Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guides

What IPD Guides are? Good question!

Taken directly from the website: ‘…(IPD) guides are the next version of Windows Server System Reference Architecture. The guides in this series help clarify and streamline design processes for Microsoft infrastructure technologies, with each guide addressing a unique infrastructure technology or scenario…’

For SCOM R2 the IPD Guide has been recently updated. It contains good information about setting up a SCOM R2 environment. Ever wanted to impress your bosses? Print this Visio file and put it on the wall behind your desk:

People will be awed and impressed!

IPD Guides to be found here.

Experts Live

On Thursday the 4th of November a huge Knowledge Event in Eemnes (The Netherlands) will be given, all about Microsoft Infra & Security, Unified Communication, Virtualization and Management with System Center.

Among the people presenting will be Wally Mead (Program Manager SCCM, Microsoft US) and Travis Wright (Program Manager SCSM, Microsoft US).

Last time I could not attend but now I will. Entrance is FREE which is great for such an event. Go here to sign up and perhaps we meet!

Unit Monitor ‘Basic Service Monitor’ does not work correctly when monitoring a Service which is set to start manually

Update 29-10-2010: Got two comments from Vladimir Trigub based on this posting.

His first comment is to use the MP Authoring Console and not the SCOM R2 Console for creating Monitors like these. Even though I do know and recognize the power of the MP Authoring Console I also realize that many everyday users of SCOM find it a bit too complicated. Therefore I have used the regular SCOM R2 Console in this posting. Also because the issue came to be by using the SCOM R2 Console. His second comment is that the required override can be set through the same SCOM R2 Console. So no need to export the MP, edit it and import it again. I have updated this article accordingly. Thanks Vladimir for your comment and keeping me sharp!

Bumped into this issue yesterday. A customer of mine had made several Unit Monitors (the workhorse of SCOM Monitors) in order to monitor a service. Everything seemed to be just fine ONLY that the monitor reported to be Healthy on the targeted servers while the service was NOT running! That was really strange.

Since this customer has some good SCOM experience and the screenshots he sent showed nothing strange, I decided to built such a monitor in one of mine test environments. Since the customer had targeted a Service which was not set to start automatically, I selected a service which was set in the same manner. Also my test environment showed the same behavior: the Monitor showed up Healthy while the service on the targeted server wasn’t running!

So I took a deeper dive in order to get to the bottom of it. This blog posting will tell you all about that search and its outcome.

01 – The Situation
Lets say I want to build a Monitor which monitors the Application Management service on a particular server. As you can see this service is not running yet and is set to start Manual. I have chosen this particular service because it does not have an executable of its own. It uses the process svhost.exe with some additional switches. I have done this with a special reason but more about that later on.

I will build this Monitor in a quick & dirty way: I create the monitor, targeted at Windows Server 2003 Computer and set it by default disabled. Later on I enable it with an override, targeted at the particular server. A better way to go is to create a new Class and target that Monitor at that Class. But this posting is not about MP Authoring, so forgive me.

And:

And:

The Monitor is enabled with an override targeted at a Windows 2003 Server. When I open Health Explorer for that server this is shown:

But that is not true. Lets take a look at Services Manager on that server. The service is really not running. What is happening here?

02 – The Explanation
I searched the Internet and quickly I bumped into this website where this behavior was explained:

Sigh!

But wait! SCOM R2 has improved Management Pack Templates. Among them is the Windows Service Monitor Template to be found. Lets take a look at that one and check out whether this one will do the trick?

Hmm. Another snag!

:). That’s why I have chosen this particular service. For some reason this wizard does not work with services which do not use a unique executable. As stated before, the service Application Management uses the generic process svhost.exe with some special switches. So this wizard will not work in this particular situation.

However, suppose you have to monitor a service which is not set to run automatically AND this service uses a unique executable. Now this Wizard would do the trick because it has an additional option available which is not to be found in the GUI while creating a Unit Monitor (Basic Service Monitor):

Now you are about to say: ‘Duh! When I want to monitor a service which isn’t set to run automatically AND this service uses svchost.exe or something alike, this cannot be done by SCOM!’. But wait just a minute! By setting a simple and straightforward override all is OK again!

03 – The Workaround 
Select the newly created Monitor and set an override on Parameter Name Alert only if service startup type is automatic (set it to false), like this:
  
Save the override.

Lets check Health Explorer again:
 

Wow! That looks way much better! Lets start the service in order to check out the correct workings of this Monitor:

Nice!

