SQL Server 2008 R2 and System Center 2012

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Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 8
Overview of SQL ...................................................................................................................................... 9
Overview of System Center .................................................................................................................... 9
The SQL server ...................................................................................................................................... 10
SQL Server Workloads....................................................................................................................... 11
OLTP .............................................................................................................................................. 11
DW ................................................................................................................................................ 11
Windows Server Settings .................................................................................................................. 12
Disks, Partitions and RAID ............................................................................................................. 12
SQLIO............................................................................................................................................. 12
AV Settings .................................................................................................................................... 12
Processor Scheduling .................................................................................................................... 14
Visual Effects ................................................................................................................................. 14
System Failure ............................................................................................................................... 14
Page files ....................................................................................................................................... 15
Perform volume maintenance tasks. ............................................................................................ 16
Lock Pages in Memory (LPIM) ....................................................................................................... 16
Power Settings .............................................................................................................................. 17
Location......................................................................................................................................... 17
Instance specific configuration ......................................................................................................... 19
The TempDB .................................................................................................................................. 19
Optimize for ad-hoc workloads..................................................................................................... 20
Min and Max Server Memory ....................................................................................................... 21
SQL backup compression .............................................................................................................. 21
Max degree of parallelism ............................................................................................................ 22
The Server Principle Name (SPN) ...................................................................................................... 23
Standard or Enterprise ...................................................................................................................... 26
Running SQL on a VM........................................................................................................................ 28
SQL and Hyper-V ........................................................................................................................... 28
SQL and VMware........................................................................................................................... 29
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SQL Performance .................................................................................................................................. 30
Perfmon ............................................................................................................................................ 30
WOW and Perfmon ....................................................................................................................... 30
Missing SQL counters .................................................................................................................... 31
The SQL MP for SCOM ...................................................................................................................... 31
Dynamic Management Views ........................................................................................................... 31
Performance counters ...................................................................................................................... 32
Cheat Sheet ....................................................................................................................................... 32
Performance counters in more detail ............................................................................................... 33
SQL Wait Stats.. ................................................................................................................................. 34
Maintenance Tasks and Plans for SQL .................................................................................................. 37
SQL and SCOM ...................................................................................................................................... 38
SQL High level requirements............................................................................................................. 38
Operational DB ................................................................................................................................ 38
Maintenance Plans and Recovery Models ........................................................................................ 39
SCOM DW.......................................................................................................................................... 41
Changing the grooming settings for the DW .................................................................................... 41
SQL and SCCM ....................................................................................................................................... 43
The SCCM architecture could consist of the following components. ............................................... 43
Central Admin Site (CAS) ............................................................................................................... 43
The Primary Site (PS) ..................................................................................................................... 43
The Secondary Site (SS) ................................................................................................................. 43
Management Point (MP)............................................................................................................... 43
Software Update Point (SUP) ........................................................................................................ 44
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) ........................................................................................... 44
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) ........................................................................................... 44
Disk Sizing.......................................................................................................................................... 44
Table Structure.................................................................................................................................. 45
Backup and restore of the SCCM DB................................................................................................. 46
Using a network share with the backup process. ......................................................................... 47
Moving the SQL DB to another server .............................................................................................. 48
SCCM Console in Read Only Mode ................................................................................................... 49
Maintenance Tasks ....................................................................................................................... 50
SQL and SCSM ....................................................................................................................................... 51
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Requirements.................................................................................................................................... 51
Sizing ................................................................................................................................................. 51
SCSM Data Warehouse ..................................................................................................................... 51
Moving the DB .................................................................................................................................. 52
Moving the OLTP ........................................................................................................................... 52
Moving the DW ............................................................................................................................. 53
Backup and restore ........................................................................................................................... 65
Performance ..................................................................................................................................... 65
SQL and SCVMM ................................................................................................................................... 65
Requirements.................................................................................................................................... 66
Sizing ................................................................................................................................................. 66
Moving the DB .................................................................................................................................. 66
Backup............................................................................................................................................... 67
SQL and SCO .......................................................................................................................................... 68
Requirements.................................................................................................................................... 68
Database growth ............................................................................................................................... 68
Moving the database ........................................................................................................................ 69
Backup............................................................................................................................................... 69
Useful SQL Queries............................................................................................................................ 69
SQL and DPM ........................................................................................................................................ 72
Requirements.................................................................................................................................... 72
Moving the data base ....................................................................................................................... 72
Survey Results ....................................................................................................................................... 73
Wrap up ................................................................................................................................................ 93

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SQL Server 2008 R2 and System Center 2012

Introduction
This guide has been written to help you make decisions about arguably one of the most important
building blocks of any System Center deployment; the database server. As more organisations are
deploying more of the applications within the suite we will look at the options of co-existing
different System Center databases on the same instance or a new instance on the existing SQL
server.
This guide was written by Paul Keely with the intention of helping other System Center
administrators plan for the SQL platform that will be needed for an enterprise deployment, and help
the SQL DBA get a better understanding of System Center and its requirements on SQL. The data in
this guide comes from sources like TechNet, Microsoft guides, white papers, blogs and personal
experience. Where a personal opinion is given it will be listed as such.
The main area of personal opinion will be centred on database sizing, virtualisation and co-location.
The reason this guide is giving advice on database sizing etc. is that the TechNet forums are
constantly choked with questions from people like;
What size should my Operations Manager DB be?
Where should it be located?
Can I have the SCCM DB on the same instance as my SCVMM DB?
How do I move my SCO DB?
This guide will endeavour to answer as many of these questions as possible and act as a reference
for SQL server performance with regard to System Center.
Chapter 3 The SQL Server is designed to help the typical System Center Administrator make
informed decisions about the SQL backend. It goes into some detail on SQL performance and how it
can be configured. It will likely be of limited use to the dedicated SQL admin. The rest of the
chapters will likely be more helpful to the SQL admin as they will guide you through the System
Center requirements for SQL and will help you understand some of the requirements on your
systems.
This guide is not a diehard SQL performance guide, as that is not what the guide was intended to be
and there is plenty of content of indepth SQL performance and tuning information on the web.

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Overview of SQL
SQL server is used by System Center for operational databases and reporting data warehouses. It is
the single most critical component of any System Center application. It needs to be designed and
configured correctly and its failure is a big issue for your management system.
The first revision of this document will focus on SQL 2008 R2 as at the time of writing System Center
2012 SP1 was not released, but as soon as it is, the document will be updated to look at SQL 2012
also.

Overview of System Center

System Center is an application suite of products that manages from the desktop to the cloud and is
totally dependent on databases held on SQL server. The different applications have different
requirements and needs from SQL server. In general SCOM and SCSM are more SQL intensive than
say SCO or DPM. When you read this, you may have some mission critical SCO environment running
tens of thousands of run books and it will of course have a higher DB requirement then a SCOM
environment monitoring 250 servers.
How can System Center interact and help SQL? Well SCOM can help you monitor your SQL server
and instances with the SQL management pack. SCCM can check the configuration of your server and
patch it for you. DPM will of course backup your DBs and could restore it with ease and SCO can
automate regular tasks on your SQL server.
Its possible to run the DB server as a VM and a lot of the applications can use a DB on the same
instance, all of this is however is dependent on the load you are going to place on the SQL server.

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The SQL server

In this section we will go into a lot of detail on the SQL server and how we need to configure SQL and
the OS. In general the first question you are going to have to answer is physical or virtual. Deciding
whether to virtualise or stay on physical is a really important question. The current trend for
companies is to virtualise everything or as much as possible. So should you virtualise your System
Centre SQL servers? The two main factors that will influence your decisions are

The number of SC applications you want to deploy

The size of your environment

The number of SC applications you want to deploy.

With the new licencing model of SC suite forcing you to buy the full suite and not an individual
product it is very likely that companies are going to be deploying a large number of the products. If
from the outset of your SC project you know you are going to deploy some of the big hitters like
SCOM, SCSM and SCCM then it might make more sense to consider a physical server with multiple
instances. When Microsoft blog about how they deployed one application or another they always
have the SQL backend on physical servers.

The size of your environment.

If you are deploying SCOM to monitor 300 servers, its very likely that you could deploy SCOM on
VMs with the DBs also deployed to a SQL instance on a VM. If you are going to be managing a
large environment with a lot of servers and desktops then its likely that you are going to need a SQL
backend that is capable of meeting the needs of the SC applications Some points to consider when
deploying SQL to support System Center;

SQL server sprawl makes its manageability harder

Consolidate where possible
Keep in close contact with the storage provisioning team throughout your project

No matter what you decide on, make one thing clear, dont place your System Center application on
the same server as your SQL instance, just dont. Microsoft has really deemphasized the focus of
System Center away from small companies to the medium to large enterprise. The reason for this is
small organisations in general lack the IT skills needed to support the complexity of System Center.
So dont go deploying an enterprise product or products sharing the same server with your DB
instance and start moaning later that the console performance sucks, it doesnt, your design does.

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SQL Server Workloads

SQL server has to manage two types of workloads in relation to System Center, Online Transaction
Processing (OLTP) and a Data Warehouse (DW). Examples of the different DBs profiles are
Database
SCOM Operational DB
SCOM Reporting DB
SCCM database
SCSM Operational DB
SCSM Reporting DB
SCO
SCVMM
SCDPM

Type
OLTP
DW
OLTP
OLTP
DW
OLTP
OLTP
OLTP

OLTP
OLTP databases will have a high number of short transactions. The data tends to be more volatile
and it has a higher number of write activities to the data files and in general the OLTP DB will
generate more IOPS than a DW. From a SC perspective data in an OLTP DB like the SCOM
operational DB only stays in the DB for short period of time.
DW
The DW in SC is used to hold data for longer time frames and from the DW we can run reports to
ascertain for example performance data over a long timeframe, normally up to a timeframe of just
over one year. In general the DW will normally have longer running queries than the OLTP, and
often the data is more static.

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Windows Server Settings

There are a number of settings that can be configured at the OS level that can have a big effect on
SQL.
Disks, Partitions and RAID
Server 2003 had issues with disk alignment that were fixed in Server 2008 onwards, however the
assumption that I am making with this guide is that the minimum server OS is Server 2008 R2 SP1.
The optimum block sizes for disks hosting SQL files is 64K block sizes. As much as possible we are
looking for RAID 10 for all SQL data base files. There is a good web based configuration tool that can
help with sizing and IOPS calculations. RAID10 costs a lot so if you cant get all your DBs onto it,
make sure to get tempdb there.
SQLIO
The SQLIO tool is a Microsoft tool that tests your disk input/output per second or IOPS. The longer it
takes SQL to read or write from disk will be directly reflected in the way the console performs for a
user, when they try and open a new performance dashboard, or report on how well a specific
application deployment is going.
The tool is strangely named as it has very little to do with SQL and more to do with hammering the
I/O of your disk subsystem. Its important to understand how your storage has been provisioned
and what type of storage you are using before using this tool. The first reason is if you are sharing
your storage with other live applications there is a strong chance that the SQLIO tool may negatively
affect their storage I/O during the test. The second is that if you configure your test to write a
quantity that the storage system can manage within its cache, you may get an I/O result that does
not actually reflect the real speed.
AV Settings
Microsofts official AV statement on SQL and AV is here. In the document it lists some of the factors
that you need to consider and the common exclusions to think about. If you do a search on AV and
SQL you will find a lot of different opinions on its effects on performance. I personally find the risk
too high to leave servers unprotected. In the screen shot below I am using EPP from SCCM 2012,
and I am not using any exclusions. The important thing to point out is that in this example as the AV
is scanning the DB files there is a 1-1 correlation between the I/O usage for the AV and SQLSERVR.
The I/O reads being exactly the same for AV and SQL. A better value for the AVs hit on I/O should
be between 5-7% of what SQL is using.

