SCUtils APC PDU monitoring

I already wrote a blog post about the free SCUtils APC UPS monitoring pack a while ago. Now SCUtils provided the promised APC PDU Monitoring pack for System Center Operations Manager 2012 SP1/R2. The only disadvantage is that this one is with costs. You pay 716,14€ without VAT (852,21€ incl. VAT) per license which includes monitoring for 10 devices and you get one year support.

The management pack monitors two types of PDUs: PDU and PDU2, which are two different generations of APC PDUs. PDU objects are first generation devices of the AP7000 series. PDU2 objects are from the second generation AP8000 series, they have sensors included which are monitored also.

Here are some more details about the monitoring pack.

Included MPs:
SCUtils.AdminSettings.mp
SCUtils.APC.PDU.MP.mpb
SCUtils.APC.PDU.FirstDiscovery.Overrides.xml (only required to speed up the discoveries => changes frequency to 700 sec. You can remove that after all PDUs are discovered.)

The regular discoveries run ever 12 hours, that is ok. Most of the monitors run every 5 min, rules run every 10 min. All are enabled by default.

Monitors:

Rules:

The following folder/view structure gets created:

Diagram View:  (PDU Generation 1 => PDU2 Generation 2 would have additional objects)

You need to install the management pack on the management server and activate the license through a task. To do that go to the administration pane in the SCOM console and find the SCUtils Settings.

Select SCUtils Products Activation, then the Activation view is shown.

On the right side you have three Tasks:



If your console machine has internet access, then you can run the Activate task. Otherwise you can also use the Get Unique ID for an offline activation task to request the activation through email.

In the Activate task you override the LicenseKey and the CompanyName fields:

The management pack will work after activation.

I only tested PDU devices not PDU2.

This management pack closes the APC monitoring gap. So with both offered management packs (UPS/PDU) you can monitor your APC environment.

Attention! Version 1.0 of this MP only works if you monitor the devices through a management server not on a gateway server! A new version of this MP has been released, which also works on a Gateway Server.

SCOM 2012: Get Pool Member monitoring details

I recently had a problem that a custom rule was not running correctly, so I wanted to find out which of my SCOM 2012 Management Servers was running the All Management Servers Resource Pool instance, where the rule was targetted to.

I could not find a something which matched in the web so I contacted some of my great SCOM colleagues and got feedback from Kevin Holman with the correct solution. Thanks Kevin!

There are two tasks in SCOM already, which can give you more deatils about which Management Server takes care of which instance (class).

I

I will show now where you find them and what you need to enter.

Both tasks you require the ID of the resource pool which handles the instances. In my case it is the ‘All Management Servers Resource Pool’.

To find that run the Operations Manager Shell and enter the command:

Get-SCOMResourcePool | FT Displayname, ID

The output shows the resource pool names and the IDs. So copy the ID of the pool you need.

Then go to your Operations Manager Console.

Open the Management Servers State Dashboard view:

Select one of the Management Servers in the Management Server State section.

Then run the task ‘Get the Pool Member Monitoring a Top Level Instance’.

Here you need to override the PoolId and the ManagedEntityID. In my case the IDs are both the same as I want to know which pool member of the All Management Servers Resource Pool manages the pool. In your case you perhaps want to know that for another class. You can find the ManagedEntityID of the class through the PowerShell command: (Get-SCOMClass -Displayname ‘xxx’).Id.

The output of the Task gives you the Management Server Name:

The second task has another approach. It gives you all top level instances which a Pool Member monitors.

So run the ‘Get Top Level Instances Monitored by a Pool Member’ task.

Here you only need to override the PoolId.

The output lists all classes monitored by the pool member you selected in the Management Server State view.

With that information you can now go on and troubleshoot the logs why things are not working correctly on that Management Server.