oops. edit below
From: Steven Peck Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2015 2:34 PM To: [email protected] Just a minor update on this for those others doing something similar. Not having a background with VSA and XML is definitely a learning curve. For the Team Library MP, this post was really it with a few simplifications http://blogs.technet.com/b/emreguclu/archive/2012/11/07/extending-windows-computer-class-using-visual-studio-authoring-extensions-vsae.aspx Create a MP named: FooBarInc Group Library (seal it) Regkey named: Team Create a discovery for the key Creates a class called Team and will have an attribute of what is in the registry key. (i.e your articles picture on SupportLevel) --- AS for the groups themselves, still working on this. Using VSA is… new and challenging (especially sorting out classes and groups and relationships). Using Kevin’s post on dynamic groups I went ahead and created a Groups Test MP with two groups and exported it. Looking at the auto-generated classes and following them down I am pretty sure I almost have it. Trying to reconcile the differences in the VSA groups snippets vs. the XML in the exported Groups Test MP. The VSA XML I using <ClassType ID="Company.TeamGroup" Accessibility="Public" Base="System!System.Group" Abstract="false" Hosted="false" Singleton="false"> Where the EXPORTED snippet is using <ClassType ID="UINameSpace7a315519d1cf4321b0bfa2cb4f796f05.Group" Accessibility="Public" Abstract="false" Base="MicrosoftSystemCenterInstanceGroupLibrary7585010!Microsoft.SystemCenter.InstanceGroup" Hosted="false" Singleton="true" Extension="false" /> Create a MP named: FooBarInc Group Management Pack Dependency on FooBarInc Group Library. This is where I will create groups based on the attributes. In this starting case, one of 6. (t1, t2, s1, n1, s2 <- random examples) I should, hopefully, have something I can write up in full and post in the next two weeks with associated credits and reference links. Steven From: Steven Peck Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 7:18 PM To: [email protected] Our environment is undergoing a bit of a change. We are splitting one group and what it is responsible for in two and the previous method made it hard to sort for the other two groups we alerted to based on windows sever. You could say we learned a lot from our implementation. As I mentioned I have been away form SCOM for a few years. Our requirements are internal and in this case specific to ‘server owners’ of a given set of Windows servers; Ability to separate out Servers based on team ownership (we have about 5-6 now) Ability to separate out alert and state view also based on teams Long term, get the application monitoring sorted out very soon for the major in house applications. It’s been frustrating knowing we have these tools but no in house defined SLA’s other then ‘It’s on FIRE FIX IT, FIX IT NOW!!!!” We have some major in house applications and no real way to view their overall health in one nice place other than ‘alerts’. So it is my plan that once we get the bulk of the basic ‘server level stuff’ sorted out, I can turn to mapping out our ‘application groupings’ and build monitors for them and leverage these dashboards since they look useful. I hadn’t paid much attention previously but they really look like they will solve an issue for a portion of our environment. It’s not really my problem to solve so much since we are merely the Windows portion of monitoring and forward to HP OMU. There is a team of folks that have been supposed to be building some dashboards with some tools for a few years now but they keep quitting. The main goal is to re-establish trust in the monitoring and reporting solution that has been lost in the last few years. (And to get me off the larger on call rotation) Betweens Kevin’s pointer and going through Brian Wren’s videos on Microsoft Virtual Academy some of this is starting to make sense again. From: Sarbjit Singh Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 4:39 PM To: [email protected] Thanks Steve, Is there a requirements gathering sample when defining computer grouping before initiating the configuration. My grouping is really not about subscription but more on dashboard (e.g. customer would like to see view from application perspective from one dashboard and from Windows performance in another dashboard). Thanks Sarbjit Singh From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steven Peck Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 3:03 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [msmom] Groups in SCOM2012r2 Sarbjit, Some additional considerations since you are looking at doing this. For my environment I essentially have 5-6 different teams who have a ‘primary’ responsibility for the health of a given set of servers. Being able to split out subscriptions is a requirement for me getting off the on call rotation for 60% of our servers (note, I am highly motivated). The initial ‘Team’ regkey entry will be set via a script since I know how to do this. Long term manual data entry is something that falls through the cracks and while I plan on building automation eventually, I can’t count on it short term. I plan on figuring out and creating a view/report/monitor for ‘no regkey’ (no class) and or ‘not a approved value’ to accommodate finding typo’s. I hate having to report I missed something and therefore a system isn’t being monitored. I recently also came across a task MP that would allow you to add/change that value from the console so I will either post here, or get my site up and post there and link to it. Probably a few weeks for that part. Just a consideration for this method when operating at a scale. Steven From: Sarbjit Singh Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 4:47 PM To: [email protected] Thanks for the discussion below. I was just about to start requirements gathering from customer for SCOM based dashboard for the operations team. Once I know how the customer wants the grouping to be, I will be creating the grouping via the methods discussed below. Regards Sarbjit Singh From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steven Peck Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 7:22 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [msmom] Groups in SCOM2012r2 Site died a while ago… been meaning to fix it… mumble mumble mumble … I was the documentation team lead for a large open source project so there was a lot of Drupal and PowerShell stuff on it which seems an odd mix now. Need to recover the backups and fix it. 