SCOM 2012 - Installing Service Pack 1 RTM (Part 1)

At long last the final Release To Manufacturing (RTM) version bits of Service Pack 1 (SP1) for System Center 2012 are generally available (GA). 

This Service Pack has been highly anticipated as it not only delivers the customary bug fixes that are to be expected with any such release , but it also brings a large number of new exciting feature additions and enhancements.

This post is one of a number of posts that I've been working on to help people get upgraded to System Center 2012 Service Pack 1. You can check out my other posts here:

• System Center 2012 Orchestrator (SCORCH) - Installing Service Pack 1 RTM
• DPM 2012 - Installing Service Pack 1 RTM (Part 1)
• DPM 2012 - Installing Service Pack 1 RTM (Part 2)

The following list contains some of the enhancements that SP1 brings to SCOM/OpsMgr 2012:

• Support for IIS 8
• Monitoring of WCF, MVC and .NET NT services
• Azure SDK support
• Monitoring of SharePoint 2010 with APM (.NET application performance monitoring)
• Integration with Team Foundation Server 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2012
• Conversion of Application Performance Monitoring events to IntelliTrace format
• Support for monitoring of CentOS, Debian, and Ubuntu Linux
• Improved Heartbeat monitoring for Unix/Linux
• ACS support for Dynamic Access Control in Windows Server 2012
• Global Service Monitor – cloud based capability to monitor the health of your web applications from geo-distributed perspective
• Additional network devices models supported
• Visibility into virtual network switches in vicinity dashboard – thru integration with Virtual Machine Manager

This three part blog post series will walk you through the upgrade of your existing SCOM 2012 environment to SP1 RTM. Some of the information contained in this post will be taken directly from the accompanying 'OM12_SP1_Upgrade' guide from Microsoft.

Be aware that System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 contains updates for the whole suite of products (not just SCOM) and it's advised that you follow a particular upgrade sequence of each product as per this warning:

If you are planning to upgrade two or more System Center components, it is imperative that you first consult the guide 'Upgrade Sequencing for System Center 2012 SP1'. The order in which you perform component upgrades is important. Failure to follow the correct upgrade sequence might result in component failure for which no recovery options exist.

It should also be noted that you can only upgrade to SP1 from an existing SCOM 2012 RTM environment and not from a SCOM 2007 R2 one. If you want to upgrade from SCOM 2007 R2 then you first need to upgrade that environment to SCOM 2012 RTM.

High-Level Overview

Here's a high-level overview of what's involved to get your SCOM 2012 environment upgraded to SP1:

The following steps outline the process for upgrading a distributed management group configuration: 

1. Install Update Rollup 3 for SCOM 2012
2. Accomplish Pre-Upgrade Sequence Tasks on other integrated System Center products
3. Accomplish Pre-Upgrade Tasks
4. Upgrade Management Servers (each management server must be upgraded)
5. If applicable, upgrade ACS (this is because the ACS server must be on the same machine as a management server, it's recommended that you perform this step along with the upgrade of the management server on which ACS resides.)
6. If applicable, upgrade Gateway(s)
7. Upgrade Console(s)
8. Push Install to Agent(s) / Upgrading Manually Installed Agents
9. Upgrade Web Console
10. Upgrade Reporting Server
11. Accomplish Post-Upgrade Tasks 

* Steps 5 to 9 after Upgrading Management Servers can occur in parallel.

Pre-Upgrade Tasks

So, beginning with Step 1 from above, first ensure that you upgrade your existing SCOM 2012 environment to the latest Cumulative Update Rollup (UR3 is the most current) and then run through the SP1 Pre-Upgrade Sequence Tasks using my recent blog posts for reference:

SCOM 2012 - Deploying Cumulative Update Rollup 3 (CU3) Hotfix

SCOM 2012 - Pre and Post SP1 Upgrade Sequence Tasks

Once you have upgraded to the latest Cumulative Update and carried out the pre-upgrade sequence tasks from the links above on any applicable integrated System Center 2012 products, you can begin working through the tasks in Step 3 ensuring that you perform them in the order listed below:

1. Review the Operations Manager Event Logs
Review the event logs for Operations Manager on the management servers to look for recurring warning or critical events. Address them and save a copy of the event logs before you perform your upgrade.

2. Remove Agents from Pending Management
Before you upgrade a management server, you need to remove any agents that are in Pending Management. You can view agents that are in this state by clicking on the Administration tab from the Wunderbar, then expanding the Administration view and accessing the Pending Management view from there. Just highlight any agents in here and click on the Reject option from the Tasks menu on the right hand side to remove them from the list.

3. Disable the Notification Subscriptions
You should disable any notification subscriptions that you have created before you upgrade the management group to ensure that notifications are not sent during the upgrade process - a whole lot of noisy alerts coming into your inbox is not cool! From the Administration tab in the Wunderbar, expand the Administration view and then click on Subscriptions. From here, just right-click on your subscriptions and choose the Disable option to turn them off.

4. Stop the Services or Disable any Connectors
If you have any non-Microsoft connectors configured, you will need to refer to the relevant documentation for them to determine which Windows services need to be stopped in relation to the connector.

5. Verify that the Operational Database Has More Than 50 Percent Free Space
You must verify that the operational database has more than 50 percent of free space before you upgrade the management group because the upgrade might fail if there isn't enough space. You should also ensure that the transactions logs are 50 percent of the total size of the operational database. To check this, follow these steps:

• On the computer that hosts the operational database, open SQL Server Management Studio
• In the Object Explorer, expand Databases
• Right-click the operational database, point to Reports, Standard Reports, and then click Disk Usage
• View the Disk Usage report to determine the percentage of free space as shown in the screen below

6. Back up the Operations Manager Databases
As is always the case before you make any major changes to your SCOM environment, make sure that you have verified recent backups of the operational database (OperationsManager) and of the data warehouse database (OperationsManagerDW) before you upgrade the secondary management server. You should also create backups of databases for optional features, such as the Reporting and the Audit Collection Services (ACS) database before you upgrade them.

Conclusion (Part 1)

This concludes Part 1 of this short series on SCOM 2012 - Installing Service Pack 1 RTM. In Part 2 I'll walk through the upgrade of the SCOM 2012 components.

SCOM 2012 - Pre and Post SP1 Upgrade Sequence Tasks

If you're upgrading your SCOM 2012 RTM deployment to Service Pack 1 (SP1), then there are a few tasks that need to be carried out in sequence both before and after the service pack upgrade.

You will also need to take a look over the sequence in which the other System Center 2012 products have to be upgraded as this will play a major role in ensuring a successful upgrade of your environment. I recently posted about this product upgrade sequence and would recommend taking a look at it first here:

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Upgrade Sequencing

If you are happy enough with your product upgrade sequence and are now ready to start the SCOM 2012 RTM upgrade to Service Pack 1, then this blog post will detail the pre and post SP1 upgrade tasks that you need to consider. The focus for these tasks are mainly around  SCOM 2012 integrating with Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), Data Protection Manager (DPM), Orchestrator (SCORCH) and Service Manager (SM).

SCOM 2012 SP1 Pre-Upgrade Sequence Tasks

1. If configured and it exists, remove the VMM-to-Operations Manager Integration Pack. (This will disable monitoring of your VMM environment temporarily).
2. Remove the System Center 2012 RTM version of the Operations Manager console from all VMM and Orchestrator servers.
3. On the computer hosting the Orchestrator Deployment Manager, uninstall the IP for System Center 2012 – Operations Manager.
4. Follow my other blog posts on SCOM 2012 - Installing Service Pack 1 RTM to upgrade the Operations Manager components

SCOM 2012 SP1 Post-Upgrade Sequence Tasks

1. On the computer hosting the Orchestrator Deployment Manager, install the IP for System Center 2012 – Operations Manager.
2. Install the System Center 2012 SP1 version of the Operations Manager console on Orchestrator and VMM.
3. Re-establish connectivity between System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) and System Center 2012 – Operations Manager SP1.
4. Register the Operations Manager SP1 integration packs on System Center 2012 - Orchestrator SP1.
5. Make sure that the Configuration Manager agent continues to function.
6. Make sure that the management pack continues to function with App Controller.

Confirm Integrated Connections

Make sure that the following connections with VMM continue to function:

• Management pack
• Integration using the Operations Manager console (for IP communication)

Make sure that the following connections with Service Manager continue to function:

• Connectors (2)
• Management pack
• Agentless monitoring

Make sure that the following connections with DPM continue to function:

• Management pack
• Central Console Server components

Make sure that the following connections with Orchestrator continue to function:

• Management pack
• Integration Pack (Operations Manger console (SDK) connection required for IP)

If you've followed all of the above tasks and ensure that SP1 has been deployed to each System Center 2012 product in the correct sequence, then you should be good to go with your new deployments!

System Center 2012 Integration Points Map

While doing some upgrade research for System Center 2012 Service Pack 1, I came across a neat diagram on TechNet that shows all of the System Center 2012 Integration Points in a map.

This might come in useful when troubleshooting integration issues or planning new deployments.

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Upgrade Sequencing

If you have deployed any number of System Center 2012 products into your environment and are thinking of upgrading to Service Pack 1 (SP1) any time soon, then it is really important that you upgrade your System Center 2012 products in a particular sequence and that each of the products have first been updated to at least Update Rollup 2 (Cumulative Update 2).

The following list is the recommended upgrade sequence that should be followed for System Center 2012 SP1:

1. Orchestrator
2. Service Manager
3. Data Protection Manager
4. Operations Manager
5. Configuration Manager
6. Virtual Machine Manager
7. App Controller

Microsoft has recently released an on-line TechNet article that explains this sequence in detail and it's a must-read before you go ahead and deploy SP1. 

You can check out the article here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj628203.aspx

Download the (BETA) IPD Guide for DPM 2012

Admittedly, I'm a little bit slow putting this particular post up (the arrival of a new baby seriously messes up your time schedules) but nonetheless, it's worth giving a mention to the recent release of the Open BETA Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guide for System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager (DPM 2012).

The IPD guides are invaluable when designing a technology solution for your clients or own internal business and are the first port of call for me anytime I'm carrying out a new type of deployment for our customers.

The guide is over 50 pages long and deep dives into a design process which gets broken into different steps depending on your requirements and each of these steps are then further complemented with tasks that require actions to help you through the entire process.

Don't be fooled into thinking that DPM 2012 is just a simple backup product and that it can be installed and configured in a matter of a couple of hours (I hear this a lot from consultants). Although DPM 2012 is certainly one of the quicker products to deploy from the System Center 2012 suite, it's imperative that you scope and plan your deployments properly, otherwise you will soon find yourself running out of disk space or lacking when it comes to untrusted domain (e.g. DMZ) server backups.

This guide will walk you through all of the scenarios you need to successfully deploy DPM 2012 and includes considerations for integrating DPM 2012 with SCOM 2012 by using the new Central Console functionality.

