2Pint BITS/BranchCache Reporting (ConfigMgr) 3 · reason why you can’t install the Reporter in...

2Pint BITS/BranchCache Reporting (ConfigMgr) 3.0

2Pint Software 6/3/15

1

2PINT BITS/BRANCHCACHE REPORTING (CONFIGMGR) 3.0

2PINT SOFTWARE

2PintS o f t w a r e

Table of Contents New in V3.0 .................................................................................................................................................... 3

Which version of Reporter should I use? ............................................................................................. 3

Reporting for Microsoft ConfigMgr .............................................................................................................. 3

Important Notes ............................................................................................................................................. 3

BITS\BranchCache Reporter Overview ........................................................................................................ 5

How It Works .............................................................................................................................................. 5

Client Component .................................................................................................................................. 5

The Reports ............................................................................................................................................ 5

Getting Started ............................................................................................................................................... 6

Files ............................................................................................................................................................ 6

BC Reporting Engine ............................................................................................................................. 6

BC Reporting SSRS Reports ................................................................................................................. 6

Client Component Install ........................................................................................................................... 6

Report Install .............................................................................................................................................. 7

Verifying the Install.................................................................................................................................... 7

Are we getting thru yet? ........................................................................................................................ 8

Client Logging ........................................................................................................................................ 9

Client Command Line Tool ........................................................................................................................ 9

Analyzing the BITS Event Log ............................................................................................................ 10

Viewing the Reports .................................................................................................................................... 12

BITS BranchCache Download Efficiency per Computer (Packages/Applications/Updates) .............. 0

BITS BranchCache Gantt Chart for Packages/Applications/Updates .................................................. 1

BITS BranchCache Efficiency Pie Chart Overview for Packages/Applications/Updates .................... 3

BITS BranchCache Efficiency for Task Sequences ................................................................................ 2

BranchCache Efficiency Overview Per Subnet ........................................................................................ 3

BranchCache Global Efficiency Overview ................................................................................................ 4

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................... 5

2


2PINT SOFTWARE


3


2PINT SOFTWARE


New in V3.0 This is a major update, as we have now implemented a ‘standalone’ version of the Reporter – which consists of a separate SQL Database and Web Service, and does not required Microsoft Configuration Manager. The principle is the same; BITS events from the Windows Event Log are reported to a 2Pint Web Service and stored in the SQL database. SSRS is still used for the reporting element. The reports however are different to the SCCM reports.

Also new in V3.0 are some cool tweaks to the Reporter Client. You can now perform some real-time reporting on the client system using the Reporter client .exe, and you can also report a summary of BITS downloads into WMI for reporting via SCCM inventory (or other systems management tools)

Also in V3.0

New options for:

Location Reporting – now reports IP/MAC/Geo Location data by default (if possible). Can be disabled via registry setting at install time.

Report Size Limit – Used to ensure that you are not sending up tons of download reports for tiny files. Default (i.e minimum job size to report is 32k)

Which version of Reporter should I use? The SCCM version of Reporter does, of course only work with MS ConfigMgr 2012 (and CB).

The standalone Reporter is aimed at installations where SCCM is not used. However! There is no reason why you can’t install the Reporter in standalone mode in an SCCM site. It will still report back SCCM downloads, but we do not report certain parameters such as Package/Application ID etc so you would not be able to report on individual SCCM deployments. Up to you!

To make things simple for you – we’ve created two documents. Read this document if you want to use Reporter in ConfigMgr mode, or go straight to the Standalone Reporter document. Happy reporting

Reporting for Microsoft ConfigMgr

Important Notes We only test on, and support SCCM 2012R2 (and now on SCCM CB) It doesn’t work on SCCM 2007 due to the way that the reporting in SCCM has changed between versions. If you really really need it to work on SCCM 2007 – let us know!

Reports have been re-written to make them faster and simpler to use. We now only query data that’s been returned by the Reporting Engine in our datasets. If there were 2500 apps in SCCM the previous reports basically hung around like a bored teenager and gave up..so we fixed it.

Added a ‘Date filter’ to Package/Application/Update reports so that you can select specific time periods to report on rather than a specific collection/deployment of content.

New reports for BranchCache efficiency per subnet and globally – giving an overview of BranchCache efficiency across all or selected subnets.

4


2PINT SOFTWARE


Previewing the Reports in SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS).

If you are previewing the reports from a remote workstation you may get the following error.

SrsResources is Not Declared: Wrong DLL

To fix this, copy the SrsResources.dll from your CM12 R2 SSRS server over to your local PC and place it within the PrivateAssemblies directory for Visual Studio installation. The directory can be found here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies.

Then you need to add the SrsResources.dll in the ‘References’ Tab of the Report Properties. Job done!

