In the second keynote at MMS today there was a cool demo from Dave Randal on how to control hardware with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager. For this to work you need the SP1 of Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager and the machines you want to manage need the new Intel processors with support for the new Intel Vpro technology.
This first thing that Dave showed was how to use the out of band Management console in Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager to control the power state of a machine. You can turn machines off and on. The second demo was even better, Dave showed how to configure the bios settings of a machine which was turned off. With the out of band Management you can do the following things:
Powering on one or many computers (for example, for maintenance on computers outside business hours).
Powering off one or many computers (for example, the operating system stops responding). (more)
In March,
Techlog wrote a story about System Center Online Services and what had happended to it.
Now, during the Microsoft Management Summit day 2 keynote, Brad Anderson had an update on the System Center Online Services strategy. He announced the beta of an
"attached service" called Attached Knowledge Services. It essentially provides services in the cloud by means of a web portal, which connects to an on-premise SCCM environment.
Features like Scorecarding, Comparison, and integrating to WS2003 and SCCM 2007 are available out of the box. The scorecarding drills into performance aspects, SLA aspects and gives a broad overview of how the IT shop is performing. While still in Technology Preview stage, TAP customers are already onboard. Brad commented later that more will be announced at IT Forum Barcelona in November of this year. In the meanwhile, check out the
exclusive screenshots:
Att. Knowl. Services: Overview
Att. Knowl. Services: SCCM Scorecard
Att. Knowl. Services: WS2003 Scorecard
Att. Knowl. Services: Comm. Comparison
Att. Knowl. Services: Side-by-Side Comparison
Att. Knowl. Services: View Hardware
Att. Knowl. Services: Tasks
Jeanie Decker, from the Operations Manager documentation team, wrote: "I'm not a gadget-y sort of person. I mean, I like gadgets, but I've grown wary of them (both offline and on) because so often they're a disappointment -- either they don't deliver or I don't really have a use for them.
But recently I saw a presentation on a gadget that delivered the exact functionality that I've wished for numerous times: the ability to search just the System Center content on TechNet. So many times I need to look for technical content, and not just the information but the information as contained in our official documentation.
And now some folks have delivered with the System Center Content Search gadget for the Vista Sidebar. I installed it last week and have had to use it numerous times already, and :::drumroll::: it delivered exactly the results I needed every time (and usually as the first hit).
System Center Content Search was
announced at MMS this week, so I waited till after the announcement to post about it (and to make sure it was worth recommending)."
System Center Content Search
During the second day keynote on the Microsoft Management Summit, Brand Anderson showed Microsoft's update on the System Center Roadmap for the coming 3 years. While noting on the current release schedules, it also contained information about the upcoming "third wave" of System Center products:
VMM: v.2007 last year, v.2008 this year and v.3 in 2010
DPM: v.2007 last year, a rollup / SP1 this year and v.3 in 2010
SCCM: v.2007 last year, SP1 and R2 this year and v.5 in 2010
SCOM: v.2007 last year, SP1 this year, SP2 in 2009 and v.4 in 2010
SvcMgr: v1 in 2010
MDM: v.2008 this year and SP1 next year
SCE: SP1 this year and v.2 next year
So it seems that Microsoft has their schedules to releasing an interim release every 1 to 1,5 years and doing the major release every 3 years. The slide clearly shows that the "third wave" of System Center products will come out in 2010. Check out the link below for a high-resolution copy of the slide:
MMS 2008: System Center Roadmap
During his Service Manager breakout session, Travis Wright demo'd a new build of the product, which was written from the ground up. His second demo was centered around the upcoming System Center Configuration (SCCM) integration. This integration will have multiple features.
The first is that the SCCM data warehouse will be used for filling the Service Manager CMDB with information on CI's; details, inventories, etcetera. The second is that SCCM will be used to deliver applications and software packages to client machines; for instance, via a Change Request.
The third integration was a new announcement;
Desired Configuration Management (DCM) integration. Service Manager will be able to pickup "drifts" from DCM, detected by Baselines. Using the integration, an Incident can be automatically created to track those DCM "drifts".
Service Manager: DCM & SCCM integration
The Cross Platform and Interop team have
launched their blog, right after the
announcement at the Microsoft Management Summit. You can check it out here:
System Center: Cross Platform and Interop team
If you saw the
screenshots, but wanted to play with it for yourselves, you can follow their directions to download it:
The System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions, which enable customers to manage Unix/Linux systems from Operations Manager 2007, was delivered as a beta today. The second beta announcement was the availability of the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Connectors for HP OpenView (Unix/Windows) and IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console (TEC).
Both betas are available on
http://connect.microsoft.com – search for
systemcenter.
Remember -- your need Service Pack 1 for Operations Manager 2007 to run this and it is NOT recommended to run this in your product environment..
Travis Wright and Michael Nappi, both from the Service Manager product team, gave a breakout session on Service Manager on the annual Microsoft Management Summit. They
updated the audience with the new roadmap and spook about what is going on with the development. In a nutshell, they told the audience, they took the feedback from the original beta 1 release and re-architected the product from the ground up to deliver a high quality v1 product. These are the major changes:
No more mandatory Sharepoint and Infopath needed;
Underlying technology used from Operations Manager (warehouse, SDK, etc);
Self-service portal runs as a dedicated ASP.NET website, but can leverage Sharepoint;
.. check out the other major changes in the screenshot below..
Techlog has the first screenshots from this (NEW) build:
Service Manager: Architecture
Service Manager: Key Changes
Service Manager: Extending
Service Manager: Self Service Portal
Service Manager: Create Incident
Service Manager: New WPF-based UI
Service Manager: Routing Wizard
Service Manager: Incident Details
Service Manager: SCOM integration
Service Manager: DCM & SCCM integration
During the breakout session on Service Manager, at the Microsoft Management Summit, Michael Nappi -- who is the Product Unit Manager for Service Manager -- updated the audience with the roadmap for releasing Service Manager.
The delay in the release dates have been due to the fact that the Service Manager team learned from the previous Beta 1 release and took drastic decisions to deliver a high quality v1 product. While the product team has a more aggressive internal schedule, these are the publicly communicated delivery dates:
Beta 1 Refresh at the end of 2008 calender year;
Beta 2 Milestone -- which will be feature complete -- at the end of second quarter of 2009;
RC Milestone end third or beginning fourth quarter of 2009;
RTM at the first half of 2010 or sooner.
In the
MMS Keynote today, Michael Kelly had an interesting demo with System Center Configuration Manager SP1. SCCM plays an important part in the Microsoft Dynamic IT. One of the goals in the demo was is to show how to deploy Windows Server 2008 fully automated and configured. By using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit integration in System Center Configuration manager this can be done easily.
One of the cool thinks that Michael Kelly showed that it is now possible to perform hardware configuration as one of the tasks in System Center Configuration Manager. Examples are: Configure the RAID configuration, BIOS Settings, Network settings.
In order for this to work your hardware vendor must supply the necessary info on how to configure these settings this way. Another feature that SCCM SP1 finally now supports is multicast. This is a feature which many customers requested for a long time. Multicast is used when to deploy a lot of machines at the same time but without overloading the network because packages are only transported ones over the network.