As the guide has just been recently released as a BETA, you will need to access it through the Microsoft Connect site and if you haven't registered here, will need to do so first. Better still, you should sign up for the IPD BETA program here and this will give you access to any future BETA IPD guides that get released.

The benefits of using the Connect site is that you can make comments and requests on the content of the BETA guide and if enough people make the same requests, then it's possible that the final release of the guide will have your changes included.

Here's the link to register and download the IPD Guide for System Center 2012 - Data Protection Manager (BETA)

https://connect.microsoft.com/site14/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=7925

Learn PowerShell As Your New Year's Resolution

With New Year's Eve just around the corner, some of us may be thinking of making some New Year resolutions and personally, I find that the resolutions I tend to stick with are the ones where I commit to learning something new (as opposed to promising myself that I'll go for 5km jogs 4 days a week!)

With this in mind, I've promised myself that I'll really push on this year and go learn PowerShell v3 to bring me up to a proficient level that removes the requirement for me to constantly search the internet everytime I want to write a script to help with automating System Center.

To help me along the way with this, I've come across a few books and resources (see below) that will go a long way to helping me achieve my goal.

Books

There are absolutely so many books out there on PowerShell and I'm just gonna list the ones that I'll be reading through, but if anyone is reading this post and has some recommendations they want me to add to the list, then feel free to leave a comment below and I'll drop it in.

Learn Windows PowerShell 3 in a Month of Lunches (Authors: Don Jones and Jeff Hicks)

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches (Author: Don Jones)

Windows PowerShell 3.0 Step by Step (Author: Ed Wilson)

Windows PowerShell Cookbook: The Complete Guide to Scripting Microsoft's Command Shell (Author: Lee Holmes)


MVPs

If you are looking for free PowerShell resources from the community, then a great place to start is to check out the list of PowerShell MVP's on the Microsoft MVP site. Track down any blogs and Twitter accounts that these MVP's run and you'll be overloaded with great info in no time!

Click here for the link for the PowerShell MVP search.


Blogs

Windows PowerShell Blog

The PowerShell Guy

PowerShell Code Repository

Jeff Wouters's Blog

Poshoholic

Hopefully the list above is enough to get you started. I'll add to it as I come across additional resources on my journey to improving my PoSh Kung Fu!

Microsoft Service Templates and Template Explorer for System Center 2012

Just got an e-mail today about the availability of the Microsoft Service Templates for System Center 2012 and the Microsoft Service Template Explorer BETA's.

Having the ability to create service templates are an excellent addition to System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) and I wrote up a post last year on how to create a basic service template here:

Cloud Management with System Center - Creating a Service Template with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

Microsoft have now expanded on this concept and you can download service templates for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 to deliver automation of your server role deployments in a private cloud environment.

Use the new service templates to automate tasks, and reduce deployment time and cost by dynamically provisioning services that require Windows Server 2008 R2/2012 server roles for customer facing services.

The Service Template Explorer is an add-in that you can use in SCVMM to quickly discover and download new service templates from Microsoft - how cool is that!

To get access to these downloads, you will need to logon to the Microsoft Connect site and register for the BETA bits here:

https://connect.microsoft.com/site14/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=47328

The downloads come with some informative quick start guides that will walk you through the installation and configuration process in no time.

System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection (SCEP) Cookbook Review

A few weeks ago, I was given the opportunity to review a recently released book by Packt Publishing about System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection (SCEP).

SCEP 2012 is effectively the latest version of Microsoft's Forefront Endpoint Protection Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware suite but instead of it being a standalone product like it's predecessor, this release is integrated as a new addition to the System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (SCCM/ConfigMgr) product.

Background

People that know me (or anyone who reads this blog) will know that I typically keep away from working in depth with SCCM and instead try to focus on SCOM, Orchestrator, VMM, AppController and DPM with a working knowledge of SCSM thrown in for good measure! The reason for this is that apart from the facts that SCCM is such a huge product in itself and takes a long time to upskill to expert level on, we have a number of excellent SCCM consultants and Subject Matter Experts working in our company that would generally be involved in these types of customer deployments.

With the new licensing model that Microsoft has released for System Center 2012 (where a customer now can't individually purchase a single System Center product any more and instead needs to purchase the whole suite in one go), any new features or Unique Selling Points (USP's) that I can talk about when consulting with potential new System Center 2012 customers is a massive bonus. That's where SCEP 2012 comes in and why my motivation to review this new book stems as much from my own desire to learn more about the product and it's deployment as opposed to just recieving a free copy of it for personal use!

You might be thinking to yourself, "What exactly has a cookbook got to do with System Center?" and to be fair, the concept of technology centered cookbooks is new to me too. The idea of these books is to provide people who already have a basic understanding of a given technology (in this case SCEP or SCMM) with a set of 'recipes' for solving problems related to it. The publisher explains the cookbook concept in detail here.

The Book

Lead author on the book is Andrew Plue and it was reviewed by Nicolai Henriksen (SCCM MVP), Matthew Hudson (SCCM MVP) and Stephan Wibier.

Although I have this book nearly 3 weeks now, I intentionally left it until this week to have a read through it as I'm involved in building a new System Center 2012 demo environment in our datacenter and wanted to work through it to see if it would help me get the SCEP side of the demo up and running without calling in help from our SME's.

The book is just over 200 pages in lenght and contains the following chapters:

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Client-Side Endpoint Protection Tasks, provides a number of recipes for performing tasks at the local client level, such as forcing a definition update or modifying the SCEP client policy.

