IT Core Blog

How to recover from the error 10207 when performing the Administrator setup console stage:

Setup was not able to retrieve the service account from the specified Virtual Machine Manager server.
Specify a different VMM server and then try the operation again.
ID: 10207

Check if the SPN for the SCVMM service account is OK. Use the SETSPN -L, or check the account properties using ADSIEDIT or any other tool that allows you to confirm the SPN. If everything is ok you may need to recreate the SCP container that is under the SCVMM server account (In the picture bellow you can check that using the tool ADSIEDIT.msc).

To manually create this container, use the SCVMM CD and browse to the \Setup folder using command prompt.  Run CONFIGURESCPTOOL.EXE –INSTALL from that folder.  This should create the SCP, after running the cmd confirm the SCP creation using ADSIEdit.  Now rerun the integration setup and all steps should complete without errors.

Note: If you do uninstall/reinstall SCVMM then make sure you patch it to the level it was at before.  Up-to-date SCVMM agents cannot communicate with out-of-date SCVMM servers.

The full story Aida-s blog.

KB982501:The monitoring of SNMP devices may stop intermittently in System Center Operations Manager or in System Center Essentials

When you monitor some Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) devices by using System Center Operations Manager or System Center Essentials, the monitoring may stop intermittently. This issue affects the SNMP performance collection rules or the SNMP event monitors.

After you restart the OpsMgr Health service or the System Center Management service on the proxy agent, the monitoring of the SNMP devices continues as usual for a while. However, this issue may again occur sometime later. 

Additionally, the following event is logged in the Operations Manager log when this issue occurs:

Available for download from Microsoft Pinpoint, the System Center Pack for Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Pack Version: 6.1.7672.0, alerts you to problems with components such as agents, management servers, the Operations Manager database, agents, modules used by workflows and services so that you can continue to monitor the servers and clients that your business depends on. The management pack includes tasks that you can automate to get easy access to common diagnostic tools, such as restarting a health service or reloading an agent configuration.

The Service Manager Management Pack should be used to monitor Service Manager 2010 and includes monitors for the management server as well as the Data Warehouse server. In this release of the management pack, the Data Access Service, Health Service, Configuration Service, and workflows are monitored.

Feature Summary:

Here’s some interesting sessions for virtualization from TechEd.

Networking and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V: Deployment Considerations

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2: Advanced Virtualization Management

The Microsoft System Center Operations Manager Top 20 Must-Have Customizations

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager: Monitoring the Service Stack

See the Largest Mission Critical Deployment of Microsoft SQL Server around the World

Check the Latest Videos from TechEd North America

Have Fun

Wouldn’t it be handy to have one place on the web where you could find an updated list of ALL the AV exclusions you might want to configure? This wiki stub topic is meant to be that list. Feel free to add to the list, it is the wiki way!  

  

Windows:
KB822158 Virus scanning recommendations for Enterprise computers that are running currently supported versions of Windows

Windows / Active Directory: 
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822158
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837932
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943556

Cluster:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/250355

Forefront: Considerations when using antivirus software on FF Edge
Products
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943620
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc707727.aspx

FRS:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/815263

SQL:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309422

IIS:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821749
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817442

DHCP:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927059

SCOM / MOM:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975931

Hyper-V:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/961804

Exchange:
Exchange 2010: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332342.aspx
Exchange 2007: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332342(EXCHG.80).aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328841
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823166
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/245822
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332342(EXCHG.80).aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332342.aspx

SharePoint:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952167
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320111
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322941

SMS:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327453

ISA:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/887311

WSUS:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/900638

SBS:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885685

 Med-V
Recommended Anti-Virus exclusions for MED-V client and workspace installations

System Center:
Recommendations for antivirus exclusions in MOM 2005 and Operations Manager 2007

A Management Server that has been added to a Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 management group is able to download configuration information from the Root Management Server, but generates an error when attempting to process the configuration. The Operations Manager event log on the new management server will show the following two events every few minutes:

Source: HealthService
Event ID: 7022
Task Category: Health Service
Level: Error
Description:
The Health Service has downloaded secure configuration for management group , and processing the configuration failed with error code 0x80FF003F(0x80FF003F).

Source: HealthService
Event ID: 1220
Task Category: Health Service
Level: Error
Description:
Received configuration cannot be processed. Management group . The error is 0x80FF003F(0x80FF003F).

Check KB2027535 - New Management Server unable to get configuration in System Center Operations Manager 2007

The Operations Manager Support Team Blog posted some nice report samples.

