Jalasoft Xian Network Manager Io SP2 has RTMed !

Jalasoft Xian Network Manager Io SP2, a partner add-on which extends OpsMgr monitoring capabilities to non-Windows environment such as Linux,UNIX, network devices and even VMWare Virtual Center has RTMed.

What's new in SP2 ?

There are several improvements in Xian Io SP2. The ones that have had the most impact on functionality and performance are detailed below.

Improved Communication between Xian Io and Management Servers.

The Xian Data Server no longer uses the SDK to send counters and events to the Root Management Server; it can now communicate with secondary Management Servers using the Xian Connector Module. This feature increases the monitoring capacity of Xian while at the same time improving stability.

Improved Management Packs

Xian’s ‘Smart Management Packs’ have been redesigned to take up less memory and cause less congestion allowing those resources to be used to enhance Xian’s monitoring capacity.

Multiple Xian Environments

To increase the number of devices you can monitor with Xian you can add an independent Xian installation to your OpsMgr Management Group. The amount of additional devices you can monitor with a second installation of Xian depends on hardware configuration, number of active rules and rule execution intervals among others. You can do this as many times as necessary.

Automatic Health Reset

When a rule sends an alert to Operations Manager, it remains open until a success event is sent to close the alert. What Automatic Health Reset does, is once the rule is removed and is no longer monitoring that node, it sends a success event so that remaining alerts in Operations Manager disappear.

Improved SNMP engine

In Xian Io SP1 the snmp counter could, on rare occasions send wrong counters. Through the use of a new and more robust SNMP module this is no longer possible.

Enhanced Monitoring Capabilities

The number of devices a single installation of Xian Io SP2 can monitor has been increased to approximately 1000.

More reports

To have more possibilities to analyze your performance counters Xian Io has now even more reports to help you. Every Management Pack comes with over 100 build in Reports!

Available Smart Management Packs

The Jalasoft Smart Management Packs provide the intelligence to organize, process, and analyze the information on monitored devices into the views, computer groups, and reporting capabilities of Ops Mgr 2007 using the Xian Connector for Ops Mgr 2007.

• Cisco Switches
• Cisco VPN Concentrators
• Cisco Routers
• Cisco PIX/ASA
• Cisco Wireless
• HP Procurve Switches
• F5 Big Ip
• Linux Servers
• Solaris Servers
• IBM AIX Server
• VMWare Virtual Center
• Linux MySQL
• APC UPS
• Generic Network Device
• Availability (ICMP only)

For more information, take a look at:

http://www.jalasoft.com/Web/Product/Product.aspx?id=44

Configuring Email Notification channel in Service Manager

Extremely straightforward and simple.

• Logon to your Service Manager Console
• Go to the Administration space and expand the Administration -> Notification node
• Click on the Channels node
• On the Middle pane, select Email Notification Channel and click the Edit link on the right pane
• 
• This will launch the Email Notification Settings window
• 
• Tick on the Enable e-mail notifications checkbox. Click on the Add button to launch the Add SMTP Server window
• 
• Input your mail server settings and click OK.
• Enter the Return Address and click OK again to save your settings and now you have added your email notification channel.

pre-Reqs for Service Manager

For those who are like me who just wouldn't be interested in reading installation notes and eventually got burnt. I will be kind enough to share this with

you after having my hands charred a couple of times.

One of the key pre-Reqs when you want to install and configure Service Manager is to get you action accounts configured properly. Here I have copied

excerpts from the Initial Config guide and let it be our light ...

1) Create an Active Directory group of users that will be assigned to the role of Service Manager administrators of both the data warehouse and Service Manager management groups. For example, create the group SM_Admins. This group of users must be in the same domain that Service Manager is in. Users from any other domain, even child domains, are not supported.

2)For the account you use to run Setup, verify the following:

• Must be a SQL Server sysadmin on the SQL server where you install the databases.
  

• Must be a member of the data warehouse management group administrators. For example, add this account to the SM_Admins group.

3)Identify or create a domain account that will be used for the Service Manager account. For example, create the domain account SM_Acct.

• This account must be in the same domain that Service Manager is in. Accounts from any other domain, even child domains, are not supported.
  