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System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (formerly code-named “Virtual Machine Manager vNext”) was announced today at the annual Microsoft Management Summit, which enables customers to configure and deploy new virtual machines and to centrally manage their virtualized infrastructure, whether running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 or VMware ESX Server.
Techlog has the first screenshots, taken from the Microsoft Management Summit 2008 Keynote:
SCVMM 2008: Announcement
SCVMM 2008: Overview Pane
SCVMM 2008: Virtual Center
SCVMM 2008: VMware Integration
SCVMM 2008: Host Based Rating
SCVMM 2008: HBR for VMware
SCVMM 2008: Powershell
SCVMM 2008: HA options for VM
SCVMM 2008: PRO tips
Also delivered today was the public beta of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (formerly code-named “Virtual Machine Manager vNext”), which enables customers to configure and deploy new virtual machines and to centrally manage their virtualized infrastructure, whether running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 or VMware ESX Server.
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 tightly integrates with Operations Manager 2007 to deliver a new feature called Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO). Using deep knowledge of the IT environment including operating systems, applications and hardware, Operations Manager identifies opportunities for more efficient physical and virtual resource allocation and generates “PRO tips” within the Virtual Machine Manager console. Administrators can implement these PRO tips and dynamically optimize their datacenter based upon pre-defined policies and the real-time, changing demands of users.
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Michael Kelly was invited to stage at the annual Microsoft Management Summit to demonstrate how System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) will manage the physical datacenter layer. Kelly talked about the Sequencing possibilities in SCCM and about the partnering around SCCM with Dell. The integrated dell server deployment will provide a sequencing step to configure the hardware when Windows PE will be booted; for instance -- like RAID configuration. The beta version of this software will be available in the coming weeks on the Dell website.
Kelly also talked about the Configuration Manager 2007 R2 that will be coming out in the future. Multicast will be added to the features of SCCM to deploy multiple servers at once, while keeping the network traffic as low as possible. With this and the other SCCM OS deployment features, Microsoft forsees SCCM as the main means to provide the hardware layer with the OS layer.
Microsoft today announced the availability of a public beta for System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions, which build on the existing Operations Manager 2007 technology and capabilities and are designed to help customers extend the value of their Microsoft System Center investments.
Techlog has the first screenshots, taken from the Microsoft Management Summit 2008 Keynote:
OpsMgr, Cross Platform: Announcement
OpsMgr, Cross Platform: Discovery Wizard
OpsMgr, Cross Platform: Health Explorer
OpsMgr, Cross Platform: Performance View
OpsMgr, Cross Platform: Architecture
OpsMgr, Cross Platform: Diagram View
OpsMgr, Cross Platform: Diagram View
OpsMgr, Cross Platform: Problem Path
OpsMgr, Cross Platform: Diagnostics
OpsMgr, Cross Platform: Strategy
Microsoft today announced the availability of a public beta for System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions, which build on the existing Operations Manager 2007 technology and capabilities and are designed to help customers extend the value of their Microsoft System Center investments.
Providing customers with a comprehensive management solution, this new end-to-end IT systems monitoring capability incorporates industry standards and proven open source technologies, including Web Services for Management (WS-Management) and OpenPegasus, extending the capabilities across both physical and virtualized Windows and non-Windows operating systems and applications. Microsoft delivers the core foundational cross-platform support out of the box for HP-UX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Sun Solaris and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating systems so that partners can focus on adding their deep domain expertise in the form of management packs.
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Bob Muglia kicked off the annual Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) at the wonderful Venetian in Las Vegas by talking about Dynamic IT. Dynamic IT is about the vision that Microsoft is having for dynamic datacenters and centers around 4 key pillars; Unified & Virtualized, Service-Enabled, User-Focused and Proces-Led & Model-Driven. This vision is a 10 year effort, and Microsoft is currently at the 5-year milestone.
The keynote talked about how the datacenter could evolve to a true Dynamic Datacenter. The first part into a Dynamic Datacenter is efficiently handling the physical datacenter. On top of that physical datacenter Microsoft will push the hardware virtualization aspect to gain dynamic placement of operating systems. The third layer is Application Virtualization where you separate the application for the OS layer and dynamically provide them throughout the datacenter. The last layer in Microsoft's vision is the Models. These models standardize how services can be provided and managed throughout the lifecycle. Bob used a fake company called Dinner Now to give more detail about every layer.
(more)
AVG (AU/NZ) Pty Ltd, the Australasian distributor of AVG Anti-Virus and Internet Security software, has announced the availability of
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0. This latest version of the company’s popular free security software now incorporates protection against spyware through a new combined anti-virus and anti-spyware engine.
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0 provides basic protection against viruses and spyware, together with the real-time safe-searching protection of the company’s LinkScanner technology, incorporated into the new AVG Security Toolbar.
The company released the 8.0 versions of its commercial products in February 2008. Home users can choose between the AVG Internet Security suite, AVG Anti-Virus or AVG Anti-Virus plus Firewall products. Business users can select Network Edition or SBS Edition versions of the AVG Anti-Virus and AVG Internet Security products.
AVG File Server Edition 8.0 and AVG E-Mail Server Edition 8.0 server protection products are also available.
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0 is intended for personal and non-commercial use on single computers running Windows 2000, XP or Vista. The product will be released initially in English, with Japanese following next week; other language versions are planned for release over the next few months. While AVG Technologies does not provide telephone or e-mail support for AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0, the company hosts a web site and forum for user-driven support which can be accessed via www.avgfree.com.au. Interested users can download the software from this web site, or at third-party download sites such as CNet Download.com.
The AVG Free product does not include the proactive safe-surfing ("drive-by download" protection) of the full LinkScanner module that is included in the commercial AVG products, nor the protection against hackers, keyloggers, spam, phishing attacks and malicious file downloads that can come through instant messaging and attachments.
The free product also does not include the local telephone support and round-the-clock e-mail support provided with the commercial products.
A new SQL injection attack aimed at Microsoft IIS web servers has hit some 500,000 websites, including the United Nations, UK Government sites and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. While the attack is not Microsoft's fault, it is unique to the company's IIS server.
The automated attack takes advantage to the fact that Microsoft’s IIS servers allow generic commands that don’t require specific table-level arguments. However, the vulnerability is the result of poor data handling by the sites’ creators, rather than a specific Microsoft flaw.
In other words, there’s no patch that’s going to fix the issue, the problem is with the developers who failed follow well-established security practices for handling database input.
The attack itself injects some malicious JavaScript code into every text field in your database, the Javascript then loads an external script that can compromise a user’s PC.
Apple has responded to critism of its “Software Update” tool for Windows. In version 2.1 users now see a split window with two separate lists for updates and new software.
The complaint from many security (and other) sources had been that users of the old version often ended up with new software they had not intended to install. The confusion was caused by the new software being included in the list of “updates”, which users would install believing they were required. The concern was users upon finding they had unintentionally installed software they may not want on their computer would be less likely to trust updates from any source and thereby forego necessary security updates across the board.
One of the most publicized critics of this practice, Mozilla’s CEO, John Lilly, says Apple has still not gone far enough. Even though the new software is now listed separately, the boxes are checked to download it by default. The boxes for optional software should be left blank so the user may check them only if they wish.
