Monday, January 14, 2013

DPM 2012 - Installing Service Pack 1 RTM (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this short series on DPM 2012 - Installing Service Pack 1 RTM, I detailed the pre-upgrade tasks that need to be carried out to prepare your DPM 2012 environment for upgrading to Service Pack 1 (SP1) along with the steps required to get your primary DPM 2012 management server upgraded. This post will go through the final steps of the upgrade deployment process to ensure that your agents, secondary DPM servers and backed up data are all running smoothly after the upgrade.

Upgrading the Agents

Once the upgrade of SP1 is complete on your primary DPM 2012 server, you will then need to update any DPM agents that you have deployed in your environment. To do this, open the DPM 2012 SP1 console and click on the Management tab from the wunderbar and then click on the Agents link to display a list of all your agents awaiting upgrade as shown below.


When you click on the Update Available link beside an agent, you will be presented with the following window asking you to confirm if you want to proceed with upgrading the agent to SP1. Click Yes to begin the agent upgrade process.



Once the agent update process completes, you should then be able to verify the SP1 upgrade by confirming that the version of the Protection Agent is set to 4.1.3313.0 as shown below


You might also notice from the Agents list that one or two servers have a status of Restart Pending beside them. These will need to be restarted before you can backup data from them and any downtime due to this will need to be planned for as part of your maintenance schedule.

Run a Manual Consistency Check on Protected Data

Once the primary server and the agents have all been upgraded, you will now need to run a manual consistency check on all of your protection groups. This for me forms the longest part of DPM upgrades when in production environments as the more data you have being backed up, the longer these manual consistency checks will take.

To run the consistency checks, open up the DPM 2012 SP1 console and navigate to the Protection tab in the wunderbar. Once here, you will see that all of your protection groups are in an inconsistent state. Simply right-mouse click on a protection group and then choose the Perform a Consistency Check option from the resulting menu as shown below to kick off a consistency check of replica's contained in that protection group.


Repeat this task on all protection groups until they are all returned to a healthy state.

Upgrade Stand-Alone Consoles

If you have deployed the DPM 2012 console onto any other servers in your environment (such as to support integration with System Center 2012 Orchestrator for example), you will need to first uninstall the Microsoft System Center 2012 - DPM Remote Administration application from the computer before deploying the upgraded SP1 version.

To uninstall the stand-alone console, logon to the server with an administrative account, click Start and type appwiz.cpl as below. 



Now hit Enter to open the Programs and Features applet, find the Microsoft System Center 2012 - DPM Remote Administration program from the list, right-mouse click on it and then choose the Uninstall option to remove it as below


Once you have uninstalled the previous version, browse to the location that you have extracted/mounted the DPM 2012 SP1 media to and then with an administrative account, right-mouse click on the Setup executable and choose the Run As Administrator option to begin the installation


From the Installation splash screen, choose the DPM Remote Administration link as shown below


Accept the licence agreement and click OK


Click Next from the Welcome screen


When all the prerequisites have passed, click Next to move on


Choose your installation location, then click Next to continue


Select your Microsoft Update option and then hit the Install button to begin the SP1 installation of the Remote Administration feature


When the installer is finished, you should see the screen below telling you that it has been successful and you can then hit the Close button to finish


Finally, open up the newly installed stand-alone console, choose the DPM server that you wish to connect with and then ensure that the title bar of the console references Service Pack 1 as below.


Upgrade the Secondary DPM Servers

If you have deployed any additional DPM 2012 servers as a secondary or disaster recovery solution (a DPM server that is backing up another DPM server), then you will also need to run the SP1 upgrade on these. The process is identical to the steps you would have already followed up to this point but for reference, here are the steps again:

On the Secondary Server:
  • Close Administrator Console and Management Shell
  • Carry out the tasks in the Upgrade Primary DPM Server section in Part 1 of this series
  • Upgrade any protection agents on the secondary server by following the Upgrading the Agents section earlier in this post
  • Run a consistency check on all protected data by following the steps in the Run a Manual Consistency Check on Protected Data section earlier in this post

Post Upgrade Tasks

So we're just about finished the SP1 upgrade of DPM 2012 and all that's left to do is to carry out a few quick tasks/checks - some of which may not be applicable to every environment.

  • If you have previously configured tape library sharing and had to remove it as part of the initial pre-upgrade tasks for SP1, you can now go ahead and reconfigure it again using the How to Setup Tape Library Sharing link on TechNet for information.
  • If you had SCVMM Hyper-V Live Migration configured before doing the upgrade, you must run Set-DpmGlobalProperty -KnownVmmServers <VmmServerName> to continue protection
  • If you were protecting system state and you have customized the location of the backup that is staged, this customization will be lost in the PSdataSourceConfig.xml file during the upgrade. The staging location will be set to the drive with the largest available disk space. This will need to be reconfigured again.

Conclusion

That should be all you need to do now to upgrade DPM 2012 to Service Pack 1. Ensure that you refer back to the 'Upgrade Sequencing for System Center 2012 SP1'. guide to ensure that you upgrade any other System Center 2012 products in the correct order.



Sunday, January 13, 2013

DPM 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:


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


Be aware that System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 contains updates for the whole suite of products and not just Data Protection Manager (DPM) 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

If you are happy enough with your product upgrade sequence and are now ready to start the DPM 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 along with walking you through the deployment of SP1 to your DPM server infrastructure.
Some of the information contained in this post will be taken directly from the accompanying 'DPM2012_UpgradeSP1' guide from Microsoft.

DPM 2012 Service Pack 1 Enhancements

The following list contains some of the enhancements that SP1 brings to System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager (DPM 2012):

  • Improved backup performance of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V over CSV 2.0 deployments
  • Cluster Shared Volumes (CSVs) provide a distributed file access solution so that multiple nodes in the cluster can simultaneously access the same NTFS file system
In System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) DPM, CSV 2.0 support allows the following benefits:
  • 900% improvement in expressful backups
  • Parallel backups
  • No performance difference between backups from owner and non-owner nodes
  • Support for SMB shares
  • Protect Hyper-V over remote SMB share

In System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) DPM, SMB shares support allows the following benefits:
  • More efficient expressful backups
  • Continued protection even after Live Migration
  • Support for SMB shares in standalone and scaled-out deployments

DPM now allows you to exclude virtual machine pagefiles from incremental backups to improve usage of storage and improve backup performance
  • Scale out support for Hyper-V virtual machines
  • Protect Windows 8 deduplicated volumes
  • Support for Live Migration
  • Integration with Windows Azure Online Backup
  • Support for protecting file server data
  • Support for protecting virtual machines
  • Support for protecting SQL Server 2012 databases that use the AlwaysOn feature
  • You can use a stand-alone instance of SQL Server 2012 to host the DPM database
  • Support for protecting file server using Resilient File System (ReFS)
  • Support for protecting SharePoint 2013
  • Support for protecting Exchange Server 2013

Upgrading From DPM 2010

Also, before we kick off, it's worth pointing out that although you can perform an in-place upgrade of Service Pack 1 from an existing DPM 2012 RTM installation, you CANNOT upgrade directly from DPM 2010 to DPM 2012 SP1. Instead you must first upgrade DPM 2010 to DPM 2012 and then perform an in-place upgrade.

If you are running DPM 2010 and want to deploy DPM 2012 Service Pack 1, you can check out these old posts of mine to get you started:


High-Level Overview

Here's a high-level overview of what's involved to get your DPM 2012 environment upgraded to SP1:
  1. Accomplish Pre-Upgrade Tasks
  2. Upgrade Primary DPM Servers
  3. Push Install Upgrade to Agents/ Upgrade Manually Installed Agents
  4. Run a Manual Consistency Check on Protected Data
  5. Upgrade any Stand-Alone Remote Administration Consoles
  6. Upgrade Secondary DPM Servers
  7. Accomplish Post-Upgrade Tasks
  8. Return to the Upgrade Sequencing Guide

