Kevin Greene IT Blog: January 2012

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

System Center 2012 Private Cloud CEP MMS 2012 Ticket Winner!!

"Congratulations! You have won a ticket to MMS 2012 (http://www.mms-2012.com/) through the Private Cloud Community Evaluation Program Community Contest!"

It was so nice to wake up this morning to the sight of the above email in my inbox telling me I've won a free ticket to the Microsoft Management Summit 2012 In Las Vegas as part of my participation and efforts contributing to the Microsoft System Center 2012 Private Cloud Community Evaluation Program (CEP).

This email follows hot on the heels of delivery of my Microsoft Touch Mouse that I also won from the CEP as the November winner of the contest.

I can't think of a better technical program that I've been involved in that has such expert speakers with deep levels of technical content sessions and one that rewards participants in this way with prizes of such great nominal and educational value.

There is still some time left to go on the System Center 2012 Private Cloud CEP and you can sign up at any time from the link below:

https://connect.microsoft.com/site799/program7383

If you want to learn more about the new range of System Center 2012 products that are due to be released in the first half of this year or want to look over some of the blog posts that won me this competition, then click on any of the links below:

Installation:

Installing System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

Installing System Center App Controller 2012

DPM 2012:

Upgrading System Center DPM 2010 to DPM 2012 Part 1

Upgrading System Center DPM 2010 to DPM 2012 Part 2

Managing and Monitoring System Center DPM 2012 with SCOM Part 1

Managing and Monitoring System Center DPM 2012 with SCOM Part 2

Managing and Monitoring System Center DPM 2012 with SCOM Part 3

Cloud Management with System Center:

Cloud Management with System Center - Building a Private Cloud with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

Cloud Management with System Center - Creating a Virtual Machine Template with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

Cloud Management with System Center - Creating a Service Template with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

Cloud Management with System Center - Connecting your private cloud to System Center App Controller 2012

Cloud Management with System Center - Customizing System Center App Controller 2012

Cloud Management with System Center - Connecting App Controller to Azure Part 1

Cloud Management with System Center - Connecting App Controller to Azure Part 2

Cloud Management with System Center - Integrating App Controller with SCOM

SCOM 2012:

SCOM 2012 - Network Monitoring Magic!

SCOM 2012 - The All New 3 Tier Application (360) Service Template

SCOM 2012 - Creating your very own custom Distributed Application Template

SCOM 2012 - Recording a Web Browser Session

SCOM 2012 - Monitoring the System Center 2012 App Controller Website

Thanks for reading and 'Viva Las Vegas!'

Friday, January 13, 2012

SCOM 2012 - Creating your very own custom Distributed Application Template - Part 3

This is the final post in my 3 part series on 'SCOM 2012- Creating your very own custom Distributed Application Template'. You can review Parts 1 & 2 of the series from the links below:

SCOM 2012 - Creating your very own custom Distributed Application Template - Part 1

SCOM 2012 - Creating your very own custom Distributed Application Template - Part 2

This series was created with the Microsoft System Center 2012 Private Cloud Community Evaluation Program (CEP) in mind and you can sign up or get more information on the program from the link below:

https://connect.microsoft.com/site799/program7383

This post will cover the final steps in the process such as editing the unsealed XML file, sealing the unsealed template and then importing it back into SCOM and testing that it works.

Carrying on from where we left off in Part 2, you should now have three files copied to the C:\MP directory on the root of your SCOM 2012 Management Server local disk. The three files are the unsealed distributed application template, the strong name key and the 'MPSeal' utility

Right mouse click on the unsealed custom template and select 'Edit' from the drop down menu

When the file opens, locate the string near the top of the file that starts with <ID> and replace the string name in there with the exact name that you gave to the unsealed distributed application template - making sure that you exclude the .XML extension. In the example below, I have called my file CustomDATemplate.xml so therefore the string that I will be adding as the <ID> is simply: CustomDATemplate as shown below

Three lines below the <ID> line, is another one called <NAME>. Again, replace the string that is in here with a display name that describes what the template is. See the graphic below for more

Once you have edited the file with the correct ID and Display Name, you need to confirm the location of your system management packs that were installed initially with SCOM 2012. The default installation of SCOM 2012 RC drops the system sealed management packs into the following location: C:\SCOM2012RC\ManagementPacks (see the screen below)

Note: The location of the system sealed management packs is important because we will need to specify this location when running the MPSeal utility against the unsealed template.

Now open up a command prompt with administrative privileges, browse to the C:\MP directory and run the following command - substituting file names and locations where necessary:

mpseal customdatemplate.xml /i c:\scom2012rc\managementopacks /Keyfile scomkey.snk /Company "Ergo"

The MPSeal utility then runs a verification and check on the unsealed template against its Management Pack references and ensures it can access any sealed dependencies from the specified location

Once the utility has finished, you should see the screen below confirming that the new .MP sealed file has been created

Browse back to the C:\MP directory and you will see two new files there now, one of which is your new sealed management pack - at last!!