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The recommended AV exclusions for SQL are

SQL Data Files
o .mdf
o .ldf
o .ndf
Backup Files
o .bak
o .trn
Full-Text cataloge files
o Default instance: Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\FTDATA
o Named instance: Program Files\Microsoft SQL
Server\MSSQL$instancename\FTDATA
Processes to exclude from virus scanning
SQL Server 2012
o %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.<Instance
Name>\MSSQL\Binn\SQLServr.exe
o %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS11.<Instance Name>\Reporting
Services\ReportServer\Bin\ReportingServicesService.exe
o %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\MSAS11.<Instance
Name>\OLAP\Bin\MSMDSrv.exe
SQL Server 2008 R2
o %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.<Instance
Name>\MSSQL\Binn\SQLServr.exe
o %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.<Instance Name>\Reporting
Services\ReportServer\Bin\ReportingServicesService.exe
o %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.<Instance
Name>\OLAP\Bin\MSMDSrv.exe

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Processor Scheduling
As SQL runs as a background service your processor scheduling should be set to Adjust for best
performance of: Background services

Visual Effects
Should be set for adjust for Best Performance

System Failure
Set the system failure to Automatically restart

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Page files
By default Windows sets the page file to be 1.5 times the size of the available amount of RAM. The 3
main components that make the foundation of your OS are the CPU, Memory and the Hard Disk.
Windows, applications and drivers use virtual memory addresses that are translated to actual RAM
by the hardware. Virtual Memory Manager (VMM and not to be confused with the VMM that
manages your virtual environment) is the component within the OS that translates the virtual
address space to the physical memory on your server. When a process tries to write into memory it
will request a virtual address from VMM. Once it has been written VMM then decides if it will stay
in RAM, if there is sufficient stress on RAM you may need to move the data to the page file to make
room for another process. When you try and access the data again it has to be loaded from the page
file and a page fault occurs.
There are 2 types of page fault that can occur, Soft and Hard. The soft page fault occurs when SQL
requests a new page from VMM. The second and more damaging from a performance standpoint is
the Hard Page Fault. When VMM has assigned SQL pages to its virtual address space but then ran
out of physical memory and so sent one of SQLs pages to the page file on your hard disk. When SQL
now makes a call for that page then VMM has to find that page in the page file, and then write the
page to memory. When you are paging a lot you need to add more memory to the server.
If you leave the page file at 1.5 times the amount of RAM you wont hurt performance, but on a
server with large amounts of RAM do you still need such a large page file? On systems with
hundreds of gigs of memory a page file of 8GB would seem appropriate, it is also considered a good
idea to have a second page file on a separate disk to the OS.

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Perform volume maintenance tasks.
When we perform a number of SQL tasks like creating a new DB for your new SCOM instance or try
and grow your existing SCCM data file, or restore your SCSM DB then the OS needs to perform a
volume maintenance task. Normally when Windows creates a new DB for example it will go through
a process of zeroing out the entire file. This can take a long time, however if you grant your SQL
server service the right, then it allows the OS to skip this task and perform the task almost
instantaneously. The GPO is located under Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security
Settings\Local Policies\User Rights Assignment\Perform volume maintenance tasks. This setting is
recommended on all SQL servers.
In the example below I have listed the account SC\SRV_SQL because it is the account that my SQL
services are running under.

Lock Pages in Memory (LPIM)

When a driver or application made a request for resources and the OS did not have enough
resources available to meet that request the OS would periodically page out large amounts of
memory from SQL. This trim afforded the OS more memory but had a negative effect on SQL. The
main reason for this was poorly written buggy drivers. Microsoft set about taking steps to prevent
this from happening and the official stance is that there is no need to enable LPIM. Some of the SQL
experts still say that there is a mixed opinion from Microsoft and amongst the SQL MVP community
about the relevance of this setting. That being said if your server does page out memory and
negatively affect your SQL server then you will have the option to enable LPIM. Once again this is a
GPO setting and is in the same place as the Perform volume maintenance tasks,
Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\User Rights Assignment\Lock pages
in memory

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An error similar to this in the SQL error log indicates that the SQL working set has been trimmed and
that you may either call Microsoft Support or enable LPIM
A significant part of SQL memory has been paged out.
When you enable LPIM its only the SQL buffer pool that gets locked, and its strongly recommended
that you enable Max Memory Settings at the instance. When you use LPIM the SQL buffer pool cant
be moved and as such it requires less overhead to manage it. This can have a significant
performance gain on high end SQL environments.

Power Settings
Running Windows Server on the default power plan can result in less than optimum CPU
performance on the server. In Glenn Berrys excellent book SQL Server Hardware he has
conducted performance testing using the Balanced power plan and using High performance
power plan and he recorded significant performance gains using the latter.
Location
Some of the applications like VMM support hosting your SQL server in a separate domain to your
VMM server, while others dont. In my opinion it makes no sense to locate your SQL instances in
separate domains or separate data centres. If you are storing your SQL server in a separate domain
to your System Center application servers then you run the risk of authentication failures with
Kerberos and trusts etc. There are enough things to troubleshoot and manage in System Center
without adding more complexity into the mix. My rule of thumb is having my SQL backend in the
same domain and data center as my System Center servers.

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Where multiple data centers exists the common question is, where do I locate my SQL servers? This
is a great question and the source of many a question on the TechNet forums. This is a slightly more
complex question than it sounds. When deciding where to place your SQL DBs consider the
following points:
Number of servers

Storage

Number of console users

The data center that hosts the greatest number of servers is a good
location in terms of the pure number of servers to monitor and
backup etc.
Hosting your SQL in a data center where you have fast storage
possibly with tired storage. SAN replication, availability etc all help
swing the decision
Housing SQL closer to the greater number of admin users in the
past was a great idea for applications like SCOM. It still is a good
idea to place a terminal server in the data center where you place
your SQL backend.

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Instance specific configuration

Now that we have the OS configured in a SQL friendly way its time to look at the SQL instance, as we
can have many instances on the SQL server you will need to make the changes per instance. It is
considered a best practice to separate your OLTP databases from your DW databases and as such
some of the settings listed here are recommended for one workload versus another, and that will be
indicated.
The tempdb
Tempdb in some ways is similar to the page file in the OS. It holds temporary objects, temporary
stored procedures and table variables. Tempdb gets copied from the model database when the SQL
server starts and as such it gets flushed and resized. The tempdb log file is only flushed under
memory pressure and as a result an IO issue with tempdb can impact the throughput of the whole
instance. The important thing here is that a poorly performing tempdb will affect the full instance,
and all your DBs. So if you have co-located your SCOM, SCO and VMM DB on one instance than all
your apps are likely having an issue just because of your Tempdb
When you install SQL it will create a Tempdb file group in the location where you installed SQL. The
default size of the tempdb is 8MB. The best practice is to

Create a number of separate files in tempdb

Size them to an appropriate size
Store them on fast disks

Create a number of separate files in tempdb

There used to be a recommendation to have a Tempdb per CPU core. Servers with large CPU
numbers made this advice outdated. Now the recommendation is to start with between 4 and 8
files, and expand as needed. Having a number of equally sized files in the primary file group means
that you will reduce file contention.
Size them to an appropriate size
So how big is appropriate? Not too easy to answer, but it is recommended that the files be on a
separate disk and as such could be as big as the disk allows. If for example your operations manager
DB is sized initially at 50 GB, a tempdb size of 24 GB would be a good starting point. So if we take
into account the previous topic and we have 4 tempdb files then we would be dividing 24 GB by 4 so
that we have equally sized files. Its important that all files are the same size.
Errors like 3976: The version store must shrink because the tempdb is full or
1101 or 1105: The session connecting to SQL Server must allocate space in tempdb indicate that
there is a sizing issue with tempdb. If you size your tempdb too small or left it to the default
configuration then it will have to autogrow constantly and this will cause significant system
overheads.
Lets think about the default sizing of tempdb and how it will affect your instance. As we have
already said the default size of the DB is 8MB with a 1MB log file. Looking at the Perfmon of a
tempdb below, its 609MB. What does that mean? Well if this DB is set as default (and it is), then its
sitting on the SQL application drive, in this case C:, and it has been using autogrow to get from 8MB
to 609MB. Every time it autogrows it is temporally unavailable, and this situation is a mess!
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As you can see the DB is running with the full defaults.

When this server restarts the DB will be flushed, a new one will be created at 8MB and it will
autogrow continually to reach the 609MB size.
Store them on fast disks
Ideally your tempdb should be stored on a RAID 10 set. When Microsoft published a blog on how
they deployed SCOM 2007 they made a big deal of how they placed tempdb on high performing
RAID 10 set.

The bottom line

Place your tempdb on its own logical disk

Map that logical disk to a RAID 10 set
Size your tempdb in advance to be nearly the full size of the disk
Split the file group over 4-8 equally sized files
Monitor the DB for Average Disk sec/Transfer looking for MDF. >20, LDF >15ms

Optimize for ad-hoc workloads

When SQLs query optimizer has sent a job to the Query Executor, it then stores the plan in the plan
cache. As the optimizer has already worked out the cost of executing the plan it makes sense to
have it cached so that it can be reused quickly. Sounds great, but you could have a lot of execution
plans being cached end up, with plan cache bloat occurring.

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What would make more sense, is for the first time an execution plan runs, just cache a small subset
or stub of the plan, but if the query is run again, then cache the plan in full. This is exactly what the
settings Optimize for ad-hoc workloads does. The SQL MVP experts whose blogs and books I read
all recommend this setting.

Min and Max Server Memory

SQL will allow you to set the Min and Max server memory settings. The minimum setting is the
amount of memory SQL will try and hold onto, however the OS can still override this. As SQL will try
and pre-cache memory, the maximum memory setting is arguably the more important to prevent
SQL from taking too much from the OS. So what if you have a number of instances on the same SQL
server? How should you configure the max memory setting? Well each instance has to be given a
max setting that allows each of the other instances a level of memory they require. So if your SQL
server has 3 instances and your server has 32 GB of memory then you could consider a memory plan
like;
Server OS
Server based applications
SQL instance 1
SQL instance 2
SQL instance 3

2Gb
2Gb
10Gb
10Gb
8Gb

Changes you make to the memory settings take effect straight away and you dont need to restart
services.
How can you know if you are on the money with your memory settings? Well it turns out there are
two counters that can help, Available Mbytes and Page Life Expectancy (PLE).
PLE is a measure of how long a page will stay in the buffer caches memory uncontested. The figure
of 300 seconds is considered about as low as youre looking for. Values like 30 seconds is considered
critical, on many SQL servers that I am working on I see values like 4000 seconds!
The Available Mbytes should really not descend below 500Mb, and a value of about 1Gb would be
considered the safe low water mark. So how do I use these two counters to work out my max
memory settings?
Well if you have a low PLE value (below 300) but you have a high available memory value than you
have room to assign more memory to your SQL instance. On the other hand a very high PLE value
paired with a low memory value could indicate that you have too much memory assigned to SQL and
not enough for the OS.
SQL backup compression
If you are using SQL native backup then it makes sense to use the SQL backup compression setting.
This allows the backup to complete quicker. Your backup disk set is the one SQL file that can exist on
a RAID5 set as the relatively poorer IOPS of RAID 5 is not as noticeable on the backup, and certainly
not if you use SQL backup compression. With compression there is always a trade-off, in SQL you
get a higher CPU usage to perform the compression but reduced I/O due to the smaller file size of
the backup.
A lot of Host Bus Adaptors are optimized to handle throughputs of 128KB of I/O per second. SQL is
configured to runs its backup routine with a throughput 1,000 KB of I/O per second.

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Throttling this back to half that amount will reduce the latency and may speed up the backup
process. Microsoft has a good article on TechNet describing backup performance.
Running the following command we can back up the SCCM DB CM_PSS to disk and change the
transfer I/O size
BACKUP DATABASE CCM_PSS
TO DISK =NB:\SQL_BACKUP\SCCM_BACKUP\SCCM_BACKUP.BAK
WITH MAXTRANSFERSIZE=524288

Max degree of parallelism

The SQL Server configuration option 'max degree of parallelism' controls the number of processors
used for the execution of one query with a parallel plan. By default its set to zero and that allows
SQL to run a query over multiple cores.
This setting is considers the best option for DW DB but not quite as optimal for OLTP. When I
learned this I thought of all the SCOM installs where I sat the Operational DB beside the Reporting
DW....
To get a better understanding of why you may need to change this you need to understand a little
about wait stats and they are described more in the section, SQL performance. The main wait stat
that tells us we are having issues with SQL and they could be related to Max degree of parallelism in
the CXPACKET. I dont have the depth of knowledge to advise on this but both Glenn Berry and Paul
Randal have fantastic resources to help out.