Pre-Upgrade Tasks
  • Install the latest DPM hotfixes on the DPM server and protected computers (Cumulative Update 3 KB 2751230 is the most recent). For the latest updates and hotfixes for DPM, see Downloads for System Center Data Protection Manager.
  • Ensure that the hard disk on which DPM is installed has at least 4.5 gigabytes (GB) of free disk space
  • You must back up the DPM database and save the backup file in a secure location. For obvious reasons, don't use DPM to backup it's own database prior to upgrading!
  • If you have library sharing enabled, you must first disable library sharing and then backup your DPM dataset. You can enable tape library sharing after installing DPM successfully. For more information, see Removing Library Sharing on TechNet.
  • If you are upgrading your instance of SQL Server to SQL Server 2012, it's recommended to install a new instance of SQL Server 2012 before proceeding with the upgrade. For step-by-step instructions for installing a remote instance of SQL Server, see Installing a Remote Instance of SQL Server 2008
  • Then migrate your database using the steps outlined in Remote SQL Server instance to Remote SQL Server instance
  • If you are also upgrading your operating system to Windows Server 2012, you must enable the Deduplication role.

Upgrade Primary DPM Server

Note 1
If you want to use a remote SQL instance, run the DPM Setup.exe installer on the remote SQL Server and select the DPM Remote SQL Prep tool option from the Setup page. For more information on upgrading DPM database, see the Upgrading the DPM Database article on Technet.

To begin the SP1 upgrade, logon to your DPM 2012 Management Server with an administrative account and then browse to the location that you have mounted or extracted your DPM 2012 SP1 RTM media to. Now right-mouse click on 'Setup' and choose the 'Run As Administrator' option as shown below


From the splash screen, choose the Data Protection Manager link to begin


Click to accept the license terms and conditions, then hit OK


If you haven't installed Cumulative Update/Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 to DPM, then you will be presented with the error message below. To upgrade first to CU3, see Downloads for System Center Data Protection Manager.


If you have deployed CU3, then you will see the Welcome screen of the DPM 2012 Setup wizard. Click Next to continue


If you are performing an upgrade of the locally installed SQL instance that runs DPM, then from the Prerequisites Check window, choose the top option as shown below. If you are installing onto a remote SQL server, then you will select the bottom option. Once you have made your selection, click the Check and Install button to move on


When the check has completed, you will be given a final warning to ensure that you have your DPM SQL databases backed up. Click Next to continue


From the Product Registration screen, input your System Center 2012 product key and then click Next


Either choose where you want to install the database files or leave as the default settings, then click Next


At the Security Settings window, enter a password that you are going to use for the DPM SQL Server service account, then click Next


Select whether or not you want to Opt In to use Microsoft Update and then click Next to continue


Choose a setting for the CEIP and then click the Upgrade button to begin the upgrade


Note 2
I had a problem when deploying this upgrade initially to my production DPM 2012 server and halfway through the installation, I was presented with Error ID 820 as the screen below shows. If you come across this issue, take a look at this link for assistance in resolving the problem. For my environment, as I had performed numerous in-place upgrades of DPM over the last couple of years, the installation was strangely failing because the SQL Agent Service for DPM2010 wasn't running. When I started this service and re-ran the upgrade, everything worked as expected!


Once the upgrade finishes successfully, you will be presented with the screen below. Click Close to exit the wizard.


Conclusion

This completes the upgrade to SP1 of your primary DPM 2012 server. In Part 2, I'll walk through the final steps required to completely upgrade your Service Pack 1 deployment.


Friday, January 11, 2013

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 - What's New?

This is a cross post of one that Rod Trent recently published on the MyITForum.com site with a central link to all of the TechNet 'What's New' articles on System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Use these links as a quick reference guide to all of the new functionality and enhancements that you get for each of the individual System Center 2012 products when you upgrade to SP1. You can check out Rod's post here and I've posted the TechNet links below for convenience:

New and Recent System Center Downloads

This is just a quick reference post to highlight some of the newest System Center downloads that Microsoft has made available through the Download Center recently.

Some of the downloads are just updated releases of existing management or integration packs and others are new additions to the catalog.