4) For the domain account, for example, SM_Acct, make sure of the following:

• The domain account is a member of the group you created in step 1. For example, make the domain account SM_Acct a member of the SM_Admins group.
• The domain account is a member of the local administrator group on the computer that will host the Service Manager management server and the data warehouse server.
• The domain account is a member of the sysadmin role for the data warehouse SQL Server as well as for the Service Manager database SQL ServerThe domain account is a member of the Content Manager role (or higher) in SQL Server Reporting Services.

5)Make sure that the SQL instances used for Service Manager databases are using port number 1433.
6)If you are installing the databases on a remote computer running SQL Server, the computer account (for example, $) of the computer you are running Setup on must be a local administrator on the SQL Server computer.

How do I know whether my Active Directory Connector successfully sync data ?

One of the key configuration activity that you need to do when you setup Service Manager Beta 1 is to import objects from Active Directory into Service Manager. This can be achieved via the Active Directory connector which will act as the synchronization engine between both components.

However regardless whether it's is successfully synchronized or not, you will always get a successful sync message.


But then, my objects is still not synchronized? So what is the problem ? How do I know whether it is an error or synchronization is still running ?

To have a detailed view on what happened and whether the synchronization is successful, go over to Event Viewer and open the Operations Manager log.
(Yes, Service Manager uses the same framework/engine model as Operations Manager R2)

Find events where the Event Source is "Lfx Service" and if there is an error you will be able to see something like this:


By now, you should be able to see what is the details of the error for the synchronization process.

huh, my HyperV images can't be imported ! wtf !!!

Like most other posts, this is a reminder as well as some form of sharing with folks out there with regards to HyperV images.

I have a few HyperV images which I exported from my Server. Copied them to my notebook and starts importing them and it failed. All 3 of em' !!! My import failed with the following error

"Failed to import the virtual machine from import directory 'E:\VM\OpsMgr\'. Error: One" or more arguments are invalid(0x80070057) "

Good old friend Google came to the rescue and after a few searches, managed to find a solution from this blog entry in http://blogs.msdn.com/rextang/archive/2008/11/27/9146157.aspx (Clap clap)

The trick here is to 'tweak' the .EXP file inside the VM folder.

• Open the .exp file with notepad (the file should be in the Virtual Machine folder).
  
• The .exp file is actually an xml file so for those who are familiar with xml, this should be peanuts.
  
• Search for "Msvm_VirtualSystemGlobalSettingData" and you will be able to see the following :
  
• <INSTANCE
  CLASSNAME="Msvm_VirtualSystemGlobalSettingData">
  ...
  ScopeOfResidence" TYPE="string">
  
  e7668fbc-216e-4ed1-8ce3-3b932b42e22b
  
  
• Delete the entire VALUE tag ... and save your file. (Yes from to )
  
• Import the VM again. Voi'la ! the import succeeds !

Pssst .... remember to backup your exp file before you do that and save the backup copy on another location which is not inside the Virtual Machine folder else you will have another error.

Remove ancient VM Additions

I have a couple of Windows 2003 SP2 sysprep VMs created from Virtual PC 2004 SP1. ( Yes, I know those are ancient vhds) ... and plans to move these into Hyper V.

So VM migration 101, remove the VMAdditions but wait a minute those VMAdditions are so ancient ... and I only have Virtual Server 2005 SP1 ! Looks like I need to do it the hard way !

- Downloaded VPC 2004 SP1.
- Extract the VM Additions.msi
- Get the VMAdditions.iso file
- Load my VMs on Virtual Server, and load the VMAdditions which was extracted earlier. Remove VM Additions.

Just in case that if you want to skip the steps, I have uploaded the VMAdditions.iso in my skydrive. You can download this and have a much easier experience. :D

http://cid-8b468d6e5c4e0782.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/VMAdditions.iso

Unseal Management Pack

I have trouble remembering this so I am going to blog this as a REMINDER !
To unseal a Management Pack you need to firstly get a PowerShell script which you can download from Boris's blog, there is an attachment MPtoXML.zip Copy the file into a location in your computer say C:\

Run the following as an example:

powershell C:\MpToXml.ps1 -mpFilePath:'d:\Microsoft.Exchange.Server.2003.Monitoring.mp' -outputDirectory:'d:\'

Thanks Boris for this wonderful script and blog entry.
I need to make sure I will not forget this AGAIN.