SCOM: Building Instance Groups from Groups of a Different Class

When I first started working with Operations Manager, one of the items that I struggled with was how to make a group from another group targeting a different class such as all Non-System Drives hosted on Windows 2008 Servers. This can just as easily be used to help segment your management environment among multiple groups or departments managing different aspects of your environment.

Operations Manager: Cleaning Up Cluster Resources

Fixing client issues or removing defunct clusters is one of the more frustrating tasks in Operations Manager. You try to uninstall the client on a Windows Cluster node and you are immediately met with a message that that the "Agent is managing other devices and cannot be uninstalled. Please resolve this issue via Agentless managed view in Administration".

Advanced AD Inter-Site Replication

Many of us have physical locations that are connected by high-speed connections, but we have elected to still represent these sites as separate AD Sites for other reasons: segmentation of authentication traffic, global catalog load balancing, DFS Root location, disaster recovery, etc. Unfortunately, now that the DCs are in separate AD sites, replication is relegated to the timed replication cycle rather than the change notification cycle used within the same site, or are they?

Vacation Over

Well my little vacation was far longer than originally planned.

Other Common Problems Preventing SCCM Client Installation

Over the last 4 days, we have covered several of the common items that prevent SCCM Client installation and operation. Today we will cover a few more common issues, such as the dreaded VAPPDeploy registration issue, and common issues with the Windows Installer Itself.

Dealing with WMI Issues – Part 3

Over the last 2 days, we have addressed a couple of escalating methods in a process to repair the WMI subsystem on machines where it is not functioning properly. Today, we will cover, what is hopefully the last method needed, as it is a fairly drastic step: wiping the WBEM Repository.

Dealing with WMI Issues – Part 2

Assuming that the WMIDiag script did not repair the WMI Subsystem sufficiently to allow for a successful client reinstall, the next step is to run a more "invasive" WMI Repair process. Luckily, it doesn't need to come with a lot of legwork on your part.