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The Server Principle Name (SPN)

The SPN is the name that identifies a SQL instance running on a server. When the SQL service starts
it tries to register its SPN with AD. The SPN is the name that a client uniquely identifies an instance
of a service, a service here refers to a service like the SQL server service. Kerberos authentication can
use an SPN to authenticate a service. When a client wants to connect to a service, it locates an
instance of the service, composes an SPN for that instance, connects to the service, and presents the
SPN for the service to authenticate. If the SPN registration fails then Kerberos authentication fails
and SQL falls back to NTLM. If your application does not support NTLM then you will have
authentication issues.
From SQL 2008 onwards when we create an instance the first will default to port 1433, but
thereafter any other instances will install on a dynamic port and during setup you have no choice on
what that port is going to be. The SQL service will try and register its SPN in the following format.
MSSQLSvc/FQDN:PORT. So to explain this, MSSQLSvc is the name of the SQL service, the FQDN is
the fully qualified domain name of the server and the port is the SQL port number.
The default instance and all other instances on the SQL server service and will use the port number
to differentiate themselves from other instances.
There are two options for running the SQL service, the first is with a local account like the local
system like NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. The second option is that we run the SQL service under a
domain account. Most people prefer the second option as it offers better centralised control.
The main difference from an SPN perspective is that the local system can update the SPN with no
intervention. A standard user does not have the right to update its own SPN, and this can require a
little help on our part.
There are a number of ways that you can assist with the SPN being registered.
Add the user to the domain admins group
Change the users permissions with ADSI Edit
Use the setspn command utility

Add the user to the domain admins group

Using this option you can add the service account to the domain admins group, wait for replication
and then restart the service. You could then remove the account from the domain admins group.
While this is a very easy way to achieve this it may be considered a security risk for some
organisations. It is also not a great long-term solution if you use the same user account for different
SQL instances.
Change the users permissions with ADSI Edit
This is an easy option to configure and as such is the most popular. Using ADSI Edit navigate to the
user account that the SQL service is running under. The object of SELF needs to be granted Read
and Write servicePrincipleName

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Use the setspn command utility

The setspn utility allows a user with domain admin privileges to register the SPN from a SQL server.
The difference with the setspn is that it makes a permanent change, whereas in the previous
example we are adding and removing a user to the domain admins group and they only have the
update self permissions while they are in the admins group.

Lets look at an example here;

I have a SQL server called SQL1 in a domain called SC.LOCAL and the port for the instance is 61269.
The SQL service will run under an account called SVC_SQL. Reporting services are installed under
port 80.

SQL FQDNs NetBIOS Names

setspn.exe -A MSSQLSvc/sql1.sc.local:60611 sc\svc_sql
setspn.exe -A MSSQLSvc/sql1.sc.local:612696 sc\svc_sql

Reporting Services FQDN and NetBIOS

setspn.exe A http/sql1.sc.local:80 sc\svc_sql
setspn.exe A http/sql1:80 sc\svc_sql

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When I do a setspn L SC\SRV_SQL you can see that the service account has been used to register
the SPN for a number of servers and for a number of instances

On a last point of note, if you are using a clustered SQL instance there can sometimes be an issue
with registering the SPN, have a read here for some more info.

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Standard or Enterprise
Microsoft offers a number of SQL options and in the main the System Center admin is only going to
deal with SQL Standard and or Enterprise, the exceptions for this are;
A: The default install of a SCCM secondary site will install a SQL Express
B: DPM will give you the option of a local SQL Express install
In both of here situations you can opt for a pre-existing SQL instance.
The following tables will give an overview of the feature sets of the two versions. In the first table
we are manly looking at features as they pertain to System Center or are common features. The
second table mainly shows the additional features of the Enterprise version.
KEY: Full Feature =
Feature

Partial/Limited =

Number of CPUs

SQL 2008 Enterprise

SQL 2008 Standard

As many as the OS supports

Scalability and Performance

Always On

Security

Data Warehouse

Business Intelligence

Enterprise Manageability

Programmability

X64 Hardware Support

I64 Hardware Support

Multi Instance Support

50 Instances

16 Instances

16-Node Failover

2-Node Failover

Full

Single-thread

SQL Server Import and Export

SSIS Run Time

Data Profiling Tools

SSIS Package Designer and Service

Hypervisor Support
Clustering
DB Mirroring
Integration Services

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Reporting Services
Office Integration

Built in Forms Authentication

Application Embedding

Report Builder

Scale out Reporting

Infinite Click through

Dynamic Address Windows Extensions

Scalability & Performance

Table and index partitioning

Parallel index operations

Parallel consistency checks (DBCC)

Database snapshots

Scalable shared databases

Indexed views

Enhanced read-ahead and scan

For a full list of SQL features on a PDF go here

Whats important to highlight is that you can cluster with both instances and they can both access
the same amount of memory. Enterprise is a far more feature rich version but comes with a higher
price tag.

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Running SQL on a VM
In the survey I posted with the results listed at the end of this document, 70% of respondents are
running SQL on a VM to support System Center. Its likely that this number will continue to rise in
the future as companies will only deploy servers in a virtual environment. As most VM
environments are built on a highly available model you get the benefit of another level of
redundancy for your SQL environment. When I was doing some research before writing this e-book I
posed the following question on the TechNet SQL forum;
If you are going to deploy a SQL instance to a VM what are the things you might do differently
compared to running it physical?
A number of the SQL MVPs responded to the question and one reassuring comment was If you
provide the correct resources for the VM, no there won't be a difference. If you don't then there will
be.
Acknowledging the fact that you are going to need the same IOPS and memory requirements no
matter if you deploy to physical or virtual then some of the biggest mistakes are;
1. Oversubscribing host hardware with too many vCPUs mapped to pCPUs. Anything beyond
2:1 is definitely going to affect performance regardless of what the hypervisor vendor says.
2. Oversubscription of memory on the host hardware leading to ballooning issues of memory
demanding VMs like SQL server. This goes against all the vendor recommended practices for
virtualizing SQL Server
3. Undersized I/O subsystem. The I/O requirements for SQL Server are still the same in a
VM. The 6TB SAN with only 15 drives in it that is being used for the VM environment using
1Gb/s iSCSI is a recipe for disaster if you put your entire infrastructure on it without testing
and knowing your I/O workload and demand. Size is not the same thing as performance.
4. Using more virtual CPUs than necessary for a VM. Each virtual CPU has a scheduling
overhead associated with it and at times the hypervisor has to schedule all of the virtual
CPUs concurrently through a process known as co-scheduling. To do this it has to pre-empt
the same number of physical processors as virtual CPUs. When other activity from smaller
VMs is being scheduled this can cause a larger VM to wait, and performance is affected. If
this is a problem, a 4vCPU VM can perform faster than an 8vCPU VM by as much as 3-5
times depending on the level of problem that exists. Less is more in a virtual world.
SQL and Hyper-V
Running SQL on Hyper-V has been fully tested and benchmarked by Microsoft. With Server 2012,
Hyper-V has closed the gap with ESX and more people are likely to deploy SQL on Hyper-V 3.0.
There are two useful documents from Microsoft with regard to SQL.
The first is Running SQL Server 2008 in a virtual Environment Best Practices and Performance
Recommendations
The second is from the SQL CAT team and that is the High Performance SQL Server Workloads on
Hyper-V
Some of the key points to underline are;
Using pass through disks there was almost no difference in IOPS when using SQL on Hyper-V
or Physical
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Dynamically expanding disks will hurt your performance on SQL big time
Running iSCSI through a NIC that has standard network traffic going through it can
dramatically reduce throughput efficiency.

SQL and VMware

VMware have published a good PDF on configurations for SQL. Brent Ozar wrote a good blog. Here
is an overview of the points from the PDF and the blog;

Use Recent Hardware with powerful CPU etc.

Use vSphere 4.1 or above to get advantage of new CPU scheduling
If the exact CPU load that the DB will use is not known in advance, than start with a lower
amount of vCPUs
Install the latest version of VMware tools on the SQL server
Memory overcommit can be a bad idea for SQL server
If you use LPIM set the VM reservation to match the amount of memory assigned to the
VM.

Everyone is using virtualising for SQL and so will I. not quite. When Microsoft recently published a
blog on how they deployed SCCM 2012, the blog speaks about how they used physical SQL. So why
might you decide to go physical instead of virtual?
Capacity to an existing SQL cluster
Knowing in advance that a greater number of System Center products will be deployed from
the start and likely to the mid-sized and above environments.

Capacity to an existing SQL cluster

Where an existing cluster has capacity, or its possible to add another physical node to an existing
cluster, then its possible to take advantage of using a physical server for SQL.
If from the outset you know that you are going to require a very powerful SQL environment it may
be a better idea to build a physical cluster with multiple instances on the cluster. When you use a
SQL instance on a cluster there are some subtle differences with regard to what level of safeguards
you may receive. In a VM environment it is assumed that the hosts are clustered and as such if the
host server has an issue you can move your SQL VM to another host, just like a clustered SQL
environment. The difference with the cluster is that if we have an issue with either the hardware or
the OS we can move the SQL instance to another host. With a VM you are only using a single virtual
server and so things like updates might not be as easy to recover from, snapshots to some degree
help with this.

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SQL Performance
There are 3 main areas that SQL has to interact with; they are obviously, CPU, Disk and Memory.
These 3 areas are quite important to the IT pro as you may need to go to other teams and let them
know that you need more CPU clock cycles, more memory or faster disks.
I wasnt sure if it was better to talk about the SQL Server BPA here or in the Troubleshooting SQL,
but then decided to detail it here. The reason for this is that running the RBA should be your first
step in looking at your SQL server.
So how do we go about measuring performance in SQL server for System Center? Obviously the first
thing to think about is Perfmon, SCOM and once we look at these two tools we can then move onto
deeper monitoring components like Dynamic Management Views.

Perfmon
Perfmon is fairly lightweight but is best run from another server to get a more comprehensive
monitoring picture. The advantages of Perfmon are that you can add a large amount of counters for
a SQL server.
WOW and Perfmon
If you are trying to monitor 32bit SQL on a 64 bit version of Windows then you will be using WOW or
Windows on Windows. If you are managing an older version of System C enter in your environment
and have to look at the SQL performance, you wont see any SQL performance counters loaded into
your standard Perfmon view. To access your 32bit counters you need to open your Perfmon with;
Mmc /32 perfmon.msc
Running Perfmon local on your SQL server should have almost no impact on the results except if you
are monitoring a server with very poor performance. Running a smaller number of counters often
makes it easier to read the results, another tip that I often do is view it in a report format as can be
seen in the following image.

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Its clear that from this report that despite the fact that I have very little memory available, SQL has
cached a lot of memory as can be seen from my Buffer cache hit ratio of 100% and my PLE of 3,272.
Missing SQL counters
Performance counters from any component may not have registered fully or correctly with your OS
at the install time. There are two server commands that can assist with missing counters in Perfmon,
they are Lodctr and Unlodctr. Before you decide to overwrite existing perf counters you may like to
take a backup of your existing counters, you can do that using;
Lodctr /c:\pefrback.txt

You can unload your SQL counters with

Unlodctr mssqlserver
To reconfigure the performance counters navigate to the Binn of your SQL install as in
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Binn\sqlctr.ini

The SQL MP for SCOM

The SQL management pack is the default monitoring unit for SCOM. The SQL MP has a number of
performance counters that are well suited for general SQL monitoring. The MP of course gives a
nice historical view of a single or a large number of SQL servers. Things to understand is that SCOM
collects a performance counter every 5 15 min and it would create a lot of data if you were to add
a large number of perf counters to a number of SQL servers.