Chapter 2, Planning and Rolling Installation, will walk you through some of the considerations you will need to make before deploying SCEP, as well as showing you how to enable the SCEP role on your SCCM server.

Chapter 3, SCEP Configuration, will show you recipes for performing essential tasks, such as configuring SCEP policies and alerts, as well as walking you through the process of setting up SCEP's reporting features.

Chapter 4, Client Deployment Preparation and Deployment, includes a number of recipes to assist you with every step of client deployment from preparation to actually deploying the clients.

Chapter 5, Common Tasks, covers a number of day-to-day tasks that every SCEP administrator will need to know how to do it correctly in order to keep SCEP healthy and your Endpoints protected from malware.

Chapter 6, Management Tasks, covers important high level tasks, such as using policy templates, merging polices, and responding to SCEP alerts.

Chapter 7, Reporting, makes a deep dive into the reporting capabilities offered with SCEP. You will be shown how to execute reports, as well as provide access to reports. You will also be shown how to create your own custom reports.

Chapter 8, Troubleshooting, provides you with some tools to assist you with the time-consuming effort of troubleshooting an anti-malware product. The recipes in this chapter will help you deal with Definition Update issues, as well as how to approach false positives.

Chapter 9, Building an SCCM 2012 Lab, is a great chapter for anyone who has not yet taken the plunge on SCCM 2012. There is just a single recipe in the chapter that will show you the quickest down-and-dirty method for standing up an SCCM 2012 server in a lab environment. This is vital to anyone considering deploying SCEP, because with the total integration of SCEP with SCCM 2012, you can't experience SCEP without an SCCM environment.

My Thoughts

After reading through pretty much the whole book this week, I found the information to be concise and to the point. With its help, I managed to easily setup my demo environment with SCEP 2012 and learned how to quickly configure it to best practice recommendations. I also thought that the 'Notes', 'Tips and Tricks' and 'How It Works' sections scattered throughout the book provided some really good information that was evident of the real-world deployment experience the author and reviewers had.

Overall, if you're thinking of deploying SCCM 2012 with SCEP or if you have already deployed it and don't feel that you are getting enough out of it, then I'd recommend this book as a handy companion to get you up and running!

You can order the book in 'dead tree' format from Amazon here or in Kindle format from here.

Also, if you like this type of cookbook, then you might want to consider signing up to the publishers PacktLib which apart from serving as a portal to access your purchased books, from time to time they release free e-books on it that can come in handy as part of your technical library.

MMS 2013 Content Survey Now Open

Last night Microsoft sent out an e-mail announcing their annual Content Survey request for the upcoming Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2013 is open. This survey is detrimental in ensuring that the content presented at MMS is relevant to what the attendees want to see.

If you haven't registered on the MMS website and didn't receive an e-mail, you can access the Content Survey here:

https://www.2013mms.com/survey/ContentSurvey

It contains questions about the different types of technologies that you work with and what level of technical detail you would like to see those technologies presented on - Level 100 is just an entry-level overview session and Level 400 is the deep-dive technical content that most experienced techies are looking for.

MMS 2012 was held this year in April and although I had an excellent time and saw some really excellent and cool presentations, I couldn't help but feel I had seen a lot of the stuff being presented on over the previous 12 months through participation in Community Evaluation Programs (CEPs) and other online blogs and articles. Speaking with other attendees over there, this was kind of the general consensus.

I understand that not all attendees will spend nearly all of their spare time like I did learning System Center and participating in these Community driven programs but I honestly have to say that at MMS 2012, if I was running late for a particular session (it was in Vegas right..), that the decision to just give the session a miss and download it later was made easier due to the fact that I had either seen most of the stuff already or that the session was geared towards Level 100 audiences.

The fact that this year was the launch of System Center 2012 probably played a big part in the sessions that were delivered as Microsoft needed to ensure that everyone had a good understanding and overview of the products and Level 100 and Level 200 sessions are the best way to do that.

Speaking with Rod Trent and Flemming Riis last night, we all agreed that now is the time to get the right level of content and deep-dive sessions that we want presented by simply filling in the Content Survey form. If you are filling out the survey today or in the next few days (it doesn't take longer than 3 minutes), then one of the most important questions to ensure you complete is the last one about the 'General Event Questions' shown below

MMS previous attendees (alumni) should pay particular attention to this section and ensure that you use it as the forum to get your requests and points across about what you don't want to see and also what you would really love to see.

Don't be afraid to full up this section with as much suggestions as you can think of and if Microsoft get enough people suggesting the same thing, then they will definitely listen and add it to the content for next year.

So, what are you waiting for - start filling it out!

Available Now - Mastering System Center 2012 Operations Manager

Finally, after many months of long days and nights writing, our new book titled 'Mastering System Center 2012 Operations Manager' has just been published by Sybex/Wiley. We had a really strong team made up of present and former MVP's, Microsoft employees and all round SCOM experts involved in writing the book as listed below:

Authors:

Bob Cornelissen
Kevin Greene
Ivan Hadzhiyski
Paul Keely
Sam Allen
Telmo Sampaio

Contributors:

Arie de Haan
Pavel Dzemyantsau

Technical Editor:

Steve Rachui


So, how did you get involved?

I was a late addition (in place of someone else who had to drop out) to the original author team and only started writing in February with an inital contract of two chapters to complete on a really tight deadline of three weeks. One thing led to another and in the end, I was involved either in full or as a contributor on six of the final chapters! Trying to fit in a work and family life balance on top of all that writing was definitely one of the biggest time-management challenges I've ever had!

