Renewed as an MVP for 2020 - 2021!

The 1st of July is known to Microsoft MVP's all around the world as 'F5 Day' - mainly because many keyboard F5 buttons get worked extra-hard when MVP's are refreshing their inbox and/or online MVP profile to see if they've been re-awarded for another year!

Thankfully for me, I didn't break my F5 button while finding out I've been renewed as a Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP for 2020 - 2021!

This is my ninth year in the MVP program and I'm really proud that I made it this far. It's not easy to maintain the high level of standards required for renewal each year, especially with hectic work and family commitments so it's a testament to all of the MVP's across the world who have managed to remain in the program for this coming year.

The Cloud and Datacenter Management (CDM) category I've been renewed in ties in nicely with the Azure projects we've been diving into lately and which we have planned for the coming year. Azure management technologies and services such as Azure Monitor, Azure Governance, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery and Azure Migrate are some of the areas covered by the CDM award and it also includes hybrid management and connectivity scenarios (e.g. Azure-attach solutions) with on-premises environments.

I'm very thankful to have an employer (Ergo) that supports me and my colleagues on this MVP journey where we get the projects, tools and learning time that we need to help us stay current within our specialist areas - which in turn, helps me to contribute back to the community through this blog and my public speaking engagements.

Some of the community contributions I've submitted for award renewal this year and which have kept me busy include presenting at events such as Experts Live Europe, the Global Azure Bootcamp, the Cloud and Datacenter Conference Germany and even a couple of bucket-list presentation slots at Microsoft Ignite in London. I've also managed to squeeze in some time to complete the authoring process with my MVP friends on the latest edition of our recently released (and free) 'Inside Azure Management' book.

Although 2020 has been a very strange year with the global COVID-19 lockdown affecting community gatherings across the world, the MVP Community have come together with many other community leaders and contributors to re-imagine conferences as digital-only events for now. These have worked out well in many cases however, we all wait in hope for when the in-person events return and we can all catch up again to talk tech.

Thanks everyone for all your support over the last year!

Presenting at Cloud Camp 2018

It’s coming around to that time of year again when conference season kicks into full swing and over the coming months, I’ll be attending and presenting at some of the best Cloud and Datacenter conferences on the planet.

First up is Cloud Camp - Ireland’s best Microsoft Cloud and Windows Server conference. Put together by MicroWarehouse and kicking off on October 17th in Dublin’s National Convention Centre, this inaugural event plays host to 20 speakers over 4 different tracks -all in 1 day! Topics covered include the latest about digital transformation, IT modernization, productivity, security, compliance & governance, private cloud using Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365 (Office 365, EMS, and Windows 10), hybrid cloud scenarios – and there's loads to learn about the new features of Windows Server 2019.

Throw in the fact that there’s an after-party hosted in an Irish brewery with a specially commissioned recording of the super-popular Windows Weekly podcast (hosted by Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott) and you just know this will be an awesome event!

Speakers

The speaker line-up is one of the best I've seen in recent years for an Irish event and the selection brings a number of Galáctico-style presenters from the Microsoft world over to Dublin for a day of discussions and learning. With a mix of current and past MVP's, along with some very well-known Cloud-Ninja's presenting on the day - I'm already anticipating the challenge of trying to attend multiple sessions at the same time!

Breakout Tracks

Due to the sheer breadth of cloud-content available to choose from, it makes sense for the organisers to create the following four breakout tracks to run simultaneously throughout the day:

• Azure IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service): Focusing on infrastructure solutions built in Microsoft Azure.
• Azure PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service): Complete the digital transformation using platform and serverless features of Azure for modern business solutions.
• Productivity & Security: Microsoft 365 is the focus area, covering productivity, security and compliance solutions based on Office 365, EMS, and Windows 10.
• Windows Server 2019 & Hybrid: This track is a launch for the latest version of Windows Server, and will include hybrid cloud scenarios and solutions such as Azure Stack private cloud.

My Session

On the day, I'll be presenting a session titled 'All-In with Azure Monitoring' and I'll show you everything you need to know to get started using Microsoft Azure to monitor your IT estate.

You can read the session highlight of my presentation - with write-up from Aidan Finn (event co-organiser and good friend) here.

Tickets and Registration

If you haven't yet purchased your tickets, you can get sign up for them here.

Registration will begin at 08:15 on Wednesday October 17th. The keynote will start at 09:15. Breakout sessions will continue throughout the day with breaks for morning & afternoon coffee, lunch, and sufficient time to move between the tracks. A closing keynote, with special guests Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott, will start at approximately 16:30 and continue until approximately 17:30.

Hopefully I'll see some of you guys there!

