Performing Operations Tasks

  • Article

Published : January 1, 2005

It is recommended that you promptly review and resolve all alerts to identify those of a significant or potentially critical nature. In addition, you should perform other tasks on a regular basis, depending on your environment. Many important problems do not cause alerts, but they still require periodic attention. The Microsoft® Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 Management Pack has views and reports that display data over time and present patterns that indicate problems. Review the views and reports to resolve issues before they generate alerts.

You should perform the daily, weekly, and monthly tasks as specified in this section, but adjust the frequency of these tasks to meet the needs of your particular environment.

On This Page

Daily Tasks
Weekly Tasks
Monthly Tasks

Daily Tasks

It is recommended that you perform the following tasks on a daily basis:

  • Review all open alerts.

  • Review computer group membership.

  • Verify that all Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) agents are communicating with the MOM Server.

  • Review performance backlogs.

  • Review performance processing rates.

  • Review MOM agent and server performance.

  • Review notification group membership or event processing rule notification groups.

  • Review SMS 2003 site backups.

  • Review events (optional).

Review All Open Alerts

Alerts in the SMS 2003 Management Pack are displayed in the following alert description format:

$Computer$ <Rule Name>  
$Description$  
Event details

Review all alerts to ensure that they are addressed in a timely manner. You can use any of the following methods to review open alerts:

  • In the MOM Operator console, click Alerts.

  • In the MOM Operator console, navigate to Public Views, Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, Alerts.

  • In the MOM Operator console, navigate to Public Views, Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, and click General. Select Alerts that are New in the last 72 hours.

  • Alerts can be viewed by computer or computer group by clicking Computer and Groups. To display a summary by alert severity, right-click the SMS 2003 computer group that you want to examine, select View and then click Alerts.

  • Alerts can be viewed through the State view. The State view displays a list of computers and the highest-severity alert. Double-click any computer to get a listing of its current alerts.

  • Alerts can be viewed through the Diagram view. The SMS 2003 Hierarchy Diagram view displays a graphical representation of the SMS 2003 hierarchy. Each computer has a status annotation indicating its highest severity alert. Double-click any computer to get a listing of its current alerts.

It is recommended that you review all new alerts in the following order:

  1. SMS 2003 core service alerts

  2. SMS 2003 dependent service alerts

  3. SMS 2003 site system status summarizer-based alerts

  4. SMS 2003 Management Point Health alerts

  5. SMS 2003 status message-based alerts

  6. SMS 2003 component alerts

  7. SMS 2003 backlog alerts

  8. SMS 2003 Inbox monitoring alerts

  9. SMS 2003 SMS Site Backup failed alerts

  10. SMS 2003 program failed alerts

Review Computer Group Membership

Computer group membership can be verified by using the MOM Operator console in any of the following ways:

  • In the MOM Operator console, click Computers and Groups, and then double-click the appropriate SMS 2003 computer group.

  • In the MOM Operator console, navigate to Public Views, Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, and then click Computer Groups. Verify that each of the displayed computer groups contains the correct computers. If discrepancies are present, the configuration scripts might need to be run on the missing or inaccurate computer groups.

  • To check which systems have been configured with the script’s management information, in the MOM Operator console, navigate to Public Views, Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, and then click General. Select UI Versions detected in the last 24 hours.

Verify That Agents Are Communicating with the MOM Server

Communication failure between the agent and the monitoring infrastructure prevents you from receiving alerts. Verify that the agent and the server running MOM are communicating in one of the following ways.

To verify that the agents are communicating with the MOM server

  1. In the MOM Operator console, navigate to Public Views, Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, and then click Availability. Select Computers with no heartbeat in the last 3 periods (15 minutes).

  2. **\**In the MOM Administrator console, navigate to Administration, Computers, and then click All Computers. In the Detail pane, click the Last Contacted column heading. This action sorts all computers based on the last contact time. If the last contact time is greater than the currently configured heartbeat scan interval, which is 30 seconds by default, you should troubleshoot why the computer is not communicating with MOM.

    To troubleshoot the communication failure, attempt to ping the agent computer. This can be done from the command line. Another method is to use the MOM Ping task. Click Computers and Groups, select the agent computer, and then click Ping task.

Review Performance Backlogs and Performance Processing Rates

For a list of the views and reports included in the SMS 2003 Management Pack, see the Public Views for MOM 2005 and Reports sections in this guide. These views and reports are extremely useful in detecting daily trends and understanding what is happening in the SMS hierarchy.

To review performance backlogs

  1. In the Operations console, click Public Views, and then click Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003.

  2. Click Performance, and then click Backlogs. Next, click the appropriate component subfolder. Use the counter option to reduce the displayed data, the number of computers, or to select only those computers of interest.

  3. In the MOM Reporting console, click Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, click Performance, and then click the appropriate component subfolder and backlog report.

To review performance processing rates

  1. In the MOM Operator console, navigate to Public Views, Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, Performance, and then click Processing Rates. Next, click the appropriate component subfolder. Views that are marked with an asterisk (*) require customization by the administrator

  2. In the MOM Reporting console, click Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, and then click Performance. Next, click the appropriate component subfolder and processing rate report.