There are other vendors that have this detrimental habit of pre-selecting by default optional software in addition to the software the user intends to download. One example of this is additional toolbars, which many people have downloaded unintentionally and then had to uninstall. It is such an annoying practice that many will boycott a particular product for that reason alone.
Your computer problems may not just be hardware related as Windows may easily “break” when a new program is installed or a system file becomes corrupted.
If the computer starts fine but Windows fails to load, restart the computer and just after the Bios finishes loading, keep pressing the F8 key until the Windows Advanced Options menu appears.
The menu can only be navigated with cursor keys, so use the arrow keys on the keyboard to select Last Known Good Configuration.
If Windows starts up properly, remove any programs you installed or undo any changes you made recently.
If it still won’t start properly, reboot and go back to the Advanced Options menu again by pressing F8 and choose Safe Mode this time.
In Safe Mode, Windows will automatically skip loading programs and hardware components which in 99% of the cases should make it start. Don’t be shocked by the low resolution and how awful it looks. (continue at source).
The teeth gnashing is getting louder over Microsoft's plans to quit selling Windows XP at the end of June. Many businesses and consumers are crying foul, saying they want to avoid Windows Vista because of complaints that it is incompatible with too many peripherals or runs too slowly on older PCs.
Dell, for one, has posted plans to continue selling Windows XP on some computers until June 2009, and HP has reportedly said the same thing. The equipment builders say they'll use a loophole that Microsoft offers to business customers to downgrade systems from Vista to XP. Dell and HP would make the switch before the computer ships, letting customers get a computer preloaded with the tried-and-true XP.
The System Center Management Pack Authoring Console 2007 has been released to the Web! If you'll be at the Microsoft Management Summit next week, stop by the the Authoring Session SO04 - Tools and Best Practices for Authoring Management Packs for Operations Manager 2007 session for additional information.
The web package can be downloaded from these links: Authoring Console
x86 |
x64
Jeanie Decker: Most of our management packs are released to the download center (via the
Ops Manager Catalog) with a guide included. When we released
Ops Manager 2007 Service Pack 1, it included a number of management packs with it, but no guides, leading a number of you to ask us: "Where are the guides?" And the corresponding guides were available as separate downloads, but had not been updated to reflect the SP1 release, which led others to frustrated confusion -- were these the the right guides for the SP1 management packs?
So we removed the separate downloads (which, in turn, frustrated those looking for them). What we're doing to straighten this out, as quickly as possible:
- Get the management pack guides available online in our TechCenter.
- Identify the changes made to each management pack in the SP1 release and update the guides with that information.
- Post each management pack from the SP1 release with its updated guide to the download center and the Catalog.
I'm hoping to have the SP1 management pack guides in the TechCenter within a week or so (with the SP1 change logs to be added as soon as they're complete), and will post as soon as it happens. In the meantime, if you need a guide for one of the management packs included with SP1, email mpgfeed@microsoft.com and I'll send it to you.
Most MPs have one or more scripts which are used for a variety of things, discovery state monitoring, perf data creation, etc… In a lot of cases the majority of the script code is common to all the scripts in the MP, logging, connecting to a particular service (i.e. WMI), Error handling, etc… Typically this code is simply copied and pasted into every script in the MP, this means that it has to be maintained separately for every script in the MP, so if a bug is found in common script code it must be fixed in all places. This also makes the relatively simple functionality of the script much harder to read as the common script code usually dwarves the implementation.(
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This guide provides information on installing System Center Essentials 2007 (Essentials 2007) and System Center Virtual Machine Manager Workgroup Edition (VMM 2007) in the same environment.
It focuses on the system requirements, setup overview and best practices. Please refer to the installation guides of each product for more information.
Essentials 2007 provides end-to-end monitoring for the mid-market IT environment, along with software and update deployment. VMM 2007 provides centralized administration of your virtual infrastructure and rapid provisioning of new virtual machines.
In summary, the installation requires installing the Essentials 2007 components on a single computer, and VMM 2007 components on another computer. Each product also uses separate database instances.
Download:
System Center Essentials 2007 & System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Installation Guide
There is a new MP added to the
downloads section that will monitor file shares on a Windows Server. The MP is designed to discover any file shares on the server (not including the hidden $ shares) and monitor the availability of the shares. The monitors are initially disabled so you will need to override the monitor to activate it. (
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Ian Blyth:
Pete mentioned that the new sizing and performance guide had some changes. One area I looked at was database size. I picked out these figures from the white paper and stuck them in a table to make it easier to see what was going on. The increases in size are linear with the number of agents.(
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The SCOM 2007 BizTalk Management Pack has finally been released. The Management Pack is a complete rewrite and covers BizTalk 2006, BizTalk R2 as well as the new features of R2 including RFID and the EDI functionality. You can download the Management Pack
here.
Also, If you were familiar with the Management Pack for MOM 2005 you will notice a number of changes. The biggest is the change to the alerting functionality. In SCOM you create subscriptions which will provide you with alerts for all of the events. If you are looking for the alerting functionality that MOM 2005 had (the ability to pick a rule and provide an alert based only on that rule) you can find a Powershell script on the Manageability Team Blog titled:
OpsMgr 2007: Creating a subscription for future occurrences of an alert. The script takes two parameters; the RMS server address and e-mail address you want notifications sent to. After you follow the steps outlined you will see a specific notification for that problem and SCOM will send e-mails to the e-mail address you entered in the script.
Neale from System Center Forum: I have created a MP that will check a target server’s SMTP service by using telnet. The script included in the sample MP will require a command (to run on the target server) and an expected response (usually a string). The VBscript part of this MP uses the Toolsack Baseline dll (from Toolsack Software) to perform the telnet functions. When you import this MP, can you find the example rules by changing the scope of the Rules View in the Authoring pane to Management server. You can implement this MP in a SCE environment as well. (
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Larry Orecklin, who runs the System Center business and virtualization, laid out the Microsoft vision on virtualization from the server to the desktop. He clearly put the emphasis on management, focusing on core pieces of System Center with Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Data Protection Manager and Virtual Machine Manager (VMM).
If the hub of Orecklin's vision is management, the pieces that revolve around the hub are server virtualization, applications virtualization, desktop virtualization and presentation virtualization (i.e. terminal services). He said the VMM version that will support Hyper-V will ship with the hypervisor add-on for Windows Server 2008. He said the timeframe for that release will be June or July. He hinted that the beta of VMM that supports Hyper-V would be released next week at Microsoft's Management Summit in Las Vegas. In addition, he disclosed that Microsoft has 4.5 million seats of Microsoft Application Virtualization (SoftGrid) out in the field. He said Kidaro, which Microsoft acquired in March, would become an important tool for managing virtual PCs.
Pontus Blomqvist mentions on his blog that an updated version of the HP BladeSystem Management Pack is available:
Version 1.6.2 addresses the following:
Bug Fixes:
Fixed the HP BladeSystem Enclosure Monitor Manager to support the regional and language settings on Windows Operating System.
Fixed the HP BladeSystem Management Pack for Alert Parameter Replacement Failure on Operations Manager 2007 SP1.
