Updated Ops Mgr 2007 SQL and Windows Management Packs
A couple of recently updated Management Packs for Operations Manager 2007…SQL and Windows Server Operating System. Here’s the updates from the included documentation in the Management Packs. As always, get your Ops Mgr Management Packs here.
The October 2008 release (version 6.0.6321.5) of the Windows Server Operating System
Management Pack includes the following changes:
- Various scripts were updated to prevent issues with locale specific number formatting.
SQL Server Management Pack version 6.0.6441.0 includes the following changes:
- General Changes
- The management pack now includes the SQL Server 2008 discovery and monitoring management packs. SQL Server 2008 monitoring is identical to the SQL Server 2005 management pack, including the new functionality added in this release for SQL Server 2005 monitoring.
- Addressed issues with a few performance rules attempting to collect performance counters or instances by the wrong name.
- Updated a number of discoveries, rules, and tasks to ensure they use the correct RunAs profiles for discovery and monitoring.
- Updated the criteria on a number of event-based rules to make their criteria more specific to reduce alert volumes.
- SQL DB Engine discovery will now work on systems that do not have the SQL tools installed.
- The SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 management packs support discovery and partial monitoring of 32-bit instances of SQL components installed on 64-bit operating systems. This is discussed in more detail in the “Supported Configurations” section of this guide.
- All monitors are now set to public accessibility, allowing increased customization. Most notably, custom diagnostics and recoveries can now be added.
- The “Database Size” and “Log Size” properties of databases are now available as a numeric property, in addition to the string form of the property that already existed.
- Updated knowledge for various reports.
- Database snapshots are no longer discovered and monitored as if they were a full-fledged database.
- The possible states of the “Blocking SPIDs” monitor in all management packs have been changed to better align with the default override behaviors. Previously, the monitor could either be in a “Success” or “Warning” state. The “Warning” state has been replaced with “Error”.
- Changes to the SQL Server 2000 Management Pack
- The default thresholds for the “Job Duration” have been revised. The numbers were previously an integer corresponding to minutes when it should have been in the format of HHMMSS. The knowledge for this monitor has been updated to more clearly explain the format of the threshold.
- Changed the frequency at which the SAPasswordMonitor.vbs script is run from 24 seconds to 24 hours.
- Changes to SQL Server 2005 Management Pack
- Added monitoring for log shipping with the “Destination Log Shipping Monitor” and “Source Log Shipping Monitor” monitors.
- Fixed a few typos and formatting issues with product knowledge in various places.
Followup: HP C-Class Blade Enclosure Advisory (c01519680)
As a follow-up my earlier post about advisory c01519680 for HP C-Class Blade Enclosures, I wanted to provide some more identifying information that I just noticed on the advisory site, but not on the main advisory information page. When examining your existing power supplies, and especially when examining the replacement units that HP will send you, be sure to take into account all three of these items, any ONE of them identifies that power supply as being good for use per HP:
- The power supply has a revision of “W” or greater, or
- The power supply was manufactured after March 20, 2008, or
- The power supply has an ECO label 10057837 affixed to it.
You can see the first two points in this image (borrowed blatently from the HP advisory page found here).
The third point is illustrated in this image.
Do not be surprised if the “good” replacement units that you get from HP to replace your “bad” power supplies have revision numbers and manufacturing dates that indicate they should be replaced…as well as using the date code method I outlined in the previous post. Per HP (several times) as long as that ECO 10057837 label is on the power supply, then you’re supposed to use it for replacement as it has been reworked.
I suggest that if you find yourself in this situation that you print out a hard copy of all pages of the advisory and keep it in your change control log. I’d also print or save the advisory pages to PDF or MHT for archiving online as well.
Scripting backups of AD LDS (ADAM) with dsdbutil
Although I’ve worked with Windows Server 2008 for quite some time now in test, I’ve just recently deployed the first production server into our environment. This was to be a replacement for an ADAM (Active Directory Application Mode) development server used by the applications team. The server itself is a VM running Windows Server 2008 since the requirements of ADAM (now known as Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services in Windows Server 2008) are minimal from a performance standpoint.
Given the changes in how Windows Server Backup works in Windows Server 2008 (you cannot select just a part of the system volume to be backed up and you need a dedicated drive for backups to be stored on, by default), I was not looking forward to using it to get backups of the AD LDS databases. Since the adamntds.dit files are open all the time, they’d need to be backed up by a normal backup program using Volume Shadow Copy. Windows Server Backup would fill that need, but at the cost of backing up the entire system volume (over 9 GB), so that’s really a waste of space and effort. Since we use Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) as our enterprise backup/restore/disaster recovery solution, using Windows Server Backup to backup the entire server just seemed silly. Of course, the problem with TSM is that considers .dit files to be off limits by default except when backing up the System State on a Domain Controller, so even using TSM’s open file support, I could not get a backup of the adamntds.dit files. Bummer. Enter the dsdbutil command.
