The Real World Is Messy at myITforum.com : Essentials 2007, patch management

New KB: Update distribution issues in System Center Essentials 2007

Anonymous — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:20:00 GMT

Problem: In Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007, you import updates from partner catalogs. When you do this, you experience the following symptoms...(read more)

Essentials 2007 requires changes to Update Management Settings to correctly distribute Feburary IE 7 update

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:26:00 GMT

Dustin Jones at the System Center Essentials Team Blog posted a heads up. http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenteressentials/archive/2008/01/28/internet-explorer...(read more)

WSUS issue with Windows Server 2003 affects Essentials 2007

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:13:00 GMT

As noted on the System Center Essentials Team Blog http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenteressentials/archive/2008/01/28/vista-sp1-will-be-distributed-via...(read more)

New KB for Essentials 2007, Software updates cannot be deployed when System Center Updates Publisher 3.0 uses /qn switch

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:12:00 GMT

SYMPTOMS: System Center Essentials 2007 relies on both Microsoft Windows Software Update Services (WSUS) and functionality from System Center Configuration...(read more)

How System Center Essentials 2007 Can Save Your Company Money in 2008

Anonymous — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 00:59:00 GMT

A criticism I often hear about System Center Essentials 2007 is that it costs money while there are other free tools out there that do the same thing.

To me, that is sort of like saying it costs money to get a new computer with 4 gigs of RAM, a 160gig hard drive, a 21" flat panel monitor, wireless access and the latest software but my brother is giving me his five year old system with a dial-up modem for free. It depends on what you are trying to accomplish if free is really such a good deal. I'm sure you can send and receive most emails, but don't get grumpy if someone sends you a large attachment. Those two machines are not an equal comparison.

To start out, the 'free' system management tools don't have the same set of features. Unified interface from a single console? No, that actually is a feature unique to Essentials 2007 and isn't matched by any comparable product. Able to use pre-existing management packs for Exchange, SQL, or SharePoint? You'd have to use a higher end Microsoft product to get that functionality too.

Your time as an administrator isn't free. You have a tool that lets you manage updates of Microsoft products, but what about all the non-Microsoft products you have installed at your business. Before you install that upgrade, how do you go about completing a system inventory of not just the hardware but the software being used to evaluate the impact of an upgrade?

If you are like most mid-sized businesses, the system admin manages the entire network, including troubleshooting. What other product will allow you to monitor not only the client and servers but also the SNTP devices like the router? It is much easier to figure out the reason your user can't access email when you can check their system, related servers and network connectivity without having to physically check every machine and device in the system.

Down time is lost money. If employees can't complete their work and customers can't access websites, then your business is losing money. Still trying to justify to your boss why a product like Essentials 2007 is worth purchasing? Review the incidents you encountered over the past year. If you could have been notified that there was a potential issue as soon as there was a problem, how much time would that have saved everyone affected? How long did it take you to do a system inventory? How many problems would you have avoided if you could have identified hardware not on an applications Hardware Compaitbility List? Come up with a reasonable hourly rate to represent your time and you've got the numbers to show that Essentials 2007 would save your company real dollars plus free up your time for solving bigger problems.

Fellow Bloggers who Feature News on Essentials 2007

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 19:54:00 GMT

As far as I can tell, The Real World is Messy: Making Sense with Essentials 2007 at myITForum.com is the only Essentials 2007 blog out there. I created an earlier post on Online Help and Resources, but I specifically avoided mentioning any bloggers. This isn't a slight on anyone, but an effort to keep the earlier post focused.

If you want to stay abreast of Microsoft System Center products and features in general, you are going to need to visit a few other folks.

I suggest starting out with the parent forum of this blog: MyITForum.com, Not only do they host a variety of System Management blogs, but there is a Community Forum and a Wiki

I would hightly recommend visitng SystemCenterForum.org which is managed by Pete Zerger. Essentials 2007 isn't his main focus, everything System Center is of interest. Pete is a Microsoft MVP for Essentials 2007 and MOM.

