Skip to main content

Putting a SCOM object into maintenance mode

Documentation Team
  • Updated

Putting a SCOM object into maintenance mode

Maintenance mode allows you to set a SCOM object to a suppressed state, allowing you to complete work on the object without additional alerts and errors being generated.

Overview

Maintenance mode allows you to set a SCOM object to a suppressed state, allowing you to complete work on the object without additional alerts and errors being generated.

Objects that can be put into maintenance mode in SCOM (single objects, groups, DAs, EAs, etc.) have a convenient maintenance mode button on their drilldown in SquaredUp DS for SCOM. You can put the object into maintenance mode just by clicking the button.

How to identify if an object is in maintenance mode

When an object is in maintenance mode, you'll see maintenance mode next to its name on the object's drilldown.

The health icon will have a wrench icon overlayed. The same icon will also be displayed in tiles that show a health status for objects, such as the Status tile.

Does putting an object in maintenance mode affect its contained objects?

When you put an object into maintenance mode in SquaredUp DS for SCOM, all contained sub-components (such as disks, software, or group members) are also placed into maintenance mode.

Note for Enterprise Applications (EAs): Putting an Enterprise Application (EA) into maintenance mode will also put the Dependencies into maintenance mode. Since you usually don't want all Dependencies in maintenance mode, the better way to do it is to put the individual components of the EA into maintenance mode. For example, if you want to put the components that make up your application and all the availability tests into maintenance mode, drilldown to the Map and Availability objects and put them into maintenance mode, but leave the Dependencies.

Putting a SCOM object into Maintenance Mode

View a distributed application or group in SquaredUp DS for SCOM by searching for it or drilling down from another dashboard.

  1. Go to the object you want to put in maintenance mode by searching for it or drilling down from another dashboard.

  2. On the drilldown page, click the maintenance mode button.

    The maintenance mode pane opens.

  3. Enter the settings for the maintenance mode:

    DurationSelect how long the object will be in maintenance mode, in minutes, hours or days.
    Reason

    Choose a reason from the dropdown.

    The difference between planned and unplanned categories is that planned maintenance can be excluded from affecting downtime on Service Level Objectives.

    This object only (exclude contained objects)

    Activate this checkbox to put only this object in maintenance mode, not the other objects it contains.

    When you put an object into maintenance mode in SquaredUp DS for SCOM, all contained sub-components (such as disks, software, or group members) are also placed into maintenance mode.

    Note for Enterprise Applications (EAs): Putting an Enterprise Application (EA) into maintenance mode will also put the Dependencies into maintenance mode. Since you usually don't want all Dependencies in maintenance mode, the better way to do it is to put the individual components of the EA into maintenance mode. For example, if you want to put the components that make up your application and all the availability tests into maintenance mode, drilldown to the Map and Availability objects and put them into maintenance mode, but leave the Dependencies.

    Additional commentsEnter a comment for context and explanation, for instance if your server has failed due to low disk space you may want to give context when setting maintenance mode and correcting this issue.

  4. Click Update to put the object into maintenance mode.

    When an object is in maintenance mode, you'll see maintenance mode next to its name on the object's drilldown.

    The health icon will have a wrench icon overlayed. The same icon will also be displayed in tiles that show a health status for objects, such as the Status tile.

  5. The object will stay in maintenance mode for the time span you defined in the settings.

    Tip: You can end or extend the maintenance mode in the maintenance pane at any time. If you closed the maintenance pane, click on maintenance mode next to the object's name to open it again.
    If you finish your maintenance activities early, you can disable maintenance mode by clicking on disable in the maintenance mode pane to immediately end maintenance mode.
    If you need to extend the maintenance mode time, enter a new duration in the maintenance mode pane and click on update .

 

Scheduling Maintenance Mode in the SCOM console

SCOM 2016 and above

SCOM 2016 and above have a Maintenance Schedules feature which allows you to schedule one off or regular maintenance windows. This option is available to SCOM admins and can be accessed from the SCOM console under Monitoring > Maintenance Schedules.

In the preview versions of SCOM 2016, Maintenance Schedules was available under the Administration section.

A good walkthrough of setting up a recurring maintenance mode for servers on "Patch Tuesday" can be found here.

SCOM 2007 and 2012

SCOM 2007 and 2012 do not support maintenance mode scheduling. You can only enable maintenance mode to take effect immediately.

There are several community solutions for scheduling maintenance mode (try a web search for operations manager maintenance mode tool or similar).

In particular we suggest you check out the web-based SCOM 2012 Maintenance Mode Scheduler by Tim McFadden.

Related articles

Comments

0 comments

Please sign in to leave a comment.