text: .
  Just a few musings on the new Dell hardware MP.
  Download Now
  1. The MP comes in three files....
  Dell.Connections.001.mp - for Servers and Printers Dell.Connections.Client.mp - for Business Computers Dell.Connections.StorageArray.mp - for MD3000™ and MD3000i™ Storage Arrays
  Dell.Connections.001.mp - for Servers and Printers Dell.Connections.Client.mp - for Business Computers Dell.Connections.StorageArray.mp - for MD3000™ and MD3000i™ Storage Arrays
  So most of you will just need to import the Server MP. No need or benefit to import the storage array MP unless you support and monitor those specific array models above. I recommend deleting any Dell MP's you had previously imported.. along with any overrides, and starting from scratch on this one, but in place upgrade from 3.0 is supported on OpsMgr SP1.
  2. To monitor an agent's hardware, OMSA 5.3 or later must be installed on the server. Updating OMSA will likely require several BIOS and driver updates on your servers... so plan accordingly. If you deploy this MP and some agents do not have OMSA 5.3 or later installed (they have an older version) then the MP will group them under "unknown", and Dell monitoring will be disabled. This is a huge improvement from previous versions.... where monitoring still tried to apply and ended up causing WMI problems on the agents. What would be *MUCH* better.... is to take any agent without OMSA 5.3 or newer.... and drop it into a group, or class, where ONLY event log and performance monitoring is done.... since these are native. That way - if an agent with OMSA 5.1 or 5.2 is out there - most of the critical events will still match event log expressions, as these do not change very often. Still... best to just update the OMSA version so your monitoring is complete and current, end-to-end.
  3. Dell is still using their own internal terminology to revision MP's..... Such as..... "3.1 A01"..... what does that mean to an OpsMgr admin? Dell should put the actual MP version as seen in the OpsMgr console on their download page..... The previous version of the "Dell Management Pack" file "Dell.Connections.001.mp" was 3.0.0.27. The new MP imports as 3.1.0.118. The COOL thing.... is that Dell put the "3.1 A01" into the common name of the MP which shows up in the OpsMgr console.... so finally an OpsMgr admin can know if he is current or not based on Dell's download page. :-)
  4. Dell MP's do not currently support Server 2008.... according to their support matrix in the guide. Hope this is coming out soon.
  5. KB951526 IS REQUIRED!!! I think this needs a little more stress than a small blurb in the appendix.... if you plan on using this MP - you should first apply 951526 to your OpsMgr environment.
  6. You REALLY need to read the guide on this one. After importing the Dell Server MP.... all your management servers will start logging a 31707 event error every 5 minutes, complaining about not being able to find a directory. You have to run the DellBMCLogSetup.exe on all management servers, which creates a local directory and file in C:\DellReports. Fundamentally - anything optional like this.... should be disabled by default.... instead of logging constant errors by default.... letting the end user enable it if they want this type of monitoring. The rules involved in this appear to be targeting the "Management Server" class, and run a script every 360 minutes, and another rule monitors the contents of a text file that would get created.
  That's about all I could see initially. I'll be looking forward to testing it on live Dell servers... and see if they have solved the problems interacting with WMI that I experienced with previous versions.
  Update 8-18-08
  Apparently there is what appears to be a bug in this MP.... on all my management servers, I see the following events in the OpsMgr event log:
  Event Type: Warning Event Source: Health Service Modules Event Category: None Event ID: 21402 Date: 8/18/2008 Time: 3:15:46 PM User: N/A Computer: OMMS2 Description: Forced to terminate the following process started at 3:14:46 PM because it ran past the configured timeout 60 seconds. Command executed: "C:\WINDOWS\system32\cscript.exe" /nologo "BMCLogGet.vbs" Working Directory: C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\Health Service State\Monitoring Host Temporary Files 15\2829\
  One or more workflows were affected by this.
  Workflow name: Dell.Connections.BMCLogRetrieve Instance name: OMMS2.opsmgr.net Instance ID: {7E69629F-1CAD-62A7-F706-6ED089BA940F} Management group: OPS
  Event Type: Warning Event Source: Health Service Modules Event Category: None Event ID: 21413 Date: 8/18/2008 Time: 3:15:46 PM User: N/A Computer: OMMS2 Description: The Event Policy for the process started at 3:14:46 PM has detected errors in the output. The 'ExitCode' policy expression: [^0]+ matched the following output: 3
  Command executed: "C:\WINDOWS\system32\cscript.exe" /nologo "BMCLogGet.vbs" Working Directory: C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007\Health Service State\Monitoring Host Temporary Files 15\2829\
  The above is recurring every 6 hours... (360 minutes)... and also creating an application exception that is being picked up by AEM:
  Some notes on the dell discovery:
  The primary discovery (fist discovery that runs) is targeting Windows Computer. However - this discovery does not show up in the Ops console under "object" discoveries due to a problem with the MP.
