Thomas Burke Holland (http://armsinfragilehands.blogspot.com/) has taken the source code from my Sharepoint 2003 Stock Quotes Web Part and created a web part that works on Sharepoint 2007. Check out his web site and download the 2007 version of the web part from the CodePlex web site:
http://www.codeplex.com/svstockticker
Monday, October 13, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Adding a Serial port to a VM on ESXi
Back when we setup our System Center Operations Manager servers, we decided to virtualize them using VMware. Although we had an ESX cluster with datastores on our SAN, we felt that it would be counterproductive to put the monitoring system on the same hardware that we wanted to monitor. After all, an ESX or SAN outage would take the monitoring system offline so nobody would get notified.
Therefore we setup a separate Dell 2850 with Windows 2003 Server 64-bit, running the free VMware Server. At the time we setup our virtual root management server with a serial GSM modem so that it could send SMS notifications (more on that here). Since our GSM modem was serial based, all we needed to do was plug the cable into the 2850's COM1 port, then add a virtual serial port onto the virtual machine and connect it to COM1.
When VMware released their ESXi hypervisor for free, we decided to change from VMware Server to VMware ESXi. The hypervisor promised better performance and memory management and seemed like a nice upgrade. Unfortunately we soon discovered that VMware ESXi 3.5 update 2 does not support mapping a physical serial port to a virtual serial port.
To work around this problem, we purchased a Digi One SP serial over ethernet device for around $150. So now instead of connecting the modem directly to the COM1 port on the back of the Dell server, it now connects to this device which is connected to an ethernet port. The steps are pretty simple:
Therefore we setup a separate Dell 2850 with Windows 2003 Server 64-bit, running the free VMware Server. At the time we setup our virtual root management server with a serial GSM modem so that it could send SMS notifications (more on that here). Since our GSM modem was serial based, all we needed to do was plug the cable into the 2850's COM1 port, then add a virtual serial port onto the virtual machine and connect it to COM1.
When VMware released their ESXi hypervisor for free, we decided to change from VMware Server to VMware ESXi. The hypervisor promised better performance and memory management and seemed like a nice upgrade. Unfortunately we soon discovered that VMware ESXi 3.5 update 2 does not support mapping a physical serial port to a virtual serial port.
To work around this problem, we purchased a Digi One SP serial over ethernet device for around $150. So now instead of connecting the modem directly to the COM1 port on the back of the Dell server, it now connects to this device which is connected to an ethernet port. The steps are pretty simple:
- Attach the device directly to a spare ethernet NIC on the back of our Dell server using a cross-over cable. Note that we could just connect it to our existing network infrastructure, but again we wanted the monitoring system to be self contained and able to send pages even if the network was offline.
- In the VMware Infrastructure Client, add a new virtual switch to the ESXi server.
- Shut down the RMS virtual machine to add a new virtual NIC which is assigned to the new switch we just created.
- Power ON the VM and configure the new NIC with an unused private address (in our case 192.168.0.1).
- Uninstall the existing GSM modem from the RMS virtual machine.
- Install the Digi One SP software on the RMS virtual machine. The software takes you through a wizard which detects the device and allows you to configure its IP address (in our case 192.168.0.2). Accept all the defaults to install a "RealPort" virtual COM3 port.
- Install the GSM modem through the control panel and connect it to the new COM3 port.
- Test using the Microsoft SMS Sender and then with Operations Manager.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Simple Cisco Router Management Pack for SCOM 2007
I've written a simple "proof-of-concept" management pack to monitor some of my Cisco routers. The MP is configured to discover a Cisco 2600, 2800, and 2801 router. Currently it will monitor up to 4 interfaces for up/down port status, errors and incoming/outgoing bps. It will also monitor some general environmental conditions (fan & temperature state).
Note that this is an extremely simple management pack. It will not discover all of your interfaces or anything like that. For my purposes, I simply hard-coded rules for interfaces 1-4 and used overrides to enable or disable them depending on the device.
Unfortunately, after going through the process of creating this SNMP management pack, I've come to the conclusion that it is really too much work. If you can afford one of the 3rd party SNMP management tools (like Quest System Center or Jalasoft Xian Network Manager), you'll find your job much easier.
For more details on writing your own SNMP management packs, check out my previous article: Example SNMP Management Pack for SCOM 2007.
Here's a screenshot of the performance view
You can download my sample Cisco management pack here:
RBH.Cisco.Routers.Management.Pack.xml
*Reminder: it is unlikely that this management pack will work on your system without tweaking the XML. This management pack also requires Raphael Burri's SNMP Discovery Provider, which I discuss in my article: Example SNMP Management Pack for SCOM 2007.
This sample management pack is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
Note that this is an extremely simple management pack. It will not discover all of your interfaces or anything like that. For my purposes, I simply hard-coded rules for interfaces 1-4 and used overrides to enable or disable them depending on the device.
Unfortunately, after going through the process of creating this SNMP management pack, I've come to the conclusion that it is really too much work. If you can afford one of the 3rd party SNMP management tools (like Quest System Center or Jalasoft Xian Network Manager), you'll find your job much easier.
For more details on writing your own SNMP management packs, check out my previous article: Example SNMP Management Pack for SCOM 2007.
Here's a screenshot of the performance view
You can download my sample Cisco management pack here:
RBH.Cisco.Routers.Management.Pack.xml
*Reminder: it is unlikely that this management pack will work on your system without tweaking the XML. This management pack also requires Raphael Burri's SNMP Discovery Provider, which I discuss in my article: Example SNMP Management Pack for SCOM 2007.
This sample management pack is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