Now all that's left to do is to import this into SCOM 2012 and test it!

Browse to the 'Administration' tab of the SCOM 2012 console, right mouse click on the 'Management Packs' link and then select 'Import Management Packs'

Click on 'Add' and then select 'Add from disk'

Click 'No' to confirm you don't want to search online for dependancies

Browse to the C:\MP directory on the SCOM 2012 Management Server and you should see both the sealed and unsealed Management Packs that reference your template. Click on the one that has the .MP extension and click on 'Open'

SCOM 2012 should quickly check the Management Pack and report back that it is OK to add into the environment. Click the 'Install' button to begin

Once completed you should see the 'Imported' status and you can then click 'Close'

When you take a look at the list of management packs imported into SCOM 2012, you should see your new one in there with a sealed reference of 'Yes' beside it

Now to test that the template works, open up the 'Authoring' tab again and right mouse click on 'Distributed Applications', then select 'Create a new distributed application' from the resulting menu

This time, you should see a new addition to your list of Distributed Application templates that you can choose from. Give it a name and description, select your new template and a management pack to store it in, then click 'OK'

The new distributed application should open up exactly the way that you configured it to every time! No more having to create new custom component groups each time you want to build a distributed application with the same components (in my case it would have been 90 times!)

Populate the component groups with objects as below

Save the new distributed application and check that it appears in the list of distributed applications and then right click on it and select 'Diagram View'

Now you should see the Diagram View of your newly created Distributed Application Service using your very own custom sealed Distributed Application Template!

SCOM 2012 - Creating your very own custom Distributed Application Template - Part 2

In Part 1 of this short series, I explained my reasons for wanting to create my own custom Distributed Application Template and also kicked off the download and installation of the Windows SDK software that will be needed later on.

In this post, we will build the custom distributed application the way we want it and then export it out of SCOM as an unsealed .XML Management Pack. Once that's done we will start the process on sealing the management pack using the Windows SDK tools.

Open the SCOM console and click on the 'Authoring' tab on the left hand side of the screen, then right mouse click on 'Distributed Applications' and select 'Create a new distributed application'

In the Distributed Application Designer window, type a name and description, select the 'Blank (Advanced)' option, choose an unsealed management pack to store the distributed application into and then click on 'OK'

Within the Distributed Application Designer workspace window, add the component groups and relationships as you wish but don't add in any servers or objects. Just the base template is all that we need at this point. It can be as complex or as basic as you like, to keep things simple, I have just added in three component groups below with some basic relationships

Once you're happy with your template, click on 'File' and then select 'Save as Template' from the drop down menu

Give the template a meaningful name and try to avoid any unusual characters as you will be referencing this name at a later step in this process. When you've named the template, save it to the local drive of your server as a .XML file

Click 'OK' from the message below confirming that you will have to make some changes to the template before it can be imported back into SCOM

Now, on the server that you installed the Windows SDK files to (in this case it's a SCOM 2012 Management Server), browse to the Microsoft Windows SDK 'CMD Shell' shortcut from the Start Menu and open it with adminsitrative permissions

When you have the CMD Shell open, you need to use the 'Strong Name Tool' (sn.exe) utility that comes with the Windows SDK to create a key file that will be used to seal the unsealed distributed application template management pack.

Type the following (you can change the .SNK file name to whatever you wish) in the CMD Shell to create your key file:

sn -k scomkey.snk

Once the above command completes, browse to the location of the installed SDK files and you should see your new .SNK key file ready to go. The default location of the SDK files is:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0

When you have located your new key file, create a new folder on the C:\ drive of your server called 'MP' and copy the new .SNK keyfile and the unsealed custom distributed application template along with the 'MPSeal' utility from the SCOM Support Tools directory all into this new folder.

The SCOM 2012 RC Support Tools are located at the following location for a 64 Bit server:

C:\SCOM2012RC\SupportTools\AMD64

At this point, you should now have three files in the new C:\MP folder on the local disk of your SCOM 2012 Management Server as the screenshot above shows

In Part 3 of this series, I will go through the process of editing the ID and Name of the custom template along with sealing it and importing it back into SCOM to complete the process.

If you want to learn more about System Center 2012, then you can sign up for the Microsoft System Center 2012 Private Cloud CEP from the link below:

https://connect.microsoft.com/site799/program7383

SCOM 2012 - Creating your very own custom Distributed Application Template - Part 1

Over the last 12 months I've been working on some pretty nice System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) projects but I find that the larger the customer site / IT infrastructure, the more repetitive tasks there are to be carried out!

One such project I've been working on requires the creation of over 90 distributed applications that will reflect each of the remote sites around the globe that SCOM is monitoring. Each of these 90 distributed applications would contain the exact same component groups - for example, they'd all have a Domain Controllers group, a File Server group, an SQL group and a Web Sites group. The only difference for each of the 90 distributed applications would be the actual windows servers that would be members of each of the component groups as they would be specific to each of the sites they were located in.