  You can see this in MPviewer, however:
  So ALL Windows computers will be inspected to see if they are a "Dell System" every 6 hours. It does this by running a script on ALL Windows Computers every 6 hours to see if they are a Dell server.
  The script appears to simply check WMI to see if a value for Manufacturer = Dell, and then collect BIOS information. Then it will populate instances of the Dell System Class. You can see these under Monitoring/Discovered inventory to see if this is working.
  Here is the discovery script, which anyone can pull from the XML:
  ************************************
  Option Explicit On Error resume next
  Dim oArgs Set oArgs = WScript.Arguments if oArgs.Count < 3 Then Wscript.Quit -1 End If
  Dim SourceID, ManagedEntityId, TargetComputer
  SourceId = oArgs(0) ManagedEntityId = oArgs(1) TargetComputer = oArgs(2)
  Dim oAPI, oDiscoveryData, oInst Set oAPI = CreateObject("MOM.ScriptAPI") set oDiscoveryData = oAPI.CreateDiscoveryData(0, SourceId, ManagedEntityId)
  Dim strComputer, WbemServices, wbemObjectSet, wbemObject, sQuery Dim Manufacturer strComputer="." Set WbemServices = GetObject("winmgmts:" & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2") If IsEmpty(WbemServices) Then MOMDebugLog "Unable to open WMI Namespace root-cimv2. Check to see if the WMI service is enabled and running, and ensure this WMI namespace exists." & Err.Description Else GetManufacturerName() If Instr(Manufacturer, "Dell") Then set oInst = oDiscoveryData.CreateClassInstance("$MPElement[Name='Dell.Connections.DellSystem']$") call oInst.AddProperty("$MPElement[Name='Windows!Microsoft.Windows.Computer']/PrincipalName$", TargetComputer) call oInst.AddProperty("$MPElement[Name='Windows!Microsoft.Windows.LogicalDevice']/DeviceID$", TargetComputer) call oDiscoveryData.AddInstance(oInst) End If End If
  ' Submit the data Call oAPI.Return(oDiscoveryData)
  Set oDiscoveryData = Nothing Set oAPI = Nothing Public Function GetManufacturerName () 'Retrieving ManufactuferName On Error resume next Set wbemObjectSet = wbemServices.ExecQuery("select * from win32_bios") If Err.Number <> 0 Then ErrorMessage = "Number:" & Err.Number & "Description:" & Err.Description MOMDebugLog (ErrorMessage) End If If (wbemObjectSet is Nothing) or (IsNull(wbemObjectSet)) Then LogMessage = "Unable to retrieve Manufacturer" MOMDebugLog (LogMessage) Else LogMessage = "Manufacturer Name retrieved successfully" MOMDebugLog (LogMessage)
  Dim objItem For Each objItem in wbemObjectSet 'Error checking If Err.Number <> 0 Then </Composition> </Composite> </ModuleImplementation> <OutputType>System!System.Discovery.Data</OutputType> </DataSourceModuleType> <DataSourceModuleType ID="Dell.Connections.DellServer.DiscoveryRule" Accessibility="Internal" Batching="false"> <Configuration> <xsd:element <xsd:element </Configuration> <OverrideableParameters> <OverrideableParameter ID="IntervalSeconds" Selector="$Config/IntervalSeconds$" ParameterType="int" /> </OverrideableParameters> <ModuleImplementation Isolation="Any"> <Composite> <MemberModules> <DataSource ID="DS" TypeID="Windows!Microsoft.Windows.TimedScript.DiscoveryProvider"> <IntervalSeconds>$Config/IntervalSeconds$</IntervalSeconds> <SyncTime /> <ScriptName>DellServerDiscovery.vbs</ScriptName> <Arguments>$MPElement$ $Target/Id$ $Config/Computer$</Arguments> <ScriptBody>
  ******************************
  Next.... we see the next discovery will target our newly populated "Dell System" class instances - and run the "Dell Server Discovery"..... and once again - this discovery does not show up in the Ops console under Object discoveries.... This would be a really good discovery to override - if you wanted to limit the number of Servers to initially receive the Dell Management Pack.... however by not exposing this to the ops console, that functionality has been somewhat limited. You can see it in MPViewer:
  This discovery runs a script every 6 hours against all discovered instances of "Dell Systems Instances". The script is a bit long.... but this is the core script that discovers most of the Dell objects, to populate the other classes such as BIOS, hardware, software, etc... The script connects to WMI - polls some information, and checks to see if OMSAVersion = RequiredOMSAVersion = 5.3
  It LOOKS like if you have a newer version of OMSA... like 5.4 - this wont work either... unless I am reading the script wrong. I cant test this as I don't have any Dell servers. Regardless.... it is designed to look for the supported OMSA version of 5.3, and if not - then it dumps the machines into an Unknown group. If it works properly, you will be able to go into Monitoring, Discovered Inventory, and load the "Dell Server Instance" class and see the discovered systems and their attributes.