Don Hite's Blog occasionally covers Essentials 2007, including some specific tips and tricks, There are lots of VB script examples, discussions of solutions and an occasional bit of humor thown in for good measure. Ron Crumbaker's blog also mentions Essentials 2007 on occasion, with his focus being more on Exchange and other Microsoft technologies. I can't forget Rod Trent and his blog. He's the master of ceremonies at MyITForum.com and helped me get my blog rolling. Rod also covers a variety of systems management topics including Essentials 2007.

Essentials 2007 can use the Management Packs for MOM. So check out Matt Broadstock's Blog

Did you know that Essentials 2007 is based off of Operations Manager and WSUS technologies? You'll often find mention of Essentials 2007 on a blog focused on those two products. The Advisec Blog is a good example as is Scott Moss's blog.

I'm sure I've overlooked a few other noteworthy blog sites. Feel free to leave a comment so I can update the list.

System Center Essentials 2007 Product Tour

Anonymous — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 19:23:00 GMT

As part of the IT Forum wave of announcements, an updated Adobe Shockwave tour for Essentials 2007 is now available. This browser based demo covers the key features of System Center Essentials 2007 including:

- Setup
- Configuration
- Console features
- Reporting
- Monitoring
- Hardware/Software Inventory
- Software Deployment
- Update Management

Check out the Product Tour at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=767506ad-aaa0-4a44-ab5a-c9e5e056132b&DisplayLang=en

Top Ten Reasons to Use System Center Essentials 2007

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 02:12:00 GMT

Top Ten Reasons for using Essentials 2007:

1. Essentials 2007 provides a single console for your core management needs. That means a single product to purchase, deploy and learn. Server, Desktop and Network monitoring, software and update management and asset inventory under a single, easy to use, unified experience.

2. Keep your applications and your network up and running. Essentials provides multiple views of the application data in your network. Track database growth in SQL Server™ databases or connectivity to Exchange servers using some of the many provided charts, tables and reports. Essentials also tracks the status of all the SNMP 2.0 devices in your network , allowing you to receive alerts when something important goes down.

3. Troubleshoot problems more quickly. Accidents happen, systems go down. That is why Essentials provides a rich knowledge base out of the box to help you diagnose and fix critical alerts for key products like Exchange Server and SQL Server™. These management packs are optimized so you only focus on those alerts that matter. Not only do you get in-depth explanations of problems, but more importantly, Essentials often provides simple in-line tasks to click and “fix it now.” Additional management packs are available from Microsoft and 3rd party providers for both Windows and non-windows environments.

4. Simplify your Patch Management. Essentials 2007 provides integrated patch management for Microsoft products in the Microsoft Update catalog. Additionally we’ve worked with key industry vendors to integrate their updates into Essentials providing a single point of control for patch Management. You can choose to automatically deploy critical updates or have them be subject for approval, and track compliance across your network. Want the patch deployed now? No problem, just click a button to initiate deployment real time.

5. Deploy Applications easily. Deploying applications has never been so easy. Using a simple 3 step wizard you can deploy applications to a target set of computers without worrying about having to deal with packaging or other complex processes. Ready for Office 2007? Essentials can help you deploy Office 2007 with your custom settings in a snap. Additionally Essentials uses Background Intelligent Transfer Service 2.0 (BITS) to optimize traffic over your network. Changed your mind? Don’t worry, it’s even easier to un-install a previously deployed application.

6. Keep track of hardware and software assets. No more spreadsheets to maintain - Essentials 2007 gathers more than 60 hardware attributes and a complete inventory of the applications running on each machine. A summary inventory is available for quick troubleshooting or in the detailed report by machine groups.

7. Improve your users up-time. Reduce the time you spend dealing with end-user issues with features like Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) which allows you to collect application and OS errors that would otherwise remain anonymous. Use built in tasks to remotely execute important tasks on user’s computers, from performing a simple ipconfig to a remote desktop session, all without leaving the management console.

8. Get up and running fast. Deploying Essentials 2007 couldn’t be easier; the smart setup will check for prerequisites to ensure you have a smooth and successful installation. Post-installation configuration is quickly completed using three simple wizards. The built-in integration with Active Directory will allow you to manage a computer automatically the moment it’s added to your environment without any intervention.