Dynamic Management Views (DMV)

DMVs are like a window into the internal running of a SQL server, they return a numeric value that
assists in identifying a potential issue. DMVs are either server, or DB scoped. Most of the
performance counters listed in these sections can be accessed from DMVs. Using
sys.dm_os_performance_counters you can access a lot of performance values. Here is an example of
monitoring Page Life Expectancy
SELECT cntr_value
FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters
WHERE
Object_name = SQLServer:Buffer Manager
AND counter_name = page life expectancy

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Here is the same result form Perfmon

Note, when you enter a DMV to look at a performance counter as shown above and you enter the
syntax incorrectly you will not get a T-SQL error, it will just return a null value.

Performance counters
There are so many SQL and Windows performance counters that its possible to lose your way when
trying to monitor SQL. So in this section we are going to start off with a cheat-sheet of just a few
counters that you can start off with and then we will go deeper into a large number of SQL counters
and what ideally they should be.

Cheat Sheet
MSSQL$: Buffer Manger\Buffer
cache hit ratio

MSSQL$: Buffer Manger\Page

Life Expectancy

This should be as close to 100%

as possible. Below 97-98%
indicates SQL server needs
more physical memory
The minimum value here
should be 300.

LogicalDisk(*)\Avg Disk
sec/Read

Should be under 20ms. Beyond

50ms is very bad

LogicalDisk(*)\Avg Disk
sec/Write

Should be under 20ms. Beyond

50ms is very bad

\Processor
Should be below 60% and over
Information(_Total)\%Processor 80% indicates processor
Time
pressure

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Performance counters in more detail

In this section we are going to look at a lot of counters you might want to look for when getting into
SQL performance monitoring. Firstly we will cover a number of performance counters, and then we
will go into some specific areas like the tempdb.

Object
Memory

Counter
Available Mbytes

What should it be
400MB

Memory

Pages/Sec

< 40/50

SQL Server:
Buffer Manager

Page Life Expectancy

>300

SQL Server:
Buffer Manager

Buffer cache hit ratio

Between 97-100%

SQL Server:
Buffer Manager

Page Reads/sec

<90

SQL Server:
Buffer Manager

Lazy Writes/sec

<20

Paging File

% Usage

<50%

Paging File

% Usage

<70%

System
Network
Interface

Physical Disk
Physical Disk
Processor

Processor Queue
Length
Bytes Total /sec

<4 per CPU

Average Disk
Sec/Read
Average Disk
Sec/Write
%Processor Time

< 8ms

See description

< 8ms
<60%

Description
We all like to sweat the tin but
give your SQL servers at least
400MB free
This is the rate that pages are
read or written to the page file,
too much paging = not enough
memory
This is the estimated time a
page will stay in memory and
could be tens of thousands on a
system with lots of memory
This is the number of pages that
were found in cache and not
read from disk
Higher than 90 pages per
second can indicate either a low
amount of memory or poor
indexing
The number of times SQL moves
pages to disk to free up space.
The ideal number is 0
The amount of the page file in
use. Its obvious that you want
this the lower the better
The peak amount of the page
file used since the last time the
server was rebooted

There is no right or wrong value

here, but you need to be
monitoring it to understand
when something is going wrong.
Time in seconds to read from
disk
Time in seconds to write from
disk
This is not a hard number as it
depends on the number of
processors and if hyper
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Access Methods
Access Methods

Workfiles
Created/Sec
Full Scans / sec

< 20
<1

threading is enabled
Number of files created per
second
Greater than 2 shows a high
amount of index scanning

There are obviously a large number of counters both SQL and OS but what you have now is a good
baseline to start with.

SQL Wait Stats..

We all know the story, hey System Center admin, my console performance is slow, will you have a
look? Now this can be from a number of things but one of the first places I am going to look is my
SQL server. SQL has the ability to track and monitor what is happening with the server. SQL uses
threads in a first in, first out fashion to ask the CPU to perform a task, when the thread has
stopped running, but now wants access to the CPU, it may have to wait. SQL tracks why threads
have to wait, all you have to do is ask SQL, what is waiting?
There are a number of scripts to help you examine what are the top waits on your system. To begin
with lets start off with Glen Berrys script to get your top 4 waits.
-- Clear Wait Stats
-- DBCC SQLPERF('sys.dm_os_wait_stats', CLEAR);
-- Isolate top waits for server instance since last restart or wait
statistics clear
WITH Waits AS
(SELECT wait_type, wait_time_ms / 1000. AS wait_time_s,
100. * wait_time_ms / SUM(wait_time_ms) OVER() AS pct,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY wait_time_ms DESC) AS rn
FROM sys.dm_os_wait_stats
WHERE wait_type NOT IN
('CLR_SEMAPHORE','LAZYWRITER_SLEEP','RESOURCE_QUEUE','SLEEP_TASK'
,'SLEEP_SYSTEMTASK','SQLTRACE_BUFFER_FLUSH','WAITFOR',
'LOGMGR_QUEUE','CHECKPOINT_QUEUE'
,'REQUEST_FOR_DEADLOCK_SEARCH','XE_TIMER_EVENT','BROKER_TO_FLUSH','BROKER_T
ASK_STOP','CLR_MANUAL_EVENT'
,'CLR_AUTO_EVENT','DISPATCHER_QUEUE_SEMAPHORE',
'FT_IFTS_SCHEDULER_IDLE_WAIT'
,'XE_DISPATCHER_WAIT', 'XE_DISPATCHER_JOIN'))
SELECT W1.wait_type,
CAST(W1.wait_time_s AS DECIMAL(12, 2)) AS wait_time_s,
CAST(W1.pct AS DECIMAL(12, 2)) AS pct,
CAST(SUM(W2.pct) AS DECIMAL(12, 2)) AS running_pct
FROM Waits AS W1
INNER JOIN Waits AS W2
ON W2.rn <= W1.rn
GROUP BY W1.rn, W1.wait_type, W1.wait_time_s, W1.pct
HAVING SUM(W2.pct) - W1.pct < 95;

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When I run this on my SQL server I get the following output

Paul Randal has adapted the script to look at some more details on the waits. And using that I can
see some more details on the waits.

So now you have a method to get into waits, what do they mean? Here are some of the most
common waits and some resources on what they mean.

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WAIT

Description

Comments

CXPACKET

When a parallel operation is running there

are multiple threads. For whatever reason
one or more of the threads finishes before
the others.

The first place to look is

what settings you have
configured for MDOP
(talked about in a previous
section). Some other things
to think about are, Hyper
threading, and index
fragmentation or rebuilt
stats

The CXPACKET wait is started by the

finishing thread and it logs the CXPACKET
Wait Stat.

PAGEIOLATCH

This occurs when the SQL task is waiting on

a latch for a buffer page to be read from
disk into memory. It often indicates an
issue with the disk subsystem, but could
also indicate a lack of memory. (A basic rule
of thumb is when you see any IO waits in
your top waits then think about your
storage.

Have a think about large

scans over big tables. This
can be reduced by using
good indexs for your
queries

SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD The SQL OS will try and not leave any

thread idle. When a running task gives up,
its running thread for a new task to run.

Usually this indicates a

problem with CPU pressure

OLEDB

Waiting for communication with the OLEDB

This could be an issue

waiting for a linked server
to return something

ASYNC_NETWORK_IO

Often when the client is dealing with a big

amount of data

Look at your NIC

configuration on the client

THREADPOOL

SQLs internal OS is trying to schedule a

thread

Consider configuring the

max worker thread

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Maintenance Tasks and Plans for SQL

SQL ideally needs to have some maintenance performed on regular basis. If you have been a SCOM
admin for years and think that your SQL DB has been working fine well its because SCOM performs
its own maintenance. The 4 main tasks are;

DBCC CHECKDB (to look for DB errors and report on them)

UPDATE STATISTICS (to boost query performance)
DBCC DBREINDEX (to rebuild the table indexes to boost performance)
BACKUP

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SQL and SCOM

System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is one of the big hitters of the suite. By default SCOM
has an operational DB and can have a data warehouse and a DB for Audit Collection Services (ACS).
The SCOM team created a great sizing guide that is available here. For both the DB and the DW it is
highly recommended that the tempDB should be on its own disk set and can expect to be between
6GB 8GB. SCOM is a high transactional DB that has a common profile of 80% reads and 20% writes.
The Operations Manager DB should have a minimum of 50% free disk space; neither the DW nor the
ACS need the same amount of free disk space.

SQL High level requirements

SQL Server 2008 Standard and Enterprise are both supported, but only X64-bit.
Using a different version of SQL Server for different Operations Manager features is not
supported. The same version should be used for all features.
SQL Server collation settings for all databases must be one of the following:
SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS, French_CI_AS, Cyrillic_General_CI_AS, Chinese_PRC_CI_AS,
Japanese_CI_AS, Traditional_Spanish_CI_AS, or Latin1_General_CI_AS. No other collation settings
are supported.
The SQL Server Agent service must be started, and the start-up type must be set to automatic.
The db_owner role for the operational database must be a domain account.
If you plan to use the Network Monitoring features of System Center 2012 Operations Manager,
you should move the tempdb database to a separate disk that has multiple spindles.

Operational DB
The operational DB server must have;
.NET Framework 3.5 and 4
Full Text search.
The default size the installer offers is to create a 1 GB DB. From a
personal perspective this is unsuitable for anything other than a
home lab. A starting point of between 30 GB to 50 GB with the log
file of half the size of the DB makes more sense. The DB needs to have
at least 50% free space at all times to allow maintenance tasks to run.
Microsoft recommends that the DB files should be on a RAID 10 set
With the RAID controller being a Battery Backed Write Cache.

IOPS for the DW

# of agents

Estimated IOPS

1- 500

500

501-1000

875

1001-3000

1000

3001 6000

1500

6001 - 10000

2000

The exact profile of the DB depends on a great number of factors; the obvious ones are the number
of agents, number of MPs and the number of custom rules and monitors.10001
Infront- 15000
Consulting2500
has a
number of client MPs and they have found it make better sense to have a new Management Group
with a new DB. It goes without saying that the longer you keep data in the DB the bigger its going
to be. Some SCOM admins switch off performance counters in the operational DB completely and
just rely on the DW for reporting data. This frees up space and improves response times; however
having performance data in the operations console is so quick and useful that most SCOM admins
leave it in.
Lets have a look at a SQL DB for SCOM and what should be configured.
Recovery Model = Simple
Auto Close
= False
Auto Shrink
= False
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Maintenance Plans and Recovery Models

SCOM has a number of maintenance plans that run automatically and help keep it running smoothly.
The important thing is not to perform maintenance tasks on the DB at the same time. The two
recommended tasks that could be performed on the DB are
DBCC CHECKDB
BACKUP.
SCOM runs a number of its own maintenance tasks on the DB in the forms of scoped rules. The
reason for this is that the amount of activity the monitoring can create needs this maintenance to be
performed on indexes etc. The reason that SCOM performs these steps is that it was believed that
most SCOM DB environments would not receive the kind of attention it needed. Although this
approach has come under some criticism, what is important for you to understand is you should not
have your own SQL native maintenance plans competing with what SCOM is already doing.

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SCOM also creates the DB in simple recovery model. The recommendation is to leave the DB to this
setting unless your company/client really requires it. Many SCOM administrators feel that if you
change the recovery model to full, you will have a greater admin effort in managing the size of the
log files.

Kevin Holman wrote a fantastic guide on maintenance plans for operations manager and its a great
read if you are planning your SQL environment or having to justify your recovery model.

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SCOM DW
The DW holds data like alerts, performance availability and events. By default the DW holds data for
400days, but it rationalizes the data. What that means is that if a specific performance counter
constantly returns the same value over a period of time then the DW will just represent all those
same values to just one value.
You can have a number of Management Groups all report to the same DW, if you are using SQL
Enterprise and you can support scale out reporting you may want to look at consolidating a
number of instances to support all your DW requirements.

Changing the grooming settings for the DW

To change the grooming settings for the DW you need to edit the dbo.Dataset table. To do that,
connect to the OperationsManagerDW in SQL Management Studio. From there expand tables and
then right-click dbo.Dataset and open the table or select top 200 rows. Find the dataset for which
you want to change the grooming setting in the DatasetDefaultName column and make note of its
GUID in the DatasetId column

Then from the object explorer go to dbo.StandardDatasetAggregation and select to open the top
200 rows. Find the aggregation type from the list in the AggregationTypeId column by using the
following values:
o

0 = raw, nonaggregated data

10 = subhourly

20 = hourly

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o

30 = daily

Use the MaxDataAgeDays column to edit the value to set the grooming interval.