5


2PINT SOFTWARE


BITS\BranchCache Reporter Overview

The purpose of the 2Pint BranchCache reports are to give an indication of the performance of BranchCache operating in distributed mode on a single subnet. In a multiple subnet site, results may vary but the reports can still give an indication of performance. In this version, we now include a ‘Global Efficiency’ report which takes into account multiple subnets and lets you view all of you sites in one report.

These reports are Ideal for gaining visibility of BITS and BranchCache performance while testing or designing a BranchCache implementation within SCCM. They can also be used to spot any weakness or problems in an existing implementation.

The Reports also help to calculate the impact on a network connection to a site by working out the number of megabytes which are copied by client systems from an SCCM distribution point as opposed to those which are obtained from peer clients via BranchCache. In an ideal scenario, only a single instance of a package or application should be downloaded from the distribution point.

Along with the SSRS reports, we now provide a few cmd line options for the BC Reporter client which can help with testing BITS and BranchCache. These include optional switches to display ‘real-time’ feedback during a BITS download, displaying progress and the BranchCache success rate of each segment of the download. We can also place summary BITS data into WMI for inventory purposes.

How It Works

Client Component The 2Pint BranchCache reporting toolkit is based on two components. The client component analyses events from the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) event log and WMI, and returns relevant events via the SCCM status system so that they can be queried and reported on using the 2Pint Reports.

This component consists of a single executable which is triggered by certain WMI and/or Event Log events, so it’s not an agent as such. Once installed, it will only activate and report on relevant events.

NB:

The client component generates status messages, so caution should be exercised when deploying the reporting solution in an environment where there are many installations of packages and/or applications, as each package or application download generates two status messages per client computer. Please test extensively before using in a production environment. Duh right?

The Reports There are several reports, each of which give a slightly different view of the reported data. The reports should be installed on a Reporting Point server. They are simple to install, and once you get

6


2PINT SOFTWARE


to know your way around them, feel free to fiddle away to your heart’s content. Make new ones, tweak the existing ones, the sky’s the limit! Or is that the Cloud..

Getting Started Files

The Reporting kit is presented as a single zip file. Once unzipped, you will have 2 sub-folders:

BC Reporting Engine Contains the client installer script - 2PS-BITSReporter-Installer.ps1

Sub folders for x64/x86 executables – each containing:

BITSBCReporter.exe,

BC Reporting SSRS Reports Import-2PSReports.ps1

Several .rdl files (the reports themselves) At time of writing there are six.

Client Component Install The 2Pint Reporter component is installed via a PowerShell Script. This script configures the WMI and Event triggers required to send back the relevant status messages to SCCM.

The 2PS_Installer.ps1 script can be run interactively, but the most efficient way to install the reporter is to create a package using SCCM.

The Package source needs to contain the installer - 2PS-BITSReporter-Installer.ps1 and BITSBCReporter.exe (x64 and x86 versions) as the installer script will select the correct executable to install. Simply copy the BC Reporting Engine folder and subfolders – this will be your SCCM Package/Program source. The x86 and x64 folders must exist as the installer references them during the install.

Note: You will need two Programs for your package if you have both x86 and x64 systems as a different command line is used.

32 Bit Install Command line:

%WINDIR%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -file .\2PS-

BITSReporter-Installer.ps1 register

64 Bit Install Command line:

7


2PINT SOFTWARE


%WINDIR%\Sysnative\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -file .\2PS-

BITSReporter-Installer.ps1 register

This will register the Event triggers for BITSBCReporter.exe and you’re good to go.

The figure above shows the additional registry entries that can be used to further configure the Reporter. If you are in ConfigMgr mode, the only relevant entries that you may want to tweak are the LogMaxSize and DebugLogging values.

Report Install To install the reports on your reporting point, you can simply upload the .rdl files manually into SCCM, or we’ve borrowed/created a little PowerShell script that will create a new 2Pint Folder and install all of the reports for you.

To install the reports using the PowerShell script, simply go the folder containing the Reporting .rdl files (BC Reporting\BranchCache Reporting\BC Reporting SSRS Reports) and run the following command from a PowerShell window:

.\Import-2PSReports.ps1 -ReportServer MyServer -SiteCode PR1

This imports all the reports in the current folder to a folder called '2Pint Reports' on a report server called 'MyServer'. Obviously, unless your server is actually called ‘MyServer’, then you need to put your own server name and SCCM site code in there.

In another example, the following command line imports all the reports in 'C:\2Pint' to a folder called 'Custom Reports' on a report server called 'MyServer'.

.\Import-2PSReports.ps1 -ReportServer MyServer -SiteCode PR1 -FolderName

"Custom Reports" -SourcePath "C:\2Pint"

Verifying the Install

The simplest way to verify that it’s all working, is to schedule a simple deployment package install to your test clients. I use a .wim file, with a simple batch file to run as the program containing:

echo done!

