SCOM 2012 R2 UR 5

With the recently launched of the SCOM 2012 R2 UR5, one of the issue it addressed was the “Specific Case is not valid” error when you remove the agent in a server that has SQL server installed, without removing it from the SQL runas account distribution. Please refer to the previous posting here. This should save us the hassle of having to manually update the SCOM databases, without fearing that it might affect the supportability from Microsoft.

As for how to apply the patch, this is one of my favorite blog for SCOM resources

http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2015/02/22/ur5-for-scom-2012-r2-step-by-step.aspx 

Information about the patch can be found here, as well as the link to download

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3023138

SCOM Run As Account - Specific Cast Is Not Valid

Got the following error when i tried to add new servers into my SQL MP RunaAs account distribution

Once you click “Close”, you won’t get to see any other computers which this run as account has been distributed previously.

Well, the cause of this is actually due to agents are manually removed from the “Agent Managed” within the SCOM console, but without cleaning up the distribution of the RunAs Account.

In order to resolve this, i had deleted the specific entry from the OperationsManager database based on the solution found in http://www.ssistalk.com/2014/03/03/scom-2012-r2-specified-cast-is-not-valid-error/ 

Once done, the server which this account is distributed is visible again

p/s: updating the data directly in SCOM databases might impact the supportability from Microsoft. So do it at your own risk

Windows Data Deduplication – Garbage Collection

Running on a limited SSD storage in machine, the first thing after it was setup is to create 2 logical disk partitions (OS and Data) and to enable data deduplication on the data drive (well, you might know now that we are not able enable data deduplication for OS partition)

Windows 8.1 does not come with a data dedup feature but i supposed there should be lot’s of links in the net that can guide you to enable data deduplication in windows 8.1

Once configured, you should be able to reap the rewards of huge disk space saving especially if you the machine is hosting some test VMs. But after a while, you might find that the disk space does not decrease over time, even after you manually run the “start-dedupJob” cmdlets.

One of the reason is that, there’s a garbage collection job, scheduled at 2.45 am every Saturday and if the machine is not turned on all the time, the job might not even been executed.

One of the way is to manually run the dedup job again using the “GarbageCollection” parameter

Start-DedupJob -Volume <volume> -Type GarbageCollection

and this should get rid of the unwanted file chunks.

Install Windows Roles & Features from Configuration File

Used to be launching the wizard while installing the Roles & Features for every new server setup, but it might be tiring and repetitive if you have multiple servers to setup at the same time.

One of the ways is to construct a powershell script to include all the features that are needed and run in.

As for someone with limited powershell knowledge like me, there is actually another way to simplify the amount of time needed to each configuration, via an exported configuration settings file

For a start, you will still need to launch the add Roles & Features wizard to customize the required components you need. However, towards the end of the wizard (just before confirming the installation), you can actually click on the “Export configuration settings” and save it as an xml file (default filename is DeploymentConfigTemplate.xml).

 

Next, once you have the xml file, login in to the server you want to have the exact Roles & Features install, run the following powershell command (with admin rights of course !!) and the server will now start the install the roles and features according to what’s in the configuration template.

install-WindowsFeature –configurationfilepath <full path of your config file>

and displays a status once done

* if you include .net framework 3.5, make sure in include the –source pointing to the sxs folder, if not it will attempt to download from the internet

Agent Installation Error (Error Code : 80072971)

At times,we might experience another frequently seen error as below, where the agent management task status displays something like “….failed to acquire lock to remote computer….”

 

This is due to when SCOM agent is pushed from the SCOM Management Server, the MS will first copy the install (& the patches) to the target machine at c:\windows\422C3AB1-32E0-4411-BF66-A84FEEFCC8E2 folder, and if you managed to browse to the folder,there should be a file named LockTimeFile. This file is to determine which SCOM MS is attending the target server at the moment.

By default, once the installation is completed, the folder will be automatically deleted when the installation completes, however there is changes that the folder / files are not successfully removed.

In order to resolve this, one of the way is to delete the LockTimeFile and the SCOM agent was successfully installed

SCOM SharePoint 2010 MP troubleshooting

Encountered the following error message in SCOM event viewer for one of the SharePoint 2010 servers. Searching around the net, found 2 links with valuable information on resolving it.

http://www.scom2k7.com/advanced-troubleshooting-of-the-sharepoint-2010-mp/

http://thoughtsonopsmgr.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/troubleshooting-sharepoint-server-2013.html

Basically it seemed might have to do with PowerShell 3.0 (for Sharepoint 2010), and one of the solution was to uninstall the PowerShell 3.0, but before doing so, you might want to verify it further by granting the SCOM SharePoint MP account to have SP farm admin rights, to see if it is able to launch the SP cmdlets.

Hope this helps :)

Failed to capture windows 8 reference image via SCCM 2012 R2 capture media

Had recently started to play around with SCCM 2012 R2 and wanted to explore more on OSD and task sequencing. Tried to capture a Windows 8 image after i had set it up with latest updates, it failed when the capture media was inserted and TSMBAutorun.exe was executed.

As expected, once the sysprep commands are completed, the machine will be rebooted the capturing should start. In this case, it didn’t and went into “sysprep” mode whereby i was asked to personalize the windows 8 again.

Tried asking around and this seemed to have to do with the RAM allocated (mine was a VM, running on dynamic RAM 512 – 1024).

What i did next, shut down the VM, set the RAM to be static 2GB and run the capture media again, and voila…. it works. :)

many thanks to my fellow MVP for this similar blog post here

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