The default retention values are shown below

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SQL and SCCM

SCCM 2012 is one of the real phoenix applications of the suite and things have changed a bit since
SCCM 2007. SCCM 2012 uses SQL replication to move data around the organisation.
The basic requirements for SCCM from a SQL perspective are;
SQL Collation SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
The only SQL features needed are the Database Engine and SSRS
SCCM needs a minimum of 8Gb of memory reserved for the SQL instance
The PSs server account needs to be a member of the local admin group on the SCCM server
The person installing the PS needs to have SA rights on the SQL instance
It is not supported to manually edit the SCCM db.
From a personal perspective
I would always separate SCCM and the SQL instance
As SCCM does not separate out its reporting into a dedicated DW make sure your spec your disk
requirements to overcompensate for the shared load of the OLTP and reporting demands.

The SCCM architecture could consist of the following components.

Central Admin Site (CAS)
The CAS needs a DB on a SQL instance. Every CAS and Primary Site (PS) must be located on separate
SQL instances and if you are going to install SCCM into a large environment (more than 50k
computers) then you need to choose SQL enterprise and you must do this from the start. The CAS
will look to replicate by default with the SQL broker on TCP 4022. The CAS can have its own SSRS
point and it will query the CAS DB.
The Primary Site (PS)
The SCCM installer will create a default 5Gb DB on a SQL instance. The SQL server will need to setup
a replication channel to the CAS and by default it will do this on TCP 4022. Ideally the replication
ports should be the same on each instance. Each PS can have its own SSRS and it will run reports
from the PS DB.
The Secondary Site (SS)
A secondary site must use a locally installed SQL instance on the SS server. The default is to install
SQL express on the OS partition. The lack of configuration and location options with SQL express
may force you towards installing SQL standard on the server. Just like the other site hierarchy
servers, the SS will look to replicate to its assigned PS server and again by default on port 4022.
If you are installing to a pre-existing SQL instance than you may need to ensure the following two
points:
1. You grant the PS server dbcreator roll on the SQL instance
2. You start the SQL browser service

Management Point (MP)

When you install an MP you are presented with the option of using the default site DB or to create a
replicate DB, the exception to that is that you cant have the MP on the SS, use a replica, it has to be
a local installed SQL. Every communication between the MP and the DB has an associated CPU
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utilization. Using a replica for a MP will reduce the CPU requirement on the SQL server hosting the
PSs DB.
To use a replica DB the following points should be kept in mind:
Both the PS SQL server and the Replica SQL server both need to have SQL Replication Installed.
The site database needs to publish the database replica, and the other SQL server needs to subscribe
to it.
The two SQL servers need to have a self-signed certificate.
Software Update Point (SUP)
Configure Manager and WSUS interact together with the help of a SCCM role called the SUP. WSUS
requires its own DB. The DB can be co-located on an instance that hosts the CAS or PS server.
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT)
MDT is an additional bolt on that helps administrators with better control over Operating System
Deployment (OSD) The MDT DB is a small DB with light requirements. It can be co-located with
other SCCM DBs like the PS and the WSUS.
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
SCCM uses SSRS to load its reporting for its reporting server role. When you install the Reporting
Server (RS) role 400 out of the box, reports are loaded into the Reports folder. Unlike SCOM or
SCSM, SCCM does not use a dedicated DW; instead it runs its reports from the standard SCCM DB.

Disk Sizing
Microsoft offer some good sizing guides and information that you can get here but the following
table will summarise the DB sizing.
Data Usage
Base calc
25,000
50.000
100,000
MDF
75Gb per 25,000
75Gb
150Gb
300Gb
LDF
25Gb per 25,000
25Gb
50Gb
100Gb
tempdb*
4-8 1GB files
4-8 1.5GB files
8 2Gb files
IOPS**
500 IOPS
1000 IOPS
2000 IOPS
*The tempdb figure is a personal opinion and not taken from the TechNet site.
** Unlike the SCOM sizing guide the SCCM team do not offer any guidance for IOPS in SCCM as the
actual amount will depend on a large number of factors that come into play. In this example I am
giving these figures to offer some guidance.

SCCM could really do with the same sizer as SCOM has and I know when I have asked for it I am told
its impossible to give a sizing guide as it has too many changeable and configurable options. I dont
agree with this and think SCOM can be just as volatile in terms of the number of MPs, the number
of custom rules and monitors, and the number of management groups reporting to one DW etc.
Here are some resources to help
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/scstr/archive/2012/05/31/configuration_2d00_manager_2d00_2012_2d0
0_sizing_2d00_considerations.aspx
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http://softwaretopic.informer.com/sccm-2012-database-sizing/

Table Structure
SCCM has a large number of tables containing all the data that SCCM is collecting. An easy way to
view the tables is from T-SQL use your SCCM DB, in my case its CM_PSS, so you can use the
following;
USE CM_PSS
Select * from information_schema.columns
And from that I get an output like what we see below

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Backup and restore of the SCCM DB

The only supported way to backup and restore your SCCM DB is through SCCMs maintenance task,
period. You can use SQL or a third party backup to perform an additional backup, but you must also
have the SCCM internal backup if you want to stay on the good side of Microsoft Support. When you
run the SCCM backup you are only performing a backup of the SQL DB (and the PS settings if you
backup the PS), the images, software update packages and applications are separate and need to be
catered for on a separate backup procedure.

The SCCM site backup is located under;

Administration\Site Configuration\Sites\site name\Site Maintenance
The backup allows you to backup the DB to a specified location and choose the schedule.

The DB will be backed up to the specified location with a standard .bak file.

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Using a network share with the backup process.

Configuring the backup to happen to a local drive on the SQL server seems to make little sense. If
you want to back up your DB to a network location then I have found the following points make the
process a bit easier. Add the SQL Server account to the sysadmin roll, then Add the SQL Server
computer account to full control on the destination share and folder permissions. When you have
configured your backup settings then you can test the backup by starting the SMSBACKUP service on
your SQL server.

Afterbak.bat
The SCCM backup process will overwrite the previous backup, and as such you only ever have one
backup. This is probably not the safest approach for your SCCM environment. Luckily there is an
easy solution. Edit the following file to suite your own site and then drop it to C:\Program
Files\Microsoft Configuration Manager\inboxes\smsbkup.box
The file needs to be called afterbakup.bat
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set target=\\primary_site_server_name\ConfigMgr\Backups\%date:~0,3%
If not exist %target% goto datacopy
RD %target% /s /q
:datacopy
xcopy "C:\Backups\SCCM\*" "%target%\" /E /-Y

It creates 7 days worth of backups in folders Mon, Tue, Wed etc and then backup those files with
normal file backups
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Moving the SQL DB to another server

Moving the SCCM DB to another server follows a relatively small number of steps and so the move
process is fairly easy. SCCM integrates a lot of security with the server; during the move you can see
from the logs how the re-configure process changes the security mappings. This will be good news if
you have installed the DB on the same sever as your SCCM PS server, or you discover that the
requirements on the existing instance are too great for your current SQL server.

In a production install I was working on, it was decided to move the SQL from one SQL
server to another. The reconfigure worked fine except that the new SQL had no
permission with the SQL on the CAS. As a result the DB replication links could not be
reinitialized. I added the two SQL servers to the local admin groups on each other,
rebooted and replication started again. I wont forget that in the future!

1.
2.
3.
4.

On your PS server stop the SCCM services.

Go to the existing SQL server and perform a DB backup
On your new SQL server perform a Restore Database
From the SCCM PS server go to program files and Microsoft System Center 2012

5. Enter Configuration Manager Setup

Choose the option to perform site maintenance or reset this site

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Enter the new SQL details and SCCM will configure the rest.

SCCM Console in Read Only Mode

If you perform a lower site install the primary site below a CAS or a secondary site you may get the
following popup
Your Configuration Manager console is in read-only mode while this site completes tasks related to
maintenance mode. After these tasks are complete you must reconnect your Configuration Manager
console before you can edit or create new objects.
This can be a normal event as SQL tries to replicate data from the parent to child site. It can take
some time to replicate depending on the size of the parent site. You should be able to see
replication happening in the log file REPLCTRL.

In case there is an issue there is a replication monitoring tab

If your site stays in read-only mode there is likely an issue with your SQL replication and in my
experience, the most likely cause of this is the port that SCCM has been configured to use. It is not
possible to configure the broker port after an install unless you perform a site reset through the
SCCM install process. In the capture below you can see that the replication analyser checks that the
tempdb has enough space and that the broker ports exist. In my example you can see both my
broker ports are the same. There are a lot of posts on the internet on the SQL broker port for SCCM
replication, but the only way I have ever got it working is by having the same port number for all
broker server endpoints, it doesnt have to be the default port but it should be the same on all
servers.

Sudheesh N from Microsoft has written a great post to help with DB synchronisation
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Maintenance Tasks
SCCM has a number of SQL maintenance tasks; they are all accessible in the same place as the
backup tasks. There are over 34 SQL maintenance tasks within SCCM; here are a few to give you an
idea of that they do.

Task

Description

Running time

Rebuild Indexes

Rebuilds the site DBs indexes

Every Sunday at 05:00

Monitor Keys

Monitors the primary keys used

to identify the DB

Every Sunday at 05:00

Clear Install Flag

The Clear Install Flag task clears

the installed flag on the client
record in the site database if
the client is not rediscovered by
Heartbeat Discovery.

Every Sunday at 05:00

Delete Aged Computer

Association Data

Deletes all Operating System

Deployment computer
association record data that has
been deleted as part of
completing user state restores

Saturday at 5:00

Rebuild Indexes Task

Rebuilds indexes used by the

site database

Every Sunday at 05:00

Delete Aged Status Messages

deletes aged status messages

Daily at 5:00

Evaluate collection members

Just was it says on the tin

Every 5 min!

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SQL and SCSM

SCSM is one of the SQL big hitters in the System Center suite. The advice for this product is, think
about your DB instances before installing the product. There are 8 databases involved in an SCSM
deployment, they are

ServiceManager
DWRepository
DWDataMart
DWStagingAndConfig
CMDWDataMart
OMDWDataMart
Analyst
ReportServer

Requirements

SQL 2008 R2 Standard or Enterprise

Service Manager RTM is supported on SQL 2008 R2, SCSM
SSRS (separate from all other System Center reporting instances)
SQL Server 2008 R2 Native client
Analysis services
Full test search
Dont use an Instance name with $ in it, as the Service Manager installer wont accept it
Read about the collation settings here
Unlike SCOM you can use SQL Standard for the Service Manager DB and then use SQL
Enterprise for the DW.

Sizing
Luckily the SCSM team wrote a great sizing tool for SCSM. The tool contains a series of Visio
documents, templates and an excel spread-sheet. Its a great collection of tools to help with SCSM
and not only gives you a sizing guide but also helps with some great architecture Visios to explain
some of the process flows.
Here is an example from the guide.
Users
100-500
501-2000
500
2000
Computers
1
1
Incidents
20
100
CR/Month
1.5
3
DB Size GB
7.5
15
DW Size GB

2-5k
3000
1
150
4
20

5-10k
6000
1
1000
8
38.5

10k
50000
1
2000
12.5
62

It goes without saying that correct placement of the data bases especially the tempdb needs to
follow the best practices as mentioned in this document.

SCSM Data Warehouse

If you choose to install the DW on SQL Standard there are a few points on TechNet that explain some
of the differences between choosing SQL Standard or Enterprise:
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SQL Server 2008 R2 is available in both Standard and Enterprise editions. Service Manager will
function with both editions. However, there are additional features available in
SQL Server 2008 Enterprise that can enhance your experience with the Service Manager data
warehouse:

Analysis Services Files: In the Enterprise edition of SQL Server 2008, you can decide where
Analysis Services database files will be stored. In the Standard edition, there is only one
default location for the files.