Download:
HP BladeSystem Management Pack, version 1.6.2
Pete Zerger: There are a couple of tools for Powershell scripting that if you try, I don’t think you will ever want to be with out. You pretty frequently hear about PowerGUI, which is a pretty nice tool, especially for Powershell newbies, but I wanted to share with you my favorite toolset I use when working really rolling up my sleeves for some serious work in the shell. I’ll give you some quick tidbits on features, but you really need to give these a trial run.(
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Companies spend enormous amounts of resources just to determine if there are any gaps in their software licensing. Then the IT manager has to take that long walk to the CIO's office to explain how many tens of thousands of dollars it will cost to get all the licensing up to date.
The Asset Intelligence component of Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager 2007 can solve a lot of the asset management headaches regarding software and hardware. Asset Intelligence has a robust tool set not only for viewing hardware, but also for managing Microsoft SoftGrid virtualization and software but also to manage them. It also has the capability to "baseline" assets so changes can be seen over time.
Here is a quick dive into some scenarios that describe how this could change the way Windows shops view the world. (
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More enterprises are looking at Microsoft's desktop and server management software as viable options for Windows systems management. But IT managers with diverse platforms still don't view System Center in the same light as other major management platforms.
To get closer to the level of cross-platform functionality found in such established products as BMC Performance Manager, IBM Tivoli, HP OpenView and CA Unicenter, Microsoft needs to speed up delivery of management packs for third-party integration or offer more out of the box, said Stephen Elliot, an analyst at IDC, a market research firm in Framingham, Mass. (
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"Executive Summary Information technology expenditures comprise an increasing portion of IT budgets—IT assets can often account for more than half of an enterprise’s total asset base. With the changing nature of today’s technology and the complexity of network environments, enterprises find it difficult to track the IT assets they own. Without an accurate record of their IT assets, it is challenging for enterprises to determine if IT is providing value and to meet financial, regulatory and license compliance requirements.
Microsoft® System Center Configuration Manager 2007 includes hardware and software inventory and software metering capabilities that help IT organizations understand exactly what hardware and software assets they have, who is using them, and where they are. Asset Intelligence translates the inventory data into information, attaching metadata to inventory, and provides rich reports that IT administrators can use to optimize hardware and software usage. With Configuration Manager 2007 and Asset Intelligence, companies can make informed decisions about their IT assets, improve IT operations and mitigate compliance risks."
Download:
System Center Configuration Manager Asset Intelligence Whitepaper
Ian Blyth: This has now been updated for the Windows 2008 SDK. It is quite amazing how much info it will gather. I particularly like the ability to graph the CPU by process or thread. Useful in your bag of tools if you need to do some analysis on a server where you know there are performance problems but are not sure what is causing them.
You can chose the graphs and the details in the graph, zoom in to expand a particular timeframe and overlay one chart on another. And it is free.
Windows Performance Tools Kit, v.4.1.1
Alex Tcherniakhovski: This walk-through outlines the steps required to configure SCOM 2007 to perform mutual authentication with non-domain joined machines using X509 certificates. Such configuration provides high level of security in the scenario of having to manage non-domain joined machines using SCOM 2007
Walkthrough:
Configuring SCOM 2007 to perform mutual authentication with non-domain joined machines using X509 certificates
Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) 4.0 has been designed to help overburdened IT professionals quickly access useful, relevant content. It contains practical guidance—not just theory—and its streamlined approach makes it possible to use either the entire framework or one process from a particular service management function (SMF).
The guidance in MOF encompasses all of the activities, workflow, and processes involved in managing an IT service: its conception, development, operation, maintenance, and—ultimately—its retirement. MOF organizes these activities and processes into service management functions, which are grouped together in phases that reflect the IT service lifecycle. Each SMF is anchored within a lifecycle phase and contains a unique set of goals and outcomes that support the objectives of that phase. An IT service’s readiness to move from one phase to the next is confirmed by management reviews, which ensure that established goals are achieved and that IT’s goals are aligned with those of the organization.
Download:
Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) 4.0
Carol from the Configuration Manager writer team: I’m sure you’re familiar with the MMS and Tech-Ed conferences, but are you in the know about the RSA Conference? It has been described as “The most prestigious information security event of the year. It is the must-attend event for organizations that deploy, develop or investigate data security or cryptography products”. It attracts over 17,000 IT professionals, developers, policy makers, industry leaders and academics. That’s a lot of people!!
Microsoft is a Diamond Sponsor for this event that and participates in event keynotes and sessions, exhibition area and press activities – and last week it was showcasing Network Access Protection (NAP) in the Exposition Hall, in San Francisco. That’s how I got to be involved!
I teamed up with folks from the Windows NAP team on the expo booths to demonstrate how Configuration Manager fitted into the Network Access Protection infrastructure to help keep noncompliant computers off the protected network until they were remediated. The demos showed a noncompliant computer being restricted and remediated for a software update, Windows security settings, and the Forefront services – but most of the time I showed just the software update remediation with Configuration Manager, and the configuration required to make it happen.(
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Pete Zerger"If you haven’t read Satyas latest post, take a minute and checkout
In Satya Vels post title “
Opsmgr 2007 Hardware Guidance (What hardware do I buy?)“, he provides some additional clarification in the following areas, which augment the hardware sizing data in the Operations Manager 2007 Design Guide. These provide additional specificity for specific configurations, and the attached spreadsheet provides more reasonable hardware recommendations versus those contained in the Opsmgr Design Guide.
This gadget makes it easier to find help for Microsoft System Center products because it uses Live Search macros to search specific sites instead of the entire web. Search results are only returned from sites that are known to contain helpful information about System Center products. Use the settings in the gadget to pick the System Center product that you want to find information about, and then enter a search term in the gadget to get customized search results.
Download System Center Content Search sidebar gadget
Michael Murgolo: The SCCM 2007 Operating System Deployment components use the Windows Automated Installation Toolkit (WAIK) for creating, managing, and deploying Windows Imaging (WIM) images. SCCM 2007 setup installs the Windows Vista RTM WAIK (WAIK 1.0) during installation if it is not already installed. In order to deploy Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 with SCCM 2007, the WAIK must be updated to the latest version (WAIK 1.1) This process is documented in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=950782. (SCCM 2007 Service Pack 1 will natively support these operating systems when it becomes available.)
The first two steps in this process are very straight forward: uninstall WAIK 1.0, then install WAIK 1.1. The second two steps document a method of creating new WinPE 1.1 Boot Images and importing them into SCCM. The WinPE Boot Images need to be version 1.1 to support deploying Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008. If you are using the latest version of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008 with SCCM 2007 integration enabled (v4.1 released in March is the latest), you can use the menu option that MDT adds to the SCCM Boot Images node for creating new boot images and avoid step 3.
However, if you are not using MDT and want to create new default SCCM boot images, the method documented in step 3 of KB 950782 is likely to give you about as much pleasure as a root canal. This method uses WBEMTest, a tool for testing WMI that is built into the OS. If you've used WBEMTest before, the experience is usually something you don't want to repeat. While it is very flexible for testing many WMI options, it is very tedious to use to execute a simple WMI method (as is needed to create new default SCCM boot images). So to alleviate this pain, I used the WMI Code Creator and the SCCM SDK to create a VBScript that turns the long mouse click tedium of WBEMTest into a few second operation.(
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When injecting drivers using the "Auto-apply Drivers" task you can filter the drivers that are injected based on the hardware type. The MDT documentation identifies a method of doing this but it his requires an update to the task sequence every time you add a new category (model type).