Available Now: Inside the Microsoft Operations Management Suite (V2)

These past few months have been pretty hectic for me and as a result, this blog had to take a back seat for a while. Along with the day job, presenting at conferences and some family vacation time, I've been busy working with the team on an updated release of the awesome 'Inside the Microsoft Operations Management Suite' book.

The original release of this book was an essential 'must-have' for anybody working with Microsoft's Operations Management Suite (OMS) and it was a constant reference for me over the last year and a half while I tried to get my head around this new technology. As is always the case with cloud technologies however, things change at a drastic pace and an updated release of the original book was duly needed.

Meet the Team

With so many new features added to OMS, this update was never going to be a quick and easy task. Thankfully, the full original authoring team of Stan, Tao, Pete and Anders signed up again for the new release (bio's below):

Along with the original authors, a new team of technical editors (myself included) were brought on-board to help get this over the line:

What's it about?

This updated release provides readers with an end-to-end deep dive into the full range of Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) features and functionality, complete with downloadable sample scripts.

Here's a rundown of the chapters to give you a good idea of the type of content you'll learn about:

Chapter 1: Introduction and Onboarding 
Chapter 2: Searching and Presenting OMS Data 
Chapter 3: Process Automation 
Chapter 4: Configuration Management 
Chapter 5: Change & Update Management 
Chapter 6: Extending OMS Using Log Search 
Chapter 7: Alert Management 
Chapter 8: Log Management & Performance Data 
Chapter 9: Azure & Office 365 Solutions 
Chapter 10: Service Map & Wire Data 
Chapter 11: Network Performance Monitor 
Chapter 12: Other OMS Solutions  
Chapter 13: Assessment Solutions 
Chapter 14: Security & Compliance 
Chapter 15: Protection & Recovery 
Chapter 16: ITSM Integration 
Chapter 17: Custom OMS Solutions

How much will it cost?

Keeping with the community spirit behind the first book, this release will be COMPLETELY FREE for download in E-Book format with the Kindle and Paperback versions coming to Amazon a couple months later. Keep in mind that the Kindle and Paperback versions will carry a nominal price to help cover production costs.

Download Info

You can download the e-book version right now from the link below and the Kindle and Paperback versions will be available on Amazon over the coming months:

 http://tinyurl.com/insideomsbook

Hopefully you enjoy reading this book and working through all the demos as much as we did and if you've any comments/requests, please ping them to the email address here.

Cloud and Datacenter Conference 2017

Conference season is beginning to kick off again and in just over four weeks time (4th - 5th May), I'll be presenting a session at the Cloud and Datacenter Conference in Munich.

The conference is organised by Rachfal IT Solutions and it's the brainchild of my good friend and well-known MVP Carsten Rachfal (aka @hypervserver). It's my first time presenting at this event and it'll also be my first time in Munich so I'm really looking forward to it.

There's a long list of awesome speakers presenting over the two days that reads like a who's-who of Cloud and Datacenter specialists from across the MVP and Microsoft world.

My presentation will be in the Chicago room on the Thursday and it's titled 'What's New in OpsMgr 2016?'. In the session, I'll demonstrate new features, enhancements and administration tips to help make your OpsMgr 2016 environments rock.

Here's a snippet of the agenda for the room I'll be presenting in...

You can check out the full conference schedule here.

Browsing through the schedule, there's a really good mix of sessions delivered in either German or English and I've already bookmarked a number of them to attend so I can learn from the experts in area's like Hyper-V, Azure Stack, Azure and OMS.

If you're in Germany and haven't registered yet, head over to https://www.cdc-germany.de/ and get your tickets before it sells out as from what I've heard about the venue, food, content and networking at last years event, it's going to be epic!

Presenting at Experts Live 2015 in The Netherlands

Tomorrow morning, I'll be heading back over to The Netherlands as part of a three-man Irish contingent to present at the annual Experts Live conference.

This one day event features eight different tracks being presented by over 50 well known speakers in the Microsoft Cloud and Datacenter space.

I'll be presenting one session as part of the Operations Management Suite (OMS) track titled 'Monitoring.....the Next Generation'. In the session, attendees will learn about the latest developments and features coming in SCOM 2016 and I'll dive into the new OMS platform to show some handy use-case scenarios too.

If you're attending, bring the coffee and stroopwafels and I'll see you there!

Attending TechEd North America 2014

After a few weeks away from blogging due to work and family vacation time, I thought it was about time I got the laptop out and started talking about my visit to TechEd North America 2014.

The Lowdown

TechEd is Microsoft's flagship conference aimed at the IT Pro and Enterprise Developer. It's a large scale event that will see thousands of nerds come together for the best part of a week of technical presentations and networking.

