patterns & practices - Design for Operations

New Post: Installation of Documentation for TSMMD incorrect on x64

calvinandhobbes — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 23:32:30 GMT

When you install on Vista x64, the shortcut for the documentation for TSMMD is incorrect. This is what is created:
"%CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\Help 9\dexplore.exe" /helpcol ms-help://MS.VSCC.v90/MS.VSIPCC.v90/ms.practices.tsmmd.2008august /LaunchFKeywordTopic tsmmd2008august.introduction /filter "Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool - August 2008"

%CommonProgramFiles% should be %CommonProgramFiles(x86)%, but the problem with that is it is too long for shortcut text, so you can't enter it. To make it work I had to remove the /filter parameter. That way at least the documentation will launch.

Regards,
Thomas

New Post: Exactly what is the Managed Entity Property IISApplicationName

nanderto — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:00:39 GMT

I have searched though the documentation and I am unsure exactly which name should be entered into this parameter, it seems this is important for the discovery of the instrumentation bu the monitoring tool. For example I want to host serveral WCF services in IIS. Do I have to choose the "Web Site Name"? Are we restricted to modeling by web site or can I set up an application in that web site and use the Application name displayed on the properties page in the IIS console? Is this even the correct value or is it the value of the virtual directory? Your tool has validation rules for example no "." or spaces but IIS does not care about either of these rules so i am unsure if either of these are the corect values. If it is the application name then i am curous why we need these rules.
I have the same question about the ServiceName. If I host multiple WCF services in a windows service can i only enter the name of the service or can i model each service separately, and if i do what exactly is the ServiceName for each managed entity?

Thanks

Updated Wiki: Home

wloeffler — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:34:27 GMT

Project Description
patterns & practices project focused on developing tools and guidance to help enable the development of highly manageable applications on the Windows platform.

This project has created two deliverables. First is the Visual Studio Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool (TSMMD). TSMMD is a tool for modeling line-of-business health scenarios and the associated instrumentation. The tool includes guidance packages that generate platform instrumentation (called Instrumentation Helpers) and validators to confirm that application source code contains instrumentation defined in the Health Model. The tool can then be used to generate Management Packs for System Center Operations Manager 2007. Lastly is the Management Guide that contains prescriptive guidance on building highly manageable applications on the Microsoft Windows platform.

V2.2 of the Visual Studio Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool has been released.

We need your feedback. Is the tooling correct? What did we get right and where did we fall short?

patterns & practices Links

Updated Release: V2.2 VSTS Management Model Designer (Aug 13, 2008)

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:33:54 GMT

The Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool is a productivity tool that helps architects and system designers to generate models of an application that contribute to minimized TCO. These models include configuration, instrumentation, health, and performance information. The Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool also assists developers to implement the required instrumentation, and create management packs for monitoring systems such as Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007.

V2.2 of the Management Model Designer is being released as a community preview and is compatible with and will update models created by version V2.1.

TSMMD requires Visual Studio 2008 Team System and the Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) V1.4.

Released: V2.2 VSTS Management Model Designer (Aug 13, 2008)

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:33:54 GMT

NEW POST: Enterprise Library Performance Counter

David — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:20:04 GMT

I think the TSMMD will be a perfect tool to fill the gap between developers and Operators. Since developer can create a management pack without any SCOM knowledge.

But it is still very limited since it is not possible to monitor an Enterprise Library Performance counter (e.g. # of Exceptions Handled/Sec) since it contains "illegal characters" for the Tool.
And also It would be really helpful to indicate which instance to monitor (since each instance may mean a different managed entity).

NEW POST: Only 1 event per health state?

David — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:52:35 GMT

Another work around could be to create an abstract Event (e.g. called Green State Event) that has many "Configurable Implementations".
Assign to the "Green State Event" all the event logs that will make the application go to Green.

NEW POST: Bounds in measure formula overlapping?

sgrummesgaard — Tue, 20 May 2008 08:05:23 GMT

I have created an aspect on performance counters. My states are as following:

Green state:
Lower bound: (empty)
Upper bound: 1

Yellow state:
Lower bound: 2
Upper bound: 5

Red state:
Lower bound: 6
upper bound: (empty)

When validating this I get the following error:

Model Validation : Bounds in measure formula for aspect "WorkItemUpdates" are invalid. When three states are defined, the upper bound of the first state must be equal to the lower bound of the second state and the upper bound of the second state must be equal to the lower bound of the third state. Other bounds must be empty.

One way to fix this is to set Yellow Lower bound to 1 and Red Lower bound to 5. As I read the description of the lower and upper bound fields, these values are included in the interval.

Then my question is: If my performance counter has value 1 (or 5), which state is my health in?

Br,
Søren

NEW POST: State or Abstraction in instrumentation helper classes

sgrummesgaard — Tue, 20 May 2008 07:41:16 GMT

I am missing the opportunity to keep state in the generated instrumentation helper classes, or some abstraction (interfaces, abstract classes).

An example: Let’s say you have a web application and a health definition with an aspect looking at database connectivity. Each request coming in to the web application grabs a connection from the pool. If this fails a ConnectionFailed event is raised, which makes OpsMgr enter into Red Health State. If getting a connection was a success I raise a ConnectionEstablish event – this way it will go from Red to Green Health State.
But if we are already in a Green Health State I don’t really want to know that a connection was established – It would spam my event log if the number of requests is high enough.

If I somehow could keep state in my instrumentation helper classes so it would only raise events when necessary, that is, when Health state is changed (maybe redirecting “unnecessary” events to a log file instead).

Now this is probably too specific to put into the helper classes and I think it would be fine if I were to write this myself. But it would require some abstraction on the helper classes which I don’t find (otherwise I would have to rewrite whenever changing the health definition), see also http://www.codeplex.com/dfo/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=25183 (I am looking at v2.1)

What's your opinion on this?

