Although I technically received the congratulations email several days ago, I debated about whether or not I should post it. But I might as well. Well, what is it already?
As for my workload, well I’m quite busy at the moment, so posts may be a tad sparse. There’s an MS engineer on site at this client, essentially to backup that yes, these are really the only ways to do this. I’m trying to bang out this SDK connector service, which essentially is the culmination of other posts I’ve written regarding the fine tuning of alerts via alert name. Some of what I’m going to be accomplishing is in R2, but it’s not RTM yet and as such I need to act just like it doesn’t exist.
It has a new name now, the OpsMgr Alert Wrangler. It’s much like some of the code I’ve written here, except for it uses an XML config file instead of having everything hardcoded, and it hopes to be a little bit smarter about how it accomplishes things. This is really my first real foray into programming anything serious, so once it’s at a stable enough place I’ll be throwing it on CodePlex so you can all make fun of me and tear it apart.
There is an additional method to narrow alerts, and it seems like it would really work well - and that is the Alert Category; right now it has things like availability, DSIntegration, performance, custom, etc etc. I can’t find a way to properly add a new category - yet. By all accounts, the SDK documentation says I can’t - the categories are static coded members of the EnerpriseManagement.Configuration namespace, but that’s not to say there isn’t something undocumented. I’ll keep tapping away at it.
I need to bang together a new contest, and this time give away something really good, like some copies of Sapien Primalscript and such - which will come soon when I finish my ‘I <3 Primalscript’ post fairly soon.
I also to work more on the Wiki, work on my video Q&A, and about 2 dozen other things - there’s really a free moment!
I would have posted this yesterday, but I wanted to do some testing first. Twelve hours ago the PowerShell team announced the release of V2 CTP3. It adds a lot of great things into the mix. I wanted to verify that it plays well with OpsMgr and as suspected it does.
Just a note - you’ll need to install PowerShell v1 for a new OpsMgr install. But you can then remove it and install a newer version. I typically run the newest v2 CTP release on my laptop, though I remain at v1 on the production servers.
I’ve been reading and hearing all over the place how complicated and difficule Operations Manager is. You’re half-right. It’s immensely complicated when compared to previous editions, and when it’s your first exposure to it. I’m aiming to change all that, and I’m trying it in a new medium - video! So watch the video below (Or if your firewall rules don’t prohibit it, go directly to the YouTube link) and post a video response asking me your question. Any question.
I’ll do my best to answer it with the help of the OpsMgr Army and screencast it all!
Congratulations are in order to Jim and Zolon, they won an autographed Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed and a Sapien Schwag pack - who will win next? Maybe it’s you! The prizes are getting better and better!
Please forgive the delay in posts, but trust me, I’ve been busy.
Shortly after this post I’m going to make a valiant attempt to get the new site up. Though I’ve learned that to import a Wordpress blog into Drupal, I need to install Drupal 5, run an import, then upgrade to 6. So yeah, we’ll see how that goes.
For the past several days I’ve been in an MS workshop entitled ‘Vital Signs’. It’s essentially a performance tuning course which focused on the counters and thresholds to watch out for. To commemorate the occassion, I’m working on a Windows Diagnostics Management Pack - which is mostly a group of tasks to run against a remote machine - collecting a variety of counters and analyzing it via SPA.
You’ve got about 5 hours to enter the contest, and then it’s all done. I’ve lined up additional items for upcoming contests, such as the top notch screen capture program Snagit by TechSmith. Thanks to them for that!
And I’ve been doing a lot of non-OpsMgr powershell work. Since I did intend for Pavleck.NET to include ‘general’ IT topics, I think I should start posting them - been working on a bunch of Amazon web services stuff.
I’ve gone an extended last month’s contest a couple of weeks because I’m waiting for my lanyards to show up AND I really want more people to have signed up, because the prizes are just going to keep on getting better! So if you haven’t, go sign up @ Contest Machine - I don’t keep any personal info, seriously!
Additionally, the next few things I’m working on are an extension to the OpsMgr audible alert - I’ll show you 2 more ways to do it; Via WinRM & PowerShell and via a custom web service and connector. Look for that, soon!
As I add more and more things to this site, Wordpress ceases to be able to properly handle it all - it’s time to move up to a more suitable CMS. So upon the advice of fellow #powershell member Sepeck, I’m moving it all over to a nice and shiny Drupal install.
With a proper CMS, you’ll have a much easier time accessing all of the scripts, downloads, tips & tricks, and contests offered here - and I won’t have to fight with the system so much to get it to do what I want it to do. You’ll also find an awesome time saver; the combined OpsMgr Feed Aggregator - featuring all of the major players in the OpsMgr world on one page. Like today, it would have been covered with a solid wall of “R2 beta is out!”.
