SCOM - New Management Pack for Team Foundation Server 2013 Available

Microsoft have just released a new Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2013 management pack for System Center Operations Manager (SCOM/OpsMgr).

Here's what it does (taken from the MP guide):

"The Team Foundation Server 2013 Monitoring Management Pack provides both proactive and reactive monitoring of Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2013. It monitors TFS components such as application tier server instances, team project collections, build servers, and proxy servers.

The monitoring provided by this management pack includes availability and configuration monitoring, performance data collection, and default thresholds. You can integrate the monitoring of Team Foundation Server components into your service-oriented monitoring scenarios."

This MP is essentially exactly the same as the TFS 2012 MP with the only exception being that it now supports TFS 2013.

However, according to the MP guide, there's one pretty big caveat here with this MP that you need to understand.....

It's not supported to run on System Center 2012 R2 - Operations Manager!

(see below screenshot of supported configurations noted in the MP guide)

So, if you're running SCOM 2007 SP1 right through to SCOM 2012 SP1, then you're good to go and all you'll need to do is read through the MP guide for full instructions on how to get it imported (you do read the MP guides every time you deploy an MP right?)

But, if you're running the latest and greatest version of SCOM 2012 R2, then you'll have to wait for support to follow I'm afraid.

Hopefully this post saves some people a bit of time!

New System Center 2012 R2 Wallpaper Available

If you attended the last ever Microsoft Management Summit last year, you might have noticed that a lot of the attendees were using tablet and laptop devices that sported some really cool System Center 2012 wallpaper designs like the ones below:

These wallpapers were created by Cleber Marques and can still be downloaded from here.

Over a year later and Cleber has updated some of the images to System Center 2012 R2 as shown in the below examples:

If you'd like to sport these cool graphics as a lock screen or desktop background for that new tablet that Santa brought you, then go ahead and download them from here:

http://bit.ly/CSCwallpaper

Thanks Cleber!

Free Training on Azure and the Windows Azure Pack (WAP)

Yesterday I managed to get some time to participate in a very useful (and free) online webinar that was organised by my buddies over in the UK - Steve Beaumont and Simon Skinner - who run the excellent Cloud OS Community website and user group.

 

The guys managed to get my Irish MVP colleague Damian Flynn to put together a presentation on Microsoft's relatively new Windows Azure Pack (which is designed for on premise private cloud/ IT infrastructure management) and how it compares to the public cloud Windows Azure model. Although I've a pretty good understanding of the Windows Azure Pack, this session has come at a good time for me because I'm currently in the process of working through our own (Ergo's) deployments of it for our datacentre and customer offerings.

The session was just over an hour long with some very useful Q & A's throughout and not even a day after the event, the guys have uploaded the video along with all of the links that were mentioned during the session.

If you have some time and are interested in learning about this cool new technology, then I'd highly recommend checking out the content here:

http://www.cloudoscommunity.com/blogs/cid/3951/Windows-Azure-Pack-Webinar

Enjoy!

Download the Free ebook: Introducing Microsoft System Center 2012 R2

The folks at Microsoft Press have given everyone an early Xmas present with the release for download of a new e-book titled 'Introducing Microsoft System Center 2012 R2, Technical Overview'.

I've taken a quick scan through the content and it looks like they've covered everything that you need to know as an introduction to the System Center 2012 R2 suite of cloud and datacenter management products. An added bonus for me is that my good friend and ex-workmate John McCabe wrote a significant piece on the new Service Management Automation (SMA) tool working with the Windows Azure Pack in Chapter 10.

A big thanks has to go to the main authors Mitch Tulloch and Symon Perriman along with all of the other expert contributors to this book for making it a free resource to the general community - well done all!

You can download the book in PDF format from here:

Free ebook: Introducing Microsoft System Center 2012 R2

Irish Community Launch Event for Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1

If you're working with Microsoft products and are based in Ireland, then the Citywest Hotel & Conference Centre is the place to be on Thursday 28th November. The Windows and System Center Community over here are holding an event to launch the recently released Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 offerings from Microsoft.

