The Real World Is Messy

Essentials 2007 and Windows Essential Business Server

gzierdt — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:29:00 GMT

Microsoft has conducted a tremendous amount of research on IT practices in mid-sized businesses. Hundreds of customer visits, focus groups, establishment of customer and partner advisory boards, and more...(read more)

Dell Management Pack available for Essentials 2007

gzierdt — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:34:00 GMT

The Dell Management Pack enables System Center Essentials 2007 to discover and monitor the status of Dell systems and printers on a defined network segment. This improved representation, which includes...(read more)

Essentials 2007 SP1 Improves performance, usability and supportability

gzierdt — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:53:00 GMT

Essentials 2007 SP1 supports more SNMP protocols, allows cross platform archectures of managed clients and servers and has improved management pack and reporting functionality. What does this mean to you...(read more)

Windows Server 2008 is a supported platform for the Essentials 2007 SP1 Server, Console and Agent

gzierdt — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:50:00 GMT

Essentials 2007 SP1 management server, console and agent on computers running Windows Server 2008 will be fully supported by CYQ208. Management packs for Windows Server 2008 and it's role will be available...(read more)

Essentials 2007 SP1 Improves management pack quality

gzierdt — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:52:00 GMT

Essentials 2007 SP1 supported Managment Packs follow these guidelines, simplifying IT management: Rules which generate alerts are directly actionable. No alert is generated that is not directly actionable...(read more)

Essentials 2007 One Year Ago Today

gzierdt — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:43:00 GMT

Happy Birthday Essentials 2007!

http://blogs.technet.com/aralves/archive/2007/05/06/system-center-essentials-rtm.aspx

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/socal/archive/2007/05/06/system-center-essentials-goes-rtm.aspx

SP1 Improves Support for Remote SQL Servers

gzierdt — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:50:00 GMT

Essentials 2007 SP1 supports using a remote SQL Server 2005 instance on a computer with a different architecture (x86 or x64) than the computer running the Essentials 2007 management server Optimized for...(read more)

Deploying Office 2007 with System Center Essentials 2007

gzierdt — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:33:00 GMT

Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 is a solution designed for IT administrators in midsized organizations that include up to 30 servers and 500 client computers. Administrators can use the System...(read more)

Intel Active Management Technology Management Pack for Essentials 2007

gzierdt — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:33:00 GMT

The Intel® Active Management Technology Management Pack for Essentials provides support for Intel AMT Technology version 2.0 and later. The Intel AMT MP gives Essentials 2007 the capability to discover...(read more)

Create a Simple Event Detection Monitor in Essentials 2007

gzierdt — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:50:00 GMT

How to Create a Simple Log File Event Detection Monitor in Essentials 2007 A simple log file event monitor queries a log file for specific text and sets the health state based on the match. You can specify...(read more)

Now you can Monitor SNMPv1 devices with Essentials 2007 SP1

gzierdt — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:48:00 GMT

A real improvement of Essentials 2007 SP1 is to the Computer and Device Management Wizard with the ability to now support discovering SNMPv1 devices. The discovery process configures the Essentials 2007...(read more)

HP ProLiant Management Pack for Essentials 2007

gzierdt — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:35:00 GMT

HP Proliant Management Pack v1.1 The HP Server Management Packs for Operations Manager 2007 and Essentials 2007 support the following features: User Defined Custom Data Icons for Console Diagram View Streamlined...(read more)

May's Technet Magazine Features Essentials 2007

gzierdt — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:22:00 GMT

May's TechNet Magazine features a folded poster insert on System Center Essentials SP1. The poster provides a architecture diagram on how Essentials works on each of the key feature areas: Monitoring...(read more)

Reporting in Essentials 2007

gzierdt — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:17:00 GMT

Reporting in Essentials 2007 provides a very simple method to generate a report. SQL Server 2005 Express as well as other higher editions of Yukon are supported. Reports can contain data from the following sources:

WSUS
Operations Manager
AEM

The reporting feature in Essentials 2007 is available immediately after installation without performing any additional steps.

There are four reports that are generated directly from WSUS datasources, summarizing hardware and software inventory.

