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SCSM - Last Modified Date Manager for IR and SR
Conner_Wood
Customer Ninja IT Monkey ✭✭✭✭
If ya don't, get outta here
Presenting the SCSM - Last Modified Date Manager for IR and SR... I made it specifically for the purpose of preventing additional syncing after importing the Advanced Request Offering MPB.
I found it extremely useful since other areas of IT rely of Last Modified Date for some reports because if I alter all the Last Modified Dates to something else then obviously the report isn't accurate to what it really should be, hence why I made the program.
I recommend disabling the DW Job Schedules and letting all the jobs finish before proceeding with the upgrade, then after all of it you can re-enable the DW Job Schedules once more using powershell.
Disable cmd == Get-SCDWJob | ForEach-Object {<b>Disable-SCDWJobSchedule</b> -JobName $_.Name}
Enable cmd == Get-SCDWJob | ForEach-Object {<b>Enable-SCDWJobSchedule</b> -JobName $_.Name}
TechNet Instructions:
Welcome one and all, you may be wondering what this program is for. Cireson has released Version 5 of their Portal. After reading the fine print it turns out that after installing the Portal there's a management pack called "Cireson.AdvanceRequestOffering.mpb" which can be imported into SCSM to enhance functionality. The downside is there's a price, all those Last Modified Dates for IR and SR Tickets that are in the Live SCSM Database will be changed to the date that this MPB gets imported.
- Everyone must use downtime procedures, meaning no one is doing things in SCSM except you.
- Now you use this program, enter the correct SCSM SQL Server and Database Name, then click the button "Load DataTable from SCSM SQL Database"
- Depending on how many IRs and SRs are present, this can take a few seconds, be patient and wait for the DataTable list to appear
- Congrats, you're now ready to click "Export DataTable to Save File" ... you'll notice it will save to the path where you will later load the save file.
- Feel free to find and backup this save file if you're smart/nervous (cause you're smart).
- Close the SCSM Last Modified Dates Manager Program for now..... open the SCSM Console
- Now import the Cireson MPB called "Cireson.AdvanceRequestOffering" and watch as all your Last Modified Dates are assimilated
- But you have a plan, and a save file, cause you've been following these steps in order proving you're smart... Close the SCSM Console
- So after waiting a bit until SCSM settles down, open up the SCSM Last Modified Dates Manager Program again
- Enter the correct SCSM SQL Server and Database Name, then click the button "Load Saved File" ...
- You'll see it's loaded all of your correct last modified dates, fantastic, now click "Overrwrite SCSM SQL Database From Loaded DataTable"
- Give it some time, there's quite a few entries to update, eventually a message box will pop-up
- You've done it, you've proven your worth, a winner is you!
Note: If you have already applied the Cireson MPB, you could be smart and just use an earlier backup of the database and restore it elsewhere, then grab the correct last modified dates and save them to the save file, then connect to the current Live SCSM Database and Overwrite the Last Modified Dates from there if your DW hasn't already synced.
Comments
It could be usefull if you made it possible to just replace one LastModified date with a custom one that I set.
Also, I'm not that comfortable with editing the SCSM DB directly.
Is it possible to edit LastModified date through Powershell?
The goal of this program was to retain the original dates on the tickets themselves so the Data Warehouse wouldn't attempt to sync a large amount of information.
Due to the undocumented complexity of SCSM's design, it was my design choice to only alter the database in a way that would be valid data (such as data already entered in the Database), allowing any particular date on last modified could result in issues so I didn't pursue that course of action.
I'm sure you're not comfortable, and there's plenty of valid reasons why you normally shouldn't. The real question is how many limitations are you and your superiors willing to tolerate from SCSM?
SMLets might allow you to, but I have doubts because SMLets really just uses the C# SDK behind the scenes.
Thanks for a great program! I used it, for the first time, recently, and worked wonderfully, reverting back all datetime to the saved ones, which is really helpful, so thanks a lot!
We experienced a kinda odd side-effect though, where all WIs was very slow to open and save, through out the next day of working in SCSM. The day after that, all was working fine again, but I'm curious to what could be the reason.
So I used the program at about 10pm one evening, when I installed ARO. The next day, many analysts reported, that the console and portal was running very slow, when working on work items. Do you have any idea why? Is there some index which needs to be rebuild because of this or something?
Anyways, thanks for a great tool!
Thanks for your reply! By "clearing the health state" you mean deleting everything in the ..\Service Manager\Healh Service State\ dir?
Our process is to
Stop all runbooks
Stop the Cireson Cache builder
Stop on all management server - "System Center Data Access Service","System Center Management Configuration","Microsoft Monitoring Agent"
Truncate Last Modified on the ServiceManagement dbo
Delete the \SCSM2012\Health Service State\*
Start the management server services
Start the Cireson cache builder
Start the monitoring runbooks
That seems like a good procedure. We follow the same one, apart from deleting the health state, which is probably what makes the difference. I will test it out soon, as I need to extended our IR class with an additional property, and I plan on using this tool in the process.
Thanks a lot!
No problem, I'm glad you found one of the programs I've released on TechNet useful.
Used this for the first time with a customer, worked a treat, very nice work sir!
Did the customer experience any significant slowdown in console / portal operations, specifically when working on WI afterwards? Did you follow a procedure similar to @Brian_Wiest's regarding deletion of the Health Service State\ directory?
Nope, no slow down, everything worked well. And no, just exported the dates, imported the MP and imported the dates. All Good.
Hm, interesting. But thanks!
We experienced significant performance degradation after using this. We put this down to the number of WI we have in the operational db (just short of 90k at the time). It took about 2 days for performance to return to normal.
In the course of trying to understand what was causing the issue we queried the db and could see a large number of workflows that were all running in excess of 600 minutes behind.
The tool itself worked perfectly, we'll just have to consider the impact to performance should we ever have to use it again.
Ah okay, that explains it, as the workflows will have "rerun" on the updated WI, which appear not to be updated, which probably confuses SCSM. Thanks!
Yeah, it's definitely an aspect to consider for the future.
When we utilize this tool one thing we do is shut down the DW as documented but also shut down the Cireson Cache builder along with the other management servers. Means only our primary management server is running. (the other 4 are shut down)
We have ~40K WI at a given time and once we complete the outage period we do not have performance issues.
Then follow the instructions as usual but on a secondary server:
Then you restart all the Management Servers including Primary Workflow Management Server.
Assuming your SCSM 2012 R2
Ah yes, of course. Yeah, the roles are separated. The secondary server is the Cireson Portal web server running a MS to enable IWA.