Management Packs (Operations Manager)

Active Directory Domain Services Management Pack for System Center

System Center 2012 Management Pack for Windows Server Hyper-V 2012

System Center Monitoring Pack for Duet Enterprise 2.0

System Center Global Service Monitor Management Packs

System Center 2012 Monitoring Pack for Windows Server Backup

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 Management Pack for System Center


System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Integration Pack for HP Operations Manager

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Integration Pack for HP iLO and OA

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Integration Pack for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Integration Pack for VMware vSphere

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Configuration Manager - Clients for Additional Operating Systems

Windows Phone 8 Company Portal App

Thursday, January 10, 2013

SCVMM 2012 SP1 Virtual Networking Explained

This is a cross-post that I wanted to bring peoples attention to about something that a good friend of mine and fellow Irish System Center MVP Damian Flynn (aka Private Cloud Superhero) is involved in.

Update Feb 2013: I've added Damian's second post to the series below. Check them out!

System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 brings an amazing amount of new and enhanced functionality to the whole System Center suite of products. It's understandable that people want to go out and deploy this Service Pack as soon as possible and get working with all these new features but some of them need to be explained in a lot more detail than the information contained in the official technical documentation.


The Virtual Networking functionality in System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) SP1 is one such example of this and Damian is one of the primary authors along with Microsoft's Nigel Cain (Senior Program Manager, Windows Server and System Center) of a new series of blog posts on the official SCVMM blog that aim to unwrap the complexities and teach you how to define, configure and manage Virtual Networks in SCVMM 2012 SP1.

The first blog post in this series has gone live since 8th January and they will be authoring a total of 8 posts over the next 6 months. If you are working with System Center 2012 or plan to deploy virtualisation anytime soon, then I absolutely recommend that you check out these posts to ramp up your knowledge and get the most out of your virtual environment.

You can check out the first two posts in the series here:

Virtual Networking in VMM 2012 SP1

Networking in VMM 2012 SP1 – Logical Networks (Part I)

I'll try to keep my own blog post here updated as Damian and Nigel release new ones.

Monday, January 7, 2013

System Center 2012 Orchestrator (SCORCH 2012) - Installing Service Pack 1 RTM

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:



The following list contains some of the enhancements that SP1 brings to System Center 2012 Orchestrator (SCORCH/SCO 2012)
  • Support for Windows Server 2012
  • Support for SQL Server 2012
  • New Exchange Administrator Integration Pack for Orchestrator in System Center 2012 SP1
  • New Exchange Users Integration Pack for Orchestrator in System Center 2012 SP1
  • New Representational State Transfer (REST) Integration Pack Guide for Orchestrator in System Center 2012 SP1
  • Updated Active Directory Integration Pack for System Center 2012 - Orchestrator
  • Updated HP Service Manager Integration Pack for System Center 2012 - Orchestrator
  • Updated System Center Integration Pack for System Center 2012 Operations Manager
  • Updated System Center Integration Pack for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager
  • Updated VMware vSphere Integration Pack for System Center 2012 - Orchestrator
Be aware that System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 contains updates for the whole suite of products (not just Orchestrator) 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

If you are happy enough with your product upgrade sequence and are now ready to start the Orchestrator 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 along with the deployment of SP1 to your Orchestrator server infrastructure.
Some of the information contained in this post will be taken directly from the accompanying 'Orch12_UpgradeSP1' guide from Microsoft.

Orchestrator 2012 SP1 Pre-Upgrade Tasks

1. Complete all runbooks running in your current Orchestrator installation and ensure they are in a stopped state. For information about stopping runbooks, see the Running Runbooks topic in the Orchestrator library on TechNet.

2. Close any open programs and ensure that there are no pending restarts on the computer. If possible and as a precaution, just restart the Orchestrator server(s) to alleviate this issue.

3. Perform a full backup of the Orchestrator database. For information about backing up the Orchestrator database, see the How to Back up Orchestrator topic in the Orchestrator library on TechNet. You can also use tools provided by SQL Server to back up the Orchestrator database. For more information, see Backing Up and Restoring Databases in SQL Server.

4. Upgrade your hardware, operating system, and other software if necessary to meet the requirements of Orchestrator in System Center 2012 SP1. You can review the SP1 requirements for Orchestrator here.