For me, I'm a newbie when it comes to TechEd. Over the last few years, the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) was where you'd find me hanging out as this was the place to be in the Cloud & Datacenter Management space. This year however, Microsoft have made a decision not to run MMS as a stand-alone event and to instead, integrate it into the TechEd conference to bring the whole CloudOS story to the table. There's been a lot of debate over the past year about whether or not this was a good move by Microsoft and as a result, a number of newer Cloud & Datacenter Management focused conferences have gained prominence - System Center Universe and IT/Dev Connections for example.

One things for sure, TechEd NA 2014 is completely sold out now and I guess a lot of people are expecting big things from the coming week due to the MMS integration so fingers crossed it'll live up to expectations!

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

TechEd North America is being held in Houston, Texas this year and my journey over has started a few days early and taken a little bit of a detour on the way. The reason for this is that I have family living in south Texas that I haven't seen in a long time so thought that it'd be a sin if I didn't make the effort to visit - seeing as though I'm in the same state as them. That being said, Texas is the second largest state in the USA and is nearly three times the size of Ireland!

I left my house on Wednesday morning at 6am with a drive up to Dublin, enjoyed a very comfortable flight over to Chicago, had a 4.5 hour layover there (hotdogs and beer are an excellent way to pass the time in Chicago airport), jumped on another plane to Houston and finally managed to check-in to a hotel close to George Bush International Airport close to 11pm local time. All-in-all it was approximately 21 hours total journey from when I closed the front door back in Ireland!

I then managed 5(ish) hours of sleep before getting back on the road with a shuttle bus over to the airport, a connecting train between two terminals and a short-hop 45 minute flight from Houston down to Corpus Christi. In stark contrast to the massive scale of the airport in Houston, the tiny one in Corpus Christi was more reminiscent of something that we're used to in Ireland - think Knock Airport and you'll get the idea! A final 45 minute drive down to Alice, Texas and I've reached my destination and base for the next few days.

Hooking up with family and friends (of which I haven't seen in 13 years), consuming copious amounts of Mexican food and beer (this city is pretty close to the border and I'm known as a Gringo in these parts) - and life is good!

On Saturday afternoon I'll be flying back up to Houston to meet up with all of my buddies that are starting to make their way over for TechEd next week.

The Conference

Like myself, most people will be arriving into Houston from tomorrow and after some (quiet) drinks that night, on Sunday, a few of us are going to try and head over to NASA and see if we can give them any advice on how to manage their IT infrastructure with System Center.......

Also on Sunday, ten pre-conference sessions are kicking off TechEd NA 2014 and there's a nice mix of technical goodness between them to keep everyone happy.

At 9am on Monday morning, Microsoft's Brad Anderson delivers the Keynote presentation that will kick off the conference proper and immediately following that, we get down and dirty with a full day of sessions right the way up until 18:00. After a long day's work, I'm sure we'll have one or two things to do at night to keep us occupied and stave away the hunger and thirst :)

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday will follow pretty much the same agenda as Monday without of course a keynote presentation so it'll be a pretty full-on week of deep-dive sessions and fun. The graphic below shows the available tracks that attendees have to choose from for each day.

I'll be keeping this blog reasonably up-to-date throughout the week based on some of the sessions, vendor offerings and new announcements that I've seen and heard. If you're looking for a live 'up-to-the-minute' update of some CloudOS sessions, then I highly recommend you check out my buddy Aidan Finn's blog over the few days that the event runs. Aidan always has some great tips and tricks to take on board when attending these conferences and loves to live-blog his way through the sessions he attends.

As a side game, if you want to try and win a copy of Aidan's excellent Hyper-V book, then check out his Hyper-V Amigo Selfie Game for some fun (note to Aidan, that's a pretty old-school mallet head picture of me you have up there!)

#TE14D5 (a.k.a Friday)

Unfortunately for me I'll be returning home on the Friday - unfortunate purely from a nerd perspective but to be fair, I don't think I'd get a sick-note from my ever-suffering wife for any more than the 11 days I already have away from her and our two kids! As I booked my tickets so long ago in advance, I wasn't aware of the plans that my pals Cameron Fuller and Maarten Goet had put together to keep people entertained on a day when the official four-day conference ended.

They came up with the ingenious idea that seeing as there would still be many attendees floating around Houston on Friday and many MVP's still there too, why not have a side-event uniquely titled 'Day 5', whereby a number of MVP's and community leaders would present some sessions that couldn't be squeezed into TechEd around two different tracks. These tracks will focus on System Center, Hyper-V, Azure and Device Management.

If you're around on the Friday and are looking to hear some of the best speakers around do their thing again, then you can still register for Day 5 here.

Make Sure to Say Hello

So, that's it from me for now, if you're coming over to Houston, make sure to say hello if you see me rambling around and I'll be glad to try and answer any CloudOS questions you might have to help you get ahead in work.

