Installing Opalis Part I – Opalis 6.2.2

WARNING: This POST IS A LONG EXHAUSTIVE ONE AND YOU HAVE BEEN FOREWARNED

The recent release has created many waves throughout the entire System Center community and I wanted to share some of my experiences throughout my journey exploring Opalis since it joined the System Center familiy. And I would like to start my sharing with some postings on the installation steps for Opalis from 6.2.2 –> SP1 –> 6.3

Now in Part I, I will commence with the installation of Opalis 6.2.2, the very first version of Opalis since it joined the good old System Center family

• To kickstart things, my Opalis server runs on Windows 2008 R2 (x64) and has been installed with MS SQL Server 2008 SP1 (x64)
• You will also need Windows PowerShell 2.0 installed (to automate Operator Console installation)
• Once that is done, extract your installation resources
• The installation version would be \Opalis Integration Server 6.22_6.2.2.5229 as depicted in the picture below

• Kickstart Installation by executing the Setup.exe
• Click on Install Opalis Integration Server

• On the next screen, click on Install the Management Server

• Accept the Licensing Agreement and goes Next
• Proceed with defaults until you reach the Logon Information step. In this step, you need to provide a valid user account that will be used by the Opalis Management Service (basically that is your Service Account). Enter a valid user and proceed to commence installation of the Management Server.

• The next thing you need to do is to configure the datastore (which simply means configure the Opalis DB). Simply click Configure Datastore to commence the process

• The next screen will need your input the select which database will host the Opalis DB and since we LOVE Microsoft so much … I will choose MS SQL Server and proceed

• Now in the Server details, enter the DB server and the authentication method and proceed (In this case, my SQL is the same as the Opalis server and I have set to use Windows Authentication during the installation of SQL Server)

• Give the name for the Opalis DB and proceed to let installer do the rest.

• The next step is to import a license for Opalis. In the License Manager, click on Import. When prompted to Import license, enter the license key and the corresponding license file made available for you either as a customer or an evaluator. Once you are don, click Close

• The next thing that you want to do is to Install the client

• Accept the license terms and accept defaults and let the rest roll by itself.

AND YOU THOUGHT IT’S ALL DONE SO EASILY ??? THINK AGAIN … YOU HAVE JUST GONE THROUGH THE EASY PART.

• When I first started to install Opalis, I dreaded the way they forced us to install the Operator Console because unlike the always easy Microsoft Wizard based approach, we are tasked to “install” the Operator Console by a series of copy & paste of java object which is SIMPLY PAINFUL
• Even preparing the installation for Operator Console is a bitch simply because you need to manually prepare the pre-requisites which would be:
• Download JDK 6 Update 4 from http://java.sun.com/products/archive/
• Download JBoss Application Server 4.2.3.GA from http://jboss.org/jbossas/downloads/
• Then you have a very long list of Pre-Requisites of Java Objects that is scattered all over the internet which I am kind enough to download and made available for you at my SKYDRIVE folder at http://cid-8b468d6e5c4e0782.office.live.com/browse.aspx/Opalis%20Pre-Req
• Well, apparently things have changed when SP1 was rolled out where our lives are made abit easier where Microsoft provides us with an installation script to automate the installation steps.
• Extract the Installation Resources for the following \Opalis 6.2.2\Opalis Operator Console Installer Script 1.0_1.0.0.0001
• Run the OpalisOperatorConsoleInstaller.msi file
• Create a new folder C:\Libraries

Copy all the pre-requisites file that you have downloaded from my skydrive into this folder

• Install Java Development Kit 6 Update 4 by using the default settings.
• Set the JAVA_HOME system variable to the directory of the local Java Development Kit. By default, the location is C:\Program Files\Java(x86)\Jdk1.6.0_04.
• Add %JAVA_HOME%\bin to the Path Environment variable.
• Extract the contents of the JBoss Application Server 4.2.3.GA to the folder where the JBoss Application Server will run. Eg C:\JBoss.
• Launch the command prompt, change to the C:\Libraries folder and run the command

java -jar JAXWS2.1.2-20070917.jar.

• A license dialog box appears.Accept the Sun Microsystems, Inc. License Terms. The JAXWS2.1.2-20070917.jar file will be unpackaged.
• Confirm that the \Jaxws-ri\Lib folder was created.
• Click Start, click Programs, click Accessories, click the Windows PowerShell folder, and then click the Windows PowerShell item.
• At the Windows PowerShell prompt, type

set-executionpolicy RemoteSigned.

• Type the full path to the location where you installed the InstallOpConsole.ps1 file. For example, C:\OpConsoleInstaller\installOpConsole.ps1

• Follow the on-screen prompts. You will be asked to provide configuration information, for example:

a. The full path to the location of the \JBoss folder.

b. The full path to the location of the \OperatorConsole folder.

c. The full path to the location of the \Libraries folder.

d. The database type (Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle).

e. The name of the database server, for example, localhost.

f. The database authentication type (Windows authentication or SQL Server authentication). For SQL Server, provide the user name and password.

g. The name of the Opalis database.

h. The user authentication type (Stand-alone or Active Directory). For Active Directory, provide the Active Directory root DN, Domain Controller, Port, and SAM account name for the administrator group.

