Operations Manager: The Top 20 “Must Have" Customizations and addons

1. BB33 Operations Manager: The Top 20 “Must Have" Customizations and addons Alexandre Verkinderen Principal Consultant Europe, OpsMgr MVP Infront Consulting Group

2. Agenda • Review and explore the most common customizations and add-ons we see and implement at customers in their OpsMgr deployments • 20 customizations | 60 minutes • Additional notes and information on customizations posted to: http://scug.be/blogs/scom • www.systemcentercentral.com/mps

3. AgendaWhat will you learn? Maintenance Monitoring Automation • Network Device • Files, Folders and Network Shares • PKI & Certificate • Monitoring During Business Hours • Default MP • CYA Rules • AD Security Auditing • Branch Office Maintenance Mode • Scheduled Maintenance Mode • Community Knowledge Base • MP update • MP backup • Savision • DW Grooming • Closed Alert View • WMI Rebuild • SCCM Dashboard • OpsMgr Agent perf

4. Monitoring

5. 1. Network Device MonitoringChallenge Network monitoring beyond simple device availability • OpsMgr – Up / Down on device only • Essentials – Device and interface (generic device) Solution Criteria Scalable Configurable Modular Relevant • Network interface monitoring • Performance (CPU, memory) • Hardware (fans, power, etc) • Specialized devices (UPS, VPN, firewall) • Vendor-specific monitoring (APC, Cisco, HP)

6. 1. Network Device MonitoringCommunity Solution xSNMP Network Monitoring Suite (Kris Bash) Management Packs in the xSNMP Suite: • Generic Network Device MP • APC (UPS) • Brocade FC-Switches • Check Point Secure Platform • Cisco Network Devices • HP ProCurve • HP Proliant • Net-SNMP • Syslog

7. Architecture and ConsiderationsxSNMP Management Pack Suite Architecture Highlights • Well-Planned Service and Health Models • Utilizes SNMP, SYSLOG and PowerShell modules • Potential discovery of 1,000’s of network interfaces (as instances) Strategy • Use a dedicated proxy agent • Plan network interface monitoring carefully • Be selective in interface performance collection

8. xSNMP Network MonitoringSuite in Action demo

9. 2. CYA RulesChallenge CYA whenimplementingOpsMgr. Common Scenarios • HealthService.exe CPU • MonitoringHost.exe CPU

10. 2. CYA Rules Demo

11. 3. PKI Server and Certificate MonitoringChallenge Monitor PKI and certificate components across the enterprise (often 1000’s of objects) Common Scenarios Discovery Expiration Notification Critical Certs • Root CA Validity • Certificate Validity • CRL Currency • TRUST

12. 3. PKI Server and Certificate MonitoringCommunity Solution PKI Certificate Verification MP (Raphael Burri) Class-based Discovery and Monitoring of Files and Shared Folders

13. Architecture and ConsiderationsPKI Certificate Verification Management Pack Certificate Store Architecture Highlights • Uses CertUtil.exeto discover certificates and CRLs. • Implements cookdown – single script for discovery & monitoring • Scales well to 1,000’s of objects Strategy • Only discover root 3rd party CA if necessary • Override to prevent SMS cert discovery CRLs Certificate Non-Root Certificate Root Certificate

14. 4. Monitor during business HoursMissing Feature Monitor Applications onlyduring business hours. Common Scenarios • System.SchedulerFilter

15. 4. Monitor during Business Hours Demo

16. 5. File, Folder and Share MonitoringChallenge Monitor file, folder and shares for availability, threshold and performance Discovery Availability Alerting Reporting Common Scenarios • File size, age and count • Folder size • SMB Share availability • File copy performance

18. 6. Basic / Specific Security Monitoring Rules Audit Active Directory changes on the Essentials 2010 platform (where ACS is not available) Minimal Config Type-based Views Built-in Report

19. 6. Basic / Specific Security Monitoring Rules Demo

20. 7. Monitoring and alerting on changes to the Default MP • Cause • Don’t use the disable option! • Educate the end-user! • Negativeeffects • Management Pack Dependencies • Limit your recovery capabilities