It's an MVP driven event and will have some great speakers presenting content across two tracks on the day. You can learn more about and register for the event at the official website here:

http://techcamp2013.wordpress.com/

 Here's the agenda (some sessions may be subject to change):

Time	Windows Server & System Center	Windows 8.1 & Device Management
08:00-9.00	Registration
09:00-09:40	Keynote   Speaker: Dave Northey, Microsoft   Learn how the entire package from Microsoft fits together
09:45-11:00	Windows Server 2012 R2 Speaker: Aidan Finn, MVP What does WS2012 R2 bring to virtualisation, cloud, storage and networking?	Windows 8.1 in the Business Speaker: Damian Flynn, MVP How Windows 8.1 Pro and Enterprise can enhance user experience an enable BYOD.
11:00-11:30	Break Get a drink/snack & meet the sponsors.
11:30-12:45	System Center Virtual Manage Manager & Hybrid Cloud Speaker: Damian Flynn, MVP Start deploying and taking control of the entire data center with VMM 2012 R2!	Windows 8.1 Devices Speaker: Paul Shanahan, Microsoft Devices are a central ingredient to the “Windows 8.1 in the business” story. What are Microsoft and partners doing?
12:45-13:30	Lunch Get something to eat & meet the sponsors
13:30-14:45	System Center Service manager & Self-Service/Automation Speaker: Paul Keely, MVP See how System Center can automate repetitive processes, optimise time planning for IT, and change the business.	Windows Intune Speakers: David McCormick & Patrick Herlihy, Microsoft Windows Intune is a much bigger solution than you think, including branch offices, BYOD, and covering all kinds of devices (Windows & others).
14:45-15:00	Break Refuel for the afternoon push & meet the sponsors.
15:00-16:15	System Center Operations Manager & Service Management  Speaker: Kevin Greene, MVP It delivers a service, but just how is that service performing?	System Center Configuration Manager Speaker: Niall Brady, MVP Take control of every device in your enterprise like you’ve always dreamed, but keep the users happy with self-service?  That’s not possible, right? Wrong!

SCOM - New SQL Management Pack and Summary Dashboard Released

Microsoft has just released a new management pack update for monitoring SQL. We first got a preview of this management pack at the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS 2013) in Las Vegas during the Workloads: Managing Windows, IIS & SQL Technologies session and since then, we've been waiting in earnest for it's release - mainly because of the new SQL Server 2012 Summary dashboard that comes bundled with it.

The release of this MP is a bonus for me as it's just in time for me to be able to include it into my demo for my upcoming session at System Center Universe 2013 DACH.

Here's a screenshot of what the new dashboard looks like (keep in mind that this dashboard will only run on SQL 2012 databases):

The new MP comes with some additional monitors, rules and all round improvements - here's a list of them taken directly from the MP guide:

• Collect DB Active Requests count
• Collect DB Active Sessions count
• Collect DB Active Transactions count
• Collect DB Engine Thread count
• Thread Count monitor
• Transaction Log Free Space (%) monitor
• Transaction Log Free Space (%) collection
• Collect DB Engine CPU Utilization (%)
• CPU Utilization (%) monitor for DB engine
• Buffer Cache Hit Ratio monitor
• Collect DB Engine Page Life Expectancy (s)
• Page Life Expectancy monitor
• Collect DB Disk Read Latency (ms)
• Collect DB Disk Write Latency (ms)
• Disk Read Latency monitor
• Disk Write Latency monitor
• Collect DB Transactions per second count
• Collect DB Engine Average Wait Time (ms)
• Average Wait Time monitor
• Collect DB Engine Stolen Server Memory (MB)
• Stolen Server Memory monitor
• Collect DB Allocated Free Space (MB)
• Collect DB Used Space (MB)
• Collect DB Disk Free Space (MB)
• SQL Re-Compilation monitor
• SPN monitor improved
• Support for special symbols in DB names.
• Improved AlwaysOn seed discovery
• Run As configuration changes to support Low privilege for SQL Server 2012 Cluster
• Improved performance of AlwaysOn discovery
• Custom User Policy Discovery and Monitoring performance optimization
• Hid AG health object from Diagram view

You can download the MP and its associated guide from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=10631

As always, make sure you read the guide from front to back (this is a big one!) and test the MP out first before deploying into production.