The following process will allow you to dynamically specify the a category based on the models WMI identifier. This means that you will not need to add a new "Auto-apply Drivers" drivers each time you add a new model type.
So how does this work?(
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Walter Chomak: Often clients ask me who makes the ideal OpsMgr administrator. Below is my description of the ideal candidate. These are simply my thoughts and suggestions. I chose to actually write something up after noticing a disturbing trend. Many organizations I have worked with tend to usually advertise the role as a junior level position which could not be any polar-opposite from the ideal candidate. I welcome thoughts and suggestions and am curios to other’s experiences. Cheers!(
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The May issue of Technet magazine features 2 articles on System Center products:
System Center:
Introducing System Center Mobile Device Manager
The new System Center Mobile Device Manager provides a complete set of tools for managing Windows Mobile devices through an MMC snap-in or via Windows PowerShell. Find out how this vital tool will allow you to manage mobile devices, increase security, and deliver mobile VPN capabilities. Written by Matt Fontaine
System Center:
What's New in System Center Essentials SP1
Service Pack 1 introduces significant enhancements for System Center Essentials 2007. Explore some of the key changes that will improve the user experience and streamline administration. Written by Pete Zerger
Dear Configuration Manager Open Beta Participants,
We are pleased to announce that the Release Candidate (RC) build of Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is now available for download on Microsoft Connect. Please proceed to the following link for more information:
https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=8163&SiteID=16
Ben Hunter: I am often asked what the best way is to manage drivers with both BDD/MDT and ConfigMgr. With this in mind I thought I would create two blog posts dealing with this topic. The
first post covered ConfigMgr and the second (this post) BDD/MDT driver management.
Please note this is not the only way to manage drivers, there are many different ways to manage drivers. However this is an approach that I have used many times with much success.(
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Clive Eastwood: Here are a couple a tidbits on command notification with Operations Manager 2007 I’ve seen people asking about recently.
1) I’m getting Alerts “Script or Executable was Dropped” when command notifications execute. How do I prevent it?
What you’ll typically see in the Alert description is the following:
“The process could not be created because the maximum number of asynchronous responses (5) has been reached, and it will be dropped. Command executed: ………”
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When developing a build it is often useful to have it in debug mode. Debug mode is when log content is echoed to the screen during the build and all the logs, including variables.dat, are copied to the c:\windows\temp\bddlogs folder on completion. Ben Hunter covered off running single tasks or task sequences in debug mode in his blog. Here I will detail how to always enable it for LIteTouch - OSD is a different matter! This solution involves changing a core BDD/MDT file.
Before we make this change I just want to cover off what happens when you create your WinPE boot media. When WinPE boots it looks for an unattend.xml file in the root of its boot drive. If it finds one it can use the information there to control a number of things;
* screen resolution
* language settings
* programs to run
BDD and MDT have template unattend.xml files in the %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft deployment Toolkit\Templates or %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft BDD 2007\Templates directories. The files are called Unattend_PE_x86.xml or Unattend_PE_x64.xml - they are, initially both the same. If you open one you will see there are three entries under the windowsPE pass; Display, RunSynchronous and Restart. The one we are interested in is the RunSynchronous section. (
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Don Hite: The updated Admin Studio Configuration Manager Edition is now available from Macrovision in collaboration with the Microsoft System Center team for use with ConfigMgr 2007. It includes all the tools necessary for you to create windows installer applications for package distributions. It includes the Repackager, Tuner and the Distribution wizard just like the previous version for SMS 2003: FLEXnet AdminStudio SMS Edition
Download the Admin Studio Configuration Manager Edition
Matt Goedtel: In continuation of my
prior blog post a couple of weeks ago, I realized this evening there is another method that is much easier and more straight forward. While Walter Chomak recommended checking the Operations Manager Event Log on the agent managed system, by looking for Event ID 1201 specific to the Management Pack itself (See here to read Walter's Blog Post -
http://wchomak.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F56EFE25599555EC!896.entry) most customers that I engage with are looking for a more centralized approach.
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Summary: the SMS Client Health Tool (CHT) is being updated in the upcoming ConfigMgr 2007 R2 release, and renamed as Client Status Reporting (CSR). There are improvements big and small that you should consider.
Rob Stack, one of the ConfigMgr product group technical writers reviewed the CSR a few weeks ago. That's a great summary, so there's no point in me doing a similar summary here. But there are a couple of subtleties that Rob alludes to but are worth highlighting:
* The tables now include complete client activity history - I've always been an advocate of judging client health in the context of 'normal' activity. Historic data makes that possible.
o the history data is at the hierarchy level, so my earlier posting on saving your own historic data will still apply if you want site-level client activity reporting
* FSP data - FSP data is great in its own right, as is client activity data - combining the two is wonderful. The CSR service does that, so that way we have richer client health data.
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Kevin Holman: Do you ever wish you had a list of the rights needed to install OpsMgr on each server role? Or what each service account needs for steady state? Or how about ongoing support... for your Admin group - to have enough rights in SQL to support OpsMgr?
I have created a spreadsheet of the typical security accounts, and what rights they need on each server role, or database.
Download:
OpsMgr security account rights mapping - what accounts need what privileges?
Developers are best suited to building application monitoring features. On the Microsoft platform, that means building Management Packs complete with a Service and Health Model.
Models and Modeling are hardly the terms you equate with the Information Technology industry. Yet, modeling is exactly what you need to learn to build Management Packs for Microsoft Operations Manager 2007. Microsoft's new holistic model-centric approach is a complete departure from the server-centric ways of Operations Manager 2005 (MOM).
In this article, I'm going to build a simple management pack from the ground up and show how application instrumentation and modeling come together to monitor the health of your Enterprise Applications.(
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Microsoft Windows Key Management Service (KMS) is a new Windows service used in volume-licensed environments to activate machines running Windows Vista or later versions.
This management pack monitors and reports the health of KSM hosts within the enterprise environment.
The Microsoft Windows Key Management Service rule group enables system administrators to monitor the health of all computers configured as a KMS host. Rules create alerts for conditions that could indicate KMS outages or impending problems. In addition, KMS activity data logged in the Windows event log are collected to support health and statistical reporting for KMS client activations.
Download:
Microsoft Windows Key Management Service Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005
This document describes performance and scalability guidelines to consider when planning a Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 deployment.
Download:
Operations Manager 2007 Performance and Scalability Whitepaper
Learn more about how the Microsoft System Center Family of products can integrate into typical data center-centric tasks such as: planning, consolidation, deployment automation, updating and patch management, health and performance monitoring, data backup and protection, and regulatory compliance, as well as more about the role of virtualization. Dave Morehouse, Sr. Product Manager System Center Marketing interviews Jeff Wettlaufer, Technical Product Manager System Center Marketing.