Cube Processing: In the Enterprise edition, cubes are processed incrementally each night. In
the Standard edition, the entire cube is processed each night and therefore, the amount of
processing time required will increase as more data is accumulated. Cubes can still be
queried when being processed however, reporting performance will be reduced.

Measure Group Partitions: In the Enterprise edition, measure groups are partitioned on a
monthly basis, instead of as one large partition. This reduces the amount of time it takes to
process the partition.

PowerPivot: In the Enterprise edition, you can use Microsoft SQL Server PowerPiviot for
SharePoint.

There is a great blog that explains the DW in some nice details, here is a summary of some of the
points in the blog.

Moving the DB
When it comes to moving either of the data bases the SCSM product group has again produced a
great procedure on the move. The DW move is a very considerable and as such you will need to
understand the process well before you begin. Travis Wright wrote a great blog to describe the
process
Moving the OLTP
To move the SCSM DB follow these steps:
A. On all management servers stop the System Center services so that no data can be
submitted to the DB
B. Take a backup of the ServiceManager database
C. Restore the Service Manager database on the target SQL Server
D. Configure the Service Manager database
E. Change the registry key on your management servers
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\System Center\2010\Common\Database
There are two keys that can be configured here - one for the server name (DatabaseServerName)
and one for the database name (DatabaseName)
Set those values to the new SQL Server name and database name (if different than originally).
F. Start the System Center services on all the management servers

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Moving the DW
This move is complex and the steps listed here are taken from Technet.
The high-level steps of moving the Data Warehouse database to a new SQL Server computer are as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Locate the various user accounts and SQL Servers used by the Data Warehouse Management Server
Stop Service Manager Services on the Data Warehouse Management Server
Back up the Data Warehouse databases on the old SQL Server.
Take the Data Warehouse databases offline on the old SQL Server.
Restore the Data Warehouse databases on the new SQL server.
Prepare the Data Warehouse databases on the new database server
Update Data Warehouse Management server with the new database server name.
Update the Data sources on the Reporting server to point to the new SQL server.
Update the Data sources on the Analysis server to point to the new SQL server.

10. Start Service Manager Services on the Data Warehouse Management Server
Important:
1. After the move, the databases DWStagingAndConfig and DWRepository databases have to be
restored on the same SQL instance. Restoring them on separate SQL instance is not supported.
2. The SQL Server collation on the new SQL instance has to match the collation on the original SQL
server instances where the Data Warehouse databases were originally hosted.

How to locate the various accounts and SQL servers that are used by the Data Warehouse
Management Server
To identify the SQL Server database and instance name used by the Data Warehouse Management Server
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Log on to the Data Warehouse Management Server as a user with administrative credentials.
On the Windows desktop, click Start, and then click Run.
In the Run dialog box, in the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
In the Registry Editor window, expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\System
Center\2010\Common\Database
Make a note of the following registry values:
DatabaseName
DatabaseServerName
DataMartDatabaseName
DataMartSQLInstance
RepositoryDatabaseName
RepositorySQLInstance
StagingDatabaseName
StagingSQLInstance
OMDataMartDatabaseName
OMDataMartSQLInstance
CMDataMartDatabaseName
CMDataMartSQLInstance

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To identify the SQL Reporting server and instance name used by Data Warehouse Management Server
1.
2.
3.
4.

Log on to the Data Warehouse Management Server as a user with administrative credentials.
On the Windows desktop, click Start, and then click Run.
In the Run dialog box, in the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
In the Registry Editor window, expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\System
Center\2010\Common\Reporting
Server
ServerInstance
WebServiceURL

To identify the Service account used by the Data Warehouse Management Server
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

On the Windows desktop, click Start, and then click Run

In the Run dialog box, in the Open box, type services.msc, and then click OK.
Locate the service System Center Data Access Service, double click on it.
In the Properties window, Click on the Log On tab.
Make a note of user account under This account: box.
Repeat the steps 3-5 for the service System Center Management Configuration

To identify the Reporting account used by the Data Warehouse Management Server
1.
2.

3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.

Log on to the SQL Reporting Services server hosting the Service manager Reports instances. You
can get the server name from step 6 by locating the registry value for Server
Once you are on the SQL reporting Service server, click Start, click All Programs, click Microsoft
SQL Server 2008 R2 or Microsoft SQL Server 2008, click Configuration Tools and then click on
Reporting Services Configuration Manager
In the Reporting Services Configuration Connection, connect to the correct SQL Reporting
instance as noted in Step 6
In the Reporting Services Configuration Manager window, click Reporting Manager URL
In the Reporting Manager URL page, click on the hyperlink similar that would be of the
following format: http://<Servername>:portnumber/Reports
Clicking on the hyperlink will open an Internet browser window. Click on the System Center
folder.
Click the Service Manager Folder.
Click the Data Source DWDataMart
Make a note of the User name value under the radio button setting Credentials stored securely
in the report server
Hit the back button to return to the Service Manager folder.
Click the Data Source DWStagingAndConfig
Make a note of the User name value under the radio button setting Credentials stored securely
in the report server
Hit the back button to return to the Service Manager folder.
Click the Data Source ConfigurationManager
Make a note of the User name value under the radio button setting Credentials stored securely
in the report server
Hit the back button to return to the Service Manager folder.
Click the Data Source MultiMartDatasource
Make a note of the User name value under the radio button setting Credentials stored securely
in the report server
Hit the back button to return to the Service Manager folder.

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20. Click the Data Source OperationsManager
21. Make a note of the User name value under the radio button setting Credentials stored securely
in the report server
22. The account that is configured in the various data sources for Reporting services is the
Reporting account.
23. Close the browser window.

To identify the OLAP Account used by the Data Warehouse Management Server
1.
2.

Log on to the Service Manager Server, click Start, click All Programs, Click Microsoft System Center
2012, click Service Manager and then click Service Manager Shell
In the PowerShell window, type the following commands one at a time and Hit Enter
$class= get-scclass Name Microsoft.SystemCenter.ResourceAccessLayer.ASResourceStore
ComputerName <DWServerName>
$OLAPServer= get-scclassinstance class $class ComputerName <DWServerName>
$OLAPServer.Server

Note: Replace <DWServerName> with the computer name of the Data Warehouse
management server
3.
4.

The last command above will return the name of the OLAP server hosting the DWASDataBase
On a machine where you have the SQL Server Management Studio installed do the following:
a. Click on the Start menu, Click All Programs, Click Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 or Microsoft
SQL Server 2008
b. In the Connect to Server window, select Analysis Services option in the Server Type dropdown menu.
c. In the Server Name, type the name you got from the output of the $OLAPServer.Server
cmdlet in the previous steps.
d. Once you are successfully connected to the OLAP server, in the Object Explorer window,
under the server name, expand Databases and locate the OLAP database DWASDataBase
e. Expand the DWASDataBase node.
f. Expand the folder Data Sources
g. Double click on CMDataMart
h. In the Properties window CMDataMart make note of the Connection string.
i. In the same window, under the Security Settings->Impersonation Info->Impersonation
Account, there is a button , click on it.
j. In the Impersonation Info window make a note of the User name
k. Click Cancel, then Click Cancel again.
l. Repeat Steps g-k to make a note of the Connection string and the User name for the
DWDataMart and OMDataMart.
m. The account that you made a note of in steps g-l is the OLAP Account

How to Stop Service Manager Services on the Data Warehouse Management Server
Use the following procedure to stop the Service Manager services on the Data Warehouse Management
Server.

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To stop the Service Manager services

1. In the Run dialog box, in the Open text field, type services.msc, and then click OK.
2. In the Services window, in the Services (Local) pane, locate the following three services
and for each one, click Stop:

System Center Data Access Service

System Center Management

System Center Management Configuration

Use the following procedure to back up the Data Warehouse databases on the original SQL Server

To back up the database

1.

Log on to the SQL Server computer hosting the Data Warehouse databases which you
noted in the previous section.

2.

On the SQL Server computer hosting the original Data warehouse databases, click Start,
click All Programs, click Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 or Microsoft SQL Server 2008, and
then click SQL Server Management Studio.

3.

In the Connect to Server dialog box, follow these steps:

a. In the Server Type list, select Database Engine.
b. In the Server Name list, select the server name for your Data warehouse database.
c. In the Authentication list, select Windows Authentication, and then click Connect.

4.

In the Object Explorer pane, expand Databases.

5.

Right-click on the DWStagingAndConfig database, click Tasks, and then click Back Up.

6.

In the Back Up Database dialog box, type a path and a file name in the Destination on disk
box and then click OK.
Important
The destination location must have enough available free disk space to store the backup
files.

7.

Click on the OK button in the Back Up Database dialog box to start the back up.

8.

Repeat the steps 3-6 for DWRepository, CMDWDataMart, OMDWDataMart and

DWDataMart databases.

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How to take the Data Warehouse databases offline on the old SQL Server.
Use the following procedure to take the Data Warehouse databases offline on the original SQL Server

To take the databases offline

1.

On the SQL Server computer hosting the original Service Manager database, click Start,
click All Programs, click Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, and then click SQL Server
Management Studio.

2.

In the Connect to Server dialog box, follow these steps:

a. In the Server Type list, select Database Engine.
b. In the Server Name list, select the server name for your Data warehouse database.
c. In the Authentication list, select Windows Authentication, and then click Connect.

3.

In the Object Explorer pane, expand Databases.

4.

Right-click on the Data Warehouse database, click Tasks, and then click Take Offline.

5.

In the Take database offline dialog box, click Close.

6.

Repeat the steps 3-5 for databases DWRepository, CMDWDataMart, OMDWDataMart and
DWDataMart.

How to restore the Data warehouse databases on the new SQL Server
Use the following procedure to restore the Data Warehouses databases on the new SQL Server

To restore the databases

1.

On the new SQL Server computer, click Start, click All Programs, click Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2,
and then click SQL Server Management Studio.

2.

In the Connect to Server dialog box, follow these steps:

a. In the Server Type list, select Database Engine.
b. In the Server Name list, select the server name for your Service Manager database.
c. In the Authentication list, select Windows Authentication, and then click Connect.
3. In the Object Explorer pane, right-click on the Databases folder and then click Restore Database.
4. In the Restore Database dialog box, under the To a point in time text box, either retain the default
(most recent possible) or select a specific date and time by clicking the browse button, which opens
the Point in Time Restore dialog box.
5. To specify the source and location of the backup sets to restore, click the From Device option.
6. Click Browse to open the Specify Backup dialog box.
7. In the Backup media list box, select one of the listed device types. To select one or more devices for
the Backup location list box, click Add.
8. In the Select the backup sets to restore grid, select the backups to restore. This grid displays the
backups available for the specified location.
9. On the General page, the name of the restoring database appears in the To database list, select
DWStagingAndConfig database from the list.
10. In the Restore options panel, select the Overwrite the existing database option.
11. In the Restore the database files as options panel, verify the original database file name and path
are correct.

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12. For the Recovery state options, specify the state option Leave the databases ready to use by rolling
back the uncommitted transactions. Additional transaction logs cannot be restored (RESTORE WITH
RECOVERY).
13. Click OK to restore the database.
14. Repeat the Steps 2-12 for databases DWRepository, CMDWDataMart, OMDWDataMart and
DWDataMart.