New System Center 2012 - Orchestrator Book Available Now!

This blog has been real quiet of late due to me putting the finishing touches to our upcoming "Mastering Windows Server 2012 R2" book, but I wanted to do up a quick post here to highlight another book which was authored by some really good friends of mine in the System Center community.

This book is based on System Center 2012 - Orchestrator and is an excellent place to go to learn about Microsoft's automation solution in the System Center suite. Here's an excerpt from the book's description:

"Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 simplifies the process of automating systems administration tasks. Originally a third-party product named Opalis, which Microsoft acquired in 2009, Orchestrator provides a simplified way of building complex automation. System Center Orchestrator is a complete solution that goes beyond basic automation.
"Microsoft System Center 2012 Orchestrator Cookbook" will teach you how to plan, create and manage powerful runbooks to help you automate mission-critical and routine administration tasks.
In this practical Cookbook you will learn how to master System Center 2012 by creating runbooks to control and automate every feature possible. You will start by learning how to efficiently install and secure System Center Orchestrator."

I've just purchased a copy and you can get your own copy of the book today in 'dead-tree' format from here or in electronic format from here.

Enjoy!

System Center 2012 SP1 Update Rollup 3 is Now Available for Download!

Microsoft have just announced that Update Rollup 3 (UR3) for System Center 2012 SP1 has dropped and is available for download. There's a number of fixes for AppController, DPM and SCOM.

Here's an overview of what's fixed in this update for each product:

App Controller (2012 SP1) Update (KB2853227)

Issue 1

• When you try to add a Microsoft System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) connection by using either the UI or a Windows PowerShell command, the connection is unsuccessful. Additionally, you receive the following error message:

Connection address must be a fully qualified domain name.

This problem may occur when the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) contains a hyphen (-) in the last part of the name.


Issue 2

• When a Windows Azure subscription contains a high-memory (A6 or A7) Windows Azure virtual machine, Azure functionality is not available in Microsoft System Center 2012 App Controller.

Additionally, you receive the following error message:

Retrieved data is incomplete.

When you click More details, you receive a "Service Unavailable" message. You may also receive a "Requested value 'A6' was not found" message.


Issue 3

• When you try to use App Controller together with a proxy server, you receive the following error message:

(407) authentication required.

Note App Controller does not use configured proxy settings.


Issue 4

• When you view the network properties of a deployed virtual machine and then click OK, the network connection is set to None. For example, the network connection field is empty and does not show the current network adapter.

 

Issue 5

• When you move quickly between virtual machines in a list and then click the Properties task, the properties page for the previously selected virtual machine is displayed.

 

Issue 6

• When you deploy an Azure virtual machine when the User must change password at next logon option is selected, you receive the following error message:

Bad Request

 

 

App Controller (2012 SP1) Setup Update (KB2823452)

  

Issue 1

 

• App Controller cannot be installed if the Microsoft SQL Server database server name starts with a number.

 

See Installation of App Controller to a Remote SQL Server fails with Exception Error Code: 0x80131500

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2802110/ ) for more information.

 

 

Issue 2

 

• Setup incorrectly reports that the SQL Server database has insufficient disk space.

 

 

Issue 3

 

• Setup on a non-English operating system is unsuccessful when it tries to enable Internet Information Services (IIS)

 

 

Data Protection Manager (DPM 2012 SP1) Update (KB2853210)

 

Issue 1

 

• When you use a tape library that has many slots, the Microsoft System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager database becomes bloated over time.

 

Issue 2

 

• When you try to set up library sharing when you use Data Protection Manager SP1 Update Rollup 2 (UR2), you receive the following error message:

 

Failed to execute RBACRolePermissionOnStoredProcScript.sql on DPMServer\Database

 

Issue 3

 

• When you run a Windows PowerShell script that retrieves the protection groups, the console crashes.