Computer Hardware Inventory Report
This report shows the details of all hardware found for the selected computer(s). Each computer’s inventory is shown in a new report section.
Hardware Group Summary Report
This report provides a summary of your hardware components along with drill-down capability to view computers which match the selected criteria.
Computer Software Inventory Report
This report shows the details of all software installed on the selected computer.
Softwater Inventory Summary report
This report provides a summary of your software assets along the drill-down capability to view computers which match the selected criteria

Essentials 2007 and Remote Operations Manager 2007

gzierdt — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:18:00 GMT

Remote Operations Manager 2007 is a partner solution to provide remote managed services to small and midsize customers. ROM 2007 simplifies the monitoring of distributed systems, enabling IT service providers...(read more)

Essentials 2007 and SQL

gzierdt — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:50:00 GMT

SQL Server is a very sophisticated technology that requires expert tuning, maintenance and monitoring. SQL Server is used by many applications and services and must be stable or its dependant products will be unreliable. Very large IT infrastructures have dedicated teams for each element of the infrastructure. In smaller companies a dedicated DBA is rarely an option. Dedicated tools are needed to aid the generalist administrator.

SQL server offers:

End-to-end visibility into mission critical applications
Faster problem resolution using SQL Server knowledge
Increased DBA productivity
Automate routine management tasks
Consolidated view of distributed servers and applications

Essentials 2007 helps prevent outages and ease the tasks associated with running an environment dependent on SQL Server. Essentials gives intuitive access to common actions specific to SQL Server available via context sensitive action options as well as simple wizard based tools for tasks such as deployment of software and patches. SQL support in Essentials 2007 includes:

Patch Management of Operating System Updates to SQL Server and clients
Deploy SQL Server specific product updates
Inventory of software and hardware
Centralized Error collection
Complete monitoring of the SQL Server Infrastructure including the SQL Server host OS, the SQL Server service and any services SQL depends on, for example directory services
10 SQL Specific reports in addition to more general Windows reports
Automated daily health report

The SQL Server management pack provides rules for detecting and alerting critical events in SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005. The management pack’s goal is to reduce or prevent SQL Server outages by proactively managing SQL Server instances in the areas of configuration, performance, and security.This management pack can alert on many types of SQL Server critical conditions including, deadlock problems, blocking issues, and SQL Server becoming unavailable. Included in the alert is guidance for resolving the issue with configuration advice or likely problem resolution information based on the type of alert. Additionally, the most commonly monitored performance statistics for SQL Server with predefined thresholds are also defined in the management pack as performance rules. These default thresholds can be modified, but they are a good starting point for monitoring performance on a SQL Server instance. It is also possible to add more performance thresholds if there are additional metrics that are important and need to be monitored closely.

The SQL management pack has a very rich application model of the SQL elements including instances, databases, file groups, files, agent jobs and SQL Roles which the discovery component of the management pack inspects and actually looks for specific objects within the SQL environment. The aspects you choose to monitor and the actions to perform are fully customizable to your requirements. The Management Pack event analysis monitors all the key aspects of the SQL Server environment, for example clustering, log shipping, backup, SQL Server Agent and as we mentioned earlier the SQL roles are discovered and so any roles the SQL Server is running are fully monitored, for example replication. In addition to the overall views of the SQL health in-depth views of database, database engine, reporting services, integration services etc are all available.

Monitoring is based around:

Availability – Synthetic transaction connects confirming service available along with 400 SQL events that affect availability status
Performance – Items such as caching ratio, user connections, processor utilization per instance, database and log size/growth
Configuration – Analyzes the SQL Best Practices and identifies where configuration does not match

Another very useful feature that will appeal to both SQL novice users and experience DBA’s are the new ways to access functions to aid in running SQL. If the Database engine is selected in the Actions pane of the MMC the actions related to the database are displayed. Not only does Essentials reveal what is happening, it gives actions for the component that has focus in the tool. This applies to everything, if we select a just a computer and not a component we get options to list active sessions, processes etc. This is very much a management solution and not just monitoring.