MVP Cloud OS Online Event

I've just finished recording a video session for next week's UK & Ireland MVP Cloud OS Online event that will see nearly 20 different presentations being delivered online via YouTube over the course of two days by a number of MVP's.

Ireland is well represented at this event with myself, Aidan Finn, Damian Flynn and Paul Keely all entering a session. Our UK friends have a strong showing too with speakers like Gordon McKenna, Patrick Lownds, Steve Beaumont and Simon Skinner to name but a few.

Here's a snippet about the event from our UK & Ireland MVP lead - Claire Smyth:

What is MVP Cloud OS Online?

On the 31st March and the 1st April 2014, MVPs will be releasing a series of online training videos that articulate how to rapidly build and deploy apps, flexibly manage IT services, and support real-time analytics across all forms of data. They will also highlight how the Cloud OS supports people-centric IT, allowing employees to bring their own devices and enhancing anytime, anywhere productivity.

The videos (all 25-30 minutes in length) will go online consecutively from Monday 31st March through to Tuesday April 1st and you can view them using the following info:

How to get involved?!

• Visit the MVP Rocks UK and IE YouTube channel on 31 March and 1 April
• Alternatively, register your interest in viewing the MVP videos to receive an email reminder.

If you're watching the videos on the Monday or Tuesday, then you can contact us using the #UKMVPCLOUD hashtag with any questions you might have.

Here's the agenda:

31 March: Transform the datacentre

1 April: Empower People Centric IT

Check out this article for more info:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/uktechnet/archive/2014/03/26/why-not-take-a-closer-look-at-mvp-cloud-os-online.aspx

Enjoy!

New MSFT Blog To Help Keep Your Feet On the Ground and Head In The Clouds

For the last few years everyone has been talking about 'the cloud' and what it means for their businesses. Depending on where you look or who you talk to, you may well get A LOT of different versions of what exactly 'the cloud' is.

As I work primarily in the Microsoft space, I'm really only concerned about what 'the cloud' means from their perspective and I just had to write up this blog post to tell people about a new Microsoft blog called 'In The Cloud'. This blog is headed up by non other than Microsoft's Corporate VP Brad Anderson and it's aim is to help us all understand what the cloud means from the Microsoft side and where they're going to take us with this journey.

The blog has just been launched in the last couple of weeks and already Brad has some interesting posts up there that are worth taking a look over as a taste of what's to come. I'd expect as we get closer to MMS 2013 and TechEd 2013 that there will be a plethora of great information added and if Brad and his team maintain the content here, it could well become one of the most popular blogs around on MSFT Cloud.

Along with the new blog, Brad has taken the plunge and (very bravely) joined Twitter to help get his views across and information out there. If you're on Twitter and interested in Microsoft cloud technologies, then this is an account that you'll definitely want to follow and if you're not on Twitter, then I'd recommend adding the RSS feed for the blog to your Inbox to keep right up to date.

Check out the blog and Twitter account from these links:

 'In The Cloud' (Blog)

@InTheCloudMSFT (Twitter)

Thanks to Brad and the rest of the System Center and Windows Server team for getting us access to these new resources!

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!

Community Power!

The last few months have been real busy for me with the release of System Center 2012, attending MMS, writing a book and working between all of the different System Center 2012 project deployments that we're involved in. Not to mention trying to make some quality time to spend with the family!

In fact, the last year has been pretty much the same story with everything that has gone on and I find myself never having the time to study for and sit the certification exams that I set myself targets for. Nor have I had anywhere near the free time that I would like to have so I can ramp up my skills on the likes of Orchestrator and Service Manager.

Still, when new technologies come to market or unusual fixes and workarounds are made public for the products that I deal with on a daily basis, I always seem to be able to quickly find the information I need to enable me to do my job. This is all thanks to the huge amount of community resources that are available to us all every day. It doesn't matter whether your preference is for System Center, Hyper-V, Exchange or Linux - there's always going to be specialists in the relevant disciplines from across the world who love to share their knowledge and experiences with their respective online and local technology communities. These community experts share their information through blogs, central community based websites, forums, Twitter and even by presenting at local user groups and events. Best of all - it's shared completely free!

It's with the latter in mind that this week allowed me the opportunity through expert local community resources to attend some excellent sessions on the upcoming Windows Server 2012 and newly released SQL 2012 technologies. Apart from the fantastic technical content on offer, the best part was, the events were completely free!