To build a distributed application with only four component groups is real easy but the problem is when you have to go and create the same distributed application 90 times - not fun!!

This process will work exactly the same on both SCOM 2007 R2 and SCOM 2012 and I'll be demonstrating this on SCOM 2012.

SCOM 2007 R2 comes with three distributed application templates:

Line of Business Web Application
Messaging
Blank (Advanced)

SCOM 2012 comes with four distributed application templates:

3-Tier Application (360)
Line of Business Web Application
Messaging
Blank (Advanced)

Although a new distributed application template (3-Tier Application (360) - see my previous post on this for more information) has been added to SCOM 2012, it is still limited to 3 tiers and a client perspective component group which probably won't be flexible enough to fit in with the type of distributed application you might want.

As a result of these template limitations, I set out to build my own template that incorporated all of the customer specific component groups that I wanted and one that could be easily deployed alongside the default templates that came out of the box with SCOM.

To begin with, we will first need to download and then install the Windows Software Development Kit from the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=3138

When you have downloaded the SDK, kick off the installer and move through the following screens

Make sure you select all of the components here, including the 'Redistributable Components' at the bottom

This screen can take a little while to complete but when it has all finished, you can close the SDK installer and move on to the next steps which I will cover in Part 2.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

SCOM 2012 - Recording a Web Browser Session

In my previous post, I outlined the steps needed to enable monitoring of a website URL with System Center 2012 Operations Manager (SCOM 2012) and how to configure it to report back on specific http error codes and latency thresholds.

This post builds on the 'Web Application Transaction Monitoring' model in SCOM 2012 and demonstrates how to record a web browser session for times when you need to monitor web logins and user experience.

Update Oct 2016: If you've landed on this post and want to know how to get this feature working with later versions of Internet Explorer, then check out this post from Marnix Wolf to get you sorted.

I'll be using the System Center 2012 Private Cloud Community Evaluation Program (CEP) website as an example. If you're interested in learning more about System Center 2012, then you can sign up to the CEP at any time using the link below:

https://connect.microsoft.com/site799/program7383

First up, click on the 'Authoring' button from the SCOM 2012 console down the bottom left hand side of the screen, select the 'Web Application Transaction Monitoring' link on the left then click on the 'Record a browser session' link on the right hand side on the screen

In the 'Web Application Editor', enter a name and description and choose an unsealed management pack to save the monitor to

From the web application editor, click on the 'Start Capture' link.

Note: At this point an Internet Explorer window will open, but depending on the type of server or workstation you have installed the SCOM web console on, if it is a 64 Bit server or workstation (which most likely it is), then you will just get a blank Internet Explorer screen like the one below with no Web Recorder add-in present.

If you are presented with the blank Internet Explorer screen with no Web Recorder add-in as above, it is because the 64 Bit server has automatically opened the 32 Bit version of Internet Explorer which currently doesn't support the Web Recorder add-in.

To enable the Web Recorder add-in, we need to make a small change in the registry of the 64 Bit server. Open 'Regedit' and navigate to the following location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppPaths\IEXPLORE.EXE

The registry keys on the left hand side of the screen above show that Internet Explorer will always run from the 32 Bit 'Program Files (x86)' location as opposed to the 64 Bit default 'Program Files' location.

We need to edit both of these values and remove the (x86) reference from each line as the screenshots below show

The newly edited registry keys should now look like this

Once this registry change is complete, simply go back to the Web Application Editor and then click on the 'Start Capture' link again

Now the 64 Bit version of Internet Explorer will open and on the left hand side of the screen, you will see the 'Web Recorder' add-in. Click on the 'Record' button and then browse to the website that you want to configure for monitoring within SCOM 2012

As you browse to the website that you are recording and login, you should see the Web Recorder screen on the left hand side fill up with the url references for each click that you make

When you are finished your browsing, click on the 'Stop' button from the Web Recorder screen on the left hand side to finish the recording and return to the SCOM Web Application Editor

The screen below now has all of the steps imported from the Web Recorder session under the Web Site - Requests screen. To assign a watcher node for this synthetic transaction, click on the 'Configure Settings' link on the left hand side of the screen

Click on the 'Watcher Node' tab of the Web Application Properties and then select the relevant server that you want to assign the task of running this test from and specify the frequency of the test here too. When complete, click on the 'OK' button to close the Web Application properties window

Now click on the 'Apply' button down the bottom of the screen to save your changes

When al changes have been saved successfully, you can close the Web Application Editor window

In the Authoring screen, you should now see your newly recorded browser session alongside any other web application monitors that you have created within SCOM 2012

To verify that your new recorded browser session monitor is working, go back to the 'Monitoring' tab in the SCOM console and expand the 'Web Application Transaction Monitoring' folder, then click on the 'Web Applications State' link to show the health state of your newly recorded web browser session