tuning Archives - Kevin Justin's Blog

NiCE VMware addendum

‘NiCE VMware addendum’ enhances VMware monitoring, tuning alerts to ‘manual intervention’ required alerting. The NiCE folks have been around for some time as a trusted Microsoft partner, creating additional monitoring functionality across Microsoft products. Having completed a number of projects implementing the VMware pack, it’s time to share the configuration and alert report capabilities.

Quick Download HTTPS://GITHUB.COM/THEKEVINJUSTIN/NICEVMWAREADDENDUM/

Changes to Nice vmware pack

Key breakdown of VMware ESX environment monitoring

NiCE VMware monitoring features for ESX, vSphere, vSAN environments

Adjustments to vendor pack to further the mantra ‘alert when manual intervention required’.

Set monitor alerts to multiple samples over an hour (i.e. compute and performance of ESX environment)

Reports by team (requires regular expression updates for environment servers owned by each team)

Monitor reset logic, and service monitorType (count logic for X failures over Y time, before alert)

Overrides to change vendor pack provided discoveries, rules, monitors

Remove alert noise for unmanaged objects in ESX environment

Customize pack for environment

Customize the ‘NiCE VMware addendum’ pack for specific environment. This means updating group discoveries, and GUIDs for group specific overrides. Further updates are required to update server naming conventions for team virtualization reports.

Classes/groups created for pack

Discoveries

Breakout of Discoveries that need pattern updates to match

Find/Replace ##ESXHostDataStoreNamingConventions## with names to exclude

Example of regular expressions for multiple customers

Update disable guest machine alerts

Disable guest machines in ESX environment to disable alerts.

Find ##ESXGuestServersDiskUsageNamingConventions##

Replace with relevant guest naming conventions

Example template/guest/virtual machine names typically disabled

Service MonitorType

Service MonitorType adds Samples and Intervals to alert after consecutive failures (x failures in y minutes then alert )

Rules, Monitors, Recoveries

List of workflows used to troubleshoot/resolve problems

Documentation

NiCE VMware management pack https://www.nice.de/nice-vmware-mp/

MSSQL Addendum pack

Time to tune MSSQL alerts!

The ‘MSSQL Addendum pack’ wouldn’t be possible without Brandon Pires contributions. Brandon dealt with my many questions to better alert! If you need more background, check the ‘why addendum pack’ post.

Quick Download(s)

2012+ https://github.com/theKevinJustin/MSSQLAddendum

Capabilities

The pack is based on the SQL engineering blog and program team making multiple updates per year for SQL monitoring. The addendum creates two groups for dev/test and notification/subscription modeling. Second, the overrides, man there are a bunch! aid consumption of real issues. Lastly, most environments should be SQL 2016+, as the 2012R2 EOL/EOSL is quickly approaching in October!

MSSQL groups defined in the Addendum pack

MSSQL group discoveries require updates to be applicable to environment

Tailor addendum

First, the Addendum pack requires the MSSQL packs MUST be installed. The addendum is based on the MSSQL 2016+ version agnostic is currently supported, as the 2012,2012R2 products are near end of support.

Find/Replace the variables as needed:

Example ##TESTSERVER##|##DEVSERVER##

Save file

Overrides

Addendum pack contains discovery, monitor, and rule overrides to tune MSSQL to CSA (old PFE/CE/CSAe Microsoft Field engineer recommendations), to match the health model reducing critical ‘wake me up in the middle of the night’ alerts.

Import

Download pack, and save to your environment

Import into SCOM

Enjoy!

MSSQL Addendum references

MSSQL Engineering blog and old post here

SQL Releases TechCommunity here

Engineering team latest management pack, TechCommunity release v7.2.0.0

Import ‘gotcha’ importing new custom functionality blog

ADFS Addendum pack

Do you associate StarTrek when the word federation is used inside of federation services (ADFS)?

To begin, the ‘ADFS addendum pack’ needs acknowledgement of the contributors who dealt with my many questions to better alert on AD issues! My thanks to Jason Windisch for his help and expertise with Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). If you need more background, check the ‘why addendum pack’ post. BTW, what do you associate with the word – Federation?

Quick Download(s)

2016+ https://github.com/theKevinJustin/ADFSAddendum

Overview of capabilities

The Active Directory Federation Services ‘ADFS Addendum pack’ configures ADFS group of related classes for notification/subscription modeling. Second, the rules, service monitors, tasks, service recovery, alert cleanup, and summary reports aid consumption of real issues. Third, if you have ADFS2012R2, I have an addendum pack, but coordination necessary to get the ADFS management packs MSI (not currently available). Lastly, most environments should be 2016+, as the EOL/EOSL is quickly approaching in October!

ADFS Addendum pack creates ADFS Group AND discovery requiring server names applicable to environment.

ADFS Group discovery requires server names applicable to environment

Tailoring the pack(s) to your environment

First, the Active Directory Federation Services management packs MUST be installed for the ‘ADFS Addendum pack’ to load. 2016+ agnostic is currently supported, as the 2012,2012R2 products are near end of support.

Find/Replace the variables as needed

##ADFSSERVERNAME1##|##ADFSSERVERNAME1##|##LAB##

Save file

Workflows

First, the DataSources (DS) and WriteActions (WA) clean up alerts, create daily reports, where the WA are the on-demand tasks versions.

Data source (DS) scheduled workflows run weekdays between 0600-0700 local SCOM management server local time. The summary and team reports (run during this time) summarize key insights. NOTE: the Monday report gathers the last 72 hours, so administrators get a ‘what happened over the weekend’ view. Tuesday-Friday reports are past 24 hours. Lastly, the group policy report summarizing unique GPUpdate error output.

Monitoring

Addendum pack rules schedule data source execution, add on-demand tasks. The service monitor, and Recovery tasks add service recovery automation to bring us to the ‘manual intervention required’ alerting. There are a few monitor/rule overrides to match the health model.

Import

Download updated ‘ADFS addendum pack’ and save to your environment

Import into SCOM

Enjoy!

Documentation

ADFS 2016+ management pack download

Scripting SCOM Registry key tweaks

Time to tune!

Had some requests to script the registry tweaks for SCOM

Starting off with Holman’s blog entry …

TechNet Gallery download here

Save .txt file as .ps1

On SCOM Management server(s)

Close out any SCOM Console session (to prevent SDK errors)

Run as administrator in PowerShell window

Restart SCOM services

restart-service omsdk; restart-service healthservice; restart-service chost

Verify services running

get-service omsdk; get-service healthservice; get-service chost