Was it worth it?

For all the hard work and stress though, I absolutely found the entire process to be really rewarding and I can honestly say that no matter how much you know about a product or piece of software (SCOM 2012 in my case), you will learn an absolute abundance of information when writing a book like this on it! Unlike blogging, where you can quickly get something up onto the internet and when a mistake is made easily rectify it, with a book, everything needs to be cross referenced and verified along with copyright issues taken into account too - it defnitely needs to be as accurate as possible first time round!

As an added bonus, I've also made some really good friends and contacts out of this process and look forward to meeting up with some of them at the MVP Summit over in Redmond, Washington next February.

If you want to learn more about SCOM 2012, then this book is a great place to start. I know that I've certainly learned some valuable new tips by reading through each of the other authors 'Real World Scenario', 'Notes' and 'Tip' sections that you will find throughout the book.

Where can I get more information about the book?

We've recently setup a new website specifically for the book and some of the authors hope to be blogging on topics related to the book and answering any questions you might have through the FAQ section. You can check out the website here: www.masteringscom.com

OK cool, so how do I order it?

It's just come off pre-order and is available now for delivery through Amazon.com here and Sybex.com here in your traditional 'dead tree' format and also as an e-book.

If you're over my side of the world (Europe) and use Amazon.co.uk or any of the other European online book stores, then they should have it ready for delivery in the next week or two. That means that there's still some great savings to be had by pre-ordering it now! You can get it from Amazon.co.uk here.

Hope you enjoy it!

New Solution Accelerator Programs for SCVMM 2012 and SC Orchestrator

Microsoft's Travis Wright has just posted up some really cool information onto the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Engineering Blog about two new solution accelerators for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM/VMM) and System Center 2012 Orchestrator (SCO\SCOrch).

I have been using Microsoft Solution Accelerators with System Center for a number of years and they're always an excellent addition to your deployments so well worth attending these sessions online.

A description of each of the new accelerators is below (taken directly from the original blog post):

One program will provide Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) service templates and a SCVMM add-in to help you discover them. The other program will provide datacenter automation for private clouds using System Center Orchestrator. Datacenter automation for System Center Orchestrator enables you to automate operations of private cloud workloads such as SharePoint and Windows Server.

You can join up to the 'System Center Virtual Machine Manager Service Templates and the Service Templates Explorer Beta Program' from here (you'll need to create a Microsoft Connect account for yourself with a Windows Live ID first if you haven't already got one):

https://connect.microsoft.com/site715/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=7857&InvitationID=STE-B2VH-3JRX


To join the 'Datacenter Automation for the cloud Beta Program', just click here:

https://connect.microsoft.com/site715/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=7858&InvitationID=DCAU-XFDX-V8XF

Check out Travis' full post on the new solution accelerators from here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/scvmm/archive/2012/10/15/announcing-two-new-solution-accelerator-beta-programs-for-system-center-products.aspx

Enjoy!

SCOM 2012 - Deploying Cumulative Update Rollup 3 (CU3) Hotfix

Just last night, Microsoft released Cumulative Update 3 (UR3) for System Center 2012. This release contains a smaller number of fixes and is targeted mainly at Operations Manager (SCOM/OpsMgr), Data Protection Manager (DPM) and Service Manager (SCSM) you can find a description of it here.

The SCOM 2012 specific issues that this hotfix resolves are as follows:

• When you use the 32-bit version of Windows Internet Explorer to start a web console, the "Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Presentation.Controls.SpeedometerGaugeUIController" controller does not work correctly

• When you run a Windows PowerShell cmdlet, you receive the following error message:

Get-BPAModel is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet

• When you try to change a URL in the "web application availability monitoring" template instance, the change is not applied.

This post will walkthrough the steps required to deploy the Update Rollup 3 hotfix to your SCOM / OpsMgr 2012 deployment. As in the past, this post is an updated version of my previous post on deploying Update Rollup 2 (CU2) to SCOM / OpsMgr 2012.

Update February 2013 - If you want to be in with a chance of winning a copy of our Mastering System Center 2012 Operations Manager book, then check out the link below to see what you need to do:

Win a Copy of Mastering SCOM 2012 by Evaluating System Center

The process to deploy the update is quite simple. Similar to Update Rollup 2, there is no need to run any SQL queries against the SCOM databases as part of the update - as was the case with the SCOM 2007 R2 CU's. You can choose to deploy this update either manually or by using Microsoft Update. This post will outline the manual installation process.

Some of the information below is taken directly from KB2756127 on the Microsoft Support website.


To begin, here are some known issues to be aware of when deploying this update rollup:

• After you install the update rollup package on all roles on the System Center Operations manager 2012 server, except on the Agent and Gateway roles, the updates do not appear in the Add or Remove Programs item in Control Panel.
• After you install the update rollup package, the version number of the console is not changed. After you install Update Rollup 2 for System Center Operations Manager 2012, the version number of the console is 7.0.8560.0 as expected
• After you uninstall the update rollup package, a System.Management.Automation.ActionPreferenceStop exception occurs in the Discover Agent Versions script, and the script fails. To resolve this issue, change the InstallDirectory value in the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\System Center Operations" registry subkey to C:\Program Files\System Center 2012\Operations Manager\PowerShell.
• After you install the update rollup package on a web console, you receive the following error message in Windows Internet Explorer:

Server Error in '/OperationsManager' Application.

To resolve this issue, close and then restart Windows Internet Explorer.