Don't Upload WSUS 3.0 SP1 from Windows Update! It's already in Essentials SP1

gzierdt — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:10:00 GMT

WSUS 3.0 SP1 will soon be available from Windows Update. But Essentials 2007 users should not download the update from Windows Update.

Hopefuly you have already heard that for planning purposes, WSUS 3.0 SP1 should not be applied to Essentials 2007 directly. Additionally, System Center Essentials 2007 RTM will not be upgraded to WSUS 3.0 SP1. Essentials 2007 SP1 includes WSUS 3.0 SP1. These are the same bits as what will be available through Windows Update.

3rd party update support, hotfixes and drivers from Microsoft Update catalog is not available through the WSUS UI, but available through System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 API's and SQL views.

Essentials 2007 SP1 topics at MMS 2008

gzierdt — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:44:00 GMT

Time to start thinking about attending Microsoft Management Summit 2008 from April 28 to May 2 in Las Vegas, Nevada. IT professionals interested in learning more about WSUS 3.0 SP1 and how it interacts...(read more)

More N-able and Microsoft Essentials 2007 in the news.

gzierdt — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:40:00 GMT

I spotted a couple more articles on the partnership with N-able and Essentials 2007, First, in the New York Times Small Business section, N - Able Technologies, Microsoft to Market Managed Services . Then...(read more)

Discount Registration for TechEd 2008

gzierdt — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Just a reminder that TechEd 2008 for IT Professionals will be this June 10-13, 2008 in Orlando Florida. Register by Friday, April 4, 2008, to receive the discounted rate of just $1,795—that's $200...(read more)

How to Install Essentials 2007 Agent on ISA Server 2006/ISA Server 2004

gzierdt — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:07:00 GMT

It is possible to install a Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 agent on a computer that is running Microsoft Internet Server Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006 or Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration...(read more)

Do You Have Something to say to Microsoft about IT Management in your Midsize Organization?

gzierdt — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:51:00 GMT

Here is a great opportunity to have your voice heard and influence future versions of software. Microsoft User Research is looking for IT professionals to participate in a user research study. The purpose...(read more)

N-able partnership with Essentials 2007 in the news

gzierdt — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:28:00 GMT

I spotted a couple articles further dicussing the new partnership between N-able, a Microsoft Gold Certified partner, and System Center Essentials 2007. N-able Technologies(R) to Deliver Next Level of...(read more)

N-able Technologies to Partner with Essentials 2007

gzierdt — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:35:00 GMT

N-able (pronounced en-able ) announced today that they will be partnering with System Center Essentials 2007 to provide a remote management solution for midsized businesses. Here is an interview with August...(read more)

Error when you install the Essentials 2007 reporting feature: "SRS Server Validation Error"

gzierdt — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:57:00 GMT

ISSUE: When you install the Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 reporting feature, the installation may be unsuccessful. Additionally, you may receive an error message that resembles the following...(read more)

New KB: Essentials 2007 generates errors in setup wizard and/or in report deployment due to winsock

gzierdt — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:36:00 GMT

Essentials 2007 generates errors in setup wizard and/or in report deployment You may experience one of the following problems in Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007: Problem 1 You cannot install server...(read more)

Upgrade a Remote Essentials 2007 Console to SP1

gzierdt — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:22:00 GMT

I've been watching the forums and two questions seem to be cropping up repeatedly. One is on using the SP1 feature that allows managing workgroup servers. I must have intuited this question since yesterday's...(read more)

Managing workgroup-joined computers in Essentials 2007 SP1

gzierdt — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:27:00 GMT

Management of workgroup-joined computers is now supported in Essentials 2007 SP1. Supporting the management of workgroup-joined computers requires additional configuration on the Essentials 2007 management...(read more)

Monitoring MySQL using Essentials 2007

gzierdt — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:45:00 GMT

I just ran across a great post by Tom Swanson on how he monitors MySQL using Essentials 2007 . Check it out! In his post, Tom describes the steps he took to create custom monitors and how to work around...(read more)

It's Here! It's Here! Essentials 2007 SP1 now available!

gzierdt — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:00:00 GMT

I just received word from the Product Manager for Essentials 2007, Rene Garcia. Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 has just been announced at Microsoft Convergence in Orlando, Florida. You can...(read more)