System Center Operations Manager 2012 SP1 Failes on Data warehouse step and setup log shows “Create File” error

When installing SCOM setup fails during the Data warehouse step and the setup log file contains an error similar to the following:  EXEC(@sql);: Threw Exception.Type: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException, Exception Error Code: 0x80131904, Exception.Message: CREATE FILE encountered operating system error 5(Access is denied.) while attempting to open or create the physical file ‘E:\SystemCenterData.mdf’.

scom dw install bug 2
There is a bug in the Operations Manager SP1 installer which causes the file to be created in the wrong location.  During setup the location was configured to use “E:\SystemCenterData” for the Data path and “F:\SystemCenterLogs” for the logs however setup attempts to create the file as “E:\SystemCenterData.mdf”

One way to work around this issue is to amend the configured path for the data warehouse data and log files during setup.  Simply append the name of the database to the end of each path. (The main operations manager database and logs do not need this change.) for example using the locations E:\SystemCenterData\OperationsManagerDW for data and F:\SystemCenterData\OperationsManagerDW for logs will result in the files being created as E:\SystemCenterData\OperationsManagerDW.mdf and F:\SystemCenterData\OperationsManagerDW.ldf and setup can continue as expected.

SCOM DW install bug 3

Message tracking in Exchange 2010 Error: “String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.”

When attempting to run message tracking on an Exchange 2010 server you get an error similar to this: Cannot process argument transformation on parameter ‘Start’. Cannot convert value to type “System.DateTime”. Error: “String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.”

Message Tracking Error

Can you spot the difference?  Even if the server has a non US regional setting you have to specify the date in US format. e.g. 08/22/2013 instead of 22/08/2013.