Thursday 28 February 2008

How to Access the Carbon Copy Web console from a URL

The Carbon Copy Basic and Advanced Web console viewers are both ASPX pages and can be accessed from a URL.
To access the Basic Carbon copy Web console page: http://ns-machine-name/Altiris/CarbonCopy/CarbonCopy.aspx?Name=&Timeout=60To Access the Advanced Carbon Copy Web console page: http://ns-machine-name/Altiris/CarbonCopy/CarbonCopyFull.aspx?Name=&Timeout=60Note: Make sure to substitute the name of the Notification server where the Carbon Copy solution is installed for “ns-machine-name” within the links above.To create a link to connect to a Carbon Copy Agent automatically (Basic): http://ns-machine-name/Altiris/CarbonCopy/CarbonCopy.aspx?IpAdd=cc-agent-nameTo create a link to connect to a Carbon Copy Agent automatically(Advanced): http://ns-machine-name/Altiris/CarbonCopy/CarbonCopyFull.aspx?IpAdd=cc-agent-nameNote: Make sure to substitute the name of the notification server where the Carbon Copy solution is installed for “ns-machine-name” and the machine name where the Carbon Copy agent is installed for “cc-agent-name” within the links above.

Monday 18 February 2008

Creating a Hidden automation partition for Deployment Solution 6.8

Article ID: 40247
Creating a Hidden automation partition for Deployment Solution 6.8
Answer
This is offered as a guide and may not work in all environments.
Create an image of the computer that you will use at the "base" image.
Create either the CD boot .iso or floppy bootdisks that will create the hidden automation partition in the boot disk creator. When the user gets to Step 1 of 6 in the bootdisk creator, choose the create an automation partition install package.
Click Next.
Choose the DOS bootable disk.
Choose Create hidden DOS partition. If the 2,000 MB is is sufficient, leave it as is. Otherwise put in the number desired up to 20,000 MB.
Click Next.
Choose either bootable disk or bootable .iso image.
If you choose bootable .iso image, create the image and burn it to CD.
If you choose the floppy disk option, then get the floppy disks and create them.
When the automation partition is set up in the CD or the floppy disks, then install the partition. When this is done, the automation partition will overwrite the first 2 to 20 GB of hard disk storage.
Rename your base image to a 8.3 DOS standard. This will make it easier in later steps when referencing it.
Boot to the automation partition on the client computer. Press F2 to get into BootWorks and then exit. Verify that the hidden partition is there and accessible. Also, verify that the F drive was mapped and you have access to your image file.
Copy the image file and rdeploy.exe to hidden partition. This can be done with a scripted firm copy command. This can also be done from inside the automation partition boot from step 5.Example: copy f:\images\winxp.img c:\winxp.img copy f:\rdeploy\dos\rdeploy.exe c:\rdeployNote: Keep an eye on the file copy job or command. Even in a test scenario, this file copy is touchy and can fail.
Take an image of the computer after the base image has been copied.
Open image explorer in the Deployment Solution console and verify the image is there.
Boot to BootWorks, press F2 and exit to a DOS prompt. Run the following command to verify that the image can be redeployed:c:\rdeploy -md -fc:\winxp.img
Verify that the image was deployed correctly and that the OS works.
Note: You can script the re-imaging of the client computer so that it’s not necessary to manually enter in the command line. While testing this, it was possible to create a job with a run script task with the following commands:
Task Run Script:
c:c:\rdeploy -md -fc:\winxp.img–Choose to run this script in DOSTask Power Control:-Choose reboot.
Final Note: This is a "how to" article and is given as is. Search http://juice.altiris.com/ for additional help regarding hidden partition imaging.

Wednesday 13 February 2008

How to configure Notification Server so that Performance monitor ( perfmon ) can monitor Altiris metrics

Article ID: 34628

Question

How should the Notification Server be configured so that Microsoft’s Performance Monitor (perfmon) utility can monitor Altiris metrics?

Answer

To enable the Altiris metrics so that they are available in Microsoft’s Performance Monitor (perfmon) utility do the following:
     1) Open the NS Configurator tool (Start | Programs | Altiris | Tools | NsConfigurator) and select DisableCounters under Miscellaneous.  The Value should be set to ‘False’. 
     2) Restart the Altiris Service so that it will use the changed DisableCounters value.

NOTE: If the NS Configurator tool has not yet been installed on your Notification Server, it can be installed by running the following:

%Installation Path%\Altiris\Diagnostics\NSConfigurator.msi

NOTE: Some of the Altiris Performance Objects that are available for monitoring are:

     Altiris:Asset
          Time to edit - (Total milliseconds taken to edit a resource)

     Altiris: Client Requests
          Active Client Requests -
(Active client policy requests)
          Busy Server Response - (Total number of busy response)
          Client Requests - (Total client policy requests)
          Successful Server Response - (Total Number Of Successful Responses)

     Altiris: Codebase Cache
          Cache Expired Gets -
(Total number of get requests for expired items)
          Cache Gets - (Total number of get requests)
          Cache Hits - (Total number of hits from the codebase cache)
          Cache Invalid Gets -
(Total number of get requests for invalid items)
          Cache Misses -
(Total number of misses from the codebase cache)
          Cache Removed Expired Items -
(Total number of expired items removed from the codebase cache)
          Cache Removed Invalid Items - (Total number of invalid items removed from the codebase cache)
          Cache Removed Items - (Total number of invalid items removed from the codebase cache)
          Cache Scavenged Items -
(Total number of scavenged items removed from the codebase cache)
          Cache Total Entries - (Total number of items in the cache)

