Quick Look at Multi-Tenant RRAS Management Pack

If you are using Network Virtualization from Microsoft you probably also using Multi-Tenant Gateways. In such scenario the gateways become critical part of your infrastructure and would be best if you can monitor them. Continue reading “Quick Look at Multi-Tenant RRAS Management Pack”

New MP: System Center 2012 Monitoring Pack for RemoteAccess 2012

Another management pack for monitoring Windows Server 2012 role is out. This new MP will monitor Remote Access only in Windows Server 2012. Also SCOM 2012 or later is only officially supported. Accoriding to the documentation the following monitoring features are provided:

DirectAccess Monitoring
  • Issues with internal and external network adapter connection and settings such as forwarding
  • Teredo server state and configuration
  • Isatap availability and configuration such as name publishing and route publishing
  • 6to4 adapter and forwarding state
  • Heuristics around network security such as DOS attack, spoof attack and replay attack and state of IPSec
  • State of network infrastructure like Dns servers, Management servers configured for DirectAccess
  • IP-Https state and configuration
  • State of various underlying services such as BFE, IPHelper etc needed for Remote Access
  • Heuristics related to OTP

Most of the health monitoring scenarios that can be monitored using the native DirectAccess UI have been included in the management pack.

VPN Monitoring

Existing capabilities for RRAS management pack have been included in the unified management pack as well. We’ll summarize the monitoring capabilities for RRAS included in the unified management pack:

· Remote access (VPN) connection failures due to erroneous configuration.

· Demand-dial (site-to-site) connection failures due to erroneous configuration.

· Erroneous configuration of VPN tunnels:

· Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP)

· Layer Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP/IPSec)

· Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP)

· Internet Key Exchange version 2 (IKEv2)

· Connection licenses, registry corruption, authentication, and accounting issues for remote access

· VPN network access protection (NAP) enforcement and Network Access Quarantine Control access issues

· Erroneous configuration and setup issues involved with various routing protocols that are exposed through RRAS, such as the following:

· Routing Information Protocol (RIP) v1 and v2

· DHCP Relay Agent

· Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP)

· DHCPv6 Relay Agent

· Monitors and alarms to notify the administrator about erroneous conditions. These conditions include the following:

· Hardware device error

· Protocol initialization failure

· Remote Access Connection Manager (RASMAN) service unexpected termination

· Routing and Remote Access service unexpected termination

· Routing and Remote Access service monitor

· Authentication or accounting failures

· Configuration failures

· IPsec-related failures

· Packet filter-related failure

· IPCP negotiation failure

· Memory allocation monitor

· Memory allocation failure

· No more licenses monitor

· Port open failures

· Support for monitoring performance counters and instrumentation, including the following:

· Total number of remote access connections

· Total number of timeout and serial overrun errors for this connection

· Total number of alignment errors for this connection (alignment errors occur when a byte received is different from the byte expected)

· Total number of buffer overrun errors for this connection (buffer overrun errors occur when the software cannot handle the rate at which data is received)

· Total number of bytes received for this connection

· Number of bytes received per second

· Total number of bytes transmitted for this connection

· Number of bytes transmitted per second

· Total number of cyclic redundancy check (CRC) errors for this connection (CRC errors occur when the frame received contains erroneous data)

· Total number of data frames received for this connection

· Number of frames received per second.

 

The MP and its guide you can download from here.

Windows Server 2012 Upgrade Jump Start Training

This Jump Start Training was held live last month and now it is available as a recordings. This course is led by Microsoft Senior Technical Evangelist Rick Claus and Ed Liberman from TrainSignal. The course is divided in 12 topics which can be found as separate videos here.

Microsoft Virtual Academy: Windows Server 2012 Tracks

As soon as Windows Server 2012 went into General Availability MVA released a fair amount of videos to cover the new functionalities. So watch and learn for free:

Windows Server 2012: Technical Overview

Server Virtualization Module

Networking Module

Storage Module

Identity and Access Module

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Module

Web and Application Platform Module

Windows Server 2012: Server Virtualization

Virtual Machine and Scale Mobility Module

Windows Server 2012: Storage

Storage Spaces Module

SMB 3.0 Module

File System Enhancements Module

Windows Server 2012: Networking

Managing Network Infrastructure Module

IP Address Management (IPAM) Module

Hyper-V Network Virtualization Module

Windows Server 2012: Management & Automation

Standard Based Management with Windows Management Framework Module

Multi-Server Management with Server Manager Module

You can also logon to MVA and find the track there.

Microsoft Virtual Academy: Windows Server 2012

Here are 8 new videos from MVA about what Windows Server 2012 will offer: