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Understanding Status Summarizers

You can configure status messages in a variety of ways. For the most part, the default configuration of the status message system will serve the average site quite well and generate a sufficient number of messages to facilitate reporting and troubleshooting. However, you might need to modify or enhance the reporting of status messages. One way to control the way messages are displayed in the SMS Administrator Console is by using status summarizers.

Status summarizers provide a mechanism to consolidate the copious amounts of data generated by status messages into a succinct view of the status of a component, a server, a package, or an advertisement. In the Component Status window (shown in Figure 5.2), for example, you’re presented with a single entry for each component that indicates the component’s status (OK, Warning, or Error), its state (Started or Stopped), and the number of error, warning, and info messages that have been generated. Remember that behind each of these entry summaries can be a host of detailed messages. Let’s explore some techniques for modifying how the status summarizers consolidate and display the data you see in the SMS Administrator Console.

Display Interval

The status messages that are displayed are filtered first by a display interval. By default, only status messages generated since midnight are displayed. This limitation doesn’t mean that all previous status messages have been deleted. On the contrary, all status messages are written to the SMS database by default (You’ll learn more about the status message reporting process in the section entitled “Status Message Process Flow” later in this chapter). The display interval merely facilitates your view of recent messages. You can modify the display interval for status summaries displayed in the Component Status node and the Advertisement Status node. Since summaries displayed in the Site System Status node and the Package Status node are based solely on state, you can’t modify the display interval for these status messages.

To modify the display interval, right-click the Component Status node or the Advertisement Status node and choose Display Interval from the context menu to display a list of interval options, as shown in Figure 5.16.

Select the interval option that best suits your viewing needs. Be aware that choosing an interval such as Since Site Installation is likely to net you a significant number of messages to scroll through when you choose Show All Messages from the context menu.

Strictly speaking, the display interval is not so much an attribute of the status summarizer mechanism as it’s a way to facilitate your view of the status messages kept in the database. You can also view package status based on display interval; we’ll discuss package and advertisement status in detail in Chapter 12.

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Figure 5.16: Displaying the list of display interval options.

Status Message Thresholds

A status message threshold is a limit that defines when the status summary for a component or site system should indicate OK, Warning, or Critical status. This threshold is set by determining the number of actual OK, Warning, and Critical messages that have been generated for each component or site system. When a predetermined number of messages has been collected, the status changes from OK to Warning or from Warning to Critical.

For example, consider the Status Threshold Properties dialog box shown in Figure 5.17, which you can get to by right-clicking a status summary entry in the Component Status window and choosing Properties. The Status Message Threshold settings indicate that if one error type status message is generated for SMS Site Component Manager, the status summarizer will change the component’s status from OK to Warning. If five error type status messages are generated, the component’s status will change from Warning to Critical. Similarly, if 2000 informational type status messages are generated for SMS Site Component Manager, the status summarizer will change the status of SMS Site Component Manager from OK to Warning, and if 5000 informational type status messages are generated, the status will change from Warning to Critical.

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Figure 5.17: The Status Threshold Properties dialog box, showing the default number of status message thresholds.

Status thresholds for site system status are calculated similarly, but are based on available free space in the SMS site system and the site and software metering databases. Figure 5.18 shows the Free Space Thresholds Properties dialog box, which you can access by right-clicking any status summary entry in the Site System Status window and choosing Properties. Notice that the free space thresholds for all site systems generate a warning status message if free space falls below 20 MB (20,480 KB) and a critical status message if free space falls below 10 MB (10,240 KB).

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Figure 5.18: The Free Space Thresholds Properties dialog box for the Site System Status.

Other thresholds are specific to the databases based on a percentage of the database size. You’ll learn how to modify these values or add new threshold values in the next section.

Configuring Status Summarizers

You can configure three status summarizer components: Component Status Summarizer, Site System Status Summarizer, and Advertisement Status Summarizer. To access these status summarizers, in the SMS Administrator Console expand the site’s Site Settings node and then expand the Status Summarizers node. We’ll look at the specific property settings for each of these status summarizers in the following sections.

Component Status Summarizer

To configure the Component Status Summarizer, follow these steps:

  1. Right-click Component Status Summarizer in the Status Summarizers node and choose Properties from the context menu to display the Component Status Summarizer Properties dialog box, shown in Figure 5.19.

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    Figure 5.19: The General tab of the Component Status Summarizer Properties dialog box.

    Notice that the Enable Status Summarization and Replicate To Parent Site options are selected by default. If you want to disable component status summarization, clear the option Enable Status Summarization. If you do so, however, the status message system won’t be of much help to you as you’ll no longer be tracking the activity of SMS components.

    If you don’t want to send status information to administrators in a parent site, clear the option Replicate To Parent Site. You might choose to do so if all site troubleshooting occurs at your site or if your parent site administrators don’t want to receive status information from your site, or both. If you’re replicating status messages to a parent site, you can set the replication priority for those messages. The default, as you see in Figure 5.19, is Medium. You might choose Low as a replication priority if you’ve set address options limiting the priority of intersite communications (refer to Chapter 4, “Multiple-Site Structures,” for more information) and you want to control when status messages are sent to the parent. This dialog box also gives you another place to modify the display interval, here called the threshold period.