So whenever you create a Basic Service Monitor in order to check the status of a Service which is not set to start automatically this is the way to go.

Battling Config Churn

Yesterday at a customers location I bumped into an issue where heavy Config Churn was involved.

So it was time to take some action in order to bring it down. It a was a bit challenging since much of the Config Churn was caused by a very important MP which could not be tuned like increasing the interval of the Discovery frequency since those Discoveries are event driven. And disabling those very same discoveries would render the MP almost useless. So that is a no go area.

But let me start at the beginning. When do you know you are experiencing Config Churn? Because you can only start a fight when you know who or what your opponents are. So recognition is very important here.

First of all, complaints started to come in about sluggish Console performance. I checked first how MANY simultaneously SDK connections from the Consoles were running (Monitoring > Monitoring > Operations Manager > Management Server Performance > Console and SDK Connection Count) but that stayed well below 12. And for a super sized RMS and SQL server this is not an issue at all. These very same servers did not show any performance issues at all nor any connectivity issues, so the cause of the sluggish consoles was to be found somewhere else.

Time to take a deeper dive. Could it be Config Churn? In the old days one had to run queries against the Data Warehouse. But today, with the SCC Health Check Reports, those same queries are contained within these Reports:

I really love these Reports and implement them in every SCOM R2 environment since they make life a whole lot easier. Another good thing about these Reports are the details. Every Report is explained and contains good information like url’s to bog articles about the subject. This way you have everything in a single place.

I ran the Report Config Churn – Discoveries Last 24 Hours (DW). With this report I knew what was possibly causing the complaints about the sluggish consoles. So I had identified something. Time for the next steps: battling Config Churn or better, its causes.

Based on the information found in the blog posting this Report refers to, I started to increase the intervals of the Discovery frequencies of some noisy Discoveries. As stated before, the most noisiest ones did not allow this kind of tuning, so I had to work around them.

It took me some time but with the information found in the earlier mentioned blog posting, I found some Discoveries which allowed for tuning and adjusted them accordingly.

Today I ran the same Report again and when compared to the first Report, which I ran yesterday, Config Churn has been reduced by 40%! And the SCOM Admins are happy again since the Consoles have become snappier!

Thanks to the Community who provided these great Reports and the blog posting describing how to battle Config Churn! It made my efforts highly efficient.

Exchange 2010 SP1: a known issue, a canary and flip flopping…

Exchange 2010 SP1 contains a known issue (or a hidden feature). With SP1 for Exchange 2010 the canary is introduced in order to counter cross-site script attacks. The canary is a string which is used continuously between client and server in order to counter 'man in the middle attacks'.

The event log of an Exchange server however will shows events like these when the Test-ECPConnectivity cmdlet is being run in order to test the Exchange Control Panel :

When the Exchange 2010 SP1 environment is being monitored by SCOM R2, it will result in flip flopping. Open Health Explorer for the Organization State Object in the SCOM R2 Console.

Check out the State Change Events for the Entity Health (top level node in Health Explorer), it will look like this:

This is NOT good!

So it is time to disable the monitor KHI: Exchange Control Panel connectivity (External) transaction failures targeted at ECP:

Experience from the field learns that is best to target the overrides against For a specific object of class: ECP and select – one by one – all ECP Classes.

This will reduce the level of noise to a great extend.

All credits go to Maarten Piederiet who pointed this one out to me and Jaap Wesselius (Exchange 2010 MVP) who has written a good posting (in Dutch!) about the canary. I used his posting in order to describe the bird…

Ex2010 MP issue: new-testcasconnectivityuser.ps1 script generates errors like ‘Mailbox could not be created.’

When the Ex2010 MP is imported and the PS script ‘new-testcasconnectivityuser.ps1’ is run, errors are thrown. Even when the user who runs this script does have Exchange Admin permissions AND sufficient AD permissions to create a new user.

An error like this one is shown: ‘CreateTestUser : Mailbox could not be created. Verify that OU ( <DOMAIN>\<OU>\<OU>) exists and that password meets complexity requirements.’

This error message is easily misunderstood so one starts a search in the wrong direction. Many times this error is thrown when the OU mentioned in the script isn’t UNIQUE. For instance, there are two OU’s in place with the name Service Accounts like this:

Changes are that the script will fail. When a unique OU is used instead, the script will run successfully. Afterwards the newly created account can be moved to the proper OU.

New MP: DPM 2010

Earlier today Microsoft released a new MP for monitoring DPM 2010.

