Dynamic Service Manager CMDB with System Center Orchestrator

Posted on 07/04/2012 by Marcel Zehner

One thing you have to keep in mind with Private Cloud Computing is the fact that requirements for CMDB change dramatically. Not only that your CMDB needs to manage new classes (e.g. Virtualization Hosts, Hypervisors, Guests, Clouds etc.) and Relationships (e.g. VM belongs to Cloud, Cloud uses Virtualization Hosts, Virtualization Hosts run Hypervisor etc.,), but it must also be able to be enough dynamic to support Cloud scenarios. Cloud configurations are dynamic (e.g. VM Live Migration, VM Storage Migration), configuration changes can happen any time and can be triggered in many different situations (e.g. System Maintenance, End user Self Service). I had a speech about this topic some days ago at a Microsoft TechNet Event in Switzerland and I’d like to share that information with my blog readers.

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Posted in SCSM, System Center (without SCSM) | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

MVP 2012 “System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management”

Posted on 01/04/2012 by Marcel Zehner

Wow, great news in my mailbox today! I’m very proud to announce that I was awarded Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for “System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management”.

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That’s a great honor and of course encourages me to continue my work for the community – in my case with focus on Private Cloud and System Center – especially Service Manager.  Thanks to anyone that supported my work in the past and will do so in the future! And thanks to Michel Lüscher from Microsoft Switzerland that gave me the needed Support for becoming a MVP finally 🙂

Regards
Marcel

Posted in Exams/Awards | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Self Service Software Ordering (using SCSM, SCCM and SCO)

Posted on 27/02/2012 by Marcel Zehner

This is something I hear a lot: customers want their end users to be able to order new software for their computers using a self service portal. As soon as the request is approved (if an approval is needed may depend on the selected software), the software should be installed automatically. This procedure really helps unburden service desk people and supporters and of course also shortens the time to have a software ready on an end user device. In SCSM 2010 Microsoft shipped a solution to let consumers order software by using the end user portal, but – to be honest – this solution was not really enterprise ready and was removed for SCSM 2012. But if you are using the Microsoft System Center Suite, you have a set of great tools to build your own, cloud-ready solution. Read this post if you want to get an overview how this could be done.

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Posted in SCSM, System Center (without SCSM) | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Data Cubes in Service Manager 2012 – Part 2/3 (Publishing Reports)

Posted on 06/02/2012 by Marcel Zehner

In the first blog post of this series I described the basic handling of data cubes, how to create them and how to slice and dice data by using excel. Now let’s go to the next step with Data Cubes in Service Manager 2012 – I will demonstrate how reports can be saved and published in different ways. Have fun reading!

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Posted in SCSM | Tagged , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Marcel@MMS 2012- will you be there?

Posted on 03/02/2012 by Marcel Zehner

As every year I will attend MMS 2012 in Las Vegas to get the latest information about Microsoft’s Systems Management and Virtualization products. This year will be of deep interest because of the System Center 2012 platform launch – very exciting! But of course we all want to have fun as well. If you want to hang out for a beer and talk a little bit let me know!

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See you in fabulous Vegas!
Marcel

Posted in Events/Speaking | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

System Center 2012 Licensing

Posted on 19/01/2012 by Marcel Zehner

Microsoft announced the new licensing model for System Center 2012. There are some huge and very interesting changes. I’m gonna point out tho most important ones here …

  • There will be no more “single product licenses” for servers, System Center 2012 is an “all or nothing” decision where the server licenses cover the following System Center products:
    • System Center Service Manager
    • System Center Configuration Manager
    • System Center Operations Manager
    • System Center Orchestrator
    • System Center Virtual Machine Manager
    • System Center App Controller
    • System Center Data Protection Manager
    • System Center Endpoint Protection
  • No more licenses for Management Servers are needed, the only components that need licenses are managed endpoints (like systems monitored with SCOM agents or systems managed with SCCM agents)
  • All needed SQL Server licenses for System Center use are included.
  • There will be only 2 types of licenses for server components:
    • System Center Standard Server Management License – for physical servers or servers with max. 2 VMs
    • System Center Datacenter Server Management License – for unlimited VMs
    • Both suites contain the exact same server product licenses
    • Both suites are licensed per processor and every license covers 2 processors
  • For client management licensing there are 3 different offers:
    • System Center Configuration Manager
    • System Center Endpoint Protection
    • System Center Client Management Suite (SCOM, SCCM, SCO, SCDPM)
  • A transition path exists for existing licenses.

If you need more information about the new licensing model, check out this link –> http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/SystemCenter2012.aspx

Have fun!
Marcel

Posted in System Center (without SCSM) | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Data Cubes in Service Manager 2012 – Part 1/3 (Overview and basic handling of Data Cubes)

Posted on 02/01/2012 by Marcel Zehner

One cool new thing in SM12 is the ability to calculate data cubes that allow analysts to slice and dice data to get relevant information out of the data warehouse. This is a good alternative to regular Reporting which can sometimes be very hard to manage, especially when the default reports are not delivering the information you need and you have to customize the reports definitions yourself. This 3 part series will show you how to deal with data cubes in SM12 and will hopefully make your life as a SM12 administrator easier Smiley

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Posted in SCSM | Tagged , , , | 23 Comments

To what CI belongs a specific mail address?

Posted on 29/12/2011 by Marcel Zehner

Some months ago I wrote a blog post about getting the SMTP addresses of a User CI. This can be helpful if you need this information in a Opalis/Orchestrator Runbook. Based on this article the question came up if it would be possible to do the reverse approach and get the User or Group CI if you have a specific mail address. I took this as an input for this blog post as it indeed is possible.

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Posted in SCSM | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

News in SCSM12 (Beta) #8 – Permissions for triggering System Center Orchestrator runbooks

Posted on 12/11/2011 by Marcel Zehner

This question comes up a lot: “What permissions are needed to trigger runbooks in System Center Orchestrator?” Sure, you can give all service accounts administrative permissions on all components and that would work somehow, but this is not really what you want to do because you lose control of your environment. Because this information is not available in any docs, me and one of our SCSM TAP customers put together all the permissions that need to be configured to make this thing running smoothly by using the minimum privileges. I hope this will make it to the next version of the SCSM docs somehow …

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Posted in SCSM, System Center (without SCSM) | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Access the SM12 Web Portal using an Alias

Posted on 01/11/2011 by Marcel Zehner

SM12 brings a new Web Portal that is based on SharePoint. This is pretty cool because you can now combine the Service Manager functionality together with the rich function set of SharePoint. One thing I normally do is creating an alias to access the SM Web Portal (instead of using the effective server name). To make sure you have the complete functionality, read this blog as there is some more configuration needed than just creating a cname record.

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Posted in SCSM | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments