How is the SQL Management Pack?

I truly enjoy being part of the Operations Manager community and one of the reasons being that the Product Team actually cares. I just got word that they are extending surveys that was traditionally reserved for their TAP customers out to the public through the connect site.

The new connect site for Operations Manager is http://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgr

And one of the first things that can be done there is feedback on experience with the SQL MP. So if you've experienced any pains or have any suggestions on how to improve it..? Well this is your chance to shout it out... https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgr/Survey/Survey.aspx?SurveyID=9559

Announcement: System Center Configuation Manager R3

This is surprising... but i can't say that it wasn't expected. The product team announced today the coming of System Center Configuration Manager R3. It will come with the additions of a Power Management feature, scalibility and performance improvements etc. Target release is Q1 2010.

I've applied to be part of the TAP program to get a first hand look at the BETA and hope to report on the findings.

For more info, check out the team blog entry

Tech Insights 2009, Penang 17 - 18 September

Probably the only event of its kind to be held in Malaysia, Tech Insights is a 2-day event containing deep dive sessions conducted by MVPs and Field Experts. No marketing talk, no BS.. pure unadulterated technical knowledge.

Split to 2 tracks, Dev and ITPro and supported by the User Groups of Malaysia (SPUG, SCUG, Elite, MyVSTS, MIND), this event held in Penang is a must attend if you want to get deeper knowledge into chosen Microsoft technologies as well as interact and tap on the experience of field experts.

There is a limit in terms of the numbers of registrations allowed. So if you're keen and in Penang or willing to make the trip there... sign up at http://www.techinsights.my/

WIN @ System Center Central!

If you haven't already done so.. or perhaps haven't even heard of it... There is a contest running at System Center Central (www.systemcentercentral.com). For anyone of you who have not registered on the site.. well you will want to hear about this.

System Center Central is a huge database of resources about everything System Center and its members range from field experts, MVPs and Microsoft product team members themselves. If you are unsure of something related to System Center, just post your queries in the forums and you can expect an answer from one of these 'gurus'.

If that is not good motivation enough.. then go on over to www.systemcentercentral.com now and register yourself as a user cause there's going to be a drawing every 2 weeks to win a prize!!

It starts today!! and they will be drawing for winners on the following dates (August 31, September 14 and 28, October 12 and 26, November 9 and 13) based on new registrations from the previous two weeks!!

Check out Rory's blog entry on it...

What you waiting for? stop reading this blog entry and click on the link :)

Operations Manager R2 Connectors Released

Just got news that the Connectors for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 has been released today.

Connectors are needed for situations where u need to forward alerts to another Management system or Service Desk system. The connectors available for download are to connect to:

1. IBM Tivoli Enterprise console
2. HP Openview
3. BMC Remedy ARS

There is also a Universal Connector available. All of which can be downloaded here

Now I need to test this... how do i get my hands on some of these management systems??.. hmmm..

MP Update: Hyper-V MP Update with WinSvr 2008 R2 monitoring

The Windows Server 2008 /R2 Hyper-V Management Pack was released today. This management pack provides health and performance monitoring capabilities at the host and virtual machine levels for Hyper-V systems on Win6 and Win7 workloads (pending release of WS 2008 R2 and Server OS MP for WS 2008 R2).

Features include monitoring of critical host services and disk performance thresholds, monitoring of virtual machines and virtual hardware health from host perspectives, and visualization and complete application roll-up from host level to virtual machine component level to guest operating system level in a virtualized environment.

Download it here

This Management Pack is supported on both the OpsMgr 2007 SP1 and R2 platforms.

MP Update: Exchange 2007 Native MP for OpsMgr R2

Its been a long time coming.. but its finally here. Straight out of the oven.. the smoking hot Exchange 2007 native MP!! This MP has has gone through a great development process because it wasn't just the Product team that was doing the work and making decisions... but they got the OpsMgr MVPs, CSS experts like Kevin Holman and Adrian Doyle, the Exchange Center of Excellence, MCS Operations IT team and 512 Beta customers all involved!!

I for one was truly honored to be able to be part of the development of this MP, that even when down to scrutinizing areas like Wizard flows.

So here are some of the highlights of this MP:

• Discovery is turned off by default so that users can control the deployment of the MP
• Very extensive 95 page MP Guide
• Rollups reflect state of synthetic transactions. This means that the Availability metrics will reflect on user experience rather than server state
• The Availability metrics described above can be published to the OpsMgr R2 SLA Dashboard
• New Mailflow and Client Access Server synthetic transaction template and interactive wizards
• Support for monitoring multiple Exchange organizations from a single Management Group
• Cross-forest mail flow transaction great for monitoring an Exchange migration scenario which also works with the Cross Platform monitor for SMTP gateways
• Operators can see the links between Exchange Servers with visualized synthetic transactions using perspectives
• 15 Capacity planning reports like database size and message volumes, 30+ reports in total
• Matching 15 Service Level Objectives to view the state of Mail Operations such as whether mails are delivered based on the agreed SLA
• A nicely tuned set of Rules and Monitors making it a less noisy MP
• Threshold monitors go through consecutive samples to reduce noise
• Synthetic transactions are aware of maintenance mode
• Event log collection turned off by default
• Heavy workflows like report data collection scripts and synthetic transactions are spread out using Sync Time to reduce load on the agent
• The Exchange Best Practice Analyzer is run by the MP checking over 800 configuration aspects of an Exchange server compared to best practices.
• Clustering and log shipping scenarios are fully supported

A big shout out to my man Ake Pettersson and his team for this MP.

BIG NOTE: This MP only works for Ops Mgr R2. Also a watch out mentioned by Ake that if you are importing this MP through the new R2 console, the unsealed SLM reporting MP will not be downloaded. So go to the catalog for this.

Download it from the catalog here

Operations Manager R2 is RTMed

Its finally here!.. the official announcement that Operations Manager R2 is RTM was done late yesterday.

Some of the key enhancements are:

1. Monitoring of Unix and Linux natively
2. Service Level Tracking through detailed reports
3. New Process Monitoring Template, OLEDB Template, Windows servive template
4. Import MPs direct from the console
5. Overrides Summary view
6. View Health explorer via the Web Console
7. One-click maintenance mode that turns all neccessary objects appropriately
8. Console performance is fantastic!!

Read the full post of available datasheets, whitepapers, videos on Sacha's post http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2009/05/22/om2007r2-rtm.aspx