Taken directly from the website:

Jonathan Almquist has written to good postings about this MP. It is to be advised to read these postings in order to get a thorough understanding of this MP:

1. Data Protection Manager 2010 management pack (service and health models)
   http://blogs.technet.com/b/jonathanalmquist/archive/2010/10/21/data-protection-manager-2010-management-pack-service-and-health-models.aspx
   
   
2. Things you need to know!
   http://blogs.technet.com/b/jonathanalmquist/archive/2010/10/21/data-protection-manager-2010-management-pack-just-released-things-you-need-to-know.aspx

MP to be downloaded from here.

SCOM R2 Agent Installation Error: HRESULT: 0x80070BC9

Got this error while trying to push the SCOM R2 Agent to a group of servers. One of them generated this error: ‘Error 1935. An error occured during the installation of assembly component {97188F1D-6A9F-3406-A992-630F7EF2F164}. HRESULT: 0x80070BC9’.

After running some checks it turned out this server was new and had gotten many updates but wasn’t rebooted. After the reboot the push installation of the SCOM R2 Agent ran just fine.

EventID 10: Active Directory Helper Objects Installation unsuccessful. MSI was not found at the specified location

Got this EventID in the OpsMgr event log on all DCs reporting to a SCOM R2 Gateway Server.

As it turned out, the AD Helper Object (OOMADs.msi) was missing on the DCs. The SCOM R2 Gateway Server did not have this file in place so it never arrived on the DCs to be monitored by SCOM.

This resulted in many Warnings in the SCOM R2 Console. So it was time to solve the issue at hand and in such a manner that it would not return ever again. This is what I did:

1. Corrected the SCOM R2 Gateway Server
   Copied the file OOMADs.msi from the installation media of SCOM R2 (~\HelperObjects\<ARCHITECTURE>) to the installation folder of the SCOM R2 Gateway Server (~:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\HelperObjects).
   
   
2. Corrected the Agent Staging Folder
   Copied the file OOMADs.msi from the installation media of SCOM R2 (~\HelperObjects\<ARCHITECTURE>) to the Agent Staging folder of the SCOM R2 Gateway Server (~:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\AgentManagement\<ARCHITECTURE>).
   
   
3. Copied the AD Helper Object to the Agent
   Copied the file OOMADs.msi from the installation media of SCOM R2 (~\HelperObjects\<ARCHITECTURE>) to the installation folder of the SCOM R2 Agent (~:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\HelperObjects).
   
   
4. Corrected the Agent
   Stopped the HealthService, removed the cache file (~:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\Health Service State), installed the AD Helper Object manually and restarted the HealthService. Checked the OpsMgr event log for EventID 10. It did not return. Closed the Alerts (based on a Rule) in the SCOM Console per fixed DC and the Alerts did not come back.

Now all is well and the DCs are monitored in a proper manner. No more Alerts in the SCOM R2 Console.

Tech-Ed 2010 Europe: Are you going to be there?

Even though I aimed for presenting a session there, it did not work out. Too bad. But still the GOOD news is, that I will be attending Tech-Ed 2010 Europe non the less! w00t!

So who else is going to attend? I am going together with four colleagues and we will arrive by train. Nice! A week filled with technology, trains, some beer & schnitzel, fun and laughter! Nice! Good to see some good old friends again.

Like last year I will do my best to blog about it as much as possible.

New MP released: Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Monitoring MP

Some days ago Microsoft released a new MP for monitoring Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server.

Good to know is that this MP is developed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers who ‘deliver out of band solutions for missing features or guidance’. Thanks guys and girls for building this MP.

What this MP does? Taken directly from the website:

MP to be downloaded from here.

Opalis: QIK Video Tutorial Series

QIK, also known as Opalis Quick Integration Kit is the Opalis equivalent of the SDK. Charles Joy has made a nine series video tutorial about how to use QIK in order to  create QIK projects using the QIK CLI and QIK SDK.

Series to be found here.

Opalis: Installation Video Tutorial Series

Charles Joy has made some great video’s showing how to install Opalis. Not only the easiest parts are shown but also the more challenging one, the installation of the Operator Console.

Enjoy. Video tutorial series to be found here.

Comparison Matrix II: Savision Live Maps 5.01 vs. Visio 2010 Add-in for SCOM R2

Based on the previous Comparison Matrix I got the question to update this Matrix based on Savision LiveMaps 5.01 and the Visio 2010 Add-In for SCOM R2. It took some time but here it is.