8


2PINT SOFTWARE


Cls

Don’t forget to check the following checkbox to enable BranchCache (it’s checked by default).

Once this has been scheduled and run on your test systems (you can check this status using the ‘Deployments’ status in the SCCM console), you can start further checks as detailed below.

Are we getting thru yet? I created a little Status Message query so that you can quickly check to see if your status messages are being generated and making it back to the site server. Here’s the query:

select SMS_StatusMessage.*, SMS_StatMsgInsStrings.*, SMS_StatMsgAttributes.* from SMS_StatusMessage left join SMS_StatMsgInsStrings on SMS_StatMsgInsStrings.RecordID = SMS_StatusMessage.RecordID left join SMS_StatMsgAttributes on SMS_StatMsgAttributes.RecordID = SMS_StatusMessage.RecordID where SMS_StatusMessage.MessageID in(3,4)

When you run this, providing your clients are correctly configured and have successfully run the scheduled package (or Application) deployment, you should get a bunch of status messages back like this.

Don’t worry that it says ‘The Status Message Viewer could not locate the file containing the description strings for messages from 2Pint BITS Reporting. 2Pint BITS Reporting is not registered..’ in each status message – the data we want is in there really. So 3’s are Download Start Events, and 4’s are Download End ones, simple right?

9


2PINT SOFTWARE


Tip: When testing, setup a Status Message Query using the above query, and you can easily clear out the Reporter Status Messages by right clicking on the query and selecting ‘Delete Messages’

Client Logging On the client side of things, the BITSBCReporter executable generates logfiles, and we just love logs don’t we? It generates one for each execution (download start or download end), but will tidy up after itself every 7 days so that you’re not left with tons of the little blighters lying around. The logs can be found in Windows\CCM\Logs with all the other SCCM client logs. The logs will be named 2PSBITSBC_Reporter_<processID> as you can see below.

In these logs, you should see something like:

Querying succeeded... Parsing the result data{F67F5A23-8F12-41B8-9346-

1B88D1AF701E}

If not, then you probably got issues!

Stepping back a little – if you know that your SCCM package has run but you DON’T have any of these logfiles, it probably means that the installation of BITSBCReporter itself failed. In this case, run the 2PS-BITSReporter-Installer.ps1 interactively in PowerShell ISE on a client and check the results. It should look something like this..

SUCCESS: The scheduled task "2Pint Software\BranchCache\2Pint Software BITS Report Job Completed" has successfully been created. Microsoft (R) MOF Compiler Version 6.4.9841.0 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corp. 1997-2006. All rights reserved. Parsing MOF file: C:\Users\ADMINI~1\AppData\Local\Temp\2PSBCEvent.mof MOF file has been successfully parsed Storing data in the repository... Done!

If not – send us the error!

Client Command Line Tool Here are some of the command line options that can be used on a client system to monitor and analyze BITS downloads and BranchCache activity. These are great for testing in the lab when you are starting out with BranchCache-ing

10


2PINT SOFTWARE


Analyzing the BITS Event Log Realtime Output The ‘/realtime’ switch is used to monitor BITS download jobs in – yes – you guessed it, realtime. It will also tell you if the current download is BranchCaching or not. To launch the BC Reporter client in this mode, use the following command line:

BITSBCReporter.exe /Realtime <BITS Job GUID| Name> [ResultFilename.csv]

Note that you can use either Job GUID or Name

Where: BITS Job GUID should contain 32 digits with 4 dashes (xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx)

Name – should be the BITS Job Name

Resultfilename.csv (optional) – should contain the path to a .csv output file should you wish to record the results in this format.

Here’s an example of the output:

So each asterisk on the above console output denotes the ‘BranchCache Status’ of each particular chunk of data being transferred as follows:

Green = more than 90% of data from Peers or local cache

Dark Green = between 75 and 90% of data from Peers or local cache

Dark Yellow = between 50 and 75% of data from Peers or local cache

Yellow = between 25 and 50% of data from Peers or local cache

Grey = between 0 and 25% of data from Peers or local cache

Red = Unable to determine the success rate.

11


2PINT SOFTWARE


Summary Output This can be useful as it provides a snapshot of past BITS downloads, and the BranchCache efficiency thereof. To launch the BC Reporter client in this mode, use the following command line:

BITSBCReporter.exe /analyze /probe

Where: the /analyze switch is mandatory, and the /probe switch is optional. The /probe switch will place the results (below) into the local WMI repository, where they could be collected by an inventory program (such as SCCM) for further reporting. See the following Technet article for information regarding extending SCCM inventory. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg712290.aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg712290.aspx

12


2PINT SOFTWARE


Viewing the Reports Once installed, the reports can be viewed like any SCCM report – either via the SCCM console, or the Web based Report Server in SSRS.