Windows Server 2012

Yesterday I attended the Windows Server 2012 Rocks event in Microsoft Ireland which was presented by Alex Juschin (RDP MVP) and Aidan Finn (Hyper-V MVP). Although this was never going to be a deep dive Level 400 type session (you'd never fit all that info into 4 hours!), it was perfect to get an overall understanding with some really cool demo's of the new features around managebility, remote access and virtualization that comes out of the box with this release.

Although the Irish Windows Server 2012 Rocks events have now finished, this event is taking place all over the world and you can check out the official site from the link below to see if there's a presentation on in your locality in the coming month:

https://ws2012rocks.msregistration.com/EventList.aspx

I left there yesterday with a much better understanding of what we can now do with Windows Server and Hyper-V and more importantly for me, how my future System Center deployments will benefit from all of the new game-changing features. Did I mention that all this is for free?

SQL Server 2012

If the Windows Server 2012 event was more for me to brush up on my already pretty good Hyper-V and Server O/S knowledge, then the SQL 2012 Always On Deep Dive event that I've just attended tonight in Microsoft Ireland was purely to help me on the long road to improving my SQL 'Kung Fu' -which by the way, just about get's me out of trouble when I need it to!

I realised a long time ago that no matter how good you are at System Center, if you don't know SQL, then you're missing a trick and it's something that is a MUST for anyone deploying System Center 2012. Of course I've earmarked the SQL MCITP exams as ones to sit and pass, but I hardly ever can find the time these days to commit to studying for them!

Step forward another community resource in Ireland and that's the SQL User Group run by Niall Flanagan and Bob Duffy. The session this evening was presented by Bob Duffy who's been working on databases since I was still in school! He's an SQL Ranger and also an SSAS Maestro and definitely someone who knows what they're talking about when it comes to databases!

The session on SQL 2012 Always On was excellent and the demo's backed up seamlessly what Bob was presenting on and to top it all off, we all got our fair share of pizza's and refreshments. Once again, did I mention that this was all free?

The point I'm trying to make I suppose, is that, although as IT Pro's we might get caught up with all of the new technologies being released and the pressure of trying to juggle any spare time we have to get to know and understand them, it doesn't have to cost a load of money on instructer-led training or expensive books - we're in a recession right - to get the knowledge you need to become proficient.

Instead, if sometimes, you're prepared to give up a small amount of your own time, then take a look around the Internet and pay attention to your local IT community user groups, you can get expert technical advice from some of the best in the world, right on your doorstep and all for FREE!!

That's what I call Community Power!

Beta Guide: Managing and Operating a Microsoft Private Cloud with MOF Application

After spending the last few months involved in writing a book that included a chapter on Systems Management with the Microsoft Operations Framework and Private Cloud components, it's typical that when I finish the writing process that Microsoft have just announced the release of the 'Managing and Operating a Microsoft Private Cloud-How to Apply the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) Beta' guide that covers most of what I was trying to research!

The guide is available on the Microsoft Connect site and you will need to click on the link below to register (if you aren't already registered) and then download the guide:

https://connect.microsoft.com/site14/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=1880&InvitationID=MOFN-M6H9-PV3X

The following is an excerpt from the Overview section of the guide to give you a feel for what's contained in it:

Overview

This guide describes how to manage and operate a Microsoft private cloud using the service management processes of the Microsoft® Operations Framework (MOF). MOF is a framework that helps IT organizations plan, create, operate, and support IT services that deliver expected business value at an acceptable level of risk.

The guide assumes an organization has already built an infrastructure-as-a-service private cloud environment based on one of Microsoft’s three private cloud options, using the conceptual architecture and technical components that are recommended. More information about those options can be found in the “Microsoft Private Cloud” section of this guide.

The guide applies MOF’s IT service management principles to that conceptual architecture and technology stack. However, the guide’s approach and principles can be applied to any private cloud, regardless of the technology used, with the understanding that the specific technical references will not be relevant.

If you have deployed System Center 2012 or are planning on implementing it over the coming months, then this guide is essential reading before you deploy to get you in the correct frame of mind when designing your ITSM processes.

SCOM 2012 - Deploying Cumulative Update Rollup 1 (CU1) Hotfix

With the recent RTM of SCOM 2012, Microsoft have just announced the release of Cumulative Update Rollup 1 (CU1). Unlike previous Cumulative Rollups for SCOM 2007 R2 which were over 1GB in size, thankfully this one is only 74MB!

Edit July 2012: This update has now been replaced with Cumulative Update 2 (UR2). Check out my post on it's deployment here:

SCOM 2012 - Deploying Cumulative Update Rollup 2 (CU2) Hotfix

The process to deploy the update is quite simple and this time 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. Some of the information below is taken directly from kb 2686249 on the Microsoft Support website.