Recommended usage of this matrix

1. Read this posting about the Visio 2010 Add-In for SCOM R2;
2. Read this posting about Savision LiveMaps 5.01 for SCOM R2;
3. Read this posting about SharePoint Integration.

Both postings are part of a Series of postings about Dashboards for SCOM.

I hope this comparison matrix will aid organizations by choosing what visualization tool to utilize in conjunction with their OpsMgr R2 environments.

Exhange 2010 MP: Checklist of what to do when importing that MP

For many times now I have seen discussions going on about the Exchange 2010 MP. This MP is really something special. For now I have implemented it 6+ times all together in small and big Exchange 2010 environments.

And I must say, I have come to like and appreciate this MP big time. Having said that, this MP really REQUIRES some good planning BEFORE being imported. When you don’t and just import it into your environment, changes are that you will see many Alerts coming from the Exchange 2010 MP.

So sometimes people tend to say: Wow! Look! The Exchange 2003 MP is back! But wait just a minute! The Exchange 2010 MP deserves much more credit. And when you follow this checklist of mine, which I always use when I am asked to implement that MP, you will see that you are able to cut down the noise very fast. And the Alerts which do turn up afterwards, you BETTER take them SERIOUSLY…

But before sharing my Checklist with the Community I want to point out the MOST obvious: RFTM, RTFM and RTFM the MP guide of the Ex2010 MP. Seriously! The guide tells one so much. For instance, about the Correlation Engine. A piece of art it is. Be sure to understand how it operates. When you don’t you NEVER EVER will understand the Exchange 2010 MP. So RTFM it is!

This is the Checklist I use when I am asked to import this MP:

1. Introduction of SCOM R2 to the Ex2010 admins and designers;
   Many times people do not really know what SCOM is all about. So show it to them. However, keep it like a real introduction, NOT a training. This way they know what they are up against :).
   
   
2. Providing the MP Guide of the Ex2010 MP and discussing it;
   That is also why I said RTFM. You look stupid when you tell them you don’t know about the contents of the guide. So familiarize yourself with it before handing out the copies!
   
   
3. Referring to some or more KB articles where some common errors in SCOM concerning the Ex2010 MP are discussed and some solutions are shown;
   Some KB articles are already referred to in the guide. Print them as well. Discuss them.
   
   
4. Finding out whether POP3 and IMAP4 are running or not;
   In many today's environments these protocols aren’t used any more. However, they can create a lot of noise when these aren’t used. So it is good to know whether these are in place or not.
   
   
5. Making an appointment with the Ex2010 team when the Ex2010 MP will be imported;
   Planning is crucial. This way you involve them and give them a sense of control. No phone calls out of the blue, mostly on times when they don’t need it. So they can plan capacity in advance and do some reading of the guide as well.
   
   
6. Creating a MP for storing the overrides for the Ex2010 MP;
   When the MP is imported many times POP3 and IMAP4 monitors need to be disabled. The faster the better. So when the overrides MP is already in place, some minutes are spared which can be used to set quickly the overrides.
   
   
7. Importing the MP;
   Since the MP is really big, it can take a while. Now the fun really starts.
   
   
8. Using Override Explorer to create many required overrides in matters of seconds;
   Override Explorer is THE tool here. Use it since within a matter of seconds overrides are set very very FAST.
   
   
9. Checking out the Console with the Ex2010 team and troubleshoot any Alert right away;
   For a company I had made a contest: the Exchange 2010 Admin who solved most Alerts during the first hours after having imported the Ex2010 MP got his lunch paid by me. It worked really great and we had fun as well!
   
   
10. Many times after an hour or two most of the Alerts are resolved (their issues that is) and the noise is cut down big time;
    Keep the SCOM R2 Console under tight scrutiny for the first two hours. When all Alerts are taken care off, all is well within a few hours.
    
    
11. Checkups during the first week after deployment of this Ex2010 MP and do some more tweaking and tuning when needed.
    Sometimes situations arise after the first day this MP has been imported. So keep track of SCOM.

Something else to reckon with:

Many times after that all is well and the MP runs just fine. Most common issues I have seen so far are the Synthetic Transactions turning sour because the account is locked out. Even though one is told to switch on  ASP.Net impersonation in IIS on the /rpc directory, it is better to switch on the attribute “Do not require Kerberos pre-authentication” on the extest_* account. Details: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/operationsmanagermgmtpacks/thread/0d3955c7-fb9d-4652-9709-73879f00faf0

Hope this helps importing the Exchange 2010 MP to become a smoother process. And to have a better appreciation of the Exchange 2010 MP since it is really a good MP.

