Stuart Renes: The Blog

The Power Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 R2 enables you to monitor and manage the power consumption of computers running Windows Server 2008 R2. This management pack provides:

• Visibility into power consumption.
• Visibility and control of power policy.
• Ability to lower power consumption during non-business hours to reduce overall power consumption.
• Ability to limit power consumption.
• Ability to detect excessive power consumption.

To download the Management Pack visit http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6f147c1f-e190-4dbe-a3c7-9b9a19de8f93&displaylang=en

It can be downloaded from : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9104af8b-ff87-45a1-81cd-b73e6f6b51f0&displaylang=en

·         The resource kit ships the following features:

o   Authoring Console

o   Management Pack Best Practices Analyzer

o   Management Pack Spell Checker

o   Management Pack Visio Generator

o   Management Pack Diff

o   Management Pack Cookdown Analyzer

o   All References Addin

o   Workflow Analyzer

o   Workflow Simulator

o   System Management Packs

Below is a quick summary of these features.

Authoring Console

o   Develop Management Packs within a GUI environment.

Management Pack Best Practice Analyzer (MPBPA)

o   MPBPA scans management packs for best practice compliance and provides automated resolution for numerous issues. This tool integrates with the Authoring Console.

Management Pack Spell Checker (MP Spell Checker)

o   MP Spell Checker checks spelling in management packs to eliminate errors in display strings.

Management Pack Visio Generator (MP Visio Generator)

o   MP Visio Generator allows you to generate a class inheritance and class relationship diagram using Microsoft Office Visio.

Management Pack Diff (MP Diff)

o   MP Diff shows the differences between two management packs.

Management Pack Cookdown Analyzer (MP Cookdown Analyzer)

o   MP Cookdown Analyzer identifies workflows which may break cookdown. Suggestions are provided for how to fix the performance problems.

All References Add-in

o   All References Add-in helps find all management pack elements that reference the specific element chosen. For example, the ability to right click a class and find all rules, monitors, overrides, as well as anything else that targets that class is provided. This tool works on most management pack elements.

Workflow Analyzer

o   The Workflow Analyzer provides the ability to statically analyze all types of workflows. It also allows users to trace workflows running on any Health Service.

Workflow Simulator

o   The Workflow Simulator provides the ability to test certain types of workflows such as discoveries, rules, and monitors without a Management Server and Management Group. Key functionality includes the ability to test workflows as well as view and validate output prior to signing and importing the MP into a Management Group for additional testing.

Management Packs

o   Three management packs which are frequently used as dependencies are provided as part of the tools installation. These MPs are necessary to allow the Authoring Console to open most MPs available online in the System Center Operations Manager MP Catalog. The provided MPs are:

Microsoft.SystemCenter.DataWarehouse.Report.Library

Microsoft.SystemCenter.InstanceGroup.Library

Microsoft.SystemCenter.ServiceDesigner.Library

Screenshots and more information on how to use the tools effectively to make authoring simple for Operations Manager will be coming out soon.

Microsoft just released the first out of band update to the Operations Manager Management Pack.  This MP (Version 6.1.7553.0) is specific to OpsMgr 2007 R2 and will not import on product versions prior to that.

Following are some changes made in this release (refer to the MP guide for the full list):

1.       the monitoring around excessive agent memory utilization has been improved.

a.       the monitors have been updated so that the value of the sample must exceed the threshold for a specific number of consecutive samples, as opposed to the average of the samples over the consecutive samples.  This will increase the accuracy of the monitors by handling periodic spikes in resource utilization better.

b.      the thresholds have been made less stringent on the agents to better align with a more realistic baseline (6,000 handle counts and 300 MB in private bytes)

2.       missing display names, descriptions, and product knowledge where added.  For a good example of the improvements check out the rule Data Access Service Spn Registration.

3.       the rule “Collects Opsmgr SDK Service\Client Connections” was added to collect the number of connected clients for a given management group.  This data is shown in the view “Console and SDK Connection Count” under the folder “Operations Manager\Management Server Performance”.

4.       the following rules and monitors are now disabled by default as they are generally not actionable:

a.       A GroupPopulator module unloaded due to an unrecoverable error

b.      Health Service Cannot Find Management Group

c.       Data Validity Check

d.      Root Connector Data Validity Check

5.       updated the alert suppression criteria for the rule “Alert on Dropped MultiInstance Performance Module” in order to significantly reduce the alert volumes generated by this rule and make it easier to identify the root cause.

6.       fixed the configuration of the rule “IIS Discovery Probe Module Execution Failure” so that the parameter replacement will now work correctly for alert suppression and generating the details of the alert’s description.