All of the reports use ‘Cascading Parameters’, which means that you have to select the Report parameters in order – it’s easy enough because you can only fill one parameter at a time – the others will be ‘greyed out’. Here’s an example for Download Efficiency Report

So, just select all of the parameters for the Application/Package/Update that you want to view, click on ‘View Report’, and BranchCache Bob’s your Uncle.

If your status messages are all in line with Jupiter, and you made your daily sacrifice to the Report Gods, you should see a stunningly beautiful report ..

But what does it all mean? In the next few pages, I will explain each report type in more details.

BITS BranchCache Download Efficiency per Computer (Packages/Applications/Updates) This is probably the most ‘instant’ of the reports, and the easiest to understand. I shows a bar for each client system, representing the amount of data that was downloaded by that client from the Distribution Point, and from its Peers on the same subnet. Note that the footer of all the reports contain some summary information such as the time taken for the download and the overall efficiency of the Package/Application.

In the above example, it’s about as perfect as you can get! Note that only one system (on the far right) downloaded content from the Distribution Point. The rest of the clients copied their content from their peers.

1


2PINT SOFTWARE


The next example of the above graph is slightly less successful. Here you can see that more of the client systems had to go back to the Distribution Point to get content, probably due to WAN congestion, or the fact that the deployment was configured so that all the clients tried to get the content at the exact same time. Note also that if you are reporting across more than 2 subnets the efficiency figures will be incorrect, because there will be one content download per subnet. This will be improved in the final release.

BITS BranchCache Gantt Chart for Packages/Applications/Updates The Gantt view of things show the deployment evolving over time, so that you can see when each client started and completed the content download. You still get the summary information regarding the overall efficiency, but the purpose of this chart is to show the progress of the deployment. Here’s an example of a great looking deployment!

2


2PINT SOFTWARE


This is a great example of the efficiencies that can be achieved if clients are allowed to get the content over time, with the content itself being pre-staged on a couple of systems. Bingo! The short strips of blue indicate that each content retrieval happened quickly on the local LAN.

Of course, life isn’t always like that, as you can see from this next example! This is a perfect illustration of a ‘Flash-crowd’ scenario, where all of the clients are fighting it out over a slow WAN link with no throttling applied. How NOT to deploy content to a branch office. Efficiency is down to 11% and the network team are on the phone..

3


2PINT SOFTWARE


BITS BranchCache Efficiency Pie Chart Overview for Packages/Applications/Updates Everyone loves Pie right? This chart is a snapshot of a deployment in terms of overall efficiency. You can easily see how much data was copied from your Distribution Points vs Peers, and in this example it’s a perfect result. The pie on the left shows the total download efficiency, and the middle two show just how efficient this particular content download was. The hare and the tortoise? Just a bit of fun really..

Not all Pie is good however. This is a slightly less efficient deployment, and you can instantly see that you’ve incurred more of an overhead than you might like. Some BranchCache and BITS tuning required.

1


2PINT SOFTWARE


2


2PINT SOFTWARE


BITS BranchCache Efficiency for Task Sequences Finally, we included this report, as it covers Task sequences that contain multiple packages. It only gives a brief overview of efficiency per Package, but you can get an idea of how things are looking. Obviously Task Sequences can be more complex (conditional installs etc) than regular packages or applications, and we are working on more reports to cater for these scenarios. Keep checking the website for more report releases!

3


2PINT SOFTWARE


BranchCache Efficiency Overview Per Subnet This report lets you select a subnet, and then displays the efficiency of BranchCache for that subnet. It’s easy to tell if things are working OK, as there’s a nifty summary of stats on the left which tell all that you need to know. You should be aiming for %100 efficiency!

4


2PINT SOFTWARE


BranchCache Global Efficiency Overview New for V2.0 – This is the big one! We pull together all the data that we sent back across all of your subnets, so that you can not only identify which subnets are performing well (or badly) but you can also get the total overall performance across your entire estate.

5


2PINT SOFTWARE


So how can the efficiency be 100% I hear you ask? Well sometimes BranchCache will already have content cached locally so that the download is actually smaller than the package or application being deployed. There might be common DLLs for example which BranchCache can use locally instead of downloading from the DP.

Conclusion

We hope that you find the 2Pint BranchCache Reporting useful, and that all your deployments are 100% efficient. Keep checking the website for further updates and new report releases. If you have an idea for a new report, or for improvements to these initial releases, let us know. If you have any questions about BranchCache Reporting, or are running into issues, then jump onto our support forums over at http://2pintsoftware.com/2pint-support-forum/

http://2pintsoftware.com/forums/forum/2pint-support-forum/

Date post:	27-Sep-2019
Category:	Documents
Upload:	others
View:	5 times
Download:	0 times

2Pint BITS/BranchCache Reporting (ConfigMgr) 3 · reason why you can’t install the Reporter in...

Documents