Having a number of consoles open places a burden on the RMS server as all consoles connect to the SDK service on the RMS server. This includes web console sessions. So if you have more than a few consoles open continuously you might consider lowering the refresh rate of the consoles. For instance a web console hanging against the wall could be set to a few more minutes than default, or when it is a full console on that wall you definitely want to slow down the refreshing of that one. Many full consoles also do not need a 15 second refresh rate as that is usually faster than you can read and you would have to really stare at the screen constantly to keep an eye on changes that often.
You know, with this great product it is great to have a lot of people looking at it and having dashboards on the wall and having screens open everywhere. Its great! But, be aware that too many of these open connections can slow your SCOM environment down. For the SCOM 2007 Sp1 version the max was set at about 25 consoles and for SCOM 2007 R2 this was raised to about 50. But we would be talking about heavy machines as well. So always try to make a compromise and have the least amount of consoles open, but also have the maximum exposure of the product to the people so things get solved fast enough and everybody is happy.
Full console
So first of all let’s take on the SCOM full console refresh rate. You can set that at the machine where the console is running at the moment by setting a registry key. As you can see the root hive is the HKCU so this is a per user setting.
Registry Path Registry Value (DWORD)
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\console\CacheParameters\PollingInterval
Values 0 – 10. 0 turns off automatic refresh and requires manual refresh via F5. The value 1 through 10 increments the refresh interval every 15 seconds. The maximum value of 10 is a refresh interval of 2 min 30 seconds).
I would start by increasing the refresh rate to 1 minute. Many also suggest you turn the auto refresh off and refresh the screen when needed by pressing F5. Consoles that hang from the wall you might want to set at a 1 to 2 minute refresh interval.
Web console
Next up is the Web Console. This one also has a refresh rate and much more configurable stuff and you can change it at the server side, so it is done for everybody at the same time. Find the web.config file on the server hosting the web console in the directory:
%programfiles%\System Center Operations Manager 2007\Web Console\
Also the Web console per default show less data than the full console. For instance it only shows 200 alerts in an alert view, it shows only critical and warning (no informational), only alerts for the last 7 days. The refresh rate is set at 5 minutes. So perhaps in order to bump performance you could change this a little bit. For instance by showing the last 100 alerts, for the last 3 days and refresh in 7 minutes. The options and value are to be found through these links:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/michaelpearson/archive/2009/11/30/opsmgr-r2-web-console-web-config-settings.aspx
http://www.systemcentercentral.com/downloads/downloadsdetails/tabid/144/indexid/7845/default.aspx
http://systemcentercentral.com/BlogDetails/tabid/143/indexId/24364/Default.aspx
Find your own optimum settings which still show enough data and often enough, but perhaps lower a little bit of the strain on your SCOM environment.
