Monitoring Status and Flow

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SMS 2.0 offers an excellent set of tools for monitoring the status and flow of the site configuration process: site status messages and site component log files. Together, these tools provide you the means not only to effectively troubleshoot an SMS process, but also to learn the process and become familiar with the way SMS components interact with, and react to, each other.

Status Messages

Each of the SMS components responsible for carrying out the site configuration process generates a set of status messages specific to this process. To view these status messages, expand the System Status folder in the SMS Administrator Console, expand Site Status, and then expand your site. Click on Component Status to view a list of status messages for all the components, as shown in Figure 3-12. You will find entries for Hierarchy Manager and Site Control Manager listed here.

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Figure 3-12. The Site Component Status window, listing the status messages for all the SMS components.

To view the detailed status messages for a component, right-click on the component, choose Show Messages from the context menu, and then choose All. SMS will display the rich set of detailed messages that that component has generated during a predefined period. Figures 3-13 and 3-14 show the messages generated by Hierarchy Manager and Site Control Manager, with the content of one message displayed. Message content can be viewed by double-clicking on the message or by positioning your cursor on the description area of each message to open a pop-up window. Viewing and configuring status messages are discussed in detail in Chapter 5.

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Figure 3-13. Status messages generated by Hierarchy Manager. Message IDs 3306 and 3307 (displayed) are specific to the Site Control Manager process.

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Figure 3-14. Status messages generated by Site Control Manager. Message IDs 2807, 2811, 2814 (displayed), and 2865 are specific to the Site Control Manager process.

Log Files

In addition to status messages, each component can also be configured to create and maintain log files. Unlike status messages, which are generated automatically and enabled by default, log files are not automatically enabled for the site server in SMS 2.0. This is a notable change from earlier versions of SMS. Logging component activity does require additional resources on the site server. Depending on the SMS 2.0 features you installed and the components you have enabled and configured, SMS could generate 30 or more log files—more than twice as many as were generated in SMS 1.2.

Needless to say, it is not always practical, or even necessary, to enable logging for every SMS component. Logging is intended primarily as a troubleshooting tool. However, you would do well to practice using logging in a test environment to learn how the SMS components interact with each other. Logging is certainly not the most exciting activity you could engage in, but nevertheless this exercise will be very enlightening from an SMS perspective.

Enabling SMS 2.0 Log Files

SMS 2.0 component log files are enabled through the SMS Service Manager utility launched in the SMS Administrator Console. Follow these steps to enable SMS 2.0 component log files:

  1. Expand the Tools folder in the SMS Administrator Console.
  2. Right-click on SMS Service Manager, choose All Tasks from the context menu, and then choose Start SMS Service Manager, as shown in Figure 3-15. SMS will launch the SMS Service Manager utility. Notice that it makes its own connection to the SMS database.
  3. Expand the site server entry and select Components, as shown in Figure 3-16.
  4. Right-click on the component for which you want to enable logging—for example, SMS_Hierarchy_Manager—and then choose Logging from the context menu to display the SMS Component Logging Control dialog box, as shown in Figure 3-17.
  5. Check the Logging Enabled check box. Note the location and name of the log file that will be created. Modify this entry only if you need to. Note also the default log size of 1 MB. This setting ensures that the log does not compromise disk storage space. Again, you can modify this entry (in MB) if you need to.
  6. Click OK, and then close the SMS Service Manager window.

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Figure 3-15. Launching SMS Service Manager.

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Figure 3-16. The SMS Service Manager window.

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Figure 3-17. The SMS Component Logging Control dialog box for a single component.

REAL WORLD  Enabling Logging for Multiple Components

Obviously, there's much more to SMS Service Manager, which we'll look at more closely in Chapter 5. However, one feature that is definitely applicable here is the ability to enable logging for multiple SMS components at one time.

You can enable logging for multiple components at one time by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on the components you want to log, just like selecting multiple files in Windows Explorer. You can enable logging for all components by choosing Select from the Component menu in the SMS Service Manager window and then choosing Select All, or by right-clicking on a component and choosing Select All from the context menu. With all the components selected, you can either right-click on any one of them and choose Logging from the context menu or choose Logging from the Component menu and then enable logging as described earlier.

When you enable logging for multiple SMS components in this way, the option Use Same File For All Selected Components will be selectable in the SMS Component Logging Control dialog box, as shown in Figure 3-18.

Checking this option will cause the components that you selected to write their logging data to a single file. With more than two or three components, this log file can become confusing and somewhat unwieldy. Nevertheless, for something like the site configuration process, in which two SMS threads are involved, this file can provide a single source of tracking information.

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Figure 3-18. The SMS Component Logging Control dialog box for multiple components.

Log files are text files that are written, by default, to the SMS\Logs folder. You can save these files anywhere you want when you enable logging, but unless you have disk space concerns, why make changes? Log files can be viewed using any text editor or using the SMS Trace utility included on the SMS 2.0 CD. The advantage of using SMS Trace is that it displays one or more log files in real time—that is, while they are being updated. A text editor will display the file only as it appears up to that point in time. For details on how to install the SMS Trace utility and all its features, refer to Chapter 5.



Microsoft Systems Management Server 2.0 Administrator's Companion
Microsoft Systems Management Server 2.0 Administrators Companion (IT-Administrators Companion)
ISBN: 0735608342
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 1999
Pages: 167

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