Additionally, there is something that’s in enough of a ready state to show you. It’s in a fairly rough state right now as I steal time to clean things up, but I present to you the Pavleck.NET OpsMgr Wiki. It’s based on the wonderful Deki Wiki software, and I’m quickly falling in love with it. And thanks to some PoSh goodness by Jaykul, you can see the get-help for all of the Command Shell cmdlets. Right now I’m using the free version until I figure out just how active and used it is - the Pro version is only $99 though. Although that’s not the most expensive price in the world, it will take a little time for me to budget - unless you’d like to help. Any donations received go towards the improvement of this site AND awesome prizes to give away to you all! Feel like donating? Awesome! Please click the button below:
Everyone who donates at least $5 will receive a free Pavleck.NET lanyard. They aren’t here yet but they will be. And might I add, they do look quite stunning! Get rid of that company-logo’d cheapie with a high quality Pavleck.NET lanyard. 5/8″ thick, silkscreened logo onto the strong polyester. And it features a break away so you don’t kill yourself, and so you can pop those thumb drives off in 3 seconds. Donations of $10 or above will have a chance to see attached to that Lanyard a 4, 8, 16, or even a ginormous 32GB Corsair Flash Voyager USB drive! So open those eWallets ;).
Greetings my fellow OpsMgr admins! I’m back from vacation with 100% more married then before! And I come bearing gifts!1
Yes, that’s right, it’s contest time again. This time I’m offering up 2 things: 1 autographed copy of System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed. This is a fairly rare item as it’s one of less then a half dozen signed by all the authors. I had to do dirty dirty things to Cameron to get it. I’m not proud, but for my peeps I go the distance!
A copy of SCOM2007 Unleashed signed by all the authors
The second item is a little teaser prize package from the wonderful folks over at Sapien Technologies. Soon I’ll be posting a new contest with oodles of Sapien prizes - from the PrimalScript Universal Resource Kit to flying monkies and more! That entire contest/post will be centered around setting up PrimalScript as the development environment for us OpsMgr Admins. You’ll love it! This current package, however, isn’t as illustrious: It contains a Sapien portfolio, PicoPad, Post-It notes, a credit card sized flash drive and an awesome pen!
A little teaser of whats to come from Sapien!
Additionally I’d like to offer up some SDK app loving I’ve been baking all day!
I’m working on a neat console application that was initially called Alert Utility, and is now just called the OpsMgr Utility. It reports on a variety of things and allows you to interact with the system in a variety of ways.
I’m not much of a programmer, so I need to start out slow - so the first thing I whipped up is a little utility called SCOM-CloseAll. Simply put, it takes 2 arguments - your RMS and an optional comment to insert when you resolve the alert. It then connects to the SDK service on the RMS, retrieves all open alerts, then resolves them. And yes, it does ask if you truly want to do this. It’s in beta, so I’d love it if you all could test it out for me. This is a perfect solution to handle those pesky alert storms and another tool in the box.
Take a look at the screenshots then download it here.
Showing the initial startup of the Alert Closer
Showing the progress bar indicating what % of alerts have been closed
Even though no one bought me anything OR even got me a giftcard. I guess I’m the only one that does that stuff at other peoples sites heh [↩]
First off I wish to congratulate Joel “Jaykul” Bennett from HuddledMasses.org (Awesome powershell site, a must read) and MaryBeth Issac - they both won a $32 gift card from Amazon.Com!
October is a busy month for me. I’m taking several weeks off - one to work on an OpsMgr connector and the other to celebrate my wedding on the 24th. Oh, and if you’d like to congratulate me I won’t complain - here’s an Amazon.com wish list, our wedding registry, one from Target and one from Macy’s. But we also love ThinkGeek and Microcenter gift cards!1
I’ll be starting off November with a bang and with an amazing contest. First on the contest block is a pretty rare copy of System Center Operations manager 2007 Unleashed - signed by all of the original authors - only 5 or so copies exist like this! And then equally exciting is we’ll be giving away some Sapien schwag - the fine folks sent over a nice little package contain copies of PrimalScript Enterprise, The PrimalScript Universal Resource Kit, USB flash drives, monkeys, binders and more!
This never works, but I might as well continue to give it a shot, right? [↩]
Posted by Jeremy D. Pavleck on 18th September 2008
I’ve been working on several things all in parallel, and I’ll give you a little insight into them all.
But first, don’t forget to enter the Pavleck.NET Contest for your chance to win 1 of two Amazon.Com gift cards. We’re currently at a paltry 10 entries, so your chances are pretty good to say the least. If I get a good turnout for this, I’ll make this a regular event - I already have next months prize ready, too. A rare copy of System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed - signed by all the authors. Not many of these exist, but I have one for you!
What’s I’m working on:
Writing a small MOM 2005 to SCOM 2007 migration report script. Examines your agents from MOM and compares them with what’s installed in SCOM.
Attempting to write a small service that will handle custom alert notifications by matching alert names to notification groups through the SDK. A simple XML file is used to create the configuration, and it’s as easy to setup as this:
As does an article (With a nifty flow chart!) of the steps to take to handle an alert storm, from the console all the way to SQL - get that system back in action!