Installation Notes

• Update Rollup 3 is available in a number of languages but some components are language neutral, and the updates for these components are not localized.
• You must run these updates as an administrator.
• You have to close the console before you apply the console update to avoid having to restart the computer.
• You must restart and clear the browser cache to start a new instance of Microsoft Silverlight.
• This update rollup should not be installed immediately after you install the server. Otherwise, you could encounter an issue in which the Health Service state remains uninitialized.
• If User Account Control is enabled, the .msp update files must be run from an elevated Command Prompt window.
• System Administrator rights on the database instances for the Operational Database and Data warehouse are required in order to run updates on these databases.

As described in KB911722, the web console fixes will work after you add the following line to the %windir%\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\CONFIG web.config file:

<machineKey validationKey="AutoGenerate,IsolateApps" decryptionKey="AutoGenerate,IsolateApps" validation="3DES" decryption="3DES"/>Note This line should be added under <system.web>

Note: As with all updates, it goes without saying that you should first make a full backup of your SCOM 2012 environment before proceeding with these steps.

The supported installation order of CU3 is as follows:

Server Infrastructure Deployment Order Overview:

• Management server or server
• Gateway servers
• Reporting servers
• Web console server role computer
• Operations console role computers

Note: If Connected MG/Tiering is enabled, the top tier should be patched first.


Update Management Packs Overview:

• Manually import CU3 management packs

Agent Deployment Overview:

• Apply the agent update to manually installed agents, or push installation from the Pending view in the Operations console.

Note: This update rollup can be installed on agents either before or after server infrastructure.

 

Installation

 

The previous two rollups for SCOM 2012 (CU1 and CU2), were relatively small in size (75MB) however, this particular update is much larger and can be over 400MB if you need to deploy it to all of the different SCOM roles in your environment. It's still significantly smaller than previous SCOM 2007 R2 updates which were closer to 1.5GB in size!

 

Click on the link below to access the Microsoft Update Catalog (as shown in the screenshot) and download the CU3 packages for each SCOM role that you have deployed (e.g. Agent, Management Server, Web Console, Console etc.) to a location on your SCOM 2012 Management Server:

 

Download Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 Operations Manager

 

 

Once you've downloaded the relevant updates to your SCOM management server, you should see a number of folders similar to the screenshot below depending on which roles you've chosen to download updates for.

 

 

Fisrt thing to do now is to double click on the "Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 - Operations Manager Server (2750631)" folder and then extract the contents of the .cab file contained inside of it as shown below

Update 12th October - A number of people have been having issues trying to locate the English version of the .cab file to manually deploy to the Console, Web Console and Reporting server roles. Here's the ones that worked for me:

Console -
all-kb2750631-amd64-console_755b85ba494fa5c83ca31cf40d38be5d6d0551ef.cab

Web Console -

all-kb2750631-amd64 webconsole_2ef77d6ea1080b83c10351001dc13bf7e6977b7a.cab

 

Reporting -

all-kb2750631-amd64-reporting_8043cc39d79514d1e633b645063100c136cf1f92.cab

 

 

You should now see the KB2750631-AMD64-Server.msp file and this is the one that we will use to update the SCOM Management Server role.

Now, open up a Command Prompt with Administrative permissions and browse to the location on your SCOM 2012 Management Server that you extracted the Update Rollup 3 package to. Once here, you will need to execute the following command for each update package:

msiexec.exe /update <PackageName>

 

For example, if you are installing the extracted KB2750631-AMD64-Server.msp package, then type the following command and hit Enter:

 

msiexec.exe /update KB2750631-AMD64-Server.msp

You should now see the following dialog boxes open up indicating that the upgrade is in progress

After the update has been applied, you won't see any confirmation confirming it's finished, the above dialog box will just close out. Don't be alarmed that it's crashed or that you need to re-run the update again, this is just normal behaviour!

Once you've installed the server update package, you can then go ahead and follow the same steps from above to install the other update packages that are relevant to the SCOM server roles that you have deployed. In my environment, I have the SCOM Console and SCOM Web Console installed on the Management Server so after the server update package, I need to then extract those files, browse to their location from an administrative command prompt and then execute the following commands:

msiexec.exe /update KB2750631-AMD64-Console.msp

msiexec.exe /update KB2750631-AMD64-WebConsole.msp

Once these commands have finished installing, I'll then run the relevant commands on my SQL server that's running the SCOM Reporting role and my Gateway servers.

When you've updated your Management Server, browse to the SCOM 2012 installation folder - normally located at C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2012\Server. Once here, add a column view for 'File Version' and then sort the column by file version and you should see four files with a new version level of 7.0.8560.1036 as the screen below shows

If you don't see the product version updated as above to your files, then your server hasn't updated properly and you will need to revisit the installation to see if you've missed something.

Once you are happy that your first SCOM 2012 Management Server has been updated, then you can then move onto installing the new management packs that come with the CU3 hotfix.

Note: You only need to import the updated management packs once. You will not have to carry out this process for every SCOM server role that you upgrade.

After the Server update package (KB2750631-AMD64-Server.msp) has been installed, you can now browse to the following location and locate the three new updated management packs that need to be imported into your SCOM 2012 environment (shown in the screenshot below):

C:\Program Files\System Center 2012\Operations Manager\Server\Management Packs for Update Rollups

To import these management packs, simply open up the SCOM Console and click on the Administration button in the wunderbar from the bottom left hand side of the screen. From there, expand the Administration view, right mouse click on Management Packs and then select Import Management Packs from the resultant menu

From the Import Management Packs window, click on the Add button, choose the Add From Disk option and then click on No when prompted to go online to download any dependencies

Now browse to the "C:\Program Files\System Center 2012\Operations Manager\Server\Management Packs for Update Rollups " folder and select the three new management packs to import as shown below

If you have previously upgraded to Cumulative Update 1 (UR1), then you will notice that the version of the Data Warehouse Library management pack is the same version number for CU3 and this will not be imported. If you haven't upgraded to CU1, then the import will upgrade all three new management packs at this point.