     Altiris:Event Processing
          Events processed/min -
(Number of events processed in all queues per minute)
          Total Events Processed - (Total events processed since last NS restart)

     Altiris:Event Queues
          EventQ Bad Count -
(Number of files in bad event queue)
          EventQ Bad Size (MB) -
(Size of bad queue folder)
          EventQ Count - (Size of bad queue folder)
          EventQ Size (MB) - (Size of bad queue folder)
          FastQ Bad Event Count -
(Number of files in fast-bad queue)
          FastQ Bad Event Size (MB) - (FastQ Bad Event Size (MB))
          FastQ Event Count - (Number of files in fast queue)
          FastQ Event Size (MB) - (Size of fast queue folder)
          LargeQ Bad Event Count -
(Number of files in large-bad queue)
          LargeQ Bad Event Size (MB) - (Size of large-bad queue folder)
          LargeQ Event Count - (Number of files in large queue)
          LargeQ Event Size (MB) -
(Number of files in large queue)
          SlowQ Bad Event Count -
(Number of files in slow-bad queue)
          SlowQ Bad Event Size (MB) - (Number of files in slow-bad queue)
          SlowQ Event Count - (Number of files in slow-bad queue)
          SlowQ Event Size -
(Number of files in slow-bad queue)

     Altiris: NS Messaging
          Messages processed -
(Total # of messages processed)
          Rate of dispatching messages - (The rate (message per secs) of dispatching message)
          Rate of incoming messages - (The rate (message per secs) of incoming message)

NOTE: Altiris recommends that you enable the Altiris Performance Counters during troubleshooting only and disable them after you finish your diagnosis.  There may be situations where having these counters enabled could cause performance degradation on the Notification Server and the admin console.

Notification Server Basic Health Check

Article ID: 33202

Question

What steps should be taken to perform a basic Notification Server performance health check?


Answer

The following steps are focused on eliminating Notification Server console timeouts and or slow responses, but are applicable to resolving many Notification Server performance problems.

  1. Upgrade to the latest version of the solution that is experiencing a timeout or performance issue. This is particularly true in the case of Patch Management Solution and Software Delivery Solution. Both have had issues in prior versions with handling very large tables and or contained inefficient SQL queries.
  2. Ensure that the database used space is appropriate to the managed computer count. A general rule of thumb is 1 MB of space per managed computer (5,000 computers equals approx. 5 GB of space in the database). Don’t forget that the physical file size of the database will be larger than the actual space used. Use the appropriate SQL management tool to see actual space used in the database.
    Article
    21310, "How do I determine what the database table sizes are per solution"
    If used data space is higher than expected, check the individual table sizes and prune the Event tables as necessary.  Extremely large event tables indicate an ongoing database timeout problem during the nightly purging process.  Several Notification Server reports depend upon aggregating event data, and millions of rows from 6 or more months ago will drastically increase report generation times.
  3. Check the SQL Index fragmentation levels (article 18828 for SQL 2000 and article 25784 for SQL 2005) and rebuild indexes as necessary. Heavily fragmented indexes can have a severe impact on performance. Rebuilding indexes will also help free wasted space in the database.
  4. Review IIS logs for heavy traffic consumers. Any standard IIS log parser can aggregate visits by IP address and URL. Any IP address visiting the same URL more than 100 times over an 8-hour period indicates an unhealthy managed agent, a broken Notification Server Web service, or an agent configuration policy with an overly aggressive interval.
  5. Review agent configuration intervals and collection update intervals. The top two sources of processing load are caused by agent configuration requests, and collection rebuilds. 
    • For production purposes, Altiris agent configuration intervals should be no less than 1 hour, with most enterprise environments using 4–6 hour check-in intervals.
    • For production purposes, Delta and Policy Change collection update intervals should be no less than 30 minutes, with most enterprise environments using 1–3  hour update intervals. A general rule of thumb is update collections twice as frequently as the Altiris Agent interval. Stagger the start times on the collection update schedules by 10–15 minutes to avoid concurrency problems. The full collection update schedule should remain at once per day.
  6. Review the SQL tuning and configuration articles as listed in article 30821, "NSEs are not being processed and the Altiris Console is too slow."
  7. For very large environments, also review article 26878, "Common problems for very large environments."

Clients see popup notification windows when patches are about to install

Article ID: 22287

Problem/Symptoms

Even though the All Computers with Software Update Agent Installed policy has been configured to not notify the user in advance that Software Updates are about to install, the popups occur anyway.

Resolution

Navigate to the Software Update Agent configuration policy in question (by default Configuration tab > Solutions Settings > Software Management > Patch Management > Windows > Software Update Agent Configuration > All Windows Computers with Software Update Agent Installed). On the Notification tab, change the Notify in Advance setting to 2 hours. Click Apply. Now, change it back to 0 minutes and then hit apply again.  This should trigger the correct XML to be written for the policy to the database.