What a cool month! First SCOM 2007 R2 Beta released, and now Service Manager!

 

To download, simply go to the Service Manager site on Connect (link below) and click Downloads.

Service Manager Connect Site

https://connect.microsoft.com/SelfNomination.aspx?ProgramID=2733&pageType=1&SiteID=446

 

 

Grtz,

Alexandre Verkinderen

http://scug.be/blogs

 

ps: If you’r a Belgian IT pro and are familiar with service desks, CMDB, MOF/ ITIL etc and if you want to blog about service manager please contact us @ medewerkers at scug.be

 

 

Yesterday I came accros this error: Saying that the SQL server Service Broker or database mirroring endpoint is disabled or not configured. If you don’t know what the SQL server service broker exactly is, have a look here: An introduction to SQL server service broker . In summary the Service Broker, internal or external processes can send and receive guaranteed, asynchronous messaging by using extensions to Transact-SQL. And it needs to be up and running for our Opsmgr DB. So I did a search on google...(read more)

Just got an email from Microsoft to announce that the Opsmgr 2007 R2 Beta available is on the connect site. Will post testing results soon! The System Center Operations Manager team is excited to announce the availability of the Operations Manager 2007 R2 beta, which is ready for you to download through Connect today! Operations Manager 2007 R2 introduces key new and enhanced functionality, including: Enhanced application performance and availability across heterogeneous platforms . Delivers monitoring...(read more)

Following Microsoft announcement of App-v 4.5 RTM (known previously as "Soft Grid") from the beginning of September, Microsoft just publish the Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) for this version. Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) is a series of planning and design guides created to clarify and streamline the planning and design process for Microsoft infrastructure technologies. The App-v 4.5 RTM will be include as part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2008...(read more)

Two new IPD guides has been published: Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 with R2 Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Download them from the following link . Hope it helps Kenny Buntinx...(read more)

Stefan Stranger found an interesting video on network aware service management with the integration solution of emc smart and opsmgr.   After this video I was looking for some more information and didn’t find a lot: Keynote german mms: network aware service management White paper: creating network aware service management Datasheet EMC smart site     Look at the keynote for more interesting screenshots.   Unfortunatly we will have to waith until 2010 for the Opsmgr V10 for the...(read more)

At day 2 one of the sessions I followed covered the future of opsmgr. They announced that at the end of this month the beta of Opsmgr R2 will be available, RC is for Q1 of 2009 and RTM in Q2 2009. For opsmgr 10, the next version we will have to wait until H1 of 2011.   Microsoft also announced the availabiltity of opsmgr R2 on there website: System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 will introduce new and enhanced capabilities including extending its monitoring capabilities to Unix and Linux...(read more)

I'm now at teched Barcelona and my first impressions? WOOOOW! Everything is very well organized, free wifi, everything is taken care off you even get free metro tickets! I arrived Sunday morning and took the opportunity to visit Barcelona and of course, my first dinner was paella! :-) After that I went to the forum to collect my badge and went to the "ask the experts" (ATE) briefing. I'm standing at the system center/SCE ATE stand. So if you're in Barcelona come and join me...(read more)

Creating custom reports in Configuration Manager can be a challenge, not only to create the SQL statement for the report, but to figure out what SQL view contains the information you need and how the SQL views can be joined together. The Windows Installer CreatingCustomReportsByUsingSQLViews.msi package provides information that will help you to create custom reports, determine which Configuration Manager SQL views contain the information you need for your reports, and identify a path between the...(read more)

Some people are really experiencing hell with the PXE/OSD features when their site is in native mode. Below I have written a small guide on what to do and what to check to get things going in native mode for Operating system deployment . Step 1 In the site properties , check that you have imported your Root CA certificates. If you have subordinate CA servers , import them as well as I have seen issues arriving when not importing them .The picture below will give you the idea : Step 2 Create your...(read more)

All, It all started with the great idea of a customer of reserving the same SMSGuid for an Inplace upgrade / Refresh scenario that would : - Keep the same hardware - Do an USMT capture of the settings for that machine. - Replace the OS from W2K to XP SP2 or from XP SP2 to XP SP2 - Rename the computer account to the new standard from GTxxxxx to TGNxxxxx - Maintain the same SMS Guid , so no duplicate entry's - Restore the USMT state to the local machine . What a challenge , but we had a kind of...(read more)

