SCOM 2012 Extended Agent Info - a SCOM 2012 migration companion MP
I don’t know about you, but I have been performing migrations
of several SCOM 2007 R2 environments to SCOM 2012 and I could sure use some
help. Since I don’t believe in in place migrations, I have decided to do all of
them side by side. It has its issues, but I believe the resulting environment
is cleaner.
I have started with the excellent post from Andreas
Zuckerhut and from there I have developed my own methodology. I first
started by automating some processes, like adding and removing management groups
from the console: http://scomandplus.blogspot.ca/2012/07/adding-scom-agent-task-to-update.html.
I have also added a task on the console to show the Management group info, but
I always thought that it could be nicer. Then I decided to get serious, put the
kids to sleep and wrote this little piece of SCOM authoring: a management pack
that connects both the old and the new SCOM worlds.
A little background: when you do the side-by-side approach,
the agents get a double personality disorder: they report to both SCOM MGs and
one side doesn’t know about the other. So, during the process, you need to
know:
- Which
agent has received the new management group configuration;
- The
agent version (that is available already, but not in the same view)
You’ll also need a tool to remove the old MG info from the
console and a view to observe the results.
Say no more! Here it is! That’s what the MP does!
Now for some documentation:
Management Pack Elements
Discovery
It has a discovery, which creates the new extended agent
class. It is based on the Windows Computer class and adds two properties:
-
Management Group Info
This
field shows: MGName;Primary Server;TCP
Port##
In
case you have more than one MG, it will show something like this:
MGName;Primary
Server;TCP Port## MGName;Primary Server;TCP Port##
-
AgentVersion
Agent Tasks
We also have now three agent tasks, targeted to the Extended agent
class:
Remove
MG info from Agent – it will require an override (the MG name) and will remove
the MG info and restart the HealthService service.
View
Extended Agents View - > All
Agents - where you’ll be able to see the agents and their management group
info.
Installation
To
install the MP, simply import the file through the SCOM console. To remove it,
simply remove the management pack from the console. Make sure you install it in
the NEW environment (2012).
Known issues
The
discovery runs on all windows computers. So, you may want to disable it and
override it just for some computers. Another consequence of that is that it
will run also on management servers and the script will potentially fail,
generating some warnings, which can be safely ignored. The MG shouldn’t be
there forever, so, as soon as you remove it, the warnings will disappear.