Visit TechNet Radio: System Center and the Data Center
Raphael Burri: Using the currently available AD management packs it is only possible to discover AD forests, the root management server (RMS) has access to. When implementing gateway servers to extend OpsMgr’s management group to other forests (domains), only the remote domain controllers (DCs) but not their domains and forests are added to the repository.
Furthermore the discovery explicitly expects finding all DCs in the AD OU ‘Domain Controllers‘. If DCs’ computer objects are organized into sub OUs (in our installation this was required to make applying different IPSec policies possible), the AD topology discovery won’t be able to find them.(
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DPM provides an efficient disk-based data protection and recovery solution. DPM protects Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, and Windows Storage Server 2003, and makes use of advanced features such as replication, policy-driven protection, and the Windows Server 2003 Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). DPM is designed to work in conjunction with your existing backup solution to help you achieve the following goals:
• Reduce backup and restore times to below those offered by traditional tape-based systems.
• Simplify your backup infrastructure and make it easier to manage.
• Reduce the amount of data your organization will lose in the event of a server failure or emergency.
• Allow your users to restore their own files in many cases.
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Stefan Stranger: Secure Vantage is offering a
free download of their Security Top Alerts Management Pack (STAMP).
STAMP is designed to provide key alerting for Windows Server Security events leveraging System Center Operations Manager 2007. STAMP is intended to provide security alerting and operations for key Windows Security events for the following:
- Auditing Integrity
- Domain Changes
- Policy Changes
- User Rights Changes
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Check out the new look and feel for some of the System Center product pages on TechNet.
The System Center
Configuration Manager and
Operations Manager Tech Centers sport new page designs that group content into related areas making it easier to find what you're looking for. All related System Center products will be updated to the new format over the next few months so we hope you find the new design useful. There are additionial updates coming down the road that will increase the functionality of these pages even further, so bookmark these pages and check back soon.
Thanks, The System Center Team.
The deployment guide discusses best practices for deploying Remote Operations Manager 2007. The guide includes the following:
• Architecture
• Security
• Requirements
• Service Provider Site Deployment
• Customer Site Deployment
• Post-Deployment Tasks
The Relnotes file contains a list of known issues for SC Remote Operations Manager.
Download:
Remote Operations Manager 2007 Deployment Guide and RelNotes
Adam Meltzer: Often times, basic communication issues can happen between the client and MP and they can be hard to decipher from logging alone. The error class I'll concentrate on here are the "WINHTTP_STATUS_CALLBACK" errors that may appear in the ccmexec.log on the client. These errors are bubbled up from WinHTTP and the MSDN documentation can be found here. However, only a few of these are relevant to ConfigMgr, and I'll cover a few of these here.(
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The BizTalk Server Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 is a entirely new management pack that provides comprehensive discovery and monitoring of BizTalk Server components and applications. In addition to general support for BizTalk Server 2006, BizTalk Server 2006 R2, this management pack provides coverage for new BizTalk Server 2006 R2 features, such as the native EDI runtime and RFID.
Feature Bullet Summary: This management pack focuses on the following key scenarios which are discussed further in the management pack guide provided within the download:
* Suspended Message Alerts
* Alert Suppression Policy
* BAM Technical Assistance Alerts
* BizTalk Message Boxes and Hosts
* Orchestration Failures
* Service Monitoring
* Application Monitoring
* Monitoring of various aspects of RFID
Download:
Microsoft Biztalk Server 2006 Management Pack for SC Operations Manager 2007
Victor Sletten: We often get questions about the Auto Apply Driver action not being able to resolve content – which results in the following lines in the smsts.log file:
Found 0 DPs in subnet, 0 DPs in local site, and 0 DPs in remote location.
Failed to resolve content for driver "
". Code 0x80040102.
If you get this error, you should do the following:
1. Verify you have added the driver to a driver package
2. Verify the driver package has been assigned to a DP
3. Verify the package has been Updated since the driver was added to the driver package
It is this last step that is often the problem – let me try to explain what is going on.(continue at source)
Pete Zerger: It’s process that raises questions in any software platform, and controlling your management pack deployment and tuning processes is one of th most important.
The Management Pack Lifecycle Whitepaper provides great insight and process guidance around effective tuning, deployment and release management of your Operations Manager and Essentials 2007 MPs. Although written by Silect Software (a 3rd party ISV for Opsgmr and SCE), this paper is full of excellent guidance (and I am not paid to say that).
Download the Managment Pack Lifecycle Whitepaper from Silect.
Pete Zerger: The Remote Operations Manager Deployment Guide for Essentials 2007 is now available for download from the Microsoft website. For those of you not familar with Remote Operations Manager, it is the Essentials add-on that allows managed services providers to remotely monitor Essentials environments at remote customer sites.
The deployment guide discusses best practices for deploying Remote Operations Manager 2007. The guide includes the following:
• Architecture
• Security
• Requirements
• Service Provider Site Deployment
• Customer Site Deployment
• Post-Deployment Tasks
Download the guide HERE
Neale from System Center Forum: I created a script for a customer to measure the response time of SMB file share (Windows File Share) to test new network equipment. I thought that this script might be useful to someone in the community so I dressed it up a bit and created two versions of it. You can download the scripts in a MP form here.(continue at source)
Kevin Holman: This question comes up a lot. The answer is really - not what maintenance you should be performing... but what maintenance you should be *excluding*.... and when. Here is why:
Most SQL DBA's will set up some pretty basic default maintenance on all SQL DB's they support. This often includes, but is not limited to:
DBCC CHECKDB (to look for DB errors and report on them)
UPDATE STATISTICS (to boost query performance)
DBCC REINDEX (to rebuild the table indexes to boost performance)
BACKUP
SQL DBA's might schedule these to run via the SQL Agent to execute nightly, weekly, or some combination of the above depending on DB size and requirements.
On the other side of the coin.... in some companies, the MOM/OpsMgr team installs and owns the SQL server.... and they dont do ANY default maintenance to SQL. Because of this - a focus in OpsMgr was to have the Ops DB and Datawarehouse DB to be fully self-maintaining.... providing a good level of SQL performance whether or not any default maintenance was being done.(continue at source)
Hi everyone, my name is Jeff Wettlaufer, and I am the Sr. Technical product Manager for System Center Configuration Manager. This week at RSA, Microsoft System Center will be present like never before. With the recent releases of Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007, Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager, the business of Management at Microsoft has taken Security to a new level.
Through integration to the Windows Client and Server platform as well as Forefront, System Center has achieved new and improved security capabilities across a wide range of scenarios, including: Datacenter, mobile workforce, branch office as well as both physical and virtual environments.
For example, this week at RSA, System Center will be showcasing our ability to integrate with Windows Server 2008 Network Access Protection. Today’s increasingly mobile workforce and the need for interconnection between partners and customers present an entirely new set of challenges for IT departments. In addition to ensuring that the desktop computers on the network are up-to-date and meet the company’s requirements for system health, network perimeters must also protect networks from roaming devices that may be vulnerable to security exploits.(continue at source)
Pete Zerger: Question: What if I do not want to monitor an application or service for a particular server? How can I stop this without overriding every rule and monitor for that server?