Back in june i posted this blogpost on what to expect from DPM2007 SP1 . Some weeks ago I attended a session hosted by the Belgian system center user group about DPM where there was a slide on what will be included in SP1. SCR protection for Exchange 2007 support for mirrored Databases and for SQL2008 support for indexes in sharepoint support for HyperV ! and local datastorage backup you will be able to use shared tape librairies You can also view this session as it was recorded for the Technet Chopsticks...(read more)

Hi! Just did another implementation of a DELL Equallogic PS5000XV iscsi array which is very nice and powerfull equipment well suited for the virtualisation project I'm currently working on. I just had a "few thingies" I wanted to try out offline so I booted up my virtual lab and started to search for iscsi target software. I used openfiler before and as this is great software (and free) I was going to build me a openfiler VM again just when I happened to cross a blogpost about the MS...(read more)

W're almost at the end! :-) Only 3 steps left. First we have to define a healt criteria for our web appliction and after that we can create our distributed appliction that will drive ou service level dashboard.   Use the Web Application Editor to choose what conditions will cause an error or warning during a synthetic transaction. For the Service Level Dashboard, an error is equivalent to an availability exception, and a warning is equivalent to a performance exception. Availability exceptions...(read more)

After you create your monitors and distributed applications, you must take some additional steps to configure the Service Level Dashboard group and service level goal properties. Discovery finds all the objects that are associated with a distributed application. The current setting of these attributes is displayed in the Service Level Dashboard Attributes view in the Operations Console. This view lists the distributed applications that can be shown on the Service Level Dashboard, their Dashboard...(read more)

The distributed application model interface provides a flexible way to customize the Service Level Dashboard display to your needs. The Service Level Dashboard accepts a simple distributed application model as its configuration for application listings and transaction groupings. This model allows you to group Web applications or other monitors on the Service Level Dashboard into applications and regions. You can define how the health rolls up to the component group and the application as a whole...(read more)

Ok, so we finally have our service level dashboard. Let's see some reports service level dashboard Service level dashboard by application: " src="http://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scom/clip_5F00_image002_5B00_6_5D005F00_thumb.jpg" width="244" border="0" /> Little summary to create a service level dashboard: Create a web application monitor ad a recording session to your web application monitor define a health criteria Create a distributed appliction...(read more)

Here's another cool tip on OSD Task Sequences that Frank Rojas made me aware of. ======== Issue: When using SMS 2003 Operating System Deployment with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) or Business Desktop Deployment (BDD), a variable called %SMSDP% was available for use in Task Sequences that pointed to the local Distribution Point (DP) for the PC that the OSD Task Sequence was running on. However, in SCCM 2007 OSD with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008 (MDT 2008) integrated, this variable does...(read more)

Hi all, Note: Only 4 seats left for this training session! I will be teaching a custom training class on how-to upgrade you sms 2003 admin skills to SCCM 2007 again in Novemer. This class is mainly aimed at current sms 2003 administrators that have transitioned to configmgr 2007 or are in the planning / preparation phase of transitioning. This class is not about the upgrade / migration itself but on upgrading the administrator's skillset. Quite a number of things have changed from Sms to Sccm...(read more)

System Center Virtual Machine manager is RTM! Microsoft made an announcement today on theire website!

Microsoft is pleased to announce the release to manufacturing (RTM) of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 – the next generation of Microsoft’s solution for managing the virtualized infrastructure. A key member of System Center – a centralized, enterprise-class suite of data center management products -- Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 enables customers to configure and deploy new virtual machines and centrally manage physical and virtual infrastructure from one console. New to this version of VMM is multi-vendor virtualization platform support, Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) and enhanced support of “high availability” host clusters, among other new features.

 

 

You can donwload a evaluation version here.