From Operations Manager Support Team Blog:

“Just in case you missed their post last week, The System Center Operations Manager team blog posted a bunch of reporting samples you could use with OpsMgr 2007, including:
- “Customer X needs to produce a report that shows the processor, memory, logical disk performance for his 100 servers and needs to see the average performance over multiple time ranges”
- “Customer X needs to produce a report showing detailed information about how long servers spent in maintenance mode and what happened during that time”
- “Customer Y is looking for physical servers in his environment that may be suitable candidates for Virtualization, he needs a report that can show overtime the most suitable servers”
and more.
You can find their original post here but they recently uploaded an newer, updated batch of files to correct some issues they saw in the first one.  You can find that here.
If you’re looking to really maximize how OpsMgr 2007 can help you save money and manage your resources more wisely then you’ll definitely want to check these out.”

Once again Kevin Holman posted how to perform this update step by step…

The KB979257 article describes the fixes and changes and instructions
Get it from the download Center

This is not a huge hotfix rollup…. It does contain some substantial fixes however, and if impacted, you should consider applying this update. If you have not yet tested and applied CU1 to your R2 management group, then you absolutely should skip CU1 and apply CU2 as soon as possible.

The release notes in the KB article above cover the fixes that are included. The main ones I have seen in the field are the SNMP device view issue, and the Console crashing when opening multiple views. I have added it to my Recommended Hotfix page, but if you aren’t impacted by any of these issues, you can certainly pass on a cumulative update, and pick up the next one that provides a fix you need.

Read More…

Another great article from Kevin Holman, this time Kevin explains how to configure Opsmgr to alert you when security is compromised.

“Because I have a lab, that is exposed to the internet over port 3389, I get a LOT of hacking attempts on this lab. Mostly the source is from bots running on other compromised systems. These bots just do brute force attacks against the typical Admin accounts and passwords via RDP. In this article, I am going to show how OpsMgr can not only alert on this condition, but also respond by configuring the Windows Firewall to block these attacks.“

Read more at: “Using OpsMgr for intrusion detection and security hardening“

You import a new management pack that contains new properties for certain views on a computer that is running System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. After you do this, you may receive the following error message:
“An object of type Variable with ID Number was not found“
Additionally, you find that the new properties are missing from a specific view.

KB981740 – System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 does not display new properties in some views after you import a management pack

Updated release, version 6.0.6794.0, to resolve an issue with discoveries failing to query the Win32_PowerPlan WMI class.

Get “Windows Server Operating System Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007“

Here’s a cool tip at “How to create a computer group for VMware servers or Hyper-V servers“.

Hyper-V Server Group
This process was very simple for the Hyper-V servers, as there is an existing attribute (Virtual Machine) that indicates if the server is virtual in Hyper-V. The steps to create this group from the Operations Manager console: Navigate to the Authoring space -> Groups, right-click and create a new group. We named ours Hyper-V virtual, and when we specified the dynamic members we defined them to where Windows Computer / Virtual Machine equals True.
VMware Server Group
For VMware, we needed to create an attribute that would identify systems virtualized with VMware, and then use the attribute to populate the group membership. From the Operations Manager console -> Authoring space –> Management Pack Objects –> Attributes, we right-clicked and created a new attribute. We labeled the attribute as VMware tools, provided a description, defined it to a target of Windows Computer (which set it to Windows Computer_Extended) based upon a registry key, and stored it in a custom MP (not the default MP shown in the screenshot below).

Read more at “How to create a computer group for VMware servers or Hyper-V servers“

Having problems with discovery scripts? Don’t know how to troubleshoot them?

Check Kevin Holman blog where he explains how to perform Basic troubleshooting for discovery scripts.

Do you ever get script errors from a discovery scripts?  Or you aren’t discovering something that you feel should be discovered?

There are many ways to troubleshoot this discovery process, this will cover the “basics”.
First thing I like to do – is start with the console. 
1.  Find out what class your discovered object is missing from.  I will use SQL 2005 DB Engine as an example.
2.  Find out what discovery “discovers” this object.  Fairly easily – we can see that this discovery is “Discover SQL 2005 Database Engines (Windows Server)”
3.  Find out what class this discovery targets.  From looking at the discovery – we can see that this discovery targets the “Windows Server” class.

Once again Kevin does a great job explaining step by step about “How to apply a SCOM hotfix to a clustered RMS“.

“The challenge is – that several SCOM hotfixes will make changes to the database, while being applied to the RMS.  They expect the SDK service to be running locally, so they can accomplish this.  This FORCES us to always apply a SCOM hotfix to the active node (under the current design).”