 

Issue 4

 

• The VMM Helper Service stops responding, and no virtual machines are backed up. A restart enables the backups to continue.

 

 

Operations Manager (SCOM 2012 SP1) Update (KB2852565)

 

Issue 1

 

• The Audit Collection Services (ACS) dtPrincipal tables sometimes are missing a user's domain name.

 

Issue 2

 

• If you decide to see more than two days' worth of data in a Service Level Dashboard view, the data is displayed from the Daily Aggregated data and does not contain the last two days' worth of data.

 

Issue 3

 

• The Health Service stops collecting performance data on Windows Server 2008 R2.

 

Issue 4

 

• The web console crashes when the Active Alerts view and the Windows Computer State view are accessed at the same time when Internet Explorer 9 is used.

 

Issue 5

 

• A memory leak may occur in the console when the performance widgets dashboard is left open.

 

Issue 6

 

• When the Operator role is used, many 26319 events are generated. This causes performance problems.

 

Issue 7

 

• Health Service availability reports are incorrect because of duplicate entries in the HealthServiceOutage table.

 

Issue 8

 

• When the Orchestrator Integration pack is under a high-load scenario, a software development kit (SDK) process deadlock may occur.

 

Issue 9

 

This update includes fixes to the following Advisor Connector issues:

• Group opt-in
• Microsoft System Center 2012 Operations Manager gateway and Microsoft monitoring
• Windows PowerShell cmdlets
• Health state
• Microsoft Knowledge Base article links in Operations Manager console alerts

Operations Manager (SCOM 2012 SP1) - UNIX and Linux Monitoring (Management Pack Update)

Issue 1

• The Solaris agent cannot be installed on Solaris 11.1 because it does not find the prerequisite OpenSSL package.

Issue 2

• Knowledge editing pages are not displayed when monitors that were created by the Shell Command templates are edited.

Issue 3

• Log files that are encoded in schemes other than ASCII cannot be monitored.

You can choose to install these updates either automatically through Windows Update (recommended) or manually by clicking on the relevant download links from the official KB article on UR3 here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2836751

As always though, make sure to read through the installation instructions for each product and understand what's involved.

TechEd North America 2013 Kicks Off Announcing Heaps of New MSFT Releases

Microsoft's flagship conference - TechEd 2013 - is kicking off today (June 3rd) in New Orleans. The Day 1 keynote speech by Microsoft's Brad Anderson is of particular interest due to the media storm that has been generated around the so-called Windows 'Blue' wave of updates across their client and server stack.

Here's a high-level summary of the keynote and announcements that have been made:

Windows 8.1

Microsoft announced the newest release of their client Operating System - called Windows 8.1. This release will be made available as a free upgrade to existing Windows 8 customers. The preview bits will be made available on June 26th and the final release will hit the shelves before the year is out.

The following Windows 8.1 features have been demonstrated or mentioned during the keynote:

• Enhanced tile customization
• Group policy management of the Start Screen
• A new feature for Windows 8.1 and PowerPoint called Mirrorcast allows Windows 8.1 devices to easily pair with compatible streamless devices to allow seamless wireless presenting.
• Workplace Join is a new feature that allows you to easily connect your non-domain joined device to the workplace and to just as easily remove all the customization and management of that device once you're finished working for the day.
• Apps can be managed from the cloud with Windows Intune.

