I’ve been doing a lot lately. I have stood up a Windows Server 2012 server, racked it and configured it for a client. I have updated boot code and firmware on firewalls and routers (Sonicwall, Cisco and Mikrotik). Fixed a couple “Read-only Filesystem” linux errors on Xen VMs.  Moved a few websites/email from a hosting service to our own hosting server.

Hmm, written down, it doesn’t seem like a whole lot – until you think about all the steps involved in moving a website, changing DNS in multiple places, syncing emails, doing documentation.

😀

So, we decided we needed to monitor Exchange servers for Backpressure so we can be more proactive in preventing problems.

I wrote a script in Labtech to monitor the event log for incidents that indicate potential issues.  Check out the SQL concat!  The logic checks for existing tickets, either creates a ticket, makes a note on an existing ticket or closes the ticket it if the situation no longer exists.  I didn’t include putting time into the ticket, but that would be fairly easy as well.

See the script export below:

Resend EventLogs
SET:  @BackpressureEvent@ = SQLRESULT[SELECT Concat(eventlogs.TimeGen, ” “, eventlogs.Message) As dEvent FROM eventlogs WHERE eventlogs.`Message` like ‘%resource pressure increased from Medium to High%’ AND (timegen > DATE_SUB(NOW(), INTERVAL 1 HOUR)) AND ComputerID=%computerid% LIMIT 1]
IF  @Backpressureevent@  Contains  High  THEN  Jump to :Alert
SET:  @mysqlquery@ = SELECT COUNT(v_tickets.`TicketID`) FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’ ‘
SET:  @sqlresults@ = SQLRESULT[SELECT COUNT(v_tickets.`TicketID`) FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’]
IF  @sqlresults@  >=  1  THEN  Jump to :ProcessTicket
GOTO :END
:Alert – Label
Note: Backpressure! – need to create a ticket!
:CheckTicket – Label
SET:  @mysqlquery@ = SELECT COUNT(v_tickets.`TicketID`) FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’ ‘
SET:  @sqlresults@ = SQLRESULT[SELECT COUNT(v_tickets.`TicketID`) FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’]
IF  @sqlresults@  >=  1  THEN  Jump to :UpdateTicket
:CreateTicket – Label
LOG:  Exchange Backpressure High! Creating Ticket
Create New Ticket for %clientid%\%computerid% Email:%ContactEmail% Subject:%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected
SET:  @eTicketId@ = SQLRESULT[SELECT v_tickets.`TicketID` FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’]
Send Email To:[email protected] Subject:Exchange Backpressure – %clientname% – %computername%
GOTO :END
:UpdateTicket – Label
SET:  @eTicketId@ = SQLRESULT[SELECT v_tickets.`TicketID` FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’]
LOG:  Exchange Backpressure High! updating Ticket
Comment Ticket @eTicketId@ to Admin
GOTO :END
:ProcessTicket – Label
Note: If the Ticket exists then Finish it.
SET:  @monitorticketid@ = SQLRESULT[SELECT v_tickets.`TicketID` FROM v_tickets WHERE v_tickets.`Subject` = ‘%locationname% / %computername% / Exchange Backpressure Detected’]
IF  @monitorticketid@  =  0  THEN  Exit Script
IF [SQL SELECT COUNT(ticketid) FROM tickets WHERE ticketid=@monitorticketid@]  <  1  THEN  Exit Script
IF @monitorticketid@ Ticket Status equals Resolved  THEN  Jump to :ClearMonitorTicketID
RUN SCRIPT:  _System Automation\Functions\Load Properties – Ticketing*
Finish Ticket @monitorticketid@ to @propTicketDefaultUserID@
:ClearMonitorTicketID – Label
SET:  @monitorticketid@ = 0
SET:  [STATE @fieldname@ticketid]  =  @monitorticketid@  for computer @computerid@
:EndProcessTicket – Label
:END – Label

Labtech.  RMM tool.  (Remote Monitoring and Management).

What is so great about it?  Well, once you learn it… once you understand it… you can do anything you want with it.

Like what?  Well, you have your normal RMM things like keep track of the computers on the network, what OS, what programs, keeping up with Microsoft patching, installing software, removing software, etc.  Then you have the monitoring – you can monitor just about anything you can think of from registry entries (including installed programs), event logs, pretty much anything you can find in a readable file on the computer, you can monitor and trigger alerts or even emails and text messages on those events.

Then you have scripting.  Some of the things I can accomplish with scripting:

Extract the backup status of a computer from the logs of the backup program and send an email if there is a failure.

Read a file version, compare to an internet site and send an alert if the two are different or off by more than two, etc.

Launch a series of powershell scripts to configure a new windows server, with variables put in when starting the script in Labtech.

With a little creativity, anything you can do via command line or powershell, can be done remotely, in the background, with Labtech.

Yes, that is very cool.

My home computer has been running Ubuntu Desktop (Debian Linux) for years.  It has only been recently that I have had the pleasure of working with Linux Servers.  I have set up, configured and administered a few LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) web servers.  For the last couple days, I have been playing with Citrix Xen Server and HyperV to proof-of-concept virtual host NIC Bonding / Teaming and it’s effect on existing Virtual Machines on each platform.

I set up an environment (Xen, then HyperV) on a test server (Dell R710) and added a few Linux VMs (Got to play with Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS and CentOS 7).  Then I did the Bonding/Teaming and watched for what happened to the existing servers and network connectivity.

Xen Server did very, very well! It had zero network disruptions as NIC Bonding was created and put into place.  Very impressive.

HyperV was less impressive.  There were multiple connectivity disruptions and panic-inducing bouncing before it settled down.

All that, to show off a screenshot:

I have two small items on Sourceforge.

Nothing Fancy Drive Space Recovery
and
BMC CM Tuner Log Helper

Source files available!

It took some time, but :

Speaking of Certs…

One of my favorite accomplishments was the “Trustmark Computer Console” that I created for use at Trustmark National Bank.  It was used by the call center and help desk from the time I created it until at least two years after I left.  It may still be used some.

I wrote the original in AutoIT3.  After a while, I re-made it into a VB .NET project.  However, the VB .NET did not do a WMI query quite right, so I had to write a helper script in AutoIT3 to get that piece of information.

Here are some screenshots :

Some items are blurred out, but under “Computer Name” is a text box where you would put in the name of the computer in the network you wanted to get the info from.  The red/green buttons under that were our major services or processes that should be installed and running.  You could right click on the buttons and start/stop/install those items.

Pressing “Enter” from the Computer Name box would go out and get the current information – such as OS, logged in user, free space, IP address, last boot time, mfg and model, processor, memory, etc.

The buttons on the right would run different scripts to automate common tasks.  At the time, on a single domain, it was fairly great for Help Desk Technicians to quickly gather info and fix common items.  I now use Labtech for almost all that functionality.

Here is the User Guide that I wrote for it – Computer Console User Guide