Preparing an AD Domain for SCOM 2007 using MOMADADMIN.EXE

I've been preparing one of our domains for use with a Gateway Server recently and consequently I've needed to use MOMADMIN.EXE to publish the Service Connection Points into AD, so that the Agents can automatically detect the SCOM settings for Management Groups and Servers.

Below is the syntax for using the command



MomADAdmin.exe <Management Group> <SCOM Admin Group> <Management Server name> <Domain name>


In my instance, the Management server was actually the name of the Gateway server in the domain as opposed to the RMS or MS.

Integrating ISA 2006 with RSA AM 7.1 SP2

I've just finished testing RSA SecurID Token  authentication with FBA on ISA Server 2006, below are the steps that I followed.

We followed some notes at the MS TMG Technet Blog for the actual ISA Rule base configuration which is pretty straightforward.

Register ISA Servers as Authentication Agents in RSA AM 7.1


Open the RSA AM Security Console and go to 'Access', 'Authentication Agents' and 'Add New'.

Complete the details for the ISA Server as an 'Authentication Agent' including the FQDN and IP Address. I also set the 'Agent Type' to 'Web Agent' (Unlike in the screenshot).

Generate RSA AM Config File

In the Security Console go to 'Access', 'Authentication Agents' and 'Generate Configuration File'.

Check the setting and then click the 'Generate Config File' button to download the configuration file.

 Click 'Download Now' to start the configuration file download.

Download and extract the sdconf.rec from the AM_Config.zip once downloaded

Copy sdconf.rec to C:\Windows\System32\ and C:\Program Files\Microsoft ISA Server\sdconfig\ on all relevant ISA Servers.

Set Node Secret for each Authentication Agent (ISA Server)

In the RSA Security Console, go to  'Access', 'Authentication Agents' and 'Manage Existing'.


Click the arrow next tot he appropriate ISA Server and select 'Manage Node Secret...'

On the RSA AM server Locate agent_nsload.exe and copy to each ISA Server in the array

Set a node secret in RSA AM interface on each Agent entry and download .zip files when requested

Extract the NODESECRET.REC file from the supplied .zip and place with the agent_nsload.exe

To import the node secret to the ISA Server(s), run the following command

agent_nsload.exe -f <path to nodesecret.rec>  -p <node secret password>

A 'securid' file should then be created in C:\Windows\System32\ (note the lack of file extension). This file should then be copied to the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft ISA Server\sdconfig\"

That was enough to get ISA working with RSA 7.1 SP2.

Change RSA AM 7.1 SP2 Allocated Disk Space for Instance Replication

I've deployed three VMs with approx 40GB of disk space available to RSA AM 7.1 and it's database. The problem is that by default RSA AM, is configured to use a maximum of 100GB, therefore there's a chance that it could consume all of the available disk and consequently halt it's services.

The fix can be found in the Troubleshooting section of the RSA AM Administrative Guide under "Freeing Disk Space Allocated for Logging on a Replica Instance". RSA recommends allowing AM to utilise 75% of the available disk space, therefore if you have 30GB free after install then you should use 22.5GB. Unfortunately the command line doesn't appear to like the decimal point so I used 22GB.

You'll need to open a command prompt and go to the 'utils' folder in the RSA install folder and run the following command where 22 is the size that you wish to dedicate to RSA AM's logs.

rsautil manage-database -a change-max-size -f archived_trans_files -s 22

You'll be prompted to confirm your password twice and then you should receive "Done..."


That's all for now.

Installing .deb files in Ubuntu

I'm just tweaking my XBMC install and need to install some additional packages. Below is the command to drag them down and install from the hyper global mega net.

apt-get install packagename

VMware Update Manager 1.0 u3 Fix for "There are errors during the remediation operation"

We have a fairly sizeable VMware ESX environment which we use VMware's Update Manager for the patching of our Hosts and guest VMs. Occasionaly when trying to patch VM's, I've attached a Baseline, already selected 'Scan for updates' but when selecting remediate received the message "There are errors during the remediation operation".

By manually running the 'VMware Update Manager Update Download' Scheduled Task using Run and then restarting the VMware Update Manager Service, I've found that the issue disappears. I'm wondering if there's some inconsistency between the metadata download and the data that Update Manager is holding? If anyone knows, i'd love to know!

RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 on VMware ESX 3.5

I'm right in the middle of an RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 SP2 deployment onto VMware ESX 3.5 as I type and having stumbled across some "gotcha's" already, I've decided to note them as I go.

• It's perfectly acceptable for RSA AM 7.1 to take approximately 15 minutes to start up thanks to Java and the 'new' Oracle Database backend. About 13 minutes of the delay is at "Applying Computer Settings". (Even with 2vCPU's and 4GB RAM).
• Give the server 4GB of RAM if possible even though RSA only recommend 2GB, that way all the services will be able to start at boot up
• When installing a Replica Instance, you'll need the replica package creating on your Primary Instance and also a copy of your RSA License certs handy. Also make sure that there is connectivity from it to your existing Primary Instance and any other Replica instances that you may have. TCP port 2334 will need to be open if you've got a firewall or two in the way.
• I'm not really having a great deal of luck with RSA AM 7.1, I'm finding it very finicky in terms of connecting Replica instances to the Primary. I'm considering another rebuild of the VMs so that I'm happy that they're working as they should. I've also experienced my Primary Instance running out of disk space eventhough it had 30GB set aside just for Authentication Manager.
• I've rebuilt my Primary and Replica now and they seem to be a little more stable. I've noticed that by default AM will assume that there is 100GB of disk available for replication. Now apparently this can be changed by following the directions in Appendix G of the Administrators PDF. I cannot find the relevant instructions although I am wondering if it can be achieved using rsautil manage-database and resizing the database files. Update - I've found that I was referring to the old documentation for the above problem. Please see my most recent post to resolve this issue.

Associate the employeeID attributed with the user class in AD

In preparation for our new HR system, I linked the existing employeeID attributed in our AD Schema to the user class. This allows the storing of employee IDs in Active Directory for each user. A quick guide can be found here