It is always important to have up to date Management packs, this is because in updated management packs their can be new monitors and rules which are not included in the current version of the management pack and therefore making you miss potential issues. Bug Fixes may also be included in updated MP’s so updating can also reduce the amount of noise from SCOM.

The task of updating SCOM R2 Management Packs is fairly Straightforward.

Upgrading Management Packs

1, If we firstly go to the administration tab on SCOM console

2, Now if We Right Click Management packs on the windows on the left and choose import management packs

3,  Next if choose the add option and then the add from catalog option. The Add from catalog option, basically checks for new MP’s from the Microsoft Management Pack catalog.

4, If we change the View drop down to update management packs. This will then compare our MP version to Microsoft catalogues and let us know what MP’s we need to update when we hit search.

5, You will now see the management packs you need to update. If you choose what management packs you  want and press the add option and then finally hit ok.

6, Then Install the MP’s and you’re done.

 Daniel Davies

You may start having issues with certain  users who are using ISA 2006 as there web proxy on certain web sites which cause IE not to work until it is restarted.

A possible cause for this is ISA’s Flood Mitigation settings which limit you to 600 http requests per minute. Certain websites will make more request than this limit and ISA will block http requests from the IP address and you will have this error appear in the alerts tab of the ISA.

“The number of HTTP requests per minute from the source IP address *.*.*.* exceeded the configured limit. ISA Server will block new HTTP requests sent from this IP address.”

To stop this issue occurring you can add exception to the flood mitigation settings which will increase the maximum number of http requests to go up to 6000.

To add an Exception to Flood Mitigation Settings

1, Expand configuration and press the general option on ISA management console.

2, Press “Configure Flood Mitigation Settings”

3, Go to the IP Exceptions Tab and add in the computers which are experiencing the issues and apply the rule and you have then increased the HTTP Requests per minute value to 6000.

Hope this helps

Daniel Davies

Forefront Threat management Gateway the successor to ISA server 2006 is now RTM and the eval is available for download form the following link above

Hurrah the CRM Analytics accelerator has been updated to include SQL 2005 definition files. When the R2 release was posted the SQL 2005 RDL’s didn’t work and there was only SQL 2005, well now you can download the SQL 2005  versions too!

Got home from work today and received an email that Office 2010 Beta is available for download from Connect, it is also available on my TechNet and MSDN accounts.

Now to uninstall the tech preview and see what’s new – hopefully things are a little more stable;)

Today Microsoft have made available Windows Marketplace for Windows Mobile versions 6 and 6.1 today joining Windows Mobile 6.5 users.

Just go to wm.windowsphone.com on your device and then install the app.

You can also view the available apps for Windows Phone at marketplace.windowsphone.com

There are currently approx 152 apps available today, wonder how long it will take to get to 65k

We can now monitor the latest and greatest mail solution with the latest and greatest MP

One of the main features with this new MP is the correlation engine, which helps to reduce the number of alerts and best determine the overall cause of a change in system health, giving a single alert identifying the root cause of an issue in Exchange 2010.

Cool stuff

Available to download at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7150bfed-64a4-42a4-97a2-07048cca5d23&displaylang=en#filelist