 

Greetz,

Alexandre

http://scug.be/blogs

Today , I was at a customer and I was struggling to get a task sequence up and running . After analyzing the log files , I discovered that it had trouble to join the domain.I say to myself , that is strange , I never had any trouble with it before. Looking up the account for joining the domain , we assigned it with special rights to just be able to add or modify computer objects in a certain container .Security for everything right :-) Looking some deeper I discovered that the account was over the...(read more)

First you will have to create a web application monitor. See my previous post on how to create a web application monitor in opsmgr. To add a recording to an existing Web Application object 1. Open the Authoring pane. 2. Expand Management Pack Templates , and then click Web Application . 3. Select the object to which you want to add a recording. 4. In the Actions pane, click Edit Web application settings . 5. Select the request from the list where you want the recording to be inserted. Recordings...(read more)

At the moment I'm testing web application monitoring, service level dashboard, etc. So the upcoming posts will handle on how to set up a web application monitoring, how to configure the service level dashboard etc. The Web Application Monitor provides the synthetic transaction for the Service Level Dashboard. It monitors the Web application and then changes the health state of an object associated with the Web application, based on the results of the synthetic transaction. It is this change in...(read more)

First you will have to create a web application monitor. See my previous post on how to create a web application monitor in opsmgr. To add a recording to an existing Web Application object 1. Open the Authoring pane. 2. Expand Management Pack Templates , and then click Web Application . 3. Select the object to which you want to add a recording. 4. In the Actions pane, click Edit Web application settings . 5. Select the request from the list where you want the recording to be inserted. Recordings...(read more)

At the moment I'm testing web application monitoring, service level dashboard, etc. So the upcoming posts will handle on how to set up a web application monitoring, how to configure the service level dashboard etc. The Web Application Monitor provides the synthetic transaction for the Service Level Dashboard. It monitors the Web application and then changes the health state of an object associated with the Web application, based on the results of the synthetic transaction. It is this change in...(read more)

In this session, we will provide an overview of DPM 2007, and deep dive of how DPM protects Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, Office SharePoint Server, and Microsoft Hyper-V/Virtual Server-using both near continuous protection to disk and long term archival to tape.

 

 

Greetz,

Alexandre Verkinderen

http://scug.be/blogs

 

Microsoft released a new catalog update to address a few issues with the SCCM 2007 SP1 catalog (the one containing the new schema from System Center Online). Specifically, it will update the Asset Intelligence Configuration Manager SP1 catalog to fix the MPC issue, correcting the LU_MSProd table. Note that this update is only applicable to the Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 Asset Intelligence knowledge base. It is not intended for SMS 2003 SP3 release or Configuration Manager RTM release. An update...(read more)

On September 16th we got a session on Security Auditing & ACS Optimization by Jeremiah Beckett from Securevantage . Jeremiah has recorded the session for us so that you can watch it. It’s condensed into about 1/3 original time, 30min, but covers all content and includes demo. Jeremiah added also theire ACS Resource Kit . (Please visit the site to view this media) Many Many thanks to Jeremiah! Grtz, Alexandre Verkinderen http://scug.be/blogs...(read more)

All, The Belgian System Center User Group organizes their second event and will have Karandeep Anand as a speaker. Karandeep is a Senior Program Manager on the System Center Data Protection Manager team and is very knowledgeable about this product. They took the opportunity to host a session at the Microsoft offices on Tuesday Oct 14 th from 18:00 until 20:00. Come join us for a deep dive on System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2007 . In this session, we will provide an overview of DPM 2007...(read more)

We're organizing our second event and will have Karandeep Anand as a speaker. Karandeep is a Senior Program Manager on the System Center Data Protection Manager team and is very knowledgeable about this product.

We took the opportunity to host a session at the Microsoft offices on Tuesday Oct 14^th from 18:00 until 20:00.

 

Come join us for a deep dive on System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2007. In this session, we will provide an overview of DPM 2007, and deep dive of how DPM protects Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, Office SharePoint Server, and Microsoft Hyper-V/Virtual Server-using both near continuous protection to disk and long term archival to tape.

 

After the session you will have the opportunity to ask questions about DPM.

 

DPM was one of topics covered during this week’s Virtualization road show and this is an excellent opportunity to follow up on the Backup capability for our Hyper-V offering.

More info can be found : http://scug.be/content/Events.aspx