9. Gain visibility into your IT environment. Start your day with a Daily Health Report, providing a quick status of your IT environment and any action items required. For more detail, go to the Essentials console and consult the more than 180 reports out of the box that help you gain better insight into how your IT environment is performing.

10. Get an affordable comprehensive IT Management solution designed for you. Essentials is priced for the budgets of midsize businesses, allowing you to purchase only what you need and then grow as your business requires it, with flexible licenses for up to 30 servers and 500 clients at a fraction of what typical management solutions cost.

reposted from: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/essentials/evaluation/topten.mspx

Interview with Essentials 2007 MVP Pete Zerger

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:27:00 GMT

I conducted a short interview with Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 MVP Peter Zerger. Pete manages systemcenterforum.org, which is an excellent resource for Operations Manager 2007, Essentials 2007 and MOM 2005 users. He has great things to say about Essentials 2007 and offers thoughts on how customers use the product.

1) Tell me a bit about yourself; how you got into this field, the blogs/forums you manage, other products you support, hobbies, etc.

In my daily work life, I am an IT consultant working with medium and large organizations supporting a variety of technologies, including Operations Manager and Essentials, Active Directory, Exchange, SQL, virtualization, as well as various authoring activities related to Operations Manager.

In my community life (the fun part), I manage systemcenterforum.org, which is my primary site where we provide news and community solutions for Operations Manager 2007, Essentials 2007 and MOM 2005. I also spend time in the MS Operations Manager newsgroups, SCE Managed Forums, and SystemCenterCommunity.com

2) How did you become an Essentials MVP? How has your work changed now that you are an MVP?

I actually became an MVP in the MOM 2005 days supporting the MS newsgroups, and maintaining a popular MOM-centric blog. As an MVP, I have been working in the community for the past couple of years working to assist end users in better understanding the MS operations management platforms and helping them better utilize the technology.

3) Describe your typical Essentials 2007 customer(s).

They are the same as the customers I support in the community. These are mid-market environments, trying to meet enterprise business needs on a limited budget without true network engineers. These are folks trying to delivery big things for the businesses they support with very limited resources. Essentials 2007 is really exciting in the sense that is it the first product I've seen that attempts to deliver the most important IT operations-related functionality in a single product at an affordable price point.

4) In your mind, what is your favorite feature in Essentials 2007 and why.

Software deployment hands down. This is traditionally a very complex task, and I think the team did a great job in delivering this functionality in SCE in a way that most administrators can readily understand.

5) If you could request a single feature to be added in the next release, what would it be? Why is that feature important?

I cannot think of one, but I can think of several. :)

Speaking generally about the platform as a whole, we can't assume all mid-market enterprises come in nice, neat single-domain, one-location flavor. I would like to see greater flexibility and extensibility in various features, such as patch management for machines without an agent installed, certificated-based authentication, capability to customize inventory (as in SCCM).

I would also like to see Internet-only management functionality for remote and traveling users, as is possible in SCCM (do you notice a theme here?).

Remote web workplace for Essentials customers (without the need for ROM) would also be great.

Given the current functionality, I think antivirus and potentially e-mail filtering are other logical extensions of the platform.

6) Anything else you would like to add?

With the first release of Essentials, Microsoft has a good start on a great idea. I would say to the product team to always remember the driving principle behind Essentials - A complete operations and systems management platform wrapped in a simple-to-use interface for the IT generalist. Examine every existing and planned feature, put it in front of the target market and get first-hand feedback at ease of use. In Essentials v2, platform stability and ease-of-use must rule for the long-term success of the platform.

Essentials 2007 and Exchange: Addressing the Needs of the Mid-Size Company

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 22:50:00 GMT

In very large organizations, there is a budget for specialized IT staff to undergo training in a specific functional area. Individuals are employed to ensure each component of the infrastructure is kept at its most efficient. Small to midsize organizations have smaller support teams. These small companies may still have the same infrastructure requirement of their larger brethren. Dedicated administrators are not always practical in a midsize organization.