😊 Maybe just start over. Got the Team attribute part of it implemented and working, I will export, save a version of the xml, seal it and import it back in tomorrow and get the next one done. It’s slowing me down as I am writing a MP doc on it as I go to correct a problem we had with the SCOM2007r2 environment (insufficient documentation over time). This is starting to be fun again! From: Kevin Holman Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 3:06 PM To: [email protected] Bingo. And agreed with blogging your examples…. super helpful for people to see blog examples put to the real world. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steven Peck Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 3:54 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [msmom] Groups in SCOM2012r2 So, looking at the article and putting on paper for me since I am at the rub sticks together to make fire stage of this… Create a MP named: FooBarInc Group Library (seal it) Regkey named: Team Create a discovery for the key Creates a class called Team and will have an attribute of what is in the registry key. (i.e your articles picture on SupportLevel) --- Create a MP named: FooBarInc Group Management Pack Dependency on FooBarInc Group Library. This is where I will create groups based on the attributes. In this starting case, one of 6. (t1, t2, s1, n1, s2 <- random examples) Since there is no discovery involved in this MP, any changes to ‘group names’, updates, added keys I make in future will not result in a new forced discovery. --- OK. Off to try it. I really need to get my site back up so I can post stuff like this so I can find it again. From: Steven Peck Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 9:32 AM To: [email protected] No no! I am all about trying to avoid the mistakes we made in the previous deployment. It’s why they pulled me back off messaging for the stalled SCOM deployment last week (Happy New Year, oh by the way we are re-org’ing and you are on a new team, best of luck because we want it done!). It just means relearning a lot of the changes since I missed all the stuff with SCOM 2012. Objects and classes have always been a challenge I was just getting a handle on my last go around. I had just finally created my first MP that did all the things I wanted it to the way I planned for (about my 5th stand alone MP) before the last re-org a few years ago and was realizing what we had done that wasn’t scalable or required so much more work to maintain because we didn’t understand the best practice at the time. Our current 2007r2 environment is a little fragile and inflexible at this point so trying to come up to speed and do it less wrong this time. We have a SCOM2012r2 dev/test SCOM environment now and have agents deployed and working on tuning, documentation and practices for production. The new production environment is built and awaiting agent deployment. Solving the teams/subscription issue and building and testing Orchestrator servers to talk with HP OMU in both places is the last component to all out work work work. I appreciate the advice and intend to act on it. From: Kevin Holman Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 9:06 AM To: [email protected] You could put them all together in a single MP. There is no requirement to separate them. It is simply a best practice – because you will make changes to the groups MP often…. but you will/should not be making as many changes to the one that contains the class and properties/discoveries. This will limit the impact on the clients for them all having to re-download the MP every time you make a change to a group which doesn’t affect them. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steven Peck Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 10:48 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [msmom] Groups in SCOM2012r2 That should get me started. I kept looking at it as one MP. For my needs, it looks like one class, five initial properties (5 teams). I was just starting to begin to understand this stuff last go around before they moved me. I suppose I had better get a better handle on it this time around! 😊 I think I had better schedule a meeting with myself so people leave alone while I play with this. Thanks! Steven From: Kevin Holman Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 8:35 AM To: [email protected] http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2009/06/10/creating-custom-dynamic-computer-groups-based-on-registry-keys-on-agents.aspx Basically – you want to create ONE new class, and use Windows Computer as your base class. Then keep adding properties to this class for anything special you will need. Put this extended class, and the discovery/discoveries to populate the class properties in its own MP and seal it. Only change it when you need to add a property. Adding properties can be done in XML or using the old SCOM 2007 R2 authoring console, or Visual Studio. Then – create another MP for your company groups. Place each group in there with whatever criteria you need, and leverage class properties from the above mentioned MP, or any others as needed. Seal this MP. Using the method above, you can leverage these groups anywhere else as needed in unsealed or other sealed MP’s, and use the groups for scoping views, notifications overrides, whatever. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steven Peck Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 10:13 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [msmom] Groups in SCOM2012r2 Greetings, I helped deploy our original SCOM 2007r2 environment several years ago and create some management pack using the original MP Authoring tool before they moved me to a different group. Our internal SCOM migration to 2012r2 sort of stalled and so they moved me back after an absence of a few years. Looking over our original environment I can say we learned a lot and are looking to not repeat some of the previous practices. 😊 With this change comes a requirement to ‘split the teams’ and alerts. I am looking to create a custom sealed management pack for us called ‘CompanyName Groups’. I figure the fastest, easiest way given our environment is to create a regkey on the servers and use this to determine which ‘group’ a server is in. Once I have this I will be able to filter subscriptions to various alerts. However, I am finding it challenging to find any docs or blog posts on this. One article I read seemed to indicate; create in console, export and seal, but I am somewhat concerned about modifying that in the future. Any pointers to blog posts or articles would be appreciated. Using either the Silect MP Authoring tool or the Visual Studio one (trying to go through Brian Wren’s presentations on MVA). I suspect I am just missing a concept or something others consider obvious. Thanks, Steven Peck
