SCOM- Could Not Determine the FSMO Role Holder

Update June 2012: I've just recently came across a cool workaround blog post on this issue by Stefan Roth that requires a change to each Domain Controller you are managing that creates a symbolic link that would allow this task to be run each time. Check out his post below:

http://blog.scomfaq.ch/2011/12/04/support-tools-task-in-active-directory-management-pack-fails/

When you install the Active Directory (AD) Monitoring Management Pack into your SCOM/OpsMgr environment, from time to time you will come across the error 'Could Not Determine the FSMO Role Holder', followed quickly by the errror 'AD Client Side - Script Based Test Failed to Complete'.

This is an annoying little error that has a relatively easy fix.

Cameron Fuller and the guys behind the 'System Center Operations Manager Unleashed' series have a good post on their blog containing a lot of resolutions to these type of errors generated from the Active Directory Management Pack - see the link below:

http://opsmgrunleashed.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/opsmgr-r2-by-example-the-active-directory-management-pack/

Following the information from the blog post above, we would select the 'Netdom Query FSMO' task on the right hand side of the screen when you have the 'Could Not Determine the FSMO Role Holder' alert highlighted

 This will open a window like the one below. Have a look at the location of the 'Support Tools Install Dir' Value. It is pointing to the '%ProgramFiles%\Support Tools' location

 When we run the task without changing anything, it will come back and fail with an error like below

The reason it fails is because the NetDom utility doesn't exist on the Domain Controller that is raising the alert in the %ProgramFiles%\Support Tools location. It is existent in the '%windir%\system32' location instead. If we choose to re-run the task but this time select the 'Override' button and modify the 'Support Tools Install Dir' value to point to the correct location of the NetDom utility, it will complete successfully as the screens below show.

Most of the time, simply by carrying out the above procedure, this error will go away as the FSMO role holder has been enumerated but in a few instances, we need to make one or two more small changes.

If the alert comes back after the above process, all you need to do is to locate the 'NetDom' utility from within the %windir%\System32 directory, create a new folder under the 'Program Files' folder on the Domain Controller giving the error called 'Support Tools' and then copy the 'NetDom' utility to here like the screenshot below

Now you can run the task again successfully without having to make any overrides or custom changes to your SCOM environment.

Hopefully after these changes, the rule should be able to run the NetDom utility and determine the FSMO role holder of each domain controller.