Windows Server 2012 R2

As the name suggests, Windows Server 2012 now has an updated release too. Here's what's been announced for it:

• Work Folders is a new feature that should most likely see usage of applications such as Dropbox getting less and less use in the enterprise.
• Active Directory on-premise now works with Azure Active Directory.
• Storage spaces are taken to the next level with enhanced performance and scalability. With Storage Tiering, you'll get approx. a 16x improvement on Windows Server 2012 RTM.
• Inbox VPN gateway for Network Virtualization

Hyper-V

Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V has a number of significant enhancements, some of which are:

(Update - some of the info below has been added as features get mentioned in the breakout sessions)

• Using DeDup storage with virtual machines can now enhance the performance of the virtual machines by intelligently caching the storage.
• Live Migration compression now means that your virtual machines will migrate between hosts far quicker than with Windows Server 2012 RTM.
• Using RDMA with Live Migration will enhance the live migration of your VM's even quicker than with the compression option.
• Hyper-V replica can be managed across sites and with greater scale using the Hyper-V Recovery Manager feature of Windows Azure.
• Remote Access via VMBus - this is seriously cool. It basically means we now get similar functionality to the HP ILO or Dell DRAC features with our virtual machines in Hyper-V.
• Online grow and shrink of virtual hard disks to manage your virtual disk space allocations on the fly.
• Replication of virtual machines can now be extended to a third site (as opposed to the two site limit in Windows Server 2012 RTM)

Windows Azure

Azure retains it original name but a plethora of new features have been added:

(Update - some of the info below has been added as features get mentioned in the breakout sessions)

• Per minute billing
• No charge for stopped virtual machines
• Special rate for MSDN subscribers making dev/test scenarios much more feasible.
• Uses the same Hyper-V hypervisor as in Windows Server 2012.
• We can now see how much credit we've used directly inside the portal making it easier to keep the credit card bills down!
• Azure Active Directory now works with Windows Server 2012 on-premise Active Directory
• The Windows Azure Pack (WAP) has been announced. This is the new name for the Windows Azure Services for Windows Server (aka project Katal). Good whitepaper on this here (http://t.co/ahLGIn2zOQ)
• Hyper-V Recovery Manager delivers enterprise level replication of your virtual machines between sites.

System Center 2012 R2

Like Windows Server, System Center 2012 now gets an 'R2' release. The only mention in the keynote of System Center was around Intune integrating with on-premise ConfigMgr to manage Windows 8.1 apps but this integration is nothing new. Hopefully as the week goes on, we'll get some additional feature updates on what's new.

(Update - some of the info below has been added as features get mentioned in the breakout sessions)

• Built-in service template for Windows Server 2012 R2 Gateway functionality as part of SCVMM 2012 R2.
• New Java Application Performance Monitoring (APM) functionality in SCOM 2012 R2

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

Here's what's coming for all you developers out there:

• Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Visual Studio are getting new releases this coming year.
• Microsoft has acquired a company called 'InRelease' that delivers integrated release management into TFS.
• Enhanced load-test service will be delivered from the cloud.

SQL 2014

SQL has been given a new release too and we should see some preview releases towards the end of the year. Here's some of the new features:

• New enterprise-level data insights with Excel project GeoFlow
• Data Explorer helps to make use of big-data and translate it into tangible business use
• Transaction processing now comes 'in-memory'

Summary

That just about wraps up all I could gather from the keynote without reviewing the recording again later but I think it'll give people the general feel of what's been announced.

You can check out the keynote video and a few selected live sessions at TechEd NA on Microsoft's Channel 9 website here: http://channel9.msdn.com/

Also, if you're looking for up-to-the-minute updates from some of the best sessions on the 'Modern Datacenter' track over there, then check out Aidan Finn's blog here: http://www.aidanfinn.com/

I think it's fair to say now that if you're working in the IT space, there's some pretty exciting times ahead for us :)

SCOM - New MP Available for the DHCP Role on Windows Server 2012!

Microsoft have just released the new management pack (MP) for the DHCP role on Windows Server 2012. This MP has support for DHCP clustering and failover functionality that Windows Server 2012 brings to the table.

You can download this new MP here:

System Center Management Pack for Windows Server 2012 DHCP

Note: Unfortunately this new MP won't discover your older Windows Server 2003/2008 DHCP servers so you'll be stuck with the original (and badly written in my opinion). If that's what you're looking to monitor, then click here to download the DHCP 2003/2008 MP.