Credits:
A much respected Exchange colleague of mine, Maarten Piederiet has been a great help. He provided me with much good information about what needs to be done in Exchange 2010 environments in order to get this MP up & running. Without his input this posting wouldn’t have been complete. Thanks Maarten!

SCOM R2 CU#3: Command line and software distribution patching scenarios

Kevin Holman has written a good and detailed posting how to do just that:

Want to know more? Go here.

New Microsoft Support Top Solutions RSS feed for SCOM and SCE

Always wanted to monitor new high-impact support issues and get links to the best Microsoft KB articles, blogs, TechNet and MSDN articles?

Since yesterday this is possible! Just subscribe to Microsoft Support Top Solutions RSS feed for System Center Operations Manager 2007 and you’re in!

Taken directly from the website:

The easiest way is to access the RSS feed is from the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Solution Center on support.microsoft.com. If necessary, enable the command bar in Internet Explorer in order to see the RSS icon and subscribe. If you are using a browser that does not display an RSS icon, you can access the System Center Operations Manager RSS feed page directly and subscribe.

Want to know more? Go here.

SCOM R2 CU#3 installation issue: ‘Warning 25362. Failed to start OMCFG service.’

12-10- 2010 Update: Kevin Holman and Graham Davies – among others – pointed out that the KB mentioned in this blog posting is also added to the Known Issues section of CU#3, KB2251525. Somehow I overlooked it.

Got this message while installing a clean SCOM R2 environment based on W2K08 R2, SQL 2008 Std x64 CU#7. The Management Group is based upon a RMS, 1x MS and a dedicated SQL server for hosting the SCOM R2 DBs and hosting the SSRS instance for the Reporting component.

The installation of all components went fine. No issue what so ever. Time to install CU#3 on the RMS and then the issues started. Somehow the first of three installations did not finish and this message box was shown:

When I clicked OK the installation rolled back and I was back to square one.

Checked the authorizations but they were just right. Also used an elevated cmd-prompt so that could not be the issue here.

I rebooted the RMS, retried CU#3, same issue. Removed the RMS, rebooted the server, reinstalled the RMS, installed CU#2 first. All was just fine. Deployed CU#2 on all SCOM R2 Management Servers, rebooted every single server and tried CU#3 again.

Bummer! Again the same issue occurred. Added an additional CPU to the RMS, checked the available RAM (6 GB) so no worries there. Tried CU#3 again, but to no avail.

So I opened the log of this CU (located in folder %temp%, KB2251525-x64-ENU_x.log) and checked it. But it contains tons of information, so where to start? I tried to find the cause of it all but couldn’t find it.

Now it was time to contact my fellow MVPs and ask them whether they had any idea. Soon the answer came from Alexey Zhuravlev. In the log, which I had attached to the mail message, he found this entry: ‘WaitForServiceState: Failed to get service state within time limits. Error Code: 0x80070102’:

Based on that entry he referred to KB922918, which is about services timing out, causing all kind of issues. Even though the KB article is about Windows 2003 servers, I gave it a shot and added the regkey as mentioned in the same KB article:

Rebooted the RMS and started (again) the CU#3 msi file. It took a long time to end and during every single MSI file this message appeared:

But when I pressed the OK button, the Setup continued and kicked off the other MSI files as well! And finally I got this message:

Phew!

So whenever you bump into this issue, try the above mentioned KB. Add the regkey, reboot the server and start CU#3 again. It helped me.

Windows 2003 Server and XP Security MP

Simon Skinner, a much respected fellow SCOM MVP is sharing a MP which he is using in one of his live SCOM environments: a MP for monitoring security events on Windows 2003 Servers and XP systems.

You can download this MP from System Center Central. All you need is a valid account which is free. MP to be found here.

IPv6 Learning Roadmap

Got this website from Walter Eikenboom, a much respected SCOM guru.

As we all know, IPv6 is the answer to the depleting IPv4 address resources. This website shows when it is to be expected when all IPv4 addresses are exhausted. Today I checked, and I did not like what I saw:
 

So it is time for action (like the years before…). One of the things you can do is to make yourself acquainted with IPv6, if you haven’t done that already. Time for a wake up call!

Check this website out AND learn!

System Center Licenses: SMSE and SMSD

System Center Central has published a good posting about the differences between SMSE (System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise) and SMSD (System Center Server Management Suite Datacenter) licenses for System Center.

Want to know more, go here.

For the official website about these kind of licenses, go here.