Microsoft Exchange Server is a powerful technology and is critical for corporate communications. Exchange is a sophisticated technology that benefits from expert tuning, maintenance and monitoring. Because of the foundational role Exchange plays in an organization of any size, it must be the most stable element or the company is at risk.

For smaller companies, a dedicated Exchange administrator is rarely an option. Simple and efficient tools are needed to aid the generalist administrator

Based on customer and partner feedback, Microsoft developed System Center Essentials 2007 (Essentials 2007), a proactive and unified management solution that enables IT professionals in midsize organizations to more efficiently secure, update, monitor and troubleshoot their IT environments.

Essentials helps prevent outages and ease the tasks associated with running an environment which includes Exchange server.

Key differentiating features of Essentials 2007:

Unified Experience - A unified solution with a single console for managing your servers, clients, hardware, software, and IT services
Proactive Management - Monitoring, troubleshooting and asset tracking to keep your IT environment secure and up-to-date
Increased Efficiency - Simple execution of complex management tasks.

Essentials 2007 was developed with the goal to address customer paint points of Exchange Management for the midsize company.

Event Monitoring

- In depth monitoring of all relevant Exchange events in the Event log
- Smart defaults set for midsized businesses to cut down the “noise” of alerts
- In-line tasks to click and remotely fix issues
- Approximately 1700 rules for individual events are available
- Most event rules provide associated knowledge to assist in understanding and resolving a problem without being an expert
- Knowledge text also links to Exchange support site for up-to-date information on problems

Outlook clients – send/receive

- Uses Messaging Template to create Exchange Messaging service
- Adds Outlook Perspective Group instance to Clients component
- Receive “Outlook clients unable to receive mail” alert
- Detect Exchange Messaging service shows Red state
- Uses Exchange Messaging service to identify probable cause
- Review alert details and knowledge.
- Use “Mount Exchange Store” inline view to resolve.
- Detect Exchange Messaging service returns to a Green state.
- Review “Availability” and “Top Alerts” reports

State View of Exchange

- Monitor service health (state view) so you know if your Exchange server is on line
- Synthetic MAPI transaction detects a failure which affected the Exchange server’s health state
- User alerted and drills down using the Diagram View
- Operator pivots from Diagram View to Alert View to review alert generated for Exchange server

Unified Messaging View

- Associate all Exchange Messaging related components into a single Messaging Service View
- View the Exchange Application itself along with all other related managed objects such as storage, Active Directory, Networking, and client views
- Health status of related component roll up into the overall Exchange Messaging View
- Easily identify problem areas, understand impact to the Messaging Service and drill down quickly to diagnose and troubleshoot
- Provides Self-Tuning Threshold monitors, which collect a metric over a defined period of time and “learns” a baseline for this metric
- Baselines range of normal working conditions is computed and used as a reference for “normal operations” and an alert is generated once a metric is outside of its baseline
- Possible to implement a “zero-configuration” threshold monitor to monitor an event like SMTP Queue length
- No longer necessary to fine tune thresholds manually for each Exchange deployment

Mail flow monitoring

- Allows you to define a set of Sending and Receiving Exchange servers
- Administrators can define the critical path for e-mail flow within their Exchange deployment
- E-mails are periodically bounced between sender and receiver
- A health monitor ensures that e-mails are received within a defined acceptable timeframe
- Delivery Time for each transaction is collected and can be displayed in reports

Availability and Configuration

- Health modeling enables Availability Reports from Exchange Sites to individual servers, down to components on each server.
- Configuration Change Reports which track key configuration changes on each Exchange server
- Overlay reports: Visualize changes in configuration on a timeline.

Exchange Performance Reports

- The Exchange MP collects a comprehensive list of Exchange and OS related metrics
- Collected Performance Data is available in the Essentials 2007 console as well as via reports

Essentials 2007 provides a single interface providing access to all elements of the solution including machine the computers, deploying software and patches, viewing software and hardware inventory. Essentials gives intuitive access to common actions via context sensitive options as well as wizard based tools for tasks such as deployment of software and patches.

Essentials 2007 Virtual Lab

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:41:00 GMT

Interested in checking out Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007?...(read more)