  If you would like to receive an email when updates are made to this post, please register here
  RSS
  David posted earlier on the release of the new Dell Management Pack, this pack has had a number of issues
  What are the requirements exactly - we have many servers on openmanage 5.3, that are healthy reporting agents. Only a handful of objects are actually discovered within SCOM. The hotfix is applied as above. Can't find anything common on the objects discovered correctly.
  WMI errors were resolved with the new MP 3.1 A01...
  See my latest update to help in troubleshooting. If it is discovering sub-objects, I'd following the same path... use MPviewer and look at the scripts to understand what is being discovered where - then use WMI to inspect each server with a discovery problem. Some of these will take a full 24 hours to complete a discovery cycle.
  More fun from Dell:
  I have loaded this MP along with several patches and such. The first time, it created way more errors than it fixed it seemed. (Although it wasn't breaking SMI.) I have found the best way to use this MP is to get rid of all the "Unnessecary" rules/monitors ect. The Dell MP uses alot of SNMP calls to the Dell OM software on each agent. It's doing this way too much, (Thus the WMI fix...) and isn't entirely nessecary. I've used the MP listed here:
  which did remove alot of the SNMP calls and then I one upped it by removing all the Dell Printer Rules/Discovery/Monitors ect since I monitor a Datacenter where there are no printers.
  Thus far, the MP is not making much noise and the WMI errors are not popping up. (Although I need to update alot of systems to the 5.4 OM software still...) I still get all the info I need, System errors/DRAC info/Hardware faults.
  I've asked Dell to release the MPs for servers and printers separately, but nothing came of that.
  I've added this Management pack to our organisation. However we only have about 6 out of 50 servers that have 5.3 or above Openmanage. The rest are 5.1/5.2. I have updated some of the servers to 5.4 and 5.5. The systems then appear. However the Storage Health will not populate. It all looks fine within openmanage itself. But cannot get it to work. It works find on the same type of server, but built with openmanage 5.4. Any ideas?
  Same here - DellStorageDiscovery.vbs doesn't return any data (exits with 0); I'm using OMSA 5.5.
  Did anyone ever find an answer to this. None of our OMSA 5.5 are reporting any Dell Storage Information?
  I was having issues with the storage vbs as well (OMSA 5.4/5.5) however installing Dell Storage Management resolved them.
  I'd also encourage people to ensure they have KB954643 installed as well as KB951526 which is already noted. Prior to installing '643 I had the Dell discoveries running on Virtual/VMWare clients, after MP removal, patching, MP import...all good.
  Hope that helps some.....
  Cheers,
  Aengus
  You can fix the MP for OM 5.5 quite easily, but note that this change will break it for prior versions:
  Export the MP to xml using mptoxml, open the xml using notepad and go to line 3171, change this:
  If (UBound(valueArray) <> 21) Then
  to
  If (UBound(valueArray) <> 25) Then
  We upgraded all servers to OM 5.5 before loading this MP and it worked perfectly.
  Andy
  Here is a better fix which will work with 5.2, 5.3 and 5.5 versons of openmanage
  Change line 3171 to:
  If (UBound(valueArray) <> 21) and (UBound(valueArray) <> 25) Then
  Dell has updated their hardware management pack.  The old version was 3.1.0.118.  The new version
  DellStorageDiscovery.vbs BUG ?
  The script use a numeric separator with a Hard Code , if you are not In US regional setting , the script DellStorageDiscovery.vbs failed.
  To correct this you need to use a US regionnal setting with the Action Agent Account
  SO create a Action Account on the domaine , use this account like a RunAs Account , set the account on the Dell serveur with the a New RunASprofil , and open a session on the DELL server with this account and set the regionnal settings with US. Verify that all it's correct.
  Hi,
  I have a problem with this MP :D
  After importing the MP I have seen some servers of my organisation haven't OMSA installed :/ and some others have old version (some with 1.9 !)
  I have installed or upgraded OMSA on theses server. But I still have a problem, new installed OMSA are dectected as Dell Monolithic Server, but upgraded servers stay in "Unknown" with the message "Please upgrade OMSA to 5.3 or above from support.dell.com"
  How I can reset the group membership for this MP ?
  Thanks for your help,
  Romain
  Hello,
  About the regional settings on the delldiscovery.vbs, i opened a case at Dell, but they ask me to wait for the next version (v4) that will come in months because i am the only one to complains. If anybody have it also, please one a case at dell support.