System Center

Collect warranty informations with SCCM

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a few days ago my boss liked to see a list of all our computers with the warranty informations like purchase date and warranty end date. So i wrote this little vbscript, witch collect the information from the manufacturers webpage (in our case HP, Dell and Maxdata) and write it to a MIF file.

Please have a look at the script or download it here:

After using this vbscript on each client computer you can create a SCCM report to list the warranty informations.

Create a calculated SNMP monitor

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Sometimes you need a SCOM monitor which was calculated from one or more SNMP values. Maybe the values have to be calculated, cause the value is in an unhandy format or unit. In this example i will monitor the input frequency for an for an UPS. The originaly readed value is in 1/10 Hz, but i like to monitor in Hz.

Create the monitor

Select Timed Script Two State Monitor and select the destination managementpack.

Insert this code to the field Script:

As you see, you have to define the SNMP OID in the script. After this you can calculate with the returned value and define rules for the GOOD and BAD state. read more

schedule subscriber notifications with exception

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I have created a few subscribers and they work perfectly, but there is one problem. If you define a schedule exception, you wouldn’t receive a notification at the defined weekdays. In my example i have a subscriber which should receive alert notifications only outside the business hours (monday to friday, 07:00 – 16:00). My first setup looked like this:

The result was, that the subscriber received alerts on saturday and sunday, but didn’t receive any notification on the other weekdays. To solve this problem, i changed the schedule like this: read more

Create a calculated SNMP Rule in SCOM

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Sometimes you need a SCOM Rule which was calculated from one or more SNMP values. Maybe the values have to be calculated, cause the value is in an unhandy format or unit. In this example i will create a Rule and a Performance View to show the autonomny time for an APC UPS. The originaly readed value is in 1/100 seconds, but i want it to show in minutes.

Creating the Rule

Insert this Code to the field Script:

As you see, you have to define the SNMP OID in the script. After this you can calculate with the returned value. To get the devices ip address and communitystring, you have to define this parameters, which could be readed by the script with Wscript.Arguments: read more

Collect CDP informations with SCCM

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Did you ever need to know, to wich network switch a computer is connected? When you are a system administrator in a large company with tousends of users, this can be difficult. But when you use SCCM for OS or Software deployment, you have a good inventory tool integreated. Unfortunately SCCM by default only collect datas which the client operating system knows. Your Windows computers doesn’t known to which switch or port they are connected, but if you have Cisco switches the computers would be able to collect this information. Fact is that switches from Cisco are spreading all 60 seconds a lot of information about them to the connected ports (you can disable this, but by default it’s enabled). So you need only a tool to gather this information an write it to the SCCM. read more

VariantTypes

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When you manualy edit a monitor or rule in the SCOM Authorin Console, maybee you have to edit the field @VariantType. The VariantType describes the type of the value that is returned.

The variant types are:

  • Empty = 0
  • Null = 1
  • Short = 2
  • Integer = 3
  • Single = 4
  • Double = 5
  • Currency = 6
  • Date = 7
  • String = 8
  • Object = 9
  • Error = 10
  • Boolean = 11
  • Variant = 12
  • DataObject = 13
  • Decimal = 14
  • Byte = 15
  • Char = 16
  • Long = 17

Problem with SCOM Authoring Console after CU4

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When you update your SCOM 2007 R2 to CU4 (Cumulative Update 4), you will have problems to load a management pack with SCOM Authoring Console.

You will receive a message, searching for management pack Microsoft.SystemCenter.Library with Version 6.1.7221.61:

Unfortunately you will found only version 6.1.7221.0 on your disk. Microsoft didn’t published the newer version as separated management pack file (*.mp).

To solve this open your management pack with a text- or xml-editor and change from:

to:

Change Version from 6.1.7221.61 to 6.1.7221.0 read more

Change string value to integer in a SNMP monitor

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When you create an SNMP monitor in SCOM 2007 R2, SCOM assumes that the values are in STRING-format. So if you define, that your monitor should check an SNMP-OID to be greather than 70 and the SNMP OID gives a value of 100 back, your monitor will generate an error. To correct this, you have to tell your monitor, that it’s an INTEGER-value. Unfortunately, you can’t do this with SCOM Console.

The easiest way to do this, you have to export your management pack and open it with the SCOM Authoring Console. read more

Monitor a SNMP device with Microsoft SCOM 2007 R2

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To monitor SNMP devices with SCOM 2007 R2 is a litle special, as i know other products witch are more easy for monitoring SNMP devices. But SCOM has some good feature and if you have SCOM, you don’t want to have another tool only for monitoring SNMP devices.

Here is an overview for monitoring one ore more SNMP devices:

  • Create a separated Management Pack for each device type.
  • Create the SNMP device.
  • Create a group for each device type.
  • Find out, which Values a SNMP devices can have and which OID’s you have to use.
  • Create one ore more SNMP Monitors.
  • Enable the monitor to the device group.
  • Make some adjustments to the monitor.

Here is a step-by-step guide to monitor one ore more SNMP devices:

Create a separated Management Pack for each device type

Make a separated Management Pack for each device type. You will have only benefits:

  • you are able to make some special changes with an xml-editor or the Authoring Console.
  • you can test the Management Pack, go forward and backward.
  • you can export and distribute the Management Pack.

Create the SNMP device

Right click Network Devices under Device Management from Administration pane and select Discovery Wizard. read more