Speeding up the SCOM Console

Beware! When editing the registry one can cause damage which cannot be undone. So be careful when performing the procedure mentioned in this blogposting. Always make an export of the registry keys before deleting ANYTHING from the registry.

Ok, having said that, there is a nice trick to get the SCOM Console running faster.

At a customers site I bumped into a situation where the SCOM operators complained about the performance of the SCOM Console. And they were right. It was very sluggish. So I checked the RMS and the related SQL server. These servers were performing just fine. No glitch what so ever. They were dimensioned properly (enough cpu, RAM and fast disks) and when running perfmon on those servers, all was well.

So the cause of the sluggish SCOM Consoles wasn't to be found there. Then I turned my attention to the systems of the SCOM Operators. First I found that they were running the SCOM Consoles with the /ClearCache command.

They started with SCOM when it came RTM and with RTM it was advised to use that switch. But when they upgraded to SP1, they were still using this switch. But it is Best Practice only to use this switch when there are problems with the SCOM Console. Under any other circumstances this switch is not to be used. So I deleted this switch.

Agents on Windows 2012 R2 Domain Controllers can stop responding or heart-beating

This is an issue I have been tracking for some time. When you deploy SCOM 2012 Agents on Windows Server 2012 R2 Domain Controllers, it is possible for the agents to stop responding and or sending heartbeats. The agent services will still be running. You will see the events in the OpsMgr event log stop processing, and you might see heartbeat failures as well. I have personally seen this on both of my Windows 2012 R2 domain controllers, which also run DNS and DHCP, and have the AD, DNS, and DHCP management packs imported.

WMI, SCOM and Windows 2003 server

On many W2K03 servers WMI can get hosed when the SCOM Agent is installed. This is not due to the SCOM Agent but due to the fact that WMI on W2K03 servers is a bit instable.

Since the SCOM Agent utilizes WMI to its fullest extend, the less stronger parts of WMI will be giving problems. There are ways to 'reset' WMI but there is also a hotfix for it. Look here for this hotfix.

Always read the KB article completely so one knows whether this hotfix applies to their situation as well.

However, when one wants to reregister the WMI repository on a W2K03 server this script will do the trick:

Windows Azure Symbol/Icon Set

Microsoft has published a free symbol/icon set for Windows Azure. This set can be used with Visio and PowerPoint.
For example:

The same zip file contains all symbols and icons as PNG files as well, so you can use them for other applications as well. Download the zip file from here.

Hope that this post was helpful.