In September I wrote a few things about how I use SAM Script Templates – specifically with PowerShell. One of the more powerful things in the SAM arsenal is the ability to return multiple components in a single script. I’ve used this in any number of ways, but the one that gives me the most satisfaction is a PowerShell script that I wrote for Linux.
PowerShell
Setup SQL Disks
Yesterday, I wrote about how I setup SQL Servers Virtual Machines using PowerShell and PowerCLI. Now that I’ve got the SQL Server imaged, it’s time to format the disks and prep the Page File. Let’s dig in.
SAM PowerShell Scripting Template
I write a lot of PowerShell scripts. Like a lot, a lot. I write them for any manner of things, but recently I’ve been tasked to help out with a few Server & Application Monitor templates. These are some of the most interesting things that SAM has to offer.
Looking at each of the scripts, I decided it was worth revisiting based on some of my newly acquired PowerShell superpowers (cape not included).
SAM script templates (Windows Scripting, PowerShell, Perl, Python, whatever) require two things – a statistic and an exit code.
Mass Export of NCM Device Templates
Do you run a bunch of Orion servers? Do you hate exporting your custom NCM Device Templates one at a time?
No? Only me?
Well, if you are ever like me, I’ve got something to help you out.
It basically checks for all the device templates in your database for those that aren’t out of the box and exports them in the proper format.
Automating the Configuration Wizard
In a previous post I said how to run multiple Orion installations without running the Configuration Wizard. This is great if you have a new big installation planned. So the last step is to actually run the configuration wizard.
Speeding up multiple SolarWinds Orion Products Installations
I stumbled across an article called Install Orion products in unattended or silent mode that made me so happy because I install new Orion servers about 4 times a month. There are only so many time I want to click “Next,” “Next”, “Finish” in any given day. So, since I do this so often, I wanted to script this out. The big two takeaways from this article are that you run the installer silently and can skip the Configuration Wizard from running after installation.
Building my Orion Server [Scripting Edition] – Step 3
I’m keeping this original post active for historical reference, but you should not use the below, since I have an update: Step 3 is dead. Long live step 3.1
This is it. The endgame. Here I’ll give you the final steps in configuring my server. We started with creating the virtual machine then moved to configuring the disks. We’re at the end – where’s it’s time to do the final configurations.
In summary, we’re going to do several steps here. They pretty much follows my other guide step-by-step, so I’ll be brief in covering them here.
- Variable Declaration
- Installing Windows Features
- Enabling Disk Performance Metrics
- Installing some Utilities
- Copying the IIS Folders to a new Location
- Enable Deduplication (optional)
- Removing unnecessary IIS Websites and Application Pools
- Tweaking the IIS Settings
- Tweaking the ASP.NET Settings
- Creating a location for the TFTP and SFTP Roots (for NCM)
- Configuring Folder Redirection
- Pre-installing ODBC Drivers (for SAM Templates)
Building my Orion Server [Scripting Edition] – Step 2
In Step 1 of this series, I showed off the PowerShell scripts that I use to create a new Orion Server VM on Hyper-V. Now we are on to configuring the disks.
As before, we have a boot drive and 4 additional drives which will contain various data files. We first need to bring the disks online and initialize them.
If you installed from an ISO, you should either remove the device from your virtual machine before this point, or change the drive mounting to a letter other than D, E, F, or G. I’m generally a fan of changing it to Z:.
Building my Orion Server [Hyper-V Scripting Edition] – Step 1
This is part 1 of a multi-part post on updates that I’ve made to How I Build an Orion Server. Primarily, it will be three parts. If you have VMware, I’ve also got a script edition for that as well.
- Building my Orion Servers in Hyper-V
- Configuring the disks on the VM after OS install
- Configuring the VM with the new disks
Getting information about MSI files
Today I ran into an interesting continuous integration-type scenario. One of the skunkworks projects that I’m looking at internally yields frequent builds of MSI files for the same product. These MSI files are automatically generated (sometimes daily) by our source control system.