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 CU1 is as follows:

Server Infrastructure Deployment Order Overview:

• Management server or servers

• 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 CU1 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

Download CU1 to a location on your SCOM 2012 Management Server from the link below:

Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 - Operations Manager

Right mouse click on the downloaded package and choose 'Run As Administrator' to begin the extraction of files

Click Yes to accept the licence

Choose a location to extract the files to (this can be a shared network folder if needs be), then click OK twice to finish the extraction

You should now see the following files extracted to the chosen folder

Server Infrastructure

Now you need to apply the relevant .MSP package to your computers depending on the architecture (AMD64 or i386) and the role each one has in your SCOM environment (Server, Console, Web Console, Reporting, Gateway or Agent)

On servers that have User Account Control (UAC) enabled, be sure to run these updates from an elevated command prompt as you will most likely receive 'Access Denied' errors when running direct from the GUI.

The server I'm installing this to is a single SCOM 2012 Management Server with the Console and Web Console roles deployed so in this instance, I have to install three packages - KB2674695-AMD64-Server, KB2674695-AMD64-Console, KB2674695-AMD64-WebConsole.

Edit: Thanks to my good man Steve Beaumont for pointing out that I forgot to mention that when deploying the KB2674695-AMD64-WebConsole update to your Web Console server, a line within the 'web.config' file needs to be modified to allow the fixes within the update to be applied - nice one Steve, can't let the standards slip at all these days :)

The following is taken directly from the KB:

Web console fixes will work after adding the following line to the %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\CONFIG\web.config file:

<machineKey validationKey="AutoGenerate,IsolateApps"
decryptionKey="AutoGenerate,IsolateApps" validation="3DES" decryption="3DES"/>

The line should be added under <system.web>, as described in the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

911722 You may receive an error message when you access ASP.NET Web pages that have ViewState enabled after you upgrade from ASP.NET 1.1 to ASP.NET 2.0

In my environment, I also need to deploy the KB2674695-AMD64-Reporting package to my SQL Reporting Services (SSRS) server and the KB2674695-AMD64-Gateway to my SCOM 2012 Gateway server.

To install a package, just right mouse click on it and then choose Apply from the menu as below

You will see a window similar to the one below open up and run through some processes before automatically closing without any notification or reference to the process being completed.

Once you have updated your 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 7.0.8560.1021 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.

Thanks to Shaun Loughton for pointing these updated file names out in his comment below!

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 CU1 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.

To do this, 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

You now need to browse to the location that you expanded the CU1 file into previously and you should see three management pack files (.MP). Select all three files and click on the Open button

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 all three management packs confirming you have imported them without issue

Once you have upgraded the first SCOM 2012 Management Server and imported the updated management packs into your environment, you then need to repeat the .MSP installation process on all of your other SCOM 2012 server roles as well

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.


Unix/Linux Infrastructure

Once you have upgraded your Windows based servers and agents, all that's left to do now is to upgrade any Unix/Linux agents that you have in your environment. The following is taken directly from KB2686249:

Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 Operations Manager contains new agents and management packs for all supported Linux and UNIX operating systems. Therefore, to fully install Update Rollup 1, follow these steps to make sure that your monitoring of UNIX and Linux computers is up to date.

Download and then install the updated management packs from the following Microsoft website:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f947878-6bf6-48a1-adb1-3cc4c2e5d4af

Import the updated management pack for each version of Linux or UNIX that you are monitoring in your environment.

Use the Update-SCXAgent Windows PowerShell cmdlet or the UNIX/Linux Agent Upgrade Wizard in the Administration pane of the Operations Console to upgrade each agent to the latest version.

Note:The Management Pack Bundle files for each UNIX and Linux operating system version contain the management pack and agent files. It may take several minutes after importing the Management Pack Bundle for the agent files to become available for agent upgrades

For each UNIX or Linux Management Pack Bundle that is imported, the update installs new UNIX and Linux agents to the following folder:

Program Files\System Center 2012\Operations Manager\Server\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\DownloadedKits

The updated agents have file names that use the following format and a version number of 214:
Scx-1.3.0-214-server type.server version.architecture.package type

Notes:
The placeholder server type represents the name of the UNIX or Linux server product.
The placeholder server version represents the version number of the server type.
The placeholder architecture represents the processor architecture of the destination computer.
The placeholder package type represents the kind of installation file.