How to prepare the DWStagingAndConfig database on the new SQL Server

Use the following procedure to prepare the DWStagingAndConfig database on the new SQL Server

To configure the database

1. On the new SQL Server computer, click Start, click All Programs, click Microsoft SQL Server
2008 R2, and then click SQL Server Management Studio.
2. In the Connect to Server dialog box, follow these steps:
3. In the Server Type list, select Database Engine.
4. In the Server Name list, select the new SQL server name that is DWStagingAndConfig
hosting the database.
5. In the Authentication list, select Windows Authentication, and then click Connect.
6. In the Object Explorer pane, expand Databases, and then click DWStagingAndConfig.
7. In the toolbar, click New Query.
8. In the center pane, type the following commands, and then click Execute.
sp_configure 'clr enabled', 1
go
reconfigure
go
9. In the center pane, remove the commands you typed in the previous step, type the
following commands, and then click Execute.
ALTER DATABASE DWStagingAndConfig SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE
10. In the center pane, remove the commands you typed in the previous step, type the
following commands, and then click Execute.
ALTER DATABASE DWStagingAndConfig SET ENABLE_BROKER
11. In the center pane, remove the commands you typed in the previous step, type the
following commands, and then click Execute.
ALTER DATABASE DWStagingAndConfig SET MULTI_USER

To configure the service account database permissions

1. In the Object Explorer pane, expand Security, and then expand Logins.

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Right-click Logins, and then click New Login
2. Perform the following procedures in the Login New wizard:
3. Click Search.
4. Type the username (domain\username) for the Data Warehouse service account, click
Check Names, and then click OK.
Note
5. If the Data Access Account is running as LocalSystem, use the format
<domain\computername$> in SQL Logins, where <computername> is the name of the
management server.
6. In the Select a page pane, click User Mapping.
7. In the Users mapped to this login area, in the Map column, click the row that represents
the name of the DWStagingAndConfig (DWStagingAndConfig is the default database
name).
8. In the Database role membership for: DWStagingAndConfig area, make sure that the
following entries are selected:

configsvc_users

db_accessadmin

db_datareader

db_datawriter

db_ddladmin

db_securityadmin

dbmodule_users

public

sdk_users

sql_dependency_subscriber

db_owner

9. In the Database role membership for: DWRepository area, make sure that the following
entries are selected:

db_owner

public

10. In the Database role membership for: DWDataMart area, make sure that the following
entries are selected:

db_owner

public
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11. Click Ok
12. In the Object Explorer pane, expand Security, and then expand Logins.
13. Right-click Logins, and then click New Login
14. Perform the following procedures in the Login New wizard:
15. Click Search.
16. Type the username (domain\username) for the Reporting account, click Check Names, and
then click OK.
17. In the Select a page pane, click User Mapping.
18. In the Users mapped to this login area, in the Map column, click the row that represents
the name of the DWStagingAndConfig (DWStagingAndConfig is the default database
name).
19. In the Database role membership for: DWStagingAndConfig area, make sure that the
following entries are selected:

db_datareader

public

20. In the Database role membership for: DWRepository area, make sure that the following
entries are selected:

db_datareader

public

reportuser

21. In the Database role membership for: DWDataMart area, make sure that the following
entries are selected:

db_datareader

public

reportuser

22. In the Database role membership for: OMDWDataMart area, make sure that the following
entries are selected:

db_datareader

public

reportuser

23. In the Database role membership for: CMDWDataMart area, make sure that the following
entries are selected:

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db_datareader

public

reportuser

24. Click Ok
25. In the Object Explorer pane, expand Security, and then expand Logins.
26. Right-click Logins, and then click New Login
27. Perform the following procedures in the Login New wizard:
28. Click Search.
29. Type the username (domain\username) for the OLAP account, click Check Names, and
then click OK.
30. In the Select a page pane, click User Mapping.
31. In the Database role membership for: DWDataMart area, make sure that the following
entries are selected:

db_datareader

public

reportuser

32. In the Database role membership for: OMDWDataMart area, make sure that the following
entries are selected:

db_datareader

public

reportuser

33. In the Database role membership for: CMDWDataMart area, make sure that the following
entries are selected:

db_datareader

public

reportuser

34. Click Ok

To configure DWStagingAndConfig tables

1. In the Object Explorer pane, expand Databases, expand DWStagingAndConfig, and then
expand Tables.
2. Right-click dbo.MT_Microsoft$SystemCenter$ManagementGroup, and then click Edit Top
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200 Rows.
3. In the center pane, locate the column SQLServerName_
43FB076F_7970_4C86_6DCA_8BD541F45E3A.
4. In the first row of this column, type the new SQL Server name hosting the
DWStagingAndConfig database. In the case of named instances, type computer
name\instance name.
5. Right-click dbo. MT_Microsoft$SystemCenter$ResourceAccessLayer$SqlResourceStore, and
then click Edit Top 200 Rows.
6. Update the column Server_48B308F9_CF0E_0F74_83E1_0AEB1B58E2FA for rows
representing DWStagingAndConfig, DWRepository, CMDWDataMart, OMDWDataMart,
DWDataMart. Type the new SQL Server name hosting the respective databases. In the
case of named instances, type computer name\instance name.
7. Right-click dbo. MT_Microsoft$SystemCenter$ResourceAccessLayer$CMDBResourceStore,
and then click Edit Top 200 Rows.
8. In the center pane, locate the column Server_48B308F9_CF0E_0F74_83E1_0AEB1B58E2FA.
9. In the first row of this column, type the new SQL Server name hosting the
DWStagingAndConfig database. In the case of named instances, type computer
name\instance name.
10. Right-click LFX.DataSource, and then click Edit Top 200 Rows.
11. In the center pane, locate the column DataSourceAddress.
12. In the first row of this column, locate the entry that starts with Data Source = <server
name>; Initial Catalog = DWStagingAndConfig; Persist Security Info=False. Type the new
SQL Server name in place of <server name>.
13. Ensure the values got saved by querying the tables specified in steps 1 through 13
14. Close Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio.

How to update the Data Warehouse Server to use the new Database Server name
Use the following procedure to update all the Data Warehouse Server to use the new Database Server name.
Caution
Incorrectly editing the registry might Severely damage your system; therefore, before making changes
to the registry, back up any valued data on the computer.

To edit the registry

1.
2.
3.

Log on to the computer as a user with administrative credentials.

On the Windows desktop, click Start, and then click Run.
In the Run dialog box, in the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.

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4.
5.
6.

7.
8.

In the Registry Editor window, expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\System

Center\2010\Common\Database
In the right pane, double-click DatabaseServerName.
In the Edit String box, in the Value data box, type the name of the new SQL Server name hosting the
DWStagingAndConfig database. If you are using a named instance of SQL Server, use the Computer
Name\Instance name format.
Click OK
Repeat the Steps 4-6 for the registry values to reflect the new SQL server name for the
DWDatamart, OMDWDataMart, CMDWDataMart, DWRepository and DWStagingAndConfig
databases respectively. if you are using a named instance of SQL Server, use the Computer
Name\Instance name format.
DataMartSQLInstance
RepositorySQLInstance
StagingSQLInstance

OMDataMartSQLInstance
CMDataMartSQLInstance
How to update the connection strings for the Data Sources on the SQL Reporting Services hosting
Service Manager Reports
Use the following procedure to update the connection strings for the Data Sources on the SQL Reporting
Services hosting Service Manager Reports
1.

2.

3.

4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.

Log on to the SQL Reporting Services server hosting the Service manager Reports instances. This is
the registry value called Server you noted in the section To identify the SQL Reporting server and
instance name used by Data Warehouse Management Server
Once you are on the SQL reporting Service server, click Start, click All Programs, click Microsoft SQL
Server 2008 R2 or Microsoft SQL Server 2008, click Configuration Tools and then click on Reporting
Services Configuration Manager
In the Reporting Services Configuration Connection, connect to the correct SQL Reporting instance
as noted in the section To identify the SQL Reporting server and instance name used by Data
Warehouse Management Server
In the Reporting Services Configuration Manager window, click Reporting Manager URL
In the Reporting Manager URL page, click on the hyperlink similar that would be of the following
format: http://<Servername>:portnumber/Reports
Clicking on the hyperlink will open an Internet browser window. Click on the System Center folder.
Click the Service Manager Folder.
Click the Data Source DWDataMart
Update the Connection string value data source=<server name>;initial catalog=DWDataMart. Type
the new SQL Server name in place of <server name>.
Hit the back button to return to the Service Manager folder.
Click the Data Source DWStagingAndConfig
Update the Connection string value data source=<server name>;initial
catalog=DWStagingAndConfig. Type the new SQL Server name in place of <server name>.
Hit the back button to return to the Service Manager folder.
Click the Data Source ConfigurationManager
Update the Connection string value data source=<server name>;initial catalog=CMDWDataMart.
Type the new SQL Server name in place of <server name>.
Hit the back button to return to the Service Manager folder.
Click the Data Source MultiMartDatasource

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18. Update the Connection string value <root><source id='DWDataMart' connectionString='Data
Source=<Server name>;Initial Catalog=DWDataMart;Integrated Security=True' /><source
id='OMDataMart' connectionString='Data Source=<Server name>;Initial
Catalog=OMDWDataMart;Integrated Security=True' /><source id='CMDataMart'
connectionString='Data Source=<Server name>;Initial Catalog=CMDWDataMart;Integrated
Security=True' /></root>. Type the new SQL Server name in place of <server name>.
19. Hit the back button to return to the Service Manager folder.
20. Click the Data Source OperationsManager
21. Update the Connection string value data source=<server name>;initial catalog=OMDWDataMart.
Type the new SQL Server name in place of <server name>.
22. Close the browser window.

How to update the connection strings for the Data Sources on the SQL Analysis services hosting the
Service Manager Analysis Database
Use the following procedure to update the connection strings for the Data Sources on the SQL Analysis
Services hosting Service Manager Analysis Database
1.

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Log on to the SQL Analysis services server hosting the Service Manager Analysis Database. This is
the value of the $OLAPServer.Server you noted in Step 29 under the section How to find out what
user accounts and SQL servers that are used by the Data Warehouse Server.
Click on the Start menu, Click All Programs, Click Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 or Microsoft SQL
Server 2008
In the Connect to Server window, select Analysis Services option in the Server Type drop-down
menu.
In the Server Name, type the name you got from the output of the $OLAPServer.Server cmdlet in
the previous steps.
Once you are successfully connected to the OLAP server, in the Object Explorer window, under the
server name, expand Databases and locate the OLAP database DWASDataBase
Expand the DWASDataBase node.
Expand the folder Data Sources
Double click on CMDataMart
In the Properties window CMDataMart update the Connection string Provider=SQLNCLI10.1;Data
Source=<servername>;Integrated Security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=CMDWDataMart

Replace <servername> with the name of the SQL server hosting the CMDWDataMart database.
10. Click Ok.
11. Repeat steps 8-10 to update the Connection strings for the data sources DWDataMart and
OMDataMart.

How to Start Service Manager Services on the Data Warehouse Server

Use the following procedure to start the Service Manager services on the Data Warehouse server.

To Start Service Manager Services

1. On the Windows desktop, click Start, and then click Run.

2. In the Run dialog box, in the Open field, type services.msc, and then click OK.
3. In the Services window, in the Services (Local) pane, locate the following three services
and for each one, click Start:

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System Center Data Access Service

System Center Management

System Center Management Configuration

Backup and restore

The SCSM DB backup is just a SQL backup process, while there are 8 DBs that need to be considered
with the backup. If your SQL instance fails, all you need for recovery is the ability to restore the
databases, which include the encryption keys to a computer with the same name as the original
computer.

Performance
Service Manager DB performance, like many of the other products in the suite, have a number of
factors that affect how SCSM will perform. When you consider that SCSM can be importing data
from AD, SCOM, SCCM, SCO etc. its easy to see how critical the SQL backend is. As with SCOM for
example the number of consoles and the quantity of data coming through the connectors will all
impact performance.

Ideally you need a minimum of 8 (GB) of RAM for the management server that hosts the
Service Manager database so that you can have an acceptable response time in typical
scenarios.

You should have at least 8 CPU cores on the computer hosting the Service Manager
database.

The usual stuff about sizing and placement on tempdb

Create your DB to be a large enough size and configure the auto growth so that growth
happens infrequently.

SQL and SCVMM

SCVMM would not be considered one of the big hitters in terms of SQL load. The main reason for
this opinion is that not too many people have been running very large Hyper-V environments. I am
sure that in Microsoft their VMM databases are under massive load but most people dont deal with
that many hosts. In the sizing guide on TechNet this fact is emphasised in the way that Microsoft
have not indicated IOPS guidelines.

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Requirements

SQL 2008 R2 SP1 (Standard or above)

You must use a case-insensitive instance of SQL Server.
SQL Roles: Database Engine and Management Tools.
If the VMM management server and the computer on which SQL Server is running are not
both members of the same Active Directory domain, there must be a two-way trust between
the two domains, but in my opinion it makes no sense to separate your SQL into a different
domain.
The name of the computer on which SQL Server is installed cannot exceed 15 characters.