This new MP follows hot on the heels of the recently released MP's for:

• Windows Server Base O/S
• Exchange Server 2013 
• Windows 8 Client O/S
• DNS

These recent releases along with the change in MP quality control are coming to us thick and fast now thanks to the internal initiative in Microsoft led by Daniel Savage and his team. You can keep tabs on all of the MP's currently available as well as the ones that are soon due for release on the TechNet MP Wiki here:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/16174.microsoft-management-packs.aspx

New System Center 2012 and Windows Server 2012 Downloads Available

There's been a surge in new downloads available from Microsoft on Windows Server and System Center 2012 over the past few days. Here's a sample of some of my favourites:

Tools and Whitepapers

Technical Documentation Download for Technical Scenarios for System Center 2012 SP1

Microsoft Operations Readiness Toolkit

Capacity Planner for Hyper-V Replica

Enabling Hybrid Cloud Today with Microsoft Technologies Whitepaper

Blogs

Server & Cloud Blog - Partnering Through Disruptive Change

SCVMM Engineering Blog - Logical Networks (Part III) – Network Isolation

SCOM Engineering Blog - New Video: System Center 2012 Operations Manager Dashboards: Visualizing Alert Data

SCOM Engineering Blog - KB: Operations Manager agents with teamed network adapters fail to be discovered and monitored

SCOM Engineering Blog - Local Resolution Time monitor in the OpsMgr DNS Management Pack may show unexpected results

DPM and System State Backup Explained


MVP Pro Speaker Series - (These are seriously excellent and a must-watch for anyone serious about System Center 2012)

Backup that really works using multiple members and functions of the System Center 2012 SP1 family (Level 300)

Building Workstation and Application Deployment Automation with Service Manager and Orchestrator (Level 300)

Operations Manager Evolution: Taking Your Environment to the Next Level with Operations Manager (Level 300)


Enjoy!

SCOM 2012 - Exchange 2013 Management Pack Is Now Available!

Microsoft have just made available the new Exchange 2013 MP for SCOM. The big news with this MP is that the Microsoft Exchange Correlation Service that was present in the Exchange 2010 MP is now no more!

I haven't had a chance to give this a good test run (that chance should come next week hopefully), but for now, you can take a look at the official TechNet Blog Post on the release here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2013/05/14/exchange-2013-management-pack-released.aspx

The technical documentation for the MP can be reviewed here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee758046(v=exchg.150).aspx

Finally, download the MP here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39039

Microsoft are always interested in peoples feedback on their MP's so if you have any 'constructive' feedback to give, add a comment to this post and I'll pass it onto the team who've developed it.

Recordings from our Windows Server 2012 Deep Dive and Mini-MMS Event, April 22-23, Dublin

A few weeks back we delivered two days of Windows Server 2012 Deep Dive sessions out in Microsoft Ireland and I've just received a mail that the session videos are now available.

For me, I totally enjoyed listening to the other guys present and definitely learned some new tips and tricks along with gaining a better understanding of Windows Server 2012 features through the content delivered.

I did a lightning roundup of some of my favourite sessions that were presented at MMS 2013 - unfortunately I couldn't get all of the ones I wanted in there but hopefully it gives people an idea of what they can see if they go and download the videos from Channel 9.

Dave Northey has done an excellent job in co-ordinating the event and overseeing the final recording content so if you have some time to learn about some of the new enhancements that you get with Windows Server 2012, then go check out the Deep Dive videos from here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/ieitpro/archive/2013/05/14/windows-server-2012-deep-dive-two-days-of-free-training.aspx

SCOM - Updated Windows Server Management Pack Released (version 6.0.7026.0)

Just seen an e-mail coming in notifying us that the SCOM Windows Server MP has received an update. Here's what's changed since the last release:

• Fixed a bug in Microsoft.Windows.Server.2008.Monitoring.mp where the performance information for Processor was not getting collected.

