Welcome to Aquilaweb

MVP David Allen's weblog advising on
System Center Operations Manager

My Blog is Moving

As a Community Leader for the Windows Management User Group (WMUG) I am moving my blog to where it now belongs, on the WMUG website.

This site will remain in place with its current information indefinately but will not have any furher posts.

I look forward to your comments on my new blog.




10 Aug, 2008 | David |



WMI

After implementing Operations Manager in your environment you may find some of your servers experiencing WMI problems. This can result in not being able to collect data or monitor what you need as the WMI queries in the rules and monitors will fail.

Here are some simple command sets to reset and re-register WMI which in my experience I have found to solve many WMI issues.


Resetting WMI


  1. net stop winmgmt
  2. c:
  3. cd %windir%\system32\wbem\
  4. rmdir /s /q Repository
  5. rmdir /s /q Logs
  6. mkdir Logs
  7. net start winmgmt


Re-registering WMI


  1. net stop winmgmt
  2. c:
  3. cd %windir%\system32\wbem\
  4. for %i in (*.dll) do RegSvr32 /s %i
  5. for %i in (*.mof, *.mfl) do Mofcomp %i
  6. net start winmgmt






03 Aug, 2008 | David |



Reporting Problems - Enable Remote Errors

If you have experienced problems with OpsMgr reporting you will probably have seen the helpful message about how to get more information about the error.


"For more information about this error navigate to the report server on the local server machine, or enable remote errors"


Enabling remote errors does in most cases give very good information as to the cause of the error and MS has a good guide on how to enable remote errors which I thought I would share.


http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa337165.aspx






16 Jul, 2008 | David |



Changing the look & feel of Reports

Ever wanted to get rid of that poor quality System Center Operations Manager 2007 banner from across the top of all the default reports and replace it with your own branding?

Original Banner


It's really quite simple.....



Read more


07 Jul, 2008 | David |



Sealing a Management Pack

By default when you create a new management it is created as unsealed so it has a .xml extension and allows for the management pack to be edited. Within the support tools of Operations Manager there is a tool called mpseal.exe which can be used to seal the management pack so it can not be edited but still allow for customization of the applied settings with the use of overrides in seperate management packs. This can be very useful if distributing out to third parties.


To seal a management pack is relatevely straight forward and Microsoft have a "How to Seal a Management Pack" guide here, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb309498(TechNet.10).aspx which outlines the basic steps and options. The problem with Microsoft's guide is that the pre-requisistes state that it is possible to create a private certificate using Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Certificate Services. This is not the case and I will show you how you can create the file required and seal your MP. I have also contacted MS about there misleading prerequisites and they should be sorting it out soon :-).


Before sealing a management, or even generating the key required, there are a couple of prerequisites.



Read more


03 Jul, 2008 | David |



SQL 2005 Log Shipping Part II

Following on from my SQL 2005 Log Shipping guide and I have created a Part II guide which covers restoring and configuring the secondary database as well as updating the configuration of Operations Manager to use it.


Available for download under Guides.








01 Jul, 2008 | David |