Powershell 2.0 Required for UCP on Windows XP

So I’m trying to install SQL Server 2008 R2 Utility Control Point, so I can take a look at all that the product has to offer and see how we can utilize it at my current place of business.

For the sake of full disclosure I’m doing this on a laptop running Windows XP SP 3, x86, Dual Core Processors and about 3 GB of memory.

I installed it about a week ago, and set up another named instance and had a SQL Agent Job running stored procedures from Adventure works every minute, to help simulate a work load on one of the databases.

I’ve read how it can take up to 45 minutes to get data posted to the dash board and so I set the jobs and got busy doing other things.   One week later I take a look at my Utility Explorer to see all the beautiful looking screens.

Needless to say this isn’t what I expected to see.  It almost looks as if there is no data.  So I check my enrolled instances to see what status they are running under.

Now I’m really bothered, apparently something has gone wrong.  So I take a look at my SQL Agent jobs to see if the jobs were created and if the history has been running properly.

I see that my sysutility_mi_collect_and_upload job has been failing.  So I isolate just that job, seeing as how collecting and uploading the data is directly related to seeing nice dashboards (or so I would guess).

And YOWZA! This has not been running at all, a quick glance back over the history and I can see this job has never run correctly. Let’s take a closer look at why this is failing.

Step 2 of the job is failing and the error is big and ugly  The important part is the following:

  (Get-Wmiobject  <<<< Win32_MountPoint) |   InvocationName   : Get-Wmiobject  PipelineLength   : 1  PipelinePosition : 1          WARNING : 11/8/2010 12:25:10 PM : 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000WARNING : 11/8/2010 12:25:10 PM :     ErrorRecord    : Command execution stopped because the shell variable "ErrorActi                   onPreference" is set to Stop: Invalid class   StackTrace

When I set up the UCP I remember seeing one Yellow Warning/Yield Sign.  Honestly I breezed right by it, because if it’s not going to work you get a big red Error sign, right.  Right?  Wrong.

The Warning box was pointing to WMI not being set up correctly.  There are several Powershell class files that are required by UCP.  So the Question is what are they and how do you check that they are there.

They are:

Win32_MountPoint

Win32_Volume

Win32_LogicalDisk

Win32_PerfRawData_PerfProc_Process

Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Processor

Win32_Processor

So how do you check for them?  Open up PowerShell and type get-wmiobject [objectname]

As you can see from above this is the error you will get if you are missing one of the classes.

A little more research shows me that Powershell 1.0 and Windows XP does not contain Win32_MountPoint and Win32_Volume classes.  This was reported on Microsoft Connect at here: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/540412/sysutility-mi-collect-and-upload-job-failure?wa=wsignin1.0 .

Microsoft Employee Jennifer Beckmann reported that the user was able to get everything working after installing Powershell 2.0

The link above lists a “work around”, by a user named Dryknot.  I would not recommend this solution as it recommended opening up the SQL Agent job and editing the PowerShell Code.  No offense to Dryknot I’m sure that she/he is a perfectly great person, and that they took the time to post a work around to help others shows that they are indeed a great person just trying to help others.  But there are 2 reasons I would not make this change.

1. You are changing the requirements that are being gathered from one class, Win32_MountPoint to another, Win32_MappedLogicalDisk.  So it’s like saying I want to gather information on an Orange and buying an Apple.  One thing is not like the other, even though they are both drive classes.
2. I’m missing 2 classes.  Even if I were to fix the Win32_MountPoint issue, I would still have one with Win32_Volume.  And if you use Mount Point’s you know how critical it is to gather space usage on them.  DON’T CHEAP OUT HERE.  Do not accept substitutes go for the original.

So If you are planning on implementing a UCP on a Windows XP machine make sure that you have Powershell 2.0 running or you could end up with the same results I did.

Thanks,

Brad

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