SCOM and Dashboards – Part V – Using SharePoint 2010 Enterprise for integration

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Postings in the same series:
Part   I – Some Questions
Part  II – The SCOM Console
Part III – Visio 2010 Add-In for SCOM R2
Part IV – Savision LiveMaps for SCOM R2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the fifth and last posting of this series I will describe how to use SharePoint 2010 Enterprise in order to integrate the Dashboards, created earlier with Savision LiveMaps and Visio 2010.

But before I start I want you to know that this posting won’t be about how to install the Visio Services data provider, since Microsoft has written a great guide about how to do just that. I had the positive experience that it all worked just fine without any issues what so ever. From a fellow MVP however I heard that he was experiencing some issues.

First of all, lets answer the question why one should decide to show SCOM R2 Dashboards – based on Savision LiveMaps and/or Visio 2010 – in SharePoint? Not just because you simply can. No way. Two good and valid reasons are:

1. No additional software required
   In today’s world where people and their businesses want to access information with any kind of device, anywhere and anytime, it is neat to have a solution in place which enables you to do just that. Since all is handled by SharePoint it is presented through http(s). So any device capable of handling that protocol is capable to show that data. With TMG and some smart publishing rules in conjunction with SSL certs, this isn’t rocket science what so ever.
   
   
2. Lets hide the SCOM R2 Interface
   Before I started this series I was already a strong believer of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). However, while writing this series, doing all the required research and looking at the end-results, I have become an even stronger believer. In such kind of a manner that I really think that some very good built Dashboards, using Savision LiveMaps and Visio 2010, in conjunction with a good Notification Model, can replace the SCOM R2 Console for over 90%!
   
   This will lower the learning curve of SCOM R2 considerably thus enabling organizations to speed up significantly the adoption of SCOM R2 into the daily routine. Of course, perhaps some additional investments are required (like licenses and time to build the Dashboards), but the ROI will be fast and good. In this kind of setup only a small set of people are required with deep SCOM R2 knowledge. And the rest is covered for by the Operational Departments.

Lets start.

Remember the Visio 2010 based Traffic Light I built? After following the guide as provided by Microsoft about using the Visio 2010 Add-in for SCOM R2, having installed the Visio Services Data Provider and publishing the Visio drawing to SharePoint 2010 (as a VDW file!), this is what I get:

Lets stop the SCOM R2 WebConsole website and hit the refresh button:

And the change of Status is correctly reflected. However, there is a small caveat: hitting F5 (refresh screen) will not do. You must hit the Refresh button or wait until the Visio Drawing is automatically refreshed. This way the most current Status information from SCOM R2 is collected and shown in the Visio Drawing.

Now it’s time to Publish the Main Dashboard – based on Savision LiveMaps – I blogged earlier about, in Visio 2010. Again, I will not show how this is done since I used an article from the website of Savision and in the matter of minutes I had it all up & running. Just follow those instructions and you will be fine. There is a small thing to reckon with though: the mentioned instructions are based on SharePoint 2007. In SharePoint 2010 the menu’s have been changed. But it shouldn’t too much of an issue. The only thing I changed was the fixed height. I changed it to 600 pixels.

This is how the Main Dashboard, based on Savision LiveMaps, looks in SharePoint 2010:
 

And:

And:

And:

As you can see, the integration of the SCOM R2 Dashboards with SharePoint 2010 Enterprise really works great. With some real SharePoint Admins (which I am not) one could even create much fancier sites.

The PDF file which is included with the SharePoint 2010 Add-In also shows another method in order to integrate Visio 2010 Drawing with SharePoint 2010. So multiple approaches are viable here. Again, use your imagination AND common sense.

Recap:
With this series I tried to clarify the topic SCOM R2 Dashboard Solutions. Not only some of the available techniques have been discussed (SCOM R2 itself, Visio 2010 Add-In for SCOM R2 and Savision LiveMaps ®) but also the reasons behind it. And these are the most important since the technique is nothing but a presentation layer. And when no one looks at it or – even worse – does not act on it, it is a waste of time and energy.

So first things first. Get the requirements, write them down and verify. After that start with a few Dashboards and do not forget the FREE version of Savision LiveMaps since with even five LiveMaps (for more additional licenses are required) one can build a smart Dashboard which will rock! Also look for ways to integrate it with other technologies like SharePoint. That way you are making the most out of it. And never ever forget KISS.

Now SCOM R2 will become the success story you hoped for and people will even fancy the nice and shiny Dashboards. Goodbye to the 80’s and HELLO 2010+!