Answer: In the RTM release there was no good answer for this all too common situation. Sometimes you may not want to monitor all applications on a computer. However, once the instance of an object-type has been discovered (such as an Active Directory domain controller), rules and monitors are active and running shortly thereafter. In the RTM release of Operations Manager, this meant creating a tremendous number of disable overrides for all rules and monitors to stop unwanted alerts (not fun) or digging into the SDK (also in the ‘not fun’ category).(continue at source)
The definition of the task sequence (e.g. the specific steps to run) is distributed to the client using System Center Configuration Manager’s policy mechanism. By default, clients are configured to download policy every 24 hours (this means that after you change the definition of a task sequence it could be up to 24 hours before it takes affect on the client). We use this polling mechanism because it enables Configuration Manger to support a large number of clients with a relatively small number of servers. However it can definitely make debugging task sequence a bit of a pain. Here are some tips:
Option 1: Refresh Policy on the client
1. Make your change to the task sequence
2. On your client open the “Configuration Manager” control panel applet and run the “Machine Policy Retrieval & Evaluation Cycle” action on the Actions tab.
3. Wait 2 minutes while the policy is downloaded and processed
4. Run the task sequence
To make it clear that the client has received the new policy I sometimes change the name of the task sequence in step 1 to make it clear that new policy has been received.
Option 2: Use Boot Media
Unlike the Configuration Manager client, boot media (which can also be run in the full OS when a client is not installed) downloads policy every time it starts. So, depending on the type of task sequence I am testing I sometimes find it convenient to use boot media.
SCCM defines a driver as an INF file plus its associated content. When a driver is first imported we do a check to see if the exact same driver (e.g. same INF file and content) has already been imported at the site and prevent it from being imported. However, if there are any differences then the metadata is read from the INF file (including name, manufacturer, supported operating systems, etc.) and a new driver object is created.
It is not uncommon for hardware vendors to package different INF files for each operating system they support in the same directory. When this happens, SCCM will create a driver object for each INF file but it is smart enough to only keep a single copy of the content. Since the default name of a driver comes from the supported hardware list in the INF file, each of these driver objects will likely get the same default name even though they support different operating systems (to see if this is the case, check out “Applicability” tab on the Driver’s preview pane).
There are a few things you can do about this.(continue at source)
Ian Blyth: Using reports from the generic library allows you to create some custom reports. The two main ones are the Custom Configuration and Performance. The former allows you to do asset type reports while the latter gives you the ability to create capacity type graphs reports. These performance reports automatically provide linked “drill down” reports to Performance Detail so it always best to start with just the Performance one.(continue at source)
Walter Chomak: Starting mid-April 2008, beta Operations Management Packs for Windows Server 2008 will start to become available through Microsoft Connect. The betas are scheduled to be released as follows: BaseOS and DHCP in mid-April; Cluster, Active Directory, and Network Access Protection (NAP) in May; Network Load Balancing (NLB) in June 2008.
Clive Eastwood: The first wave of localized Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 Upgrade packages are now available in French, German, Japanese and Russian.
Just select the download language of choice from here.
The Security Compliance Management toolkit consists of 12 desired configuration management (DCM) Configuration Packs that you can use with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. You can use the Configuration Packs to scan the computers in your environment to determine their level of compliance with baselines prescribed in security guides from Microsoft for Windows® XP SP2, Windows Vista®, and Windows Server® 2003 SP2. Customers can then use the DCM feature in Configuration Manger 2007 to produce reports that IT professionals can use to remediate security baseline settings and provide proof of compliance to a known baseline. Customers also can customize all of the prescribed security baselines and Configuration Packs.
Download the Security Compliance Management Beta
David Allen from Aquilaweb: Recently I have set-up SQL log shipping for the environment I am working on and after producing a step-by-step document I thought it might be useful to many others, so I have posted it under Guides.
Download: System Center Operations Manager 2007 SQL Log Shipping Guide
Client Tools
System Center Mobile Device Manager (MDM) 2008 Client Tools provides tools to help administrators to troubleshoot connections and monitor device synchronization for Windows Mobile powered devices as part of an MDM system.
Server Tools
System Center Mobile Device Manager (MDM) 2008 Server Tools provides tools to help administrators manage deployment and cleanup tasks in an MDM system.
Best Practices Analyzer
System Center Mobile Device Manager (MDM) 2008 Best Practices Analyzer Tool helps you analyze a group of servers to determine if the prerequisites and best practices are met for MDM deployment.
Pete Zerger: I was doing some research and testing on Windows 2008 security and audit logging capabilities and wanted to share these resources for you Opsmgr administrators that may be have need for some of this information for use with Audit Collection Services.
Here are some great resources to get you familiar with Windows 2008 security events and granular audit policy configuration.
* Windows 2008 Audit and Compliance - This TechNet Magazine article is a great introduction to auditing capabilities of Windows 2008 and configuration of Granular Audit Policies (GAP).
* Security Audit Events for Win2008 and Vista - Here’s a great list of Windows 2008 Security Event IDs and descriptions. You’ll notice that Win2008 events are nearly identical to Windows Vista, and you’ll see these in the EventSchema.xml
* Windows 2008 Security Guide - Downloadable version of the authoritative guide on Windows 2008 security
* SVT Audit Reference List - If you have interested in matching Windows 2008 event IDs to their legacy counterparts, Secure Vantage folks took some info from MS and ultimatewindowssecurity.com to reference some of the legacy event IDs next to their Windows 2008 equivalents.
Paul Thomsen: here's a technique for collecting details about the HAL used by your computers. Do you need to know which Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) your clients are using? For example, you may wish to ensure you're using all features (such as multiprocessors).
This solution is from a couple of years ago, and I don’t know if I had the optimal method (or whether it’s still optimal), but research at that time indicated that the following was necessary, and I don't have reason to think there's a better solution.(continue at source)
Richard Smith: I have had a number of emails and comments requesting the location for the video walkthroughs featuring BDD 2007 Lite Touch and BDD 2007/SMS 2003 Zero Touch Setup, so I have re-posted them to the Deployment Guys SkyDrive for download:
The BDD 2007 Lite Touch Video Walkthrough download pack (23.5 MB) contains the following videos - view them in the order they are listed to see the overall process.
* 1. Lite Touch Configuration.wmv
* 2. Lite Touch Office 2007 Configuration.wmv
* 3. Lite Touch Client NEW COMPUTER.wmv
* 4. Lite Touch Client REFRESH COMPUTER.wmv
View all of these walkthroughs on-line at Deployment Forum! Or Download the Walkthrough video pack from the Deployment Guys SkyDrive
The BDD 2007 Zero Touch Video Walkthrough download pack (22.3 MB) contains the following videos - view them in the order they are listed to see the overall process.
* 1. Zero Touch Configuration.wmv
* 2. Zero Touch Client NEW COMPUTER.wmv
* 3. Zero Touch Client REFRESH COMPUTER.wmv
View all of these walkthroughs on-line at Deployment Forum! Or Download the Walkthrough video pack from the Deployment Guys SkyDrive
Daniel Lai: From the Community request. Here are the GPO Compliance Baseline configuraton without CP Studio.