• When the Operator Console installation complete message appears, click Close
• Start JBoss by executing the following command in the <JBOSS>\bin folder:

run.bat -b 0.0.0.0

Ladies and Gentleman, you will know that the Operators Console installation is successful when you see the following:

Now I will end the rather exhaustive post on this Part I and will continue with the next Part where I will share how do you patch Opalis to SP1.

Note: I will only deploy my Action Servers & Integration Pack once I am done with the installation up to version 6.3

Till then …. STAY TUNED.

What else do I need to do to protect my SharePoint 2010 Server

I got hit with this problem when I was trying to create a Protection Group in DPM to protect our SharePoint 2010 server in our R&D lab. I have already did the necessary pre-requisites on the SharePoint server such as:

• ConfigureSharepoint.exe –enableSharepointProtection
  
• ConfigureSharepoint.exe EnableSPSearchProtection
  

However I still got hit with the error of not meeting the pre-requisites when I tried to create a new protection group for SharePoint

I went over to the SharePoint Server and noticed that DPM agent could not find the registry key that denotes the SharePoint version:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Share Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\Version

I immediately go to the Regedit and yes indeed that the registry key value is not there. I manually added a new String Value and named it as Version and give the value as 14.0.0.4762.

Go back to DPM console and Voila ! it works !!!

Opalis 6.3 is released

I have been following on Opalis since it was bought over by Microsoft earlier this year and has been impressed by what it can do since. And with the recent release of Opalis, the version 6.3 now supports Opalis installation running on Windows Server 2008 R2 (Yes, unfortunately as at Opalis 6.22 SP1 we can only run them from Windows 2003 which some of my customers gives the evil grin smile). Another noteworthy addition is the introduction of Integration Packs to support Microsoft Sytem Center Suite of products namely:

• System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (which supports SCCM 2007, SCCM 2007 R2 & SCCM 2007 SP2)
  
• System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Support for OpsMgr 2007, OpsMgr 2007 R2 has already been there since Opalis 6.2.2 and as of installation on 6.3 I have not seen additional objects)
  
• System Center Data Protection Manager
  
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager
  
• System Center Service Manager 2010
  

Those who are interested can download the 180 day trial from

http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/opalis.aspx

I have been lucky enough the be able to participate in the BETA testing of version 6.3 and honestly I feel that the new IPs are extremely interesting to explore on. Honestly, Don't expect the IPs can do wonders and and able to automate/integrate with all the functionalities of the System Center products as its still V1.0.

As I am working on Opalis for quite some time, I do have some thoughts that I hope to share … stay tuned.

OMG !!! I can't monitor new servers in OpsMgr

Recently I bumped into this problem. Apparently every new servers (that is being installed with SCOM monitoring agent) cannot be monitored by SCOM. You can clearly see from the OpsMgr console that I have tons of servers with the status of Not Monitored.

Bad News + Tension = ~non stop sweating~

I checked all my agent communication ports and nothing is wrong. My Management Server event logs doesn't show any significant errors. The only thing I got was heaps of


Event 20070
The OpsMgr Connector connected to (RMS FQDN), but the connection was closed immediately after authentication occured. The most likely cause of this error is that the agent is not authorized to communicate with the server, or the server has not received configuration. Check the event log on the server for the presence of 20000 events, indicating that agents which are not approved are attempting to connect.

Event 21023
OpsMgr has no configuration for management group (managementgroupname) and is requesting new configuration from the Configuration Service.

Event 21402
Operations Manager has discarded 1 items in management group (managementgroupname) , which came from $$ROOT$$. These items have been discarded because no valid route exists at this time. This can happen when new devices are added to the topology but the complete topology has not been distributed yet. The discarded items will be regenerated.

Not long after that, my RMS starts to generate heaps of Warning in the Event Viewer. I get tons of
Event 29106 indicating problem writing data into the OpsMgr database. Somehow I got an impression that something is not right the Management Pack.

I made a query to the OpsMgr database to look for which Management Pack that was affected and apparently something is amiss with the Windows Server 2003 MP in my case.

I quickly look back at the Management Pack and the Windows Server 2003 MP is not updated whilst the Windows Server Operating System library has been updated. Maybe certain objects was removed from the data structure when the new Base OS library was updated but then the Windows Server 2003 MP was not updated to tally with the changes done.

I updated the Windows Server 2003 Management Pack and all is well. The new servers have successfully reported back to the system and problem solved !

Synthetic Transaction: Cannot find Web Recorder in Internet Exploer

Issue:
When you start to capture a web session (for the application that you want to monitor, the browser does not load the Web Recorder component hence you could not capture the web session that you intend to monitor.
























Cause:
This happens if you try to record/capture the session on a x64 machine. This is because you need to launch Internet Explorer (x64) to get Web Recorder loaded.The default path of Internet Explorer is actually the x86 version hence the Web Recorder component could not be loaded.

Resolution:
Change the default path of Internet Explorer by changing the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\IEXPLORE.EXE\(Default)

The key value should be - C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE


Note: Internet Explorer needs to be close and reopen (if its open existingly). Once you are done, click on Start Capture from the Web Application Editor and the browser will now