Sizing
TechNet offers two tables that place a sizing mark at everything up to 150 hosts and then for
everything higher. The two sizing guides are fairly generic values but if your company is deploying
greater than 150 hosts then you will have to think a bit more about how you size your DB
environment. There are no indications of IOPS or needs on the tempdb.
In the following two tables I am not covering the minimum, as I dont believe the low watermark is
the right place for any SQL backend. Also on the TechNet page it assumes you are deploying SQL on
the same server, and we dont need to rant on again about local SQL, but, keep them separate.
For 150 hosts and below
CPU
RAM
Disk Space

Dual-CPU, Dual-Core, 2.8GHz or greater

4GB*
150GB

*I would view 4GB of RAM to be too little for SQL and would have this at 8GB with 5GB reserved for
SQL.

For 150 hosts and above

CPU
RAM
Disk Space

Dual-CPU, Dual-Core, 3.6GHz or greater

8GB*
150GB

Moving the DB
Moving the DB to another SQL instance is quite a simple process but its not the prettiest DB move
compared to some of the other System Center applications. The process involves a re-install with
the existing DB.
1. Stop the VMM services on the VMM server and make a note of the location of your VMM
LDF and MDF files
2. In SQL management studio, backup the VMM DB
3. Uninstall SCVMM with the Retail Database option
4. In SQL management studio detach the VMM DB from SQL
5. Copy the files to the new SQL instance
6. On the new SQL instance in SQL management studio attach the MDF and LDF
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7. Re-install SCVMM and then choose the existing DB on your new DB server
On your SCVMM server the only location in the register that mentions SQL is located under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager
Server\Settings\SQL

An unsupported hack is to change the SQL listing in the registry. I have used this twice in my lab and
demo environments and it worked great, but its not supported in a production environment.

Backup
The backup and restore process for SCVMM has less support restrictions for the backup process then
for example SCCM. While there is a backup task in the SCVMM GUI you can also just as easily use
the native SQL tools to perform the backup and restore process. SCVMM has a recovery tool called
SCVMMRecovery.exe that is located on the SCVMM server. This tool however cant be used if you
have your SCVMM DB located on a cluster.

BACKUP DATABASE VirtualManagerDB1 TO DISK = b:\backup\VirtualManager.bak WITH FORMAT,

MEDIANAME = SQLSERVERBACKUP, NAME = VirtualManager Full Backup; GO

To restore the DB from an elevated CMD navigate to where the SCVMM binaries are located and
look to the SCVMMRecover.exe as can be seen in the screen clipping below

So C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012\Virtual Machine

Manager\bin\SCVMMRecover.exe C:\SCVMM_BACKUP\SCVMMBACKUP.BAK CONFIRM
The location for the backup must to include the backup name with the .BAK
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When you perform the restore you may need to look at some of the following points;
Any hosts that were removed since your last backup will need to be removed and reassociated.
Add any hosts that were added to VMM since the last backup.
If you restored the VMM database to a different computer, re-associate hosts that have a
status of Access Denied in the VMM console.

SQL and SCO

SCO is another application in the suite that has a gentle SQL requirement. One of the reasons for
this is that Orchestrator when it was owned by Opalis could be run on data bases other than SQL.

Requirements
SQL 2008 R2, with the database engine and the usual SQL collation settings,
SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. Thats it.

Database growth
(The following section is almost a direct copy from TechNet

Normally, when you call a runbook the database will not grow.
Each time a runbook activity runs it should be counted individually, which should be
considered when looping features, this can cause a single activity to run multiple times.
To determine the storage needed for each invocation of the runbook, multiply the number
of activities in the runbook by the number of bytes added to the database according to the
selected logging level. These values are as follows:
524 bytes

Default logging configuration.

6082 bytes

Common published data logging level.

6082 bytes + data logged by activity

Activity-specific published data logging level.

By default, Orchestrator purges all but the most recent 500 logs for each runbook nightly at
2:00 am. To determine the storage required for each invocation of the runbook, multiply the
storage needed for each invocation of the runbook by 500. If you change the Log Purge
setting, multiply each invocation by the estimated number of invocations per day, week, or
month as needed.
The following table shows growth and performance estimates for the logging level
configurations.

Logging Level

DB Growth Factor

Performance Factor

Recommended for
Production

Default

Yes

Common published

11.6x

2.5x

Limited use with

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data
Activity-specific
published data

planning
Greater than 11.6x

Greater than 2.5x

No

Moving the database

1. Stop your runbooks.
2. Stop the Orchestator services on your MS,
a. OrchestratorManagementService
b. OpalisActionService
c. OpalisActionServerWatchdog
d. OpalisRemotingService
3. On your run book servers stop the following
a. OpalisRemotingService
b. OpalisActionService
4. Take a full backup of your SCO DB in SQL
5. Copy and restore the database backup onto the new SQL server.
6. Restore the DB from SQL MS.
7. In SQL Server Management Studio, add the Orchestrator service Account as Login and
configure it to use the Orchestrator database with the permission of db_owner.
8. On your Orchestrator management server, start the Data Store Configuration tool, configure
to use the new SQL server and connect the existing database.
9. Start all services on your Orchestrator management server that you stopped on step 2
10. Start all services on your Orchestrator Runbook servers that you stopped on step 3

Backup
The SQL DB is backed up through SQL native backup, SCDPM or another 3RD party backup facility. In
the same way as VMM or SCOM is backed up, its just a simple DB backup process.

Useful SQL Queries

Robert Hearn wrote a great blog on some useful queries within the SCO DB. Here are some of the
queries from the blog.
List all activity runbooks across all servers
SELECT *
FROM [Orchestrator].[dbo].[POLICY_PUBLISH_QUEUE] ppq
LEFT JOIN Orchestrator.dbo.POLICYINSTANCES pin on pin.PolicyID =
ppq.PolicyID
Where AssignedActionServer IS NOT NULL
and TimeEnded IS NULL

List all running Jobs with activities that started more than 5 mins ago and have not finished
SELECT pin.PolicyID
, pin.State
, pin.Status
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, oi.ObjectID
, oi.ObjectStatus
, oi.StartTime
, oi.EndTime
FROM [Orchestrator].[dbo].[POLICYINSTANCES] pin
LEFT JOIN Orchestrator.dbo.[OBJECTS] obj on obj.ParentID = pin.PolicyID
LEFT JOIN Orchestrator.dbo.OBJECTINSTANCES oi on oi.ObjectID = obj.UniqueID
Where TimeEnded IS NULL
And Status IS NULL
and oi.EndTime IS NULL
and OI.StartTime IS NOT NULL
and DATEDIFF(MINUTE,oi.StartTime,getdate()) > 5
List of all currently-running Jobs that have not had their heartbeat update in the last 5 minutes
SELECT *
FROM [Orchestrator].[dbo].[POLICY_PUBLISH_QUEUE] ppq
LEFT JOIN Orchestrator.dbo.POLICYINSTANCES pin on pin.PolicyID = ppq.PolicyID
Where AssignedActionServer IS NOT NULL
and TimeEnded IS NULL
and DATEDIFF(MINUTE, Heartbeat, GetDate()) > 5

Find out the highest number of runbooks that were run per hour at any given time in the last 30
days:
SELECT MAX(jobs.MaxInstances) FROM
(SELECT [ActionServer]
, CONVERT(VARCHAR(19), dateadd(hour,datediff(hour,0,TimeStarted),0),
120) as Hourly
, COUNT(*) as MaxInstances
FROM [Opalis].[dbo].[POLICYINSTANCES]
WHERE (DateDiff(M, TimeStarted,GETDATE()) < 1 )
GROUP BY ActionServer, CONVERT(VARCHAR(19),
dateadd(hour,datediff(hour,0,TimeStarted),0), 120)) as jobs

Robert also wrote another good blog on clearing the queue for your RB servers (and this is
unsupported). Consider a situation whereby for example you are monitoring a drive and when a
document gets placed in the drive it will kick off a job to FTP that file, by accident then a large
number of files are dropped into the folder and thousands of jobs are created. If you stop the
services on your runbook server than your secondary server will just pick up the workload. Using the
following two scripts will add a Stored Procedure to the DB to delete the jobs.
USE [Orchestrator]
GO
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[sp_StopAllRequestsForPolicy]
@PolicyID uniqueidentifier
AS

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BEGIN
DELETE FROM [POLICY_PUBLISH_QUEUE] WHERE [PolicyID] = @PolicyID
UPDATE [POLICIES] SET [Published] = 0, [PublishingTime] = getutcdate()
WHERE [UniqueID] = @PolicyID
END

And the second

USE [Orchestrator]
GO
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[sp_StopAllRequests]
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE running_cursor CURSOR LOCAL FAST_FORWARD FOR
SELECT DISTINCT [PolicyID]
FROM [POLICY_PUBLISH_QUEUE]
DECLARE @policyID uniqueidentifier
OPEN running_cursor
FETCH NEXT FROM running_cursor INTO @policyID
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
EXEC [sp_StopAllRequestsForPolicy] @PolicyID = @policyID
FETCH NEXT FROM running_cursor INTO @policyID
END
CLOSE running_cursor
DEALLOCATE running_cursor
END

With the two scripts completed you now have a stored procedure to clear the queue, run
sp_StopAllRequests

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SQL and DPM

DPM is a unique component in the suite, during the install it will offer to install a local copy of SQL.
In the questionnaire that was submitted at the start of this process I asked the question what was
peoples opinions on deploying to SQL Express. While most people said that they prefer to deploy
DPM with a full version of SQL with comments like enterprise DB for an enterprise backup. Some
of the interesting points that I was not expecting came from two of the DPM experts;
1. The SQL express DB that DPM creates was custom configured to be tuned just for DPM
2. There is little performance gain in running DPM on full SQL.

Requirements
The SQL backend needs to be a dedicated instance SQL Server 2012 or SQL Server 2008 R2 or SQL
Server 2008 R2 SP1, Enterprise or Standard Edition.

It must be in the same domain as the DPM server.

The remote instance of SQL Server cannot be on a domain controller
Setup creates the DPMDBReaders$<DPM server name> and DPMDBAdministrators$<DPM
server name> local groups on the computer that is running the remote instance of SQL
Server. You must add DPM administrators to these groups for DPM to use the remote
instance of SQL Server.
For remote instance of SQL with a firewall involved then you need port 80 open on the SQL
server.
The DPM support files need to be on the SQL server.

Moving the data base

Moving the SQL DB to another server is a fairly straight forward process. It centers around moving
the DB to a server with the same name as the original server.
On your existing DPM SQL server:
1. Back up the DPM database.
2. Note the updates installed on DPM by using the Add or Remove Programs item in Control
Panel.
On your new server, follow these steps:
1. Take the old server off the network. Name your new server the same as the old one.
2. Install DPM.
3. Install all the DPM updates that were previously installed on your old server.
4. Restore the DPM database.

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Survey Results
What started this project off was that I decided to create a survey to discover how the rest of the
community was dealing with the interaction between System Center and its most critical
component, the SQL server. Here is what people said, in some areas I am paraphrasing or just
including the important parts.

So OK its nearly all System Center folks..

Nearly 70% of us are hosting SQL instances on VMs to support System Center, so have a read of the
section on virtualising SQL.

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One point from these results; if you leave autogrowth to the default and the tempdb to default then
you are going to start off with a tiny tempdb file (8mb) and its going to grow by 10% constantly until
it reaches its necessary size. On some SCOM / SCSM environments this could be gigs and gigs of
dreadful autogrowth and corresponding terrible performance of your DB!

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While talking to an old friend and SQL MVP, he said that he never uses Windows firewall on a SQL
instance due to the excess in CPU usage from packet inspection, and I thought it would be
interesting for us all to see what others are doing.

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Whilst speaking to several SQL experts they often say, always enable the SA and then you have a
way in that is independent to AD. This will often be enough to fail a security audit.

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Wrap up
If I have made errors in this document I would appreciate your findings, and when System Center
2012 SP1 comes out the guide will be updated for SQL 2012 and some of the new features.

Paul Keely MVP

[email protected]

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