Tag: Windows

Windows Boot from Fibre Channel SAN – An Executive Overview and Detailed Technical Instructions for the System Administrator

Another worth reading document provided by Microsoft. Download it here.

Detailed description of the new Base OS MP 6.0.6972.0 by Kevin Holman

As with any new Windows OS MP for SCOM Kevin is providing us with detailed description what has been changed. No further explanation is need just read the article.

Start or Stop Maintenance Mode of server in SCOM trough SCSM

With System Center 2012 this implementation looks so easy you just have to follow some steps. Pete Zerger provides us with these steps in article titled “Controlling Computer Maintenance Mode in OpsMgr from the Service Manager 2012 Self-Service Portal”.

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.

Linux Integration Services Version v3.3 for Hyper-V

A new version of Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V is released. Here are the changes:

  • To mount an ISO file in the virtual machine, the following command must be run before executing the mount command:
    # insmod /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/ata/ata_piix.ko
    Alternatively, copy the ISO file into the virtual machine and mount it using the -o loop option.
  • Windows 8 Release Preview/Windows Server 2012 and VHDX block size: Using the ext4 file system is recommended for production deployments of Linux on Hyper-V.
  • To ensure all disks connected to the virtual machine are seen, all disks connected to a SCSI controller must start with location “0”.
  • If a disk was hot-removed from the system, the connected disks will not be rescanned until a new disk is added.
  • To use kdump functionality, configure kdump before installing the Linux Integration Services.
  • You might see entries in /var/log/messages similar to the following:
    [ 44.870261] STORVSC: WARNING! cmd 0x12 scsi status 0x2 srb status 0x4
    These messages can be safely ignored.
  • Virtual machines configured to use more than 7 virtual processors should add “numa=off” to the GRUB boot.cfg to work around a known issue in the Linux kernel.
  • Virtual machines configured to use more than 30 GB RAM should add “numa=off” to the GRUB boot.cfg.
  • If the Linux Integration Services are removed from a virtual machine configured to use more than one virtual processor, then the irqbalance service should be disabled to allow successful shutdown of the virtual machine.
  • PS 278: by-id vs by-uuid (will be creating a KB article).
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  • The ISO file also contains a .src.rpm (Source RPM) and debugging RPM. The debugging information should not be used unless instructed by Microsoft Support.
  • This version of Linux Integration Services no longer includes the Hypercall adapter that was present in earlier versions.
  • Verifying the digital signature of the RPM packages under Red Hat Enterprise Linux (by executing the rpm -K command) will return a “KEYS ARE NOT OK” message.
  • Support for this version of Linux Integration Services is provided through the Microsoft TechNet forums at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=193443&clcid=0x409, or by contacting the appropriate support channels for Microsoft or Red Hat.
  • Event log entries: You might see event log entries similar to the following. These messages can be safely ignored:

    • – Networking driver on ‘Virtual Machine’ loaded but has a different version from the server. Server version 3.2 Client version 0.2 (Virtual machine ID DC1CCF5C-0C1A-4825-B32C-9A4F8F85AA9D). The device will work, but this is an unsupported configuration. This means that technical support will not be provided until this problem is resolved. To fix this problem, upgrade the integration services. To upgrade, connect to the virtual machine and select Insert Integration Services Setup Disk from the Action menu.

    – A storage device in ‘Virtual Machine’ loaded but has a different version from the server. Server version 4.2 Client version 2.0 (Virtual machine ID DC1CCF5C-0C1A-4825-B32C-9A4F8F85AA9D). The device will work, but this is an unsupported configuration. This means that technical support will not be provided until this problem is resolved. To fix this problem, upgrade the integration services. To upgrade, connect to the virtual machine and select Insert Integration Services Setup Disk from the Action menu.

 

Download them from here.