people’s effectiveness.  

Learn more about Hana here