Review Notifications

To change notification groups

  • In the MOM Administrator console, navigate to Management Packs, Notification, Notification Groups, and then right-click either the SMS 2003 Server Administrators or SMS 2003 Client Administrators notification group to add operators as required. Operators can be either single users or user group aliases.

To change alert notification

  • To notify other notification groups about an SMS alert, add that notification group directly to the event rule that is raising the alert, or create an alert processing rule to perform the notification action only.

SMS 2003 Site Backup Monitoring

You should enable the SMS Site Backup maintenance task and schedule backups as required in your enterprise environment. When the SMS Site Backup service is started, it first stops all SMS services, including SMS_EXECUTIVE, SMS_SQL_MONITOR, and SMS_SITE_COMPONENT_MANAGER. The SMS Site Backup process does not support runtime backups while:

  • Copying portions of the SMS installation folder to the backup export path.

  • Backing up the various SMS registry values.

  • Backing up the SMS site database in a server running Microsoft SQL Server™.

When backup is complete, the SMS Site Backup service restarts the SMS services. These service stops and starts are normal during the backup process and do not indicate any critical error. The alerts that are expected from these services stopping are suppressed during SMS Site Backup. You can correlate these service stops and starts, as well as SMS Site Backup stops and starts. To do so, you should enable the following rules. These rules raise informational alerts when the SMS Site Backup service starts or stops:

  • SMS 2003 service stopped running: SMS_SITE_BACKUP

  • SMS 2003 service started running: SMS_SITE_BACKUP

The following alerts are raised when the SMS Site Backup service fails to start or unexpectedly stops:

  • SMS 2003 service failure: SMS_SITE_BACKUP terminated unexpectedly

  • SMS 2003 service failure: SMS_SITE_BACKUP hung on starting

  • SMS 2003 service failure: SMS_SITE_BACKUP failed to start

  • SMS 2003 service failure: SMS_SITE_BACKUP was unable to log on

  • SMS 2003 service failure: SMS_SITE_BACKUP depends on another service which failed to start or is nonexistent

If you see an alert indicating that the service terminated unexpectedly, verify that all stopped services have been restarted. The SMS Site Backup service might have terminated before restarting those services.

The following status message alerts are generated to show the success or failure of the backup process:

  • SMS 2003 Status: Site Backup completed successfully

  • SMS 2003 Status: Site Backup failed

Backup might have failed because of access issues, low disk space, failure to start or stop certain services, or failures in SQL Server operations.

Review Events

You should review events on a regular basis because they indicate non-critical failures and provide insight into how the MOM agent is functioning. Use one of the following methods to review events:

  • In the MOM Operator console, click Events.

  • In the MOM Operator console, navigate to Public Views, Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, and then click Events.

  • In the MOM Operator console, navigate to Public Views, Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, and then click General. Select Events that generated Alerts within the last 72 hours.

Weekly Tasks

In addition to the tasks that you perform daily, perform the following tasks on a weekly basis:

  • Review the reports. For a list of the reports included in the SMS 2003 Management Pack, see the Reports section in this guide.

  • Review the past week’s alerts, events, and performance for potential problems and trends.

  • If needed, adjust the MOM 2005 configuration settings, such as the MOM agent heartbeat interval, Service Monitoring status check interval, Agent Manager heartbeat scan interval, discovery intervals, and database grooming parameters.

  • Review the backup history of SMS sites.

  • Review the backup history of the MOM configuration group for SMS 2003.

  • Review the SQL Server database and log.

  • Run the SMS 2003 availability reports to get the availability of SMS servers and their components.

  • Verify your SMS hierarchy by using the SMS 2003 Hierarchy Diagram.

Monthly Tasks

In addition to the tasks that you perform daily and weekly, review data in the following categories on a monthly basis.

Most Common Alerts and Events

  • Most common alerts

  • Most common events

  • Most common alerts and events by rule group

  • Most common alerts and events by SMS 2003 component

  • Most common alerts and events by SMS 2003 feature

Develop an action plan to reduce these numbers.

SMS Backlog Monitoring

  • Look at reports relating to the backlog trends on various site systems.
  • Review backlog-related reports to ensure that there is not a long-term upward trend in the number of backlogs or an unacceptable level of backlogs affecting service level agreements (SLAs) on an SMS site system.

  • Discovery data records

  • Hardware inventory

  • Software inventory

  • Software metering

  • Status messages

General System Performance

  • Disk usage

  • Memory usage

  • Processor usage

SMS Service Availability

  • SMS_EXECUTIVE

  • SMS Agent Host Service

  • SMS Client Service

  • SMS_REPORTING_POINT

  • SMS_SERVER_LOCATOR_POINT

  • SMS_SQL_MONITOR

  • SMS_SITE_COMPONENT_MANAGER

SMS Availability

  • Run the SMS 2003 availability reports to review the availability of SMS servers and SMS components.