1. Create a new GPO and import the Security Template or use the existing GPO with the imported Security Template.
2. Select the GPO in the Group Policy Tab, Click Properties.
3. Remember the Unique name of the GPO. Click Cancel Twice.
4. In SCCM Console, Click Desired Configuration Management.
5. Right Click Configuration Item and create a new general configuration item.
6. In the Settings Tab of the Wizard. Click New. And choose WQL Query.
7. Follow the Screenshot for the configuration. (Attached.)
8. Modify the guidName value to be your Security Template GPO Guid.
9. Complete the Configuration Item creation and create a new Configuration Baseline with this Configuration Item.
See also: Using SCCM DCM to verify the GPO compliance
The SCAP Conversion Tool for DCM can convert any SCAP stream files into DCM Configuration Packs for use with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. This Beta release includes a user guide that provides detailed instructions for using this command-line tool, as well as detailed information about the mapping between the SCAP protocol and DCM.
Please note this is a Public Beta, the review period runs from April 3 to May 8, 2008. After using the tools and reading the documentation, please provide feedback by completing the Security Compliance Management Beta survey on Microsoft Connect. The survey provides opportunities for written feedback. Alternatively, you can turn on the Track Changes feature in the Beta documents to use the Comment feature to include your feedback. Please e-mail commented documents to SCMBeta@microsoft.com.
Download: SCAP Conversion Tool for DCM Beta
The Microsoft Configuration Manager 2007 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 provides proactive monitoring of your Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 environment. This management pack includes:
• Detection and monitoring of all Configuration Manager servers and dependent services
• The alert driven state
• The site hierarchy diagram,
• Performance and backlog monitoring and configuration
• Performance and availability reports.
Before you install the Configuration Manager 2007 Management Pack, read the Configuration Manager 2007 Management Pack User's Guide. The guide includes the instructions you need to correctly deploy, configure and use the management pack.
Download: Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007
With Microsoft Visio 2007 Pro the user now has the ability to connect data to diagrams and use data graphics to make the visualization more meaningful and impactful. The OpsManager and ConfigManager Solution for Visio 2007 Pro helps you visualize your key reports. Using the solutions framework which utilizes an easy to configure web server component provided for your environment you can now easily connect data from OpsManager and ConfigManager in Visio 2007 Pro. Download the Visio add in and the web server component to connect and generate datasets to connect to your existing diagrams or auto generate your diagrams for your infrastructure monitoring needs. See your data from OpsManager and ConfigManager live in Visio diagrams Today by downloading this valuable Visio Add-in free
Download: Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Pro SCOM & SCCM Connectors
MDM is a Microsoft technology that helps Windows Mobile 6.1 devices work within the IT infrastructure of a company as trusted and managed members of the enterprise.
MDM consists of the following four main system components: MDM Device Management Server, MDM Enrollment Server, MDM Gateway Server, and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 databases. The SQL Server databases must be installed separately.
These components work with key IT services to give managed devices access to selected business data. The primary IT services that work with MDM are the following: Active Directory Domain Service, MDM software distribution, certificate services, and line-of-business application servers, such as Microsoft Exchange.
Download: System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 Evaluation Edition
Pete from System Center Forum: While it’s clear MS has a long journey to take the lead in the virtualization market, it’s interesting to see how System Center technologies can drive virtualization, often on the cheap. But with hyper V on the way, we’re going to see more Windows shops looking to consolidate servers on the new virtualization platform.
Operations Manager 2007 plays an obvious supporting role in monitoring VM hosts and guest operating systems. However, Operations Manager can play a key role in actually planning your organizations virtualization initiative.(continue at source)
Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 Resource Kit - Client Tools
System Center Mobile Device Manager (MDM) 2008 Client Tools provides tools to help administrators to troubleshoot connections and monitor device synchronization for Windows Mobile powered devices as part of an MDM system.
Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 Resource Kit - Self Service Portal
System Center Mobile Device Manager (MDM) 2008 Self Service Portal is a Web-based interface that lets users manage their Windows powered mobile devices in MDM system.
Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 Resource Kit - Server Tools
System Center Mobile Device Manager (MDM) 2008 Server Tools provides tools to help administrators manage deployment and cleanup tasks in an MDM system.
Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 Resource Kit - Best Practices Analyzer
System Center Mobile Device Manager (MDM) 2008 Best Practices Analyzer Tool helps you analyze a group of servers to determine if the prerequisites and best practices are met for MDM deployment.
The System Center Configuration Manager 2007 User Assistance team has created a set of quizzes to help you assess your understanding of the dependencies and requirements for key features of Configuration Manager. These quizzes are intended to raise your level of awareness of the some of the nuances of these features before you configure and use them. They can also be used to help train other Configuration Manager administrators within your organization. Each quiz consists of 10 questions that can be answered Yes or No. Regardless of your answer, the quiz will display the correct information, and include one or more links to the corresponding related content located in the Configuration Manager 2007 Documentation Library located on the Configuration Manager TechCenter.
Download the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Product Feature Quizzes
The Operations Manager Product Team blog gives you a look in the Microsoft kitchen by giving an overview of how MS implemented OpsMgr 2007. Featured in this article the Management Server and the Gateway Servers. Interesting read because Microsoft itself is probably one of its biggest customers using the product.(continue at source)
Today, Windows Mobile 6.1 was announced at CTIA. One of the features of WM 6.1 is System Center Mobile Device Manager (MDM). MDM helps manage Windows Mobile 6.1 devices in a comprehensive manner with minimal impact to an IT infrastructure. With MDM, Windows Mobile devices can be used as trusted and authenticated members of your enterprise just as other managed computers that run Windows-based operating systems, such as servers or portable computers.
Just in time for the announcement of Windows Mobile 6.1, the System Center Mobile Device Manager Tech Center has gone live on TechNet. The System Center Mobile Device Manager Tech Center provides a portal to a broad set of content that pertains to MDM It will help you get started with MDM and gives you access to valuable community resources. Check it out!
Continuing our review of Hyper-V, the recently released Microsoft virtualization product for Windows Server 2008, we focus on the management aspect of the hypervisor. In two other recent blogs, I took a quick look at the Hyper-V Manager and the simple creation of a virtual machine. Also on SearchServerVirtualization.com, fellow contributor Anil Desai gave advice on using the Hyper-V Manager. Now we’ll take a closer look at System Center Virtual Machine Manager.(continue at source)
The SQL Server Management Pack monitors the availability and performance of SQL Server 2000 and 2005 and can issue alerts for configuration problems. Availability and performance monitoring is done using synthetic transactions. In addition, the Management Pack collects Event Log alerts and provides associated knowledge articles with additional user details, possible causes, and suggested resolutions. The Management Pack discovers Database Engines, Database Instances, and Databases and can optionally discover Database File and Database File Group objects.
Download Microsoft SQL Server 2000/2005 Management Pack
Company Knowledge is used to capture the steps required to resolve an alert in your OpsMgr installation. When paired with the Product knowledge (which provides you with the application developers knowledge on the causes and suggested resolution steps for an alert), the two will help any operator with the best steps to take to resolve an alert.
Product Knowledge is embedded in a rule or monitor when it is authored. Company Knowledge can be added at any time provided you have the correct applications loaded and you are logged into the console with an account that is assigned to the correct role.(continue at source)
| 25 Apr '08 - 23:11 | kenneth van surksum | 
no comments | news source ~ Operations Manager Product Team 