Before we continue with the upgrade, it's worth mentioning a note in the upgrade guide about System Center 2012 components and their associated integration packs:

Note
To allow you the leeway to upgrade other System Center components as needed, after you have upgraded the Orchestrator servers to System Center 2012 SP1, you can run:
  • A System Center 2012 integration pack against a System Center 2012 component.
  • A System Center 2012 SP1 integration pack against a System Center 2012 SP1 component.
  • No other configurations are supported.

High-Level Overview

Here's a high-level overview of what's involved to get your Orchestrator 2012 environment upgraded to SP1:
  1. If using SCOM 2012 to monitor your Orchestrator environment, put all of the Orchestrator servers in to maintenance mode.
  2. Uninstall any other System Center 2012 product stand-alone consoles (e.g. SCOM or SCVMM consoles)
  3. Uninstall the Orchestrator management server, any runbook servers, the Web Service, and the Runbook Designer.
  4. Install the Orchestrator management server in System Center 2012 SP1, as described in the Deployment Guide
  5. Install any Orchestrator runbook servers in System Center 2012 SP1.
  6. Install the Orchestrator Runbook Designer in System Center 2012 SP1.
  7. If needed, install the Orchestrator Web Service in System Center 2012 SP1.
  8. Take the Orchestrator servers out of maintenance mode.
  9. Update System Center 2012 Orchestrator Integration packs to SP1
  10. Return to the Upgrade Sequencing Guide.
Place Servers into Maintenance Mode in SCOM

If you are monitoring your Orchestrator 2012 servers with SCOM 2012, then it's a good idea to place these servers into Maintenance Mode in SCOM before you start upgrading them to SP1. Doing this will stop any alert storms notifying you that Orchestrator isn't functional and will ensure that your SLA's are maintained.

To place your Orchestrator 2012 servers into Maintenance Mode follow these steps:

Open the SCOM 2012 Operations console, click on the Monitoring tab from the wunderbar and then expand the System Center Orchestrator folder and click on the Management Servers state view as shown below


Now you can right-mouse click on your Orchestrator 2012 servers and choose the Maintenance Mode\Start Maintenance Mode options from the flash out menu to be presented with the Maintenance Mode Settings dialog box. As below, select the Planned radio box, choose a category and specify a duration value for how long you will have the server in Maintenance Mode, then click OK


You should then have an icon with a picture of a wrench located beside your Orchestrator 2012 server(s) as well as a status of Not Monitored indicating that you have placed it into Maintenance Mode.

Uninstall Other System Center 2012 Product Consoles

If you have integrated Orchestrator with any of the other System Center 2012 products, then you will have the relevant stand-alone console for the integrated product installed on your Orchestrator server(s). These consoles will first need to be uninstalled before you upgrade to SP1. As a matter of fact, if you follow the Upgrade Sequencing for System Center 2012 SP1 guide, you will see that some of these consoles will need to be uninstalled anyway as part of the products own SP1 upgrade.

To uninstall the stand-alone consoles, logon to the Orchestrator server, click Start, type appwiz.cpl as below


This will open up the Programs and Features window and from here, you can right-mouse click on the stand-alone console that you want to remove and simply click on the Uninstall/Change button similar to what I've done in the example below for the SCOM 2012 console


Now just follow the onscreen wizard for the relevant System Center application to remove the stand-alone console (SCOM/SCVMM/DPM etc.)

Uninstall the Orchestrator Server Components

The next step in the upgrade process is to uninstall the Orchestrator management server, any runbook servers, the Runbook Designer and the Web service. These components will be reinstalled later as part of the SP1 upgrade.

Similar to the uninstall process above, with an account with administrative permissions, logon to the Orchestrator server, click Start, type appwiz.cpl and then hit Enter to open up the Programs and Features window.

From here, you can right-mouse click on the Orchestrator Server component that you want to remove and simply click on the Uninstall/Change button as below.


Repeat this step until you have removed all of the Orchestrator server components (management server, any runbook servers, the Runbook Designer and the Web service) from your Orchestrator server(s).

Once you have uninstalled all of the Orhcestrator server components, I'd recommend a restart of the  server(s) just to ensure that there are no open files or stale registry keys before we proceed with our upgrade to SP1.

Install the SP1 Orchestrator Server Components

To install the SP1 Orchestrator server components, logon with an account that has administrative permissions and then browse to the location on your server that you have mounted or extracted the System Center 2012 Orchestrator Service Pack 1 media to.