  2. Select the Thresholds tab to configure summary thresholds for each component, as shown in Figure 5.20.

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    Figure 5.20: The Thresholds tab of the Component Status Summarizer Properties dialog box.

  3. Select the Message Type you want to set the threshold for—Informational, Warning, or Error—from the drop-down list and then double- click the component whose thresholds you want to change to display the Status Threshold Properties dialog box.

    The default status message thresholds differ for each message type. Figure 5.21 shows the default settings for informational status messages for the SMS Hierarchy Manager.

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    Figure 5.21: The default status message thresholds for informational status messages.

    Note 

    By default, the thresholds are the same for all components.

    Figure 5.22 shows the default settings for warning status messages.

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    Figure 5.22: The default status message thresholds for warning status messages.

    Figure 5.23 shows the default settings for error status messages.

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    Figure 5.23: The default status message thresholds for error status messages.

  4. Specify the number of warning and error messages that need to be generated (the threshold) before the Component Status Summarizer changes the summary status from OK to Warning or to Critical.

  5. Choose OK to close the Status Threshold Properties dialog box and then choose OK in the Component Status Summarizer Properties dialog box to save your modifications.

Site System Status Summarizer

To configure the Site System Status Summarizer, follow these steps:

  1. Right-click Site System Status Summarizer in the Status Summarizers node and choose Properties from context menu to display the Site System Status Summarizer Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 5.24.

    Notice that the Enable Status Summarization and Replicate To Parent Site options are selected by default. If you want to disable site system status summarization, clear the option Enable Status Summarization. If you do so, however, the status message system won’t be of much help to you as far as tracking site system thresholds. However, you’ll still be collecting component status. You might decide that tracking component status is enough, and because, let’s say, you have resource concerns on the site server, you might choose to turn off site system status summarization to conserve on resource usage.

    If you don’t want to send status information to administrators in a parent site, clear the option Replicate to Parent Site. You might choose to do so if all site troubleshooting occurs at your site or your parent site administrators don’t want to receive status information from your site, or both. If you’re replicating status messages to a parent site, you can set the replication priority for those messages. The default, as you see in Figure 5.24, is Medium. You might choose Low as a replication priority if you’ve set address options limiting the priority of intersite communications (refer to Chapter 4 for more information) and you want to control when status messages are sent to the parent.

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    Figure 5.24: The General tab of the Site System Status Summarizer Properties dialog box.

    Click the Schedule button to display the Schedule dialog box, where you can specify a schedule for when and how often site system status summarization takes place.

  2. Select the Thresholds tab to configure space thresholds for each database and for each site system, as shown in Figure 5.25.

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    Figure 5.25: The Thresholds tab of the Site System Status Summarizer Properties dialog box.

    SMS has already set general default values for site systems. You can modify these settings by entering new values in the Warning or Critical text boxes. SMS has also defined specific threshold values for the SMS database. If you need to change these values, double-click the entry to display the Free Space Threshold Properties dialog box, where you can specify the values you prefer. Then click OK to close the dialog box.

  3. To add a specific site server to monitor its status, click the New button (the yellow star) in the Specific Thresholds frame to display the Free Space Threshold Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 5.26.

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    Figure 5.26: The Free Space Threshold Properties dialog box.

    Select the site system to monitor from the Storage Object drop-down list, enter the desired free space thresholds to monitor for in the Warning and Critical text boxes, and then click OK.

  4. Click OK again to save your changes.

Advertisement Status Summarizer

To configure the Advertisement Status Summarizer, follow these steps:

  1. Right-click Advertisement Status Summarizer in the Status Summarizers node and choose Properties from the context menu to display the Advertisement Status Summarizer Properties dialog box, shown in Figure 5.27.

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    Figure 5.27: The General tab of the Advertisement Status Summarizer Properties dialog box.

    Notice that the Enable Status Summarization and Replicate To Parent Site options are selected by default. If you want to disable site advertisement status summarization, clear the option Enable Status Summarization. If you do so, the status message system will no longer track advertisement status. If you manage a lot of packages at this site, disabling this option will effectively rob you of the ability to follow the progress of a package advertisement to a target collection.

    As with Component and Site System status, if you don’t want to send status information about advertisements to administrators in a parent site, clear the option Replicate To Parent Site. You might choose to do so if all package maintenance occurs at your site or your parent site administrators don’t want to receive information about advertisements from your site, or both. If you’re replicating status messages to a parent site, you can set the replication priority for those messages. The default, as you see in Figure 5.27, is Medium. You might choose Low as a replication priority if you’ve set address options limiting the priority of intersite communications (refer to Chapter 4 for more information) and you want to control when status messages are sent to the parent.

  2. Choose OK to save your modifications.

Status summarizers help us to define how component, system, and advertisement status is displayed to the SMS administrator based on their message type—OK, Warning, and Critical. The next section shows us how to further refine which status messages are captured and displayed in the Status Message Viewer.



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