21. 7. Monitoring and alerting on changes to the Default MP Demo

22. Automation

23. 8. SavisionLiveMaps Common Scenarios Easy to implement Easily share those views Add relevancy • Need visualization

24. SavisionLiveMaps Logged on User Discovery Demo

25. 9. Scheduled Maintenance Mode Challenge Schedule maintenance mode for large groups of objects without complicated scripts Address HS and HSW maintenance automatically

26. 9. Scheduled Maintenance Mode Community Solution Web Maintenance Mode Scheduler (Steve Rachui) Simple GUI utility to automate management of maintenance mode schedules

27. Web Maintenance Mode Scheduler demo

28. 10. Community Knowledge BaseChallenge Provide users with a way to search for answers to alerts from the Operations and Essentials consoles Easy to Install Targeted Search Accurate Results Simple for Users to Contribute Common Scenarios • One-click Community Search • Integrated into Operations and SCE Consoles • Allow users to share their own solutions

29. 10. Community Knowledge BaseCommunity Solution ReSearchThis! KB and MP (Cameron Fuller) One-click search and share of System Center community knowledge bases from the Operations console ReSearchThis! ShareThis! • Mgmt Pack Tuning Guides • Alert Tuning Tips • Event Reference • Community MP Catalog • Share your System Center solution with the community • Dialogue with MVP / community moderators

30. ReSearchThis! KB / Custom Tasks demo

31. 11. Automated MPBackup Backup yourMP’s on a regular time! Common Scenarios • Automated MP backup solution

32. 11. Automated MPBackup Demo

33. 12. Management Pack Update Keepyour Management Pack up to date! RTFM! Test in lab Common Scenarios • Automated alerting when updated MP is available

34. 12. Management Pack Update Demo

35. 13. OpsMgrAgent Performance ImproveyourOpsMgr agent Performance! Easy to implement Direct Results You will be a hero! Common Scenarios • Wscript version MP • Anti Virus exlusions

36. Anti Virus Exclusions performance gain

37. 14. WMI Rebuild OpsMgr relies heavily on WMI!! Common Scenarios • RepairWMI.CMD • Install kb933061

38. 15. WMI Rebuild Performance gain

39. 15. Mobile device notification and response with AlarmPoint • AlertForwarding • Twoway communication

40. 15. Mobile Notification WithAlarmpoint Demo

41. 16. SCCM Dashboard for OpsMgr Use SCCM Dashboard to visualizeOpsMgrHealth ! Easy to Install Easy Access to Key information Common Scenarios • Integrated into Sharepoint • Create custom dashboards for different departments, based on site, user’s group membership

42. 16. SCCM Dashboard VisualizeOpsMgrHealth Demo

43. 17. Branch Office Maintenance ModeChallenge Stop alerts raised for branch office servers when WAN link goes down • Identify WAN Outage • Put Branch Servers in Maintenance Mode • Identify WAN Recovery • Remove Branch Servers from Maintenance Mode HQ BRANCH

44. 17. Branch Office Maintenance Mode Community Solution Branch Office Maintenance Mode (Steve Ross) Identification of WAN outage with automated maintenance mode for branch office servers

45. 18. ClosedAlertView

46. 19. DW Grooming Reduceyour Event Data withinyourOpsMgr DW and win DB space. USE OperationsManagerDW UPDATE StandardDatasetAggregation SET MaxDataAgeDays = ‘10’ WHERE GroomStoredProcedureName = 'EventGroom'

47. 20. More to Explore Other Great Extensions to Check Out • Virtual Machine Discovery MP • Remote Maintenance Mode MP (Derek Harkin) • NetApp Management Pack (Oskar Landman) • HP EVA Performance MP • Adobe Flash Mediaserver MP (Raphael Burri) • Agent Availability MP • Group Population from CMDB • Wake-on-LAN for Essentials (coming soon) • Ticketing for Essentials (coming soon)

48. Announcement • Community Day 2010

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