• Made monitoring of Cluster Shared Volume consistent with monitoring of Logical Disks by adding performance collection rules. (“Cluster Shared Volume - Free space / MB”,”Cluster Shared Volume - Total size / MB”,”Cluster Shared Volume - Free space / %”,”Cluster Disk - Total size / MB”,”Cluster Disk - Free space / MB”,”Cluster Disk - Free space / %”)

• Fixed bug in Microsoft.Windows.Server.ClusterSharedVolumeMonitoring.mp where the Cluster disks running on Windows Server 2008 (non R2) were not discovered.

• Fixed bug 'Cluster Disk Free Space Percent' and Cluster Disk Free Space MB' monitors generate alerts with bad descriptions when the volume label of a cluster disk is empty.

• Added feature to raise event when NTLM requests time out and customers are unable to use mailboxes, outlook stops responding, due to the low default value for Max Concurrent API registry Key (HLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Netlogon\Parameters) , which is a ceiling for the maximum NTLM or Kerberos PAC password validations a server can take care of at a time. It uses the “Netlogon” performance counter to check for the issue.

You can download the new MP version and its associated guide from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=9296

SCOM 2012 - SP1 UR2 Web Console Error with Savision LiveMaps

Last Thursday, Marnix Wolf did up an excellent blog post about an error that started occurring after Update Rollup 2 for SCOM 2012 SP1 was deployed into environments that had Savision LiveMaps deployed. Essentially, when  SP1 UR2 and that particular release of LiveMaps don't like each other very much, you are presented with the following error details:

An Unexpected Error Has Occurred
System.Reflection.ReflectionTypeLoadException: [ReflectionTypeLoad_LoadFailed]

Check out the post by Marnix on what he did to determine the cause (take particular note of his technique for performing trace logging of SCOM 2012 as this is an invaluable way of determining root cause of issues inside your SCOM infrastructure):

http://thoughtsonopsmgr.blogspot.com/2013/05/om12-sp1-rup2-web-console-error.html

Before you dig deep into troubleshooting this yourself or thinking that Savision haven't got a solution to the problem - fear not, they have now!

I've just seen this on their website while looking for a solution to this problem myself:

http://www.savision.com/resources/news/fix-om12-sp1-ur2-web-console

They've released updated versions of the LiveMaps Summary Widget MP's that will alleviate the error above.

Hopefully this will save some people a bit of time and effort if they come across this problem.

New Downloads: Microsoft IaaS Product Line Architecture Guides

Microsoft have just published two excellent guides to kick start your Friday morning coffee read ;) that are based on their Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) Product Line Architecture (PLA). The first guide is mostly based on Windows Server 2012 storage and virtualization and the second guide is based around System Center 2012.

• Infrastructure-as-a-Service Product Line Architecture Fabric Architecture Guide (Windows Server 2012)

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38817

• Infrastructure-as-a-Service Product Line Architecture Fabric Management Architecture Guide (System Center 2012)

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38813


Go check them out and I'm sure you'll learn something new from them. Also, the Microsoft PLA team are keen to get some feedback on these documents so if you have any 'constructive' feedback that you want me to pass on, feel free to leave a comment and I'll do just that.

Winners of the Mastering SCOM 2012 Book Competition!

A while back I ran a competition on this blog that required people to download and evaluate System Center 2012 in return for the chance to win a copy of the 'Mastering System Center 2012 - Operations Manager' book that I was involved in last year.

We had a target of 250 downloads to reach and eventually a few weeks ago we hit that target. Due to work commitments (and authoring another book), I've been 'slightly' delayed in announcing the winners of the competition!

To pick the winners, I used the same method that Hans Vredevoort had on his excellent Hyper-V.nu blog a while back  and asked my eldest son to pick two numbers from the full list of entrants that I had collated together into an Excel spread-sheet.

The result of his picks mean that Reidar Johansen...

 

and  Stanislav Zhelyazkov are the two lucky winners.

 Well Done Guys!

If you didn't win, I'd still highly recommend that you get your hands on the hard copy of the book from here or the e-copy from here. Adding it to your technical library will do you no harm at all if you're serious about System Center 2012 and want to ramp up your SCOM 2012 knowledge.