For example, the following is the file name format for the agent for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (x86):

Scx-1.3.0-214-sles.10.x86.rpm

The agents that are included with the original release of System Center 2012 Operations Manager have a version number of 204. These files are not removed during installation. These files are as follows:

Scx-1.3.0-206.aix.5.ppc.lpp.gz
Scx-1.3.0-206.aix.6.ppc.lpp.gz
Scx-1.3.0-206.aix.7.ppc.lpp.gz
Scx-1.3.0-206.hpux.11iv2.ia64.depot.Z
Scx-1.3.0-206.hpux.11iv2.parisc.depot.Z
Scx-1.3.0-206.hpux.11iv3.ia64.depot.Z
Scx-1.3.0-206.hpux.11iv3.parisc.depot.Z
Scx-1.3.0-206.rhel.4.x64.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.rhel.4.x86.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.rhel.5.x64.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.rhel.5.x86.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.sles.10.x64.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.sles.10.x86.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.sles.9.x86.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.solaris.10.sparc.pkg.Z
Scx-1.3.0-206.solaris.10.x86.pkg.Z
Scx-1.3.0-206.solaris.9.sparc.pkg.Z

That completes the deployment of SCOM 2012 Cumulative Update Rollup 1 (CU1) into your environment.

Newly Released System Center 2012 Downloads

We're only a week into the month of May and Microsoft have been busy releasing a whole raft of updates, technical documentation and Infrastructure Planning Design (IPD) guides for System Center 2012. The links below contain all of the releases for May to keep you up to date on what's been happening:

System Center 2012 – Service Manager Component Add-ons and Extensions

Application Approval Workflow

Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 - Service Manager

Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 – App Controller

System Center Monitoring Pack for System Center 2012 - Virtual Machine Manager

Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 - Operations Manager

System Center Monitoring Pack for UNIX and Linux Operating Systems

Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides (Includes the new Service Manager 2012 IPD)

Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 – Data Protection Manager

If you are serious about deploying System Center 2012 into your environment, then I suggest you download all of the documentation and updates from these links and get reading and installing as soon as possible!

Along with some great deep-dive information to be gleaned from the documentation, there are some additional feature set additions that some of these downloads bring such as Oracle Solaris 11 support in Operations Manager within the first Update Rollup 1.

SCOM 2012 - Installing the SCOrch 2012 Management Pack

Following on from my previous post on Installing the SCVMM 2012 Update Rollup 1 Management Pack into SCOM, this post will detail the steps required to install and configure the System Center 2012 Orchestrator (SCOrch) Management Pack that will enable you to monitor the health and availability of the SCOrch servers that deliver automation to your environment.

Although some people may not think this is a function that they really care about, the focus of System Center 2012 is all about the automation and self-service of your environment and if your main automation server isn't working as expected, then it's defintiely something that you want to know about!

For this post, it is presumed that you have already installed System Center 2012 Orchestrator and that you have deployed the SCOM 2012 agent to your SCorch servers. If you haven't yet installed SCOrch, then check out this post I wrote last year on what to do:

Installing System Center Orchestrator 2012

To begin, download the 'System Center Monitoring Pack for System Center 2012 - Orchestrator' from the link below (as always, make sure to also download the associated MP guide and read it from front to back first before deploying to get a good understanding of what's required):

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29269

The following Pre-Requisites must be in place before you deploy the management pack:

• The Windows Server 2008 Internet Information Services 7 Management Pack (version 6.0.6658 or later) must be imported to the management group prior to importing the Monitoring Pack for System Center 2012 - Orchestrator.

• Windows PowerShell is required on Orchestrator Management Servers and Runbook servers.

Once you've the MP downloaded to a location on your SCOM 2012 Management Server, browse to the location and run the SC2012OrchestratorMP.EXE file to open up the licence agreement screen and click Yes to continue.

From the window below, choose a location to extract the MP files to,then click OK

Now open up the SCOM Console, click on the Administration button from the Wunderbar down the bottom left hand side of the screen, expand Administration\Device Management, right mouse click on Management Packs and then choose the Import Management Packs option from the resulting menu as below

From the Import Management Packs window, click on the Add button and choose the Add from disk option. Select No from the window that asks if you want to go online to search for dependencies

Now browse to the location on your disk that you extracted the SCOrch management pack files to from earlier, select the two .MP files and then click Open

Confirm that both management pack files are ready for import as in the screen below and click on the Install button to continue

Once the management pack files have been imported successfully, you will see the screen below with a status of Imported for each one. Click on the Close button to exit the window.

Once the management pack has been imported, click on the Monitoring button in the Wunderbar on the bottom left hand side of the SCOM Console. Once in the Monitoring window, you should now see a new folder called System Center Orchestrator that represents the new management pack you've just installed. If you expand this folder and click on the Components view, you should see a nice diagram view of your System Center 2012 Orchestrator configuration as the screen below shows

This completes the installation of the SCOrch 2012 management pack.

SCOM 2012 - Installing the SCVMM 2012 Update Rollup 1 Management Pack

Recently, the System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) Update Rollup 1 Management Pack for System Center 2012 Operations Manager was released and as there are a number of steps that you need to follow to get it working and your SCVMM servers discovered, I thought I'd do up a blog post to cover everything that's needed.