Now locate the SetupOrchestrator executable, right-mouse click on it and choose the Run as Administrator option as below


From the System Center 2012 Orchestrator Setup splash screen, click on the Install option below the Orchestrator heading to continue


At the Product Registration screen, enter your company info and product key, then click Next to continue


Read the license terms from the next page, accept them, then click Next to continue


From the Select Features to Install window, choose the relevant Orchestrator server components that you wish to install and then click Next (in my example below, all of the components are on the same server so I can just leave them all selected.)


At the Configure the Service Account window, enter the service account credentials that you would have used when you initially installed Orchestrator 2012, click the Test button to confirm they are entered correctly and then press Next to move on


From the Configure the Database Server window, enter the SQL server and instance along with the relevant authentication and port information and then click Test Database Connection. If the database connection test succeeds, click Next to continue.


Now from the Configure the Database screen, select the Existing Database option and choose the original database that you had deployed Orchestrator 2012 RTM to. Click Next to move on.


Choose the Orchestrator users group and select the option to grant remote access to the Runbook Designer -or just leave the default settings as they are here, then click Next


Choose your ports for the Web services or just leave them at their default settings, then click Next


From the next screen, select the installation location or again leave at the default setting, then click Next


Configure the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) settings in the next screen and then click Next


Finally, at the Installation Summary screen, verify all of your configuration settings, then click the Install button to begin the upgrade to SP1


All going well, you should see the screen below confirming that you have completed Setup successfully


Now, when you open up the Orchestrator Runbook Designer, you can see that all of your previous runbooks are still present along with their associated integration packs too


To verify that you have indeed now upgraded your Orchestrator deployment to System Center 2012 Service Pack 1, click on the Help menu and then choose the About option and you will see that SP1 has been applied as shown below



Take Servers out of Maintenance Mode in SCOM

Once the upgrade process is complete, if you haven't placed a time limit on your Maintenance Mode configuration of the SCOM agents on your Orchestrator servers, ensure that you take them out of Maintenance Mode now. Follow the process further up in this post to turn off Maintenance Mode.

Update System Center 2012 Integration Packs to SP1



Once you have upgraded your Orchestrator environment to Service Pack 1, you will need to then upgrade any of your relevant integration packs to their available SP1 versions.  A couple of points to be aware of here though:

Note 1
Be aware that if you install an integration pack that is specifically for SP1, then any earlier version integration packs will need to be first uninstalled from all runbook servers and designers before you can deploy the new SP1 ones. You can then register and deploy the upgrade of the integration pack. If you do not uninstall the previous version of the integration pack prior to registering and deploying the upgrade version, the upgrade version will fail.

Note 2
To allow you the leeway to upgrade other System Center components as needed, after you have upgraded the Orchestrator servers to System Center 2012 SP1, you can run: 
  • A System Center 2012 integration pack against a System Center 2012 component.
  • A System Center 2012 SP1 integration pack against a System Center 2012 SP1 component.
  • No other configurations are supported.

On the 3rd January 2013, Microsoft released the 'System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 - Orchestrator Component Add-ons and Extensions'. It is highly recommended that once you have upgraded your other System Center 2012 products, that you then download these add-ons and extensions and deploy any integration packs that are relevant into your environment to ensure you get the most out of your Service Pack 1 experience.

Conclusion

That should be all you need to do now to upgrade Orchestrator 2012 to Service Pack 1. Ensure that you refer back to the 'Upgrade Sequencing for System Center 2012 SP1'. guide to ensure that you upgrade any other System Center 2012 products in the correct order.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

SCOM 2012 - Installing Service Pack 1 RTM (Part 3)

This is the final post in a short three part series on upgrading your SCOM 2012 environment to Service Pack 1 (SP1) RTM. Please ensure that you have read through the first two parts of this series before commencing with the steps in this one.

In Part 1, I detailed the pre-upgrade tasks that need to be carried out to prepare your SCOM/OpsMgr 2012 environment for upgrading to Service Pack 1 (SP1). In Part 2, I covered a walkthrough of the upgrade deployment process of your management servers, ACS collectors, Gateway servers and stand-alone consoles. This post will finalise the upgrade process of your agents, Web console (stand-alone) and Reporting server (stand-alone) roles.