I'll be in touch shortly with the two winners and a massive THANK YOU to everyone who participated in boosting System Center 2012 awareness and evaluating it in their environments.

SCOM - Update to MPViewer Tool (Version 2.2.2)

If you've been reading this blog over the last few months, you might have noticed a post that I did called: SCOM - Essential Community MPs, Scripts & Tools to Enhance Your Deployments. In this post I mentioned some excellent free tools developed originally by Microsoft's Boris Yanushpolsky that form a part of nearly every SCOM deployment I work on. I also mentioned that these tools received an overhaul by Microsoft's Daniele Muscetta to make them compatible with SCOM 2012.

News just in is that Daniele has given the MPViewer tool an update to resolve some bug issues and if you haven't used this tool yet, then I'd highly recommend downloading it along with the OverrideExplorer and Proxy Settings ones. They'll save you a heap of time in the long run with your SCOM troubleshooting and deployments.

Check out the download link to these tools here: Boris’s OpsMgr Tools – Updated

Ergo 20/20 Vision Event, Wed 24th April, Cork, Ireland

If you're based in Ireland and have some free time next week, then why not head down to the lovely Radisson Blu Hotel in County Cork and join Ergo for our 20/20 Vision event.

This event will have sessions on ICT-as-a-Service, Azure, BYOD, Lync, Dynamics CRM and much more. I'm presenting on System Center and Windows Server 2012 in Session 1.

Check out our micro-site here for registration info:

http://www.20-20vision.ie/index.php

OpsMgr 2012 Unleashed Book

I've just arrived home from the commute to work today (still can't believe it's snowing at the end of March!) and found that this had arrived by post for me

As someone who has been working on pretty much nothing else but SCOM/OpsMgr for the past 3 years, the two previous versions of this book - System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed and System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Unleashed - played a massive role in helping me understand how to deploy and administer this complex monitoring and management tool.

When I heard that the latest version for SCOM 2012 was available for pre-order months ago, I wasted no time in getting out the credit card and purchasing it in both 'dead-tree' and then kindle formats. This blog post isn't a review of the book in any way, shape or form but simply just some quick observations along with some advice to anyone out there who's working on SCOM.

The book is a massive 1500 pages of front-to-back content that gives you expert tips and advice in every chapter. As someone who has tried their hand at writing a SCOM 2012 book that came close to 700 pages, I can assure you it's no mean feat to put together this amount of good high-level content.

When you check out the members of the authoring team whose efforts combined to bring us this book, it's a "who's who" of the SCOM and System Center world:

Lead Authors

Kerrie Meyler - System Center Cloud and Datacenter MVP
Cameron Fuller - System Center Cloud and Datacenter MVP
John Joyner - System Center Cloud and Datacenter MVP

With

Pete Zerger - System Center Cloud and Datacenter MVP
Jonathan Almquist - Scomskills.com
Alex Fedotyev - AppDynamics.com
Scott Moss - System Center Cloud and Datacenter MVP
Oskar Landman - System Center Cloud and Datacenter MVP
Marnix Wolf - System Center Cloud and Datacenter MVP

Technical Editor

Kevin Holman - Microsoft TSP (owner of probably the best SCOM blog on the internet!)


So with this kind of SCOM authoring firepower bursting out of the 1500 pages, I don't even need to read through this book to tell you that it's a quality resource that you absolutely have to add to your library if you're serious about SCOM.

Side Note (and slight groupie story...)

I've just noticed that a link to one of my posts on SCOM 2012 APM got a mention and plug in the "General Resources" section of the OpsMgr 2012 Unleashed book and wanted to say a huge and sincere THANK YOU to whoever it was from the writing team above that took the time to read over my post and feel it worthy of a mention. It wasn't that long ago that I attended MMS 2011 and won a signed copy of the OpsMgr 2007 R2 Unleashed book from Cameron Fuller whilst attending (what still is so far for me) the most fun and interesting SCOM presentation I've ever seen. Reading that book on the plane back to Dublin, I never thought a few years later I'd have a mention in it's successor and it's an honour to be included.