You can schedule scripted backups of your AD LDS instances databases using the dbdsutil command easily enough, although at first glance at the relevant documentation this is definitely not the case. (See the relevant TechNet article here.) Like most other context sensitive commands, you can simply string together all of the commands you want to execute. So instead of you entering them manually one at a time as the TechNet article implies, you can just concatenate them all on one line and sit back and enjoy your quick and easy AD LDS instance backups.
So, the sample batch file you would use in your scheduled task would look something like this:
rd C:\ADLDS_BACKUP /Q /S
dsdbutil “activate instance INSTANCE1” ifm “create full C:\ADLDS_BACKUP\INSTANCE1” quit quit
dsdbutil “activate instance INSTANCE2” ifm “create full C:\ADLDS_BACKUP\INSTANCE2” quit quit
Note that’s only three lines of code there to backup two different instances (I’ve put line breaks in between each line). When using the dsdbutil command to create the ifm (install from media) backups, the destination directory must be empty, thus the usage of the rd (remove directory) command first in the batch file. You will want to schedule this task to run using an account that is a local administrator, and be sure to select the task to run with highest privledges or else you won’t get the directory removal you need.
Virtual Machine Manager exam still in beta
There’s still time to register and take this exam (71-403) if you’re interested in Virtual Machine Manager.
Read the relevant Beta Exam blog posting here.
HP C-Class Blade Enclosure Advisory (c01519680)
If you’ve got HP C-Class Blade System enclosure in your organization, hopefully by now you’ve read advisory c01519680 and taken the required steps. In short, the advisory states:
HP has identified a potential, yet extremely rare issue with HP BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure 2250W Hot-Plug Power Supplies manufactured prior to March 20, 2008. This issue is extremely rare; however, if it does occur, the power supply may fail and this may result in the unplanned shutdown of the enclosure, despite redundancy, and the enclosure may become inoperable.
So…that’s not so good seeing that a single failed power supply (out of six installed in the enclosure) could take down the entire enclosure!
If you’ve downloaded and tried to run the Windows version of the tool to identify power supplies the advisory pertains to…have you actually gotten it work? We tried on three different PCs (Windows XP SP2, Windows XP3 and Windows Vista Enterprise SP1), following all directions and couldn’t get any output at all. So…I decided to take a look at the Unix version of the tool. Since all files in Unix are text files, it wasn’t too hard to figure out what the criteria were for replacement (other than having a date code on the power supply of before March 20, 2008.
Without going into too much detail, the tools (whether on Windows or Unix) use the data from several command that run in the Onboard Administrator (OA) CLI. The basic sequence the tool follows to tell you which power supplies are in need of replacement goes like this:
- Log into the OA for each enclosure listed in the input file.
- Collect information (power supply number, power supply version, power supply serial number) for each power supply
- Examine that information.
- Use a sequence of logical comparisons to determine which power supplies are in need of replacement as outlined.
- If less than three fields of information are returned for each power supply, INVESTIGATE is returned.
- If the power supply version is greater than or equal to 2, OK is returned.
- If the power supply serial number is not equal to 14 characters in length, REPLACE is returned. Note I’ve never seen one less than 14 characters, but obviously they’re out there and they’re really old!
- (This is the good part) If the last five characters of the supply serial number (which is the week code, although I haven’t found the pattern for this yet) is less than VV000 then REPLACE is returned.
So…all you have to do is collect the three pieces of information from each power supply and find those that have a week code (the last five digits of the serial number) less than VV000. Easy.
So, if you too cannot get the Windows tool to work correctly (despite being at OA firmware version 2.25 and following all of the very simple directions completely), you can still get your power supplies replaced easily enough. You can get the serial number information you need from the OA either from the CLI or the GUI. I show examples of both power. The CLI requires the usage of the show enclosure powersupply all command. The GUI displays the information under Power and Thermal > Power Subsystem.
I created a simple Excel spreadsheet (get it at the end of this post) that will take the power supply serial number input and tell you which power supplies need to be replaced. One note to consider, it’s almost a certainty that all power supplies in a chassis will need to be replaced if one of them does…unless you’ve purchased them over time or previously replaced one due to a failure. So expect to be ordering replacements (free) in groups of six.
One last thing I noticed during the ordering phase, to get the new replacement power supplies, was that HP’s web form actually tells you which power supplies are authorized for replacement or not…so you could actually even skip using the Excel spreadsheet if you wanted and just paste your serial numbers into the order form…
So…if you’ve HP C-Class enclosures…check those power supplies right away!
Get the Excel file here:
HP_C7000_Power_Supply_Inventory_Public.zip (6.9 KiB, 1,568 hits)
Useful HP Links
I ran across a couple of HP sites in the past week that are very useful.
HP PartSurfer (http://partsurfer.hp.com/cgi-bin/spi/main) - Makes finding HP part numbers for your HP products much simpler. Very useful for looking up replacement parts or part numbers for entitlement checks.
HP c-Class Blade System Documentation (http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/316682-0-0-0-121.html) - A nice “one-stop” location for product information and downloads for the HP c-Class Blade System.
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