Hit the Install button and if required, click on Yes from the security warning to confirm you are happy to continue

Once the import is completed, you should see a successful status beside either two or three management packs (as mentioned above, the number of management packs imported here depends on whether or not you've previously upgraded to CU1) confirming you have imported them without issue

With the management packs imported, that finishes off the upgrade of the Management Server role and if you haven't upgraded the other SCOM server roles yet, then now's the time to do it.

Agent Infrastructure

Although the agent installation upgrade can be carried out at any time, I prefer to wait until I have upgraded my SCOM 2012 server infrastructure first before working on the agents.

To upgrade the agents using the SCOM 2012 Console, simply browse to the Administration tab again in the wunderbar, expand the Administration view, expand Device Management and then click on the Pending Management view to see all of the agents awaiting upgrade. Highlight the ones you want to upgrade, then click on the Approve link from the Tasks pane on the right hand side to update all of your push based agents

For any agents that have been manually installed, then you will manually need to copy the .MSP file for the agent to each server and manually carry out each upgrade.

Finally, the hotfix documentation available to me at the time doesn't mention anything about upgrading your Unix/Linux agents so for now it looks like the update is only applicable to Windows based systems. I'll update this post if that changes over the coming days.

MMS 2013 Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino Las Vegas

If you work with System Center and Private Cloud technologies, then the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) is the ultimate conference for you. This conference started off way back in 1998 focusing on SMS/ConfigMgr and then eventually evolving into showcasing the whole Private Cloud management suite of System Center products that we have today. In 2011, this was the first major Microsoft conference that I attended and I've been hooked on it ever since!

It's the one place where just about everyone who works in the System Center community come together to attend some excellent deep-dive sessions being presented by the Microsoft System Center product team and MVP's alike.

Last year at MMS 2012, the event was held in Las Vegas and it had been announced that MMS 2013 would be re-located to New Orleans in June 2013. Rumours started flying around about it being merged with TechEd 2013 which is normally also held in June but last night, i came across a tweet from Rod Trent of MyITForum.com that the official MMS 2012 website had been updated with some details about MMS 2013. These details confirmed that the conference would now be held the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas again (this is where it was held for MMS 2011) and would commence on the 8th of April until the 12th April - happy days :)

If you want to keep up to date with all the latest goings on for MMS 2013, then make sure you check out MyITForum.com and sign up to their MMS 2013 newsletter. Check out the link below for all the information that you need for now:

http://myitforum.com/myitforumwp/2012/10/08/forget-everything-you-heard-mms-2013-will-be-back-in-vegas/

I'm really looking forward to heading back there again and meeting up with all my System Center community friends. Here we go again............

Awarded the Microsoft MVP 2012 for System Center

This week, I've been awarded the 2012 Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for "System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management." The following e-mail arrived in my inbox on Monday evening:

"Dear Kevin Greene,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2012 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management technical communities during the past year."

To receive this award is a real honour and it tops off a fantastic 12 months for me participating in the System Center world. I've made loads of new friends, had the privilege to present at the Irish and Northern Irish System Center 2012 launches, participated in numerous Community Evaluation Programs (CEP's) and even got a free ticket to MMS 2012 in Las Vegas as a result of winning the Private Cloud CEP contest!

The next 12 months are going to be really exciting too with the launch of our new book on System Center 2012 Operations Manager this month and the MVP Summit in Seattle in February to attend - not to mention also the MMS/TechEd 2013 conference in either New Orleans or Vegas!

There's so many people to thank for their support and help over the last year, but in particular I wanted to give a special mention to Gavin McShera, Art Coughlan and Dave Northey in Microsoft Ireland and also to Aidan Finn (Hyper-V MVP) and Damian Flynn (System Center MVP) for giving me guidance and helping with the nomination for MVP. Also, thanks to all my friends in the System Center community who work tirelessly to share their knowledge and advice any time it's needed.

A big mention has to go to my workplace friends and colleagues in Ergo who have given me the opportunity to work on pretty much nothing other than System Center projects for the last few years which has been a huge help in attaining an understanding of this fantastic suite of products.

Finally, a massive thanks has to go to my wife and son for putting up with all the late nights and weeks away from home over the last year and whose patience has been key to helping keep me focused on the work that I love!

SCOM 2012 - Monitoring Pack for SharePoint 2010

In the last week Microsoft has released the latest updated OpsMgr/SCOM 2012 management pack for monitoring SharePoint 2010.

Prior to this release, if you wanted to monitor and manage your SharePoint farms with SCOM 2012 using a Microsoft produced management pack, you had to either be a Microsoft employee, on a System Center Technology Adoption Program (TAP) or have participated in the SCOM 2012 Community Evaluation Program (CEP).

Thankfully I had participated in the SCOM 2012 CEP back last October and had access to a pre-release version of this management pack that basically added an additional Admin task to the SCOM 2012 console that supported the discovery and monitoring of your SharePoint 2010 farms.

As the pre-release version of the management pack I had wasn't officially supported by Microsoft, to say I was waiting patiently for this fully supported one to be released is an understatement!

This blog post will walk you through the steps required to get this MP up and running.