Upgrading Push-Installed Agents

When you have upgraded your management servers, you can then deploy the SP1 update out to your existing SCOM 2012 RTM agents either via push install or manual install.

Some important notes taken again from the 'OM12SP1_Upgrade' guide before we continue with our agent upgrades though:

Note 1
When you upgrade an agent, the Operations Manager installer service runs and is not removed until after the completion of the upgrade. If the agent upgrade fails, you might have to re-install the agent because the installer service was not properly removed. If you attempt to upgrade the agent again and it fails, you should re-install the agent after you have completed upgrading all features of Operations Manager.

Note 2
If the agent is installed on a computer that has System Center 2012 Operations Manager (RTM)Operations console or web console installed, you must first uninstall the consoles before you upgrade the agents. You can do this by uninstalling System Center 2012 Operations Manager in Programs and Features. You can reinstall these consoles after upgrade is completed.

Note 3
If UAC is enabled, you must run the agent upgrade from an elevated command prompt.

Note 4
Information about upgraded agents might not appear in the Operations console for up to 60 minutes after performing the upgrade

Now that we have the formalities out of the way, we can continue on and get the agents upgraded. Firstly, we'll start with the existing SCOM 2012 agents that can be upgraded by using a push install.

To upgrade these agents using the SCOM 2012 Console, simply browse to the Administration tab 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 right-mouse click and choose the Approve option as below.

Note: As a general rule of thumb, Microsoft say not to do any more than 200 agents at a time but personally, I'd do no more than 100 agents at a time to have more control and to ease bandwidth.


This will prompt you for some administrator credentials to allow the agent upgrade and once you enter these, you can click the Update button to begin the deployment


When the upgrade has completed, click Close to finish.

Upgrading Manually Installed Agents

Manually-installed agents are agents that were installed manually, either by using the Command Prompt window, or by using the MOMAgent.msi Setup Wizard. Use the following procedure to upgrade these agents.
  1. Log on to the computer that hosts the agent with an Operations Manager Administrators role account for your SCOM 2012 management group.
  2. Run Setup.exe from the Operations Manager installation media.
  3. On the first page of the Setup Wizard, click Local agent. When the Welcome to the System Center Operations Manager 2012 Agent Upgrade Wizard page opens, click Next.
  4. In the System Center Operations Manager 2012 Agent Setup dialog box, click Upgrade.
  5. When the Completing the System Center Operations Manager 2012 Agent Setup Wizard page appears, click Finish.
Upgrading Unix/Linux Agents

From the SCOM 2012 Operations console, click on the Administration tab in the wunderbar, expand the Administration view and then click on the Unix/Linux Computers view.

From here, you can highlight/select all of the agents that you want to upgrade, then right-mouse click on them and choose the Upgrade Agent option to begin the process.

Upgrading the Web Console (stand-alone)

If you have a separate stand-alone Web console deployed (i.e. one that isn't on the same server as your management server) then you can follow this process to upgrade it. If your Web console is located on the same server as one of your management servers, then you will have already upgraded this role when following the Upgrade Management Server steps in Part 2 of this series.

Note:When you upgrade the web console, any customizations that were made to the web.config file after the web console was installed will be reset.

If you made changes after you set up your web console to either enable or disable Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), then the SSL settings will be reset during upgrade.

To resolve the issue, you must make changes to the registry key before you upgrade the web console, as follows: (always ensure to backup your registry before making changes and know that any incorrect modification here can cause havok with your system!)
  1. Logon on to the web console with an account that has local administrator rights, and on the desktop, click Start, and then click Run.
  2. Type regedit, and then click OK. The Registry Editor starts.
  3. Navigate to the HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\System Center Operations Manager\12\Setup\WebConsole\ key.
  4. To enable SSL, set the following:
HTTP_GET_ENABLED=0
BINDING_CONFIGURATION=DefaultHttpsBinding

To disable SSL, set the following:

