Category: Managament Packs

New MP: Windows 8 Client Operating System

At the initial release of Windows 8 there was no plan for releasing SCOM management pack for the client operating system but it seems a lot of customers were actually needing this MP so MSFT changed its mind and decided to develop it. Several months later you can now download this brand new MP from here. This MP covers only Windows 8. Read the documentation before importing in your environment.

New MP: Microsoft Application Virtualization Server 5.0

This is a new management pack. There is available MP for for the previous version 4.5 of App-V. The new MP provides the following features:

  • Discovery of the Application Virtualization 5.0 Services: Management, Publishing, Reporting
  • Alerts indicating availability/configuration/security issues that require administrative intervention
  • Collection Rules defined for significant events in ETW logs of each App-V 5.0 Service
  • Verification that dependent NT services are running
  • Notification of security issues involving admin access attempts, admin added/deleted on App-V 5.0 Management Server

Download it from here and remember to read the guide first before implementing.

New MP: Windows Azure Fabric – Preview

This is a new management pack for Window Azure that can monitor the Fabric. It is replacement MP for the pervious version of Windows Azure MP. It is still in preview so it is not supported in production. Here is overview from download link:

The Management Pack for Windows Azure Fabric enables you to monitor the availability and performance of Azure fabric resources that are running on Windows Azure. The management pack runs on a specified proxy agent and then uses various Windows Azure APIs to remotely discover and collect instrumentation information about a specified Windows Azure resource, such as a Cloud Service, Storage or Virtual Machine. The Management Pack for Windows Azure Fabric provides no functionality on import. For each Windows Azure subscription that contains Azure resources you want to monitor, you must configure discovery and monitoring by first using the Windows Azure wizard in the administration section of the OM Console, then the Windows Azure Monitoring template in the authoring section of the OM Console.

Update Rollup 5 for System Center 2012

While waiting for Update Rollup 2 for System Center 2012 SP1 it seems System Center 2012 without SP1 received its UR5. In this update only two of the components receive fixes:

Virtual Machine Manager (KB2824618)
Issue 1

A host that is put into maintenance mode does not load-balance virtual machines in a cluster during evacuation. This causes host reserve saturation.

Operations Manager (KB2831729)
Issue 1

The Solaris agent could run out of file descriptors when many multi-version file systems (MVFS) are mounted.

Issue 2

Logical and physical disks are not discoverable on AIX-based computers when a disk device file is contained in a subdirectory.

Issue 3

Rules and monitors that were created by using the UNIX/Linux Shell Command templates do not contain overridable ShellCommand and Timeout parameters.

Issue 4

Process monitors that were created by using the UNIX/Linux Process Monitoring template cannot save in an existing management pack that has conflicting references to library management packs.

Issue 5

The Linux agent cannot install on a CentOS or Oracle Linux host by using the FIPS version of OpenSSL 0.9.8.

Full description of the update and download links you kind find in KB article.

Read carefully the installation instructions as the update for SCOM has some special instructions. I would also wait System Center Monitoring Pack for UNIX and Linux Operating Systems to be updated because it is part of the update. The current download is still from 01.08.2013.

New MP: System Center Management Pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Parallel Data Warehouse Appliance

There is a new MP on the horizon. Here is a feature summary from the download page:

  • Discovers SQL Server PDW Appliances, including the hardware manufacturer.
  • Monitors both hardware and software components of SQL Server PDW Appliance. This includes:
    • The ability to roll up the overall health information across hardware and software components.
    • The ability to detect and monitor nodes that belong to different SQL Server PDW failover clusters.
    • Custom diagram view to visually represent the PDW appliance hierarchy comprising of hardware and software components. This includes these three views:
      • Appliance view – high level health information of the overall appliance health and their individual nodes
      • Appliance nodes – view to represent the health of each of the nodes and their roles.
      • Alerts view –view for the IT operator to look at proactive monitoring alerts and take appropriate actions.
  • Custom e-mail template to provide more detailed information regarding the alerts.
  • Tasks to integrate with the various PDW admin console views.
  • Run-as profile to securely connect to PDW appliance for discovery and monitoring.

Remember to read the documentation which together with the MP can be found here.