SystemCenterCentral: Automatically Reset Unhealthy Unit Monitors (when alert closed in error by a human)

In the past to resolve such issues we had to implemented scripts that were triggered daily by the task scheduler on one of the management servers. Pete Zerger shows us a way how to use Orchestrator and be more effective. Read the about the solution here.

Dell MP Suite, version 5.0.1. Part I: Let’s Start by Marnix Wolf

Marnix will publish a series of articles on how to configure Dell MP Suite. It is a must read article if you plan to use this suite. Read Part 1 here.

Performance monitors for Cluster Disks in latest Windows OS MP

As Kevin describes in his article about the latest Window OS MP Cluster disks are missing performances rules. So Kevin decided to help the community and showed us how we can make an MP to create these rules. Find the article here.

Thank you Kevin for helping the community.

OpsMgr 2012: Disabling Rules and Monitors in Bulk in PowerShell

Another great article by Pete Zerger. In this article he give us an example how to leverage PowerShell to bulk disable or enable monitors and rules.

New version of Windows OS Management Pack for SCOM is out

The new version is 6.0.6972.0. There are lot of improvements about disk monitoring but I suggest you to give a couple of weeks before importing it in production to see if the community will provide feedback of any bugs. Here is the full list of changes:

Unless explicitly noted, these updates apply to all operating system versions supported by this Monitoring Pack:

  • Updated the Cluster shared volume disk monitors so that alert severity corresponds to the monitor state.
  • Fixed an issue where the performance by utilization report would fail to deploy with the message “too many arguments specified”.
  • Updated the knowledge for the available MB monitor to refer to the Available MB counter.
  • Added discovery and monitoring of clustered disks for Windows Server 2008 and above clusters.
  • Added views for clustered disks.
  • Aligned disk monitoring so that all disks (Logical Disks, Cluster Shared Volumes, Clustered disks) now have the same basic set of monitors.
  • There are now separate monitors that measure available MB and %Free disk space for any disk (Logical Disk, Cluster Shared Volume, or Clustered disk).
  • clip_image001Note

These monitors are disabled by default for Logical Disks, so you will need to enable them.

  • Updated display strings for all disks to be consistent, regardless of the disk type.
  • The monitors generate alerts when they are in an error state. A warning state does not create an alert.
  • The monitors have a roll-up monitor that also reflects disk state. This monitor does not alert by default. If you want to alert on both warning and error states, you can have the unit monitors alert on warning state and the roll-up monitor alert on error state.
  • Fixed an issue where network adapter monitoring caused high CPU utilization on servers with multiple NICs.
  • Updated the Total CPU Utilization Percentage monitor to run every 5 minutes and alert if it is three consecutive samples above the threshold.
  • Updated the properties of the Operating System instances so that the path includes the server name it applies to so that this name will show up in alerts.
  • Disabled the network bandwidth utilization monitors for Windows Server 2003.
  • Updated the Cluster Shared Volume monitoring scripts so they do not log informational events.
  • Quorum disks are now discovered by default.
  • Mount point discovery is now disabled by default.
  • clip_image001Notes

This version of the Management Pack consolidates disk monitoring for all types of disks as mentioned above. However, for Logical Disks, the previous Logical Disk Free Space monitor, which uses a combination of Available MB and %Free space, is still enabled. If you prefer to use the new monitors (Disk Free Space (MB) Low Disk Free Space (%) Low), you must disable the Logical Disk Free Space monitor before enabling the new monitors.

The default thresholds for the Available MB monitor are not changed, the warning threshold (which will not alert) is 500MB and the error threshold (which will alert) is 300MB. This will cause alerts to be generated for small disk volumes. Before enabling the new monitors, it is recommended to create a group of these small disks (using the disk size properties as criteria for the group), and overriding the threshold for available MB.

You can download the documentation and the new version here.