Update 6th June 2012: I've recently ran into some issues when deploying this Update Rollup MP and thought I'd add in some pointers. If you have already integrated your SCVMM 2012 setup with your SCOM environment, then the Management Pack versions in there will be of a lower version than the new ones contained in the Update Rollup 1 Management Pack. It's because of this that you will need to make a change to a registry key and then re-import/update the existing old MP's back into SCOM.

For all this information in detail, firstly, make sure you download the 'OpsMgr_MP_VMM.doc' guide that is provided in the link below and once downloaded, ensure you read thoroughly the 'Mandatory Configuration' and 'Updates to this Monitoring Pack' sections.

Also, I found the steps in the technet link below much more precise than the information that is scattered in the MP guide so take a look at that too from here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh882396.aspx


First up, I'll presume that you've already installed SCOM 2012 and deployed the SCOM agent to the SCVMM 2012 server. Next, you will need to download the SCVMM 2012 Update Rollup 1 Management Pack from the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29679

Although this post references SCOM 2012, this process and management pack will work fine with SCOM 2007 as well. The following pre-requisites need to be in place though before the management pack installation:


System requirements

Supported operating systems: Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2

The Operations Manager configuration must meet the following requirements:

The VMM monitoring pack requires System Center Operations Manager 2007 with Service Pack 1 (SP1), System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, or System Center 2012 - Operations Manager.

The virtual environment managed by a management server must be monitored by a single management group in Operations Manager. However, an Operations Manager management group can monitor multiple VMM instances.

The VMM monitoring pack does not support agentless management of hosts and virtual machines in Operations Manager.

The following requirements must be met to run this monitoring pack:

• PowerShell 2.0 must be installed on all Operations Manager management servers.
• Operations console must be installed on the VMM management server. Note:The version must match the version of Operations Manager.
• The management server must have the following management packs installed:
• Windows Server Internet Information Services 2003
• Windows Server 2008 Internet Information Services 7
• Windows Server Internet Information Services Library
• SQL Server Core Library

Once all of the pre-requisites are in place, you can go ahead and run the installer for the management pack that you downloaded earlier.

From the first screen, accept the license agreement, then click Next

Choose the installation location and then click Next

Confirm the installation, then click Install

Once the installation has completed we now need to import the extracted management packs into SCOM. To do this go back to your SCOM 2012 console, click on the Administration button of the Wunderbar, expand Administration\Device Management, right mouse click on Management Packs and choose the Import Management Packs option from the resulting menu

From the Import Management Packs window, click on the Add button and then choose the Add From Disk option (click No when prompted to go online to check for dependencies)

Browse to the location that specified earlier when running the MP installer (the default location is C:\Program Files (x86)\System Center Management Packs\System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager Update Rollup 1 MP) and then select all of the management packs as below and click on the Open button to continue

You should now see all of the new SCVMM 2012 management packs listed in the window and ready for installation. Click on the Install button now to continue and choose Yes to acknowledge the security message that pops up.

When the import is complete, you should see the screen below showing that all management packs have been imported successfully. Click the Close button to close off the window.

Once you have all of the SCVMM 2012 management packs imported into SCOM, you then need to logon to your SCVMM 2012 server and open up the SCVMM console.

From within the console, click on the Settings button from the wunderbar, then click on System Center Settings from the Settings menu on the left hand side. In the central pane, you should see an entry for Operations Manager Server. Double click on this to continue.

From the Add Operations Manager wizard, click Next on the first screen to move on

At the Connection to Operations Manager window, type your SCOM Management Server name and choose an account with administrative permissions to your SCOM management group. You can create a new Run As Account at this point that will be stored within the SCVMM 2012 security model for future administrative purposes if you wish.

Choose whether or not you want to enable the PRO and Maintenance Mode integration features of the SCVMM 2012 management pack, then click Next to move on

Next up, specify an account that has administrative credentials on the SCVMM server, then click Next to continue

Finally, confirm your settings, and click on the Finish button to begin the integration.

When the integration process has completed, you should see a screen similar to the one below showing a successful operation

Now all that's left to do is to go back to your SCOM server, open the console at the Monitoring tab and expand the Virtual Machine Manager management pack view folder on the left hand side.

Click on the Agent State view, wait a few minutes for the discovery of your newly integrated SCVMM server to complete, and you should then see your SCVMM server's state view similar to the screen below.

If you chose the PRO option when configuring your integration, you can also then expand the PRO folder from the SCOM console Monitoring window and you should see your SCVMM server and any active PRO tips listed too.

That concludes the installation and configuration of the SCVMM 2012 Update Rollup 1 Management Pack into your SCOM environment.