Br,
Søren

NEW POST: Issues with the generated code

RyanRoberts — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:51:56 GMT

The subversion issue turned out to be a problem with visual svn's vs 2008 integration and GAX. I'll take a look at 2.1 as soon as I get a chance, most of our experience with 2.0 has been very positive.

NEW POST: Empty toolbox

sgrummesgaard — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:07:26 GMT

Solved...

I reset my toolbox, and selected the "ManagementInstaller" in Choose Toolbox Items.
That did the trick.

Br,
Søren

sgrummesgaard wrote:
I just "upgraded" (uninstalled - installed) feb08 CTP to apr08 CTP of TSMMD

My toolbox is completely empty (only has an empty General group). I can see a lot has moved into Wizards, and I managed to create a managed enty and an external managed entity. Now I want to connect these, but can't select the Connector tool as described in the walkthrough.

I tried "choose items" on the toolbox, but couldn't find any relevant file to add. Is there an installation problem or am I doing something wrong?

Br,
Søren

NEW POST: Empty toolbox

sgrummesgaard — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:57:35 GMT

I just "upgraded" (uninstalled - installed) feb08 CTP to apr08 CTP of TSMMD

My toolbox is completely empty (only has an empty General group). I can see a lot has moved into Wizards, and I managed to create a managed enty and an external managed entity. Now I want to connect these, but can't select the Connector tool as described in the walkthrough.

I tried "choose items" on the toolbox, but couldn't find any relevant file to add. Is there an installation problem or am I doing something wrong?

Br,
Søren

NEW POST: Error 6: The command "..\..\EventMessages.cmd" exited with code -1.

canoas — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:29:37 GMT

HELP: can't find why mc.exe and rc.exe are not installed

NEW POST: Error 6: The command "..\..\EventMessages.cmd" exited with code -1.

canoas — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:09:36 GMT

In my laptop there is no mc.exe nor rc.exe so this script fails to generate some of the files.

Any idea why this happens? I'm using VSTS Team Suite and the SDK's bin folder has 109 files but not those.

(I didn't install some parts, e,g, C++)

other errors that are probably related to this mc.exe also:
Error 5 cannot open input file 'messages/EventMessagesCustomerApplication.res'

NEW POST: Walkthrough incorrect

shahram — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:41:26 GMT

No, I have checked all nodes no "Add New Target Environment Instrumentation"!

NEW POST: Walkthrough incorrect

canoas — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:14:24 GMT

Right-click on the top of the tree (Management Model)

as a rule in this UI, if you right-click on any container (e.g. "Event Log Events") and it doesn't show any "Add New...", try one level above in the tree and it will be there :-(

NEW POST: What is the status of DfO?

wloeffler — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:14:19 GMT

V2.1 of the designer has been released.

wloeffler wrote:
Hi Mark,

We are about to make a major update to the designer tooling available as a community preview of the final bits that will be available in April 2008.

We have been quiet about our plans and direction until significant decisions about release and licensing were made.

The Program and Project are alive and well as you will see in the comming weeks and months.

markwaddle wrote:
There has not been any activity since May. Is there intentions for further updates to these tools, or are they being abandoned?

UPDATED WIKI: Home

wloeffler — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:10:33 GMT

Project Description
patterns & practices project focused on developing tools and guidance to help enable the development of highly manageable applications on the Windows platform.

This project has created two deliverables. First is the Visual Studio Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool (TSMMD). TSMMD is a tool for modeling line-of-business health scenarios and the associated instrumentation. The tool includes guidance packages that generate platform instrumentation (called Instrumentation Helpers) and validators to confirm that application source code contains instrumentation defined in the Health Model. The tool can then be used to generate Management Packs for System Center Operations Manager 2007. Lastly is the Management Guide that contains prescriptive guidance on building highly manageable applications on the Microsoft Windows platform.

V2.1 of the Visual Studio Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool has been released.

We need your feedback. Is the tooling correct? What did we get right and where did we fall short?

patterns & practices Links

UPDATED WIKI: Home

wloeffler — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:00:14 GMT

Project Description
patterns & practices project focused on developing tools and guidance to help enable the development of highly manageable applications on the Windows platform.

This project has created two deliverables. First is the Visual Studio Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool (TSMMD). TSMMD is a tool for modeling line-of-business health scenarios and the associated instrumentation. The tool includes guidance packages that generate platform instrumentation (called Instrumentation Helpers) and validators to confirm that application source code contains instrumentation defined in the Health Model. The tool can then be used to generate Management Packs for System Center Operations Manager 2007. Lastly is the Management Guide that contains prescriptive guidance on building highly manageable applications on the Microsoft Windows platform.

V2.1 of the Visual Studio Team System Management Model Designer Power Tool has been released.

We need your feedback. Is the tooling correct? What did we get right and where did we fall short?

patterns & practices Links

NEW POST: Issues with the generated code

wloeffler — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:55:35 GMT

Hi Ryan,
Thanks for your feedback. V2.1 has been released. We made some changes to the generated code. We went back and forth amoung our team and folks providing feedback. There were many oppertunities we considered to improve the design time experience but these resulted in a less than optimal experience at deployment and/or configuration. Have a look at V2.1 and let us know what you think.

Unfortunatly we were not able to preserve backward compatibility with the CTP. Now that were at the RTW milestone we will preserve backward compatability with the previous release going forward.

Can you give us more detail on the subversion issue? Is it the Instrumentation folder or other folders in your solution?

Thanks again,
-Bill

RyanRoberts wrote:
It's rather difficult to mock the current generated code, would it be possible to create interfaces for the abstract instrumentation helper classes?

Also, the code generation process seems to wipe out subversion directories.