SCOM: Online Management Pack documentation

Today I was working on new Management Pack for SCOM 2012. As I was searching for a base class definition on the internet, I found this website which can be convinient if you need a quick peek at the System Center libraries. This website shows the System Center management packs contents and is easy to browse for class definitions, discoveries, rules and monitors.

Check it out: http://mpdb.azurewebsites.net/

Have fun!

Powershell: Split text file in multiple files

For importing computer entries in SCCM I had a rather big file with 35000 items in it. I wanted to take a phased approach and found a script to split the CSV file based on a number of lines per file. Script Center repository: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/PowerShell-Split-large-log-6f2c4da0

I tweaked the script a little bit, so only the parameters that are necessary are File Name and Number of Lines Per File.

$linecount = 0
$filenumber = 1

$sourcefilename = Read-Host "What is the full path and name of the log file to split? (e.g. D:\mylogfiles\mylog.txt) "
$destinationfolderpath = Split-Path $sourcefilename -parent

$srcfile = gci $sourcefilename
$filebasename = $srcfile.BaseName
$fileext = $srcfile.Extension

Get-Content $sourcefilename | Measure-Object | ForEach-Object { $sourcelinecount = $_.Count }

Write-Host "Your current file size is $sourcelinecount lines long"

$destinationfilesize = Read-Host "How many lines will be in each new split file? "

$maxsize = [int]$destinationfilesize
 
Write-Host File is $sourcefilename - destination is $destinationfolderpath - new file line count will be $destinationfilesize

Write-Host "Writing part: $destinationfolderpath\$filebasename`_part$filenumber$fileext"
$content = get-content $sourcefilename | % {
 #Add-Content $destinationfolderpath\$filebasename_$filenumber.txt "$_"
 Add-Content $destinationfolderpath\$filebasename`_part$filenumber$fileext "$_"
  $linecount ++
  If ($linecount -eq $maxsize) {
    $filenumber++
    $linecount = 0
    Write-Host "Writing part: $destinationfolderpath\$filebasename`_part$filenumber$fileext"
  }
}

System Center 2012 Availability

The last month more and more System Center 2012 product guides, addons and other stuff was released.
Also the availability of the 2012 suite to Volume License Cusomers was already known by the public.

This week at MMS (no I'm not attending) the announcement was made that System Center 2012 is now generally available. So the coming weeks and months, more in-depth product knowledge will be shared Technet, forums, blogs and other media. Now the MVP's can finally share what they know already.

Just read a blog where Microsoft introduced a new console for creating basic management packs for Operations Manager 2007 and 2012: http://systemscentre.blogspot.com/2012/04/visio-management-pack-designer-for.html

SCOM: 2012 Wish List

Last week I was present at the first SCUG (System Center User Group) meeting for this year. It was a great source of information. Two speakers from Microsoft USA were present to tell us about the application monitoring feature (AviCode) and Network Monitoring feature. It looks great and promising!

As SCOM 2012 is going to be released and everyone is wondering what new features it might bring, I would like to share my ideas/wishes for the next SCOM releases. I'm pretty sure these are not available in SCOM 2012.

• Remove boundary for sealed en unsealed MP's.
  • Microsoft Best Practices for SCOM conflict with available functionality in SCOM.
    
  • Using one management group all self developed MP's are unsealed and their is no way to include objects from those unsealed MP's in a distributed application.
  • Currently sealing is the only solution. However sealing breaks MP's in which MP templates are used. Yeeh!
    
• Light-weight Operator Console for better performance
  
• Scale down Authoring in Operator Console, move functionality to Authoring Console.
  
• Increase usability
• Decrease complexity
• Create intuitive GUI layer on top of current console.
• Ease up using the Authoring Console as it was easy to create MP's in MOM 2005 with the adminstrator console.
• Possibility to use templates in the Authoring Console.
• Allow role 'Author' to make use of the Management Pack templates. Currently only a SCOM Administrator is allowed to make use of them.
  
• Dynamic component groups for DA's from the GUI to avoid XML usage.
• Log file monitoring for circular log files
• Out of the box better alert message possibities (read property bag definition from script, alert message templates)
• Possibility to use XPath expressions in alert suppression or a GUI layer for xpath dummies, like $Data/Context/Params[Contains(Param[1],"Fatal"). This can be handy when monitoring error events in logfile
• Review the current class model. There so much classes now. Is this really necessary? The new Network Monitoring features add classes for each component and each brand. Why not using multiple discoveries for 1 class?

If you have other good ideas/wishes, let me know!