Prerequisites

The original Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Management Pack for OpsMgr/SCOM 2007 must first be downloaded and imported into SCOM 2012 before installing this updated management pack and you can download it from here (make sure to download the guide too):

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4419

Follow the instructions in the guide for the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Management Pack for SCOM 2007 to install and import it into your environment. Make sure you have configured your Run As accounts as per the guide recommendations as they will be required later in this process.

Installation

Once you have the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Management Pack for SCOM 2007 imported, you can now go about installing the updated management pack for SCOM 2012.

Download the System Center 2012 Monitoring Pack for SharePoint 2010 to a location on your SCOM 2012 server from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34697

When the management pack installer has been downloaded, right-click on the .msi and choose the Install option

Accept the license agreement, then click Next

At the Select Installation Folder dialog box, make a note of the default installation location and notice that it will deploy to the  'Program Files (x86)' directory (this is important to know for a later step), then click Next

Click Close to finish the initial installation of the extracted the files

Browse to the location that the installer recommended and make sure that you can see the 'Microsoft.SharePoint.2010.SCOM2012' directory as shown below

Double click on the folder and you should see the new 'Microsoft.SharePoint.2010.SCOM2012.mp' file inside as below

Now, this is where things can start to go wrong with this management pack if you're not careful.

From the original location of 'C:\Program Files (x86)\System Center Management Packs\Microsoft.SharePoint.2010.SCOM2012', copy the 'Microsoft.SharePoint.2010.SCOM2012.mp' file to the following location as shown in the screenshot below. (Note: The copied location is not in the (x86) folder):

'C:\Program Files\System Center Management Packs'

Once you have copied the management pack file from the (x86) folder to the new location, in the SCOM 2012 console, browse to the Administration tab from the Wunderbar, expand the Administration view, right-click on Management Packs and then choose the Import Management Packs option to start the wizard.

In the Import Management Packs wizard, choose the Add from Disk option and then browse to the new location that you copied the 'Microsoft.SharePoint.2010.SCOM2012.mp' file to. If you've followed the instructions above, this location will be 'C:\Program Files\System Center Management Packs'. Double click on the coped management pack file and you will then see something similar to the screenshot below.

Note: If you haven't met the prerequisites and first installed the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Management Pack for SCOM 2007, you will receive an error here stating that there is a dependency missing.

When you click on the Install button, you should then see confirmation that the new management pack has been imported successfully. Click the Close button to exit the dialog box.

Browse back to the Monitoring tab from the Wunderbar, expand the SharePoint 2010 Products view and then click on the Administration view. If all has gone according to plan, you should see your Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Farm Group in the central screen and on the right-hand side in the Tasks pane, you will now see the new 'Configure SharePoint Management Pack (SCOM 2012)' task as pointed out in the screen below

Click on the new task and you will be presented with the following dialog box - notice that the Working Directory value is set to: %ProgramFiles%\System Center Management Packs

It's this value that had the requirement for us to earlier copy the management pack file out of the (x86) directory and move it as without the file being copied, this task wouldn't run.

If you have correctly configured your Run As account for the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Management Pack for SCOM 2007 as per the guide recommendations, then you should be able to just click on the Run button inside this task.

 You will then be presented with the following screen confirming that the discovery of your SharePoint 2010 Farm Group has been successful. Note: Make sure to wait a while for the discovery process to complete in your environment as it won't always show up in the console immediately.

That's all that you should need to do to get up and running with your SharePoint 2010 monitoring using SCOM 2012.

The System Center 2012 Integration Guide

After a few weeks off on holiday/vacation, the batteries are fully recharged and I'm ready to hit the ground running - starting out with a lot of upcoming System Center 2012 projects to get stuck into. I'm also counting down the days now until our new  'Mastering System Center 2012 - Operations Manager' book hits the shelves towards the end of next month.

A consequence of being away on holidays for a few weeks means that when you come back, there's always an abundance of unread e-mails and Twitter feeds to catch up on. This blog post is about one such piece of information that caught my eye and deserved a mention.

Microsoft's Brian Wren recently published the System Center 2012 Integration Guide up on the TechNet Wiki and reading through it, I have to say it's an excellent resource and a recommended 'must-read' for anyone thinking of deploying System Center 2012 into their environment. (Thanks Brian!)

Taken directly from the guide's homepage:

"The System Center 2012 Integration Guide provides an overview of each System Center component in its role as a programmable platform to be leveraged for the Microsoft Private Cloud. It is intended to provide an abstraction layer that guides partners and customers on their decision process for methods to build automated solutions across System Center components."

There will be a separate section in the guide for each of the major System Center 2012 components and although the DPM integration guide hasn't been added yet, it has been labelled as 'coming soon' and we shouldn't have to wait too long hopefully!

To access the homepage of the guide, go to the following link:

System Center 2012 Integration Guide

If you want to browse directly to a particular System Center product's integration guide, then click on the links below:

System Center 2012 Integration Guide - Operations Manager
System Center 2012 Integration Guide - Orchestrator
System Center 2012 Integration Guide - Service Manager
System Center 2012 Integration Guide - Virtual Machine Manager

Each of the individual product integration guides have been broken down into sections such as a product overview,  their role in the microsoft private cloud, programmability, product specific Integration features/packs/points and then finally a System Center integration section.

Also, as this guide has been published on the TechNet Wiki, it means that System Center community members can add their own revisions and edit's to it (within reason and subject to moderation of course!) as they come across new and useful information - making it an overall excellent central resource when working with the integration of each of the System Center products.