Stuff I have learnt recently

In the past two weeks I have:

• rebuilt 2 MOM environments
• repaired 1 MOM data warehouse
• repaired 1 SCOM environment

And I have learnt that:

1. I really don’t like stress very much, but then, who really does?

2. You need to pay careful attention to your antivirus exclusion lists, especially if you are running McAfee in a non-default configuration. This is a pretty complete list of the exclusions required, both for MOM and SCOM. When we deployed SCOM in this environment, the exclusions were made, but for some reason McAfee did not exclude sub-directories until the exclusion was changed to

*.*\Program files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\*.*

Once this was done, it resolved most of our problems with agents consuming CPU.

3. If the health service on your SCOM RMS server dies, nothing else works. It starts off with fewer agents reporting back to SCOM, and fewer alerts visible in the console, even though you haven’t done anything. When you start looking at the agents not reporting back, you may see the following event in the event log:

Event Type:    Information
Event Source:    OpsMgr Connector
Event ID:    21024
Description:
OpsMgr's configuration may be out-of-date for management group <MG Group Name>, and has requested updated configuration from the Configuration Service. The current(out-of-date) state cookie is "<cookie>"

You may also see this event in the event log of the RMS server. Restarting services doesn’t help. Steve Rachui’s blog has some information about this event and how to resolve it if it only happens on your agents. But if it happens on your RMS server, try the following:

• Stop the System Center Management service on your RMS server
• Browse to the install directory, Health Service configuration folder.
• Delete (or move) all the files in this directory
• Start the System Center Management service

The RMS server will update its configuration, and then start dishing out configurations to the agents. We did notice that on Windows 2008 agents, we needed to restart the agent service to force a config, but within 30 minutes 95% of all 600 agents were reporting back happily and alerts started flowing in again.

4. It would seem that installing the 32bit SCOM R2 agent on 64bit servers may have some negative performance impact. Deploying the 64bit agent instead resolves it instantly.

Snip: Random colours

I spent most of the day capturing all our fuel slips since we bought our current car (Dec 2007) and then decided to learn about fuel consumption and everything that goes with it. I employed FushionCharts Free again, but found the charts a little dull if I didn’t specify the colour codes.

I remember recently looking for a way to randomise the colour codes, as I pull all my information from an SQL database dynamically, but I didn’t find a workable solution then, and tonight proved pretty fruitless as well. Then I realised that all I needed was a random hex code generator. Or a way to convert random numbers to hex.

I finally pieced bits together, and this is what it looks like:

Function RandomCode(iLength)

Dim max,min
max=100
min=1
Randomize
iCode = ((Int((max-min+1)*Rnd+min))*1677215)
RandomCode = Left(Hex(iCode), 6)

End Function

I am rather pleased with the results. Even the line graphs look different with every refresh.

So, this is our fuel consumption for the month to date.

And for the year to date:

Still trying to figure out how to work out how much CO2 we pump into the atmosphere, but I was pretty pleased to discover that our average MPG over the entire period is 33, which I believe is pretty good.

IN COMPARISON

source

SCOM 2007: OpsMgr can monitor everything: The Coretech Coffee Monitor Management Pack – 0.0.0.1

OpsMgr can monitor everything: The Coretech Coffee Monitor Management Pack – 0.0.0.1: "
How cool is this? Coretech has created a coffee monitor MP.

This management packs can be used to keep track of the level of coffee in left in the pot.

With this management pack, you will never run dry of, what we all know, is the most important part of a productive environment!
(read more)

First glance: Sony Ericsson C905

I picked up my new phone yesterday, the Sony Ericsson C905.

I chose this phone mostly because of the stunning 8.1 megapixel camera, but was secretly concerned about the interface, especially because my previous phone was a Windows Mobile phone (which I do adore), but have been pleasantly surprised so far.

Rather than the 8-16 hour charge that I am used to for new phones, this one only required a 2.5 hour charge, and I was able to use the phone while it was charging.

Syncing my contacts back from Outlook was a quick and painless process – almost easier than with Mobile Sync Center on first run. In fact, I was up and running within minutes – including installing the software that comes in the box.

The camera is phenomenal. The shutter is fast, the flash not overpowering and the picture quality is fantastic. I love taking pictures, but have struggled with the camera on my previous phone, because most of the pictures were just too blurry to use, even online. I took a couple of pictures last night and this morning, and here are some of the results:

Our tortoise, who fits into the palm of my hand.

The dude’s future garden (where I am trying to grow lettuce, spinach and morogo).

My daughter, hula-hooping.

The phone includes MotionGaming and comes with Need for Speed Prostreet installed. To play, you simply move the phone. I am sure if I had to find a lightsaber app, I could have hours of fun :)

I am a little disappointed that the WiFi only supports up to WEP and not WEP2, because this means I cannot connect the phone to our home network seamlessly, but this is not the end of the world, as the HSDPA connection is blistering fast. And with the Blogger app built in, I suspect I may do a LOT of photo blogging going forward.

First glance score:  4.5/5