HTTP_GET_ENABLED=1
BINDING_CONFIGURATION=DefaultHttpBinding

To upgrade a stand-alone Web console, follow these steps:
  1. To begin the SP1 upgrade, logon to your SCOM 2012 Management Server with an administrative account and then browse to the location that you have mounted or extracted your SCOM 2012 SP1 RTM media to. Now right-mouse click on 'Setup' and choose the 'Run As Administrator' option
  2. From the Operations Manager Service Pack 1 splash screen, choose the Install option to begin.
  3. On the Getting Started, System Center 2012 - Operations Manager Upgrade page, review the features that will be upgraded, and then click Next.
  4. On the Select installation location page, accept the default value of C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2012, or type in a new location or browse to one. Then click Next.
  5. On the Prerequisites page, review and address any warnings or errors that the Prerequisites checker returns, and then click Verify Prerequisites Again to recheck the system.
  6. If the Prerequisites checker does not return any warnings or errors, the Prerequisites, Proceed with Setup page appears. Click Next.
  7. When the Ready to Upgrade page appears, review the upgrade summary, and then click Upgrade.
Upgrading the Reporting Role (stand-alone)

If you have separated the Reporting role in your SCOM 2012 management group to exist on a server that is not a management server, then use this procedure to upgrade a stand-alone Reporting server to System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1), Operations Manager.

Note:You should not run the upgrade on the Reporting server until after you have upgraded the management servers, gateways, operation consoles, and agents
  1. To begin the SP1 upgrade, logon to your SCOM 2012 Reporting Role Server with an administrative account and then browse to the location that you have mounted or extracted your SCOM 2012 SP1 RTM media to. Now right-mouse click on 'Setup' and choose the 'Run As Administrator' option
  2. From the Operations Manager Service Pack 1 splash screen, choose the Install option to begin.
  3. On the Getting Started, System Center 2012 - Operations Manager Upgrade page, review the features that will be upgraded, and then click Next.
  4. On the Select installation location page, accept the default value of C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2012, or type in a new location or browse to one. Then click Next.
  5. On the Prerequisites page, review and address any warnings or errors that the Prerequisites checker returns, and then click Verify Prerequisites Again to recheck the system.
  6. If the Prerequisites checker does not return any warnings or errors, the Prerequisites, Proceed with Setup page appears. Click Next.
  7. When the Ready to Upgrade page appears, review the upgrade summary, and then click Upgrade.
  8. Click Close when the upgrade has completed successfully

Complete Post-Upgrade Tasks

When you have ran the SP1 upgrade installer on all of your SCOM 2012 components, all that you have left to do is to finalise a number of post-upgrade tasks to ensure that everything works as it should do. Carry out these tasks in the following order:

1. Re-enable the Notification Subscriptions
From the SCOM 2012 Operations console, click on the Administration tab in the wunderbar and then expand the Administration and then the Notifications view. Click on Subscriptions and then right-mouse click on any of your disabled subscriptions and choose the Enable option to re-enable them again.

2. Restart or Re-enable the Connector Services (if needed)
Refer to the third-party documentation for any installed connectors to determine if the connectors are supported for SCOM 2012 SP1

3. Verify That the Upgrade Was Successful
Perform the following tasks to verify that the upgrade was successful:
  • Check the health state of the management servers and agents in the Health Service Watcher state view. In the Administration workspace of the Operations console, ensure that the management servers and agents are healthy. In the Monitoring workspace, check if there are any alerts related to the management group health.
  • Review the event logs of all the management servers for new errors.
  • Sort alerts by the last-modified column to review the new alerts.
  • Check the CPU utilization and disk I/O on your database servers to ensure that they are functioning normally.
  • If the Reporting feature is installed, click Reporting, and then run a generic performance report to ensure that Reporting is functioning correctly.
  • Re-deploy any agents that you uninstalled during the upgrade process.

4. Carry out the SCOM 2012 Post-Upgrade Sequence Tasks
Follow the post-upgrade sequence steps in my recent blog post here to ensure that integration with other System Center 2012 products is maintained.

Conclusion

If you have worked through all of the steps relevant to your environment that are outlined in this series, then you should now have a fully functional and upgraded SCOM 2012 Service Pack 1 deployment.