My Microsoft Operations Management Experience

Tech Insights 2011 - Useful FREE WIndows Tools to assist in a Windows 7 Migration

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:53:00 +0000

Tech Insights 2011 was awesome... as always. The session that I delivered this year was on sharing Useful Tools to Assist in Assessment, Deployment and Managing a Windows 7 Infrastructure.

Here is the slide deck from my session:

Useful FREE Windows Tools

Also.. recorded it if you want to view it:

If the video does not display well, View it in Vimeo

Check out www.techinsights.my for details about the event and announcements for Tech Insights 2012

SQL 2012 New Licensing scheme under virtualization

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 12:55:00 +0000

Looking at SQL Server licensing today, we could actually save some money based on how it is licensed under a Virtualization scenario. An example is as follows:

SCENARIO: You have a 2 X Quad Core Processor in the Host Server, and had SQL Server installed in a virtual machine. In the Virtual Machine, you assigned 4 Virtual CPUs.

LICENSING CALC: To license the SQL Server on Processor licensing, we would calculate as follows:

                                   [no. of Virtual CPUs] / [no. of total physical cores] = 4 / 8 = 0.5

                                   Round up the result to the nearest whole number = 1

                                   This means that you would need to license it with 1 Processor License

This is huge savings as you would only need to purchase 1 Proc license even though the Host Server had 2 Processors.

This will change in the upcoming launch of SQL Server 2012.

SQL Server 2012 will have 2 licensing models.

The traditional Server + CAL licensing
The new Core based license

Under this new licensing structure, when purchasing the neccessary license for SQL Server in a Virtual Machine, you would have to purchase it based on the no. of Virtual Cores assigned to the VM. Therefore if you had assigned 4 Cores, then you would have to purchase SQL Server Enterprise 2012 with 4 Cores. Microsoft currently states also that the minimum purchase for Cores type structure is 4 Cores.

I am waiting on the actual pricing to see how this plays out on a costing play field. Then we can make our conclusions on how this will affect Virtualization based SQL installations.

Here is the official Microsoft site: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/future-editions/sql2012-licensing.aspx

Windows Intune v2 Released with new stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:11:00 +0000

Windows Intune v2 released today with some long needed additions for decent pc management.

Standard features such as inventory, forefront protection, monitoring and alerting were present and added the following:

1. Software Deployment

Intune now has the ability to deploy software from the cloud to any managed PC. You will first have to upload the neccessary software to the cloud service and the space provided is 2GB

Uploading is simple, just click on the link provided and the wizard will request for the location of the file

Some new reports are useful relating to Licensing. If you upload your Microsoft Agreement number, Intune will capture all the neccessary purchase records and report to you in Intune for you to compare with the installed software

Other subtle features are, the ability to execute remote tasks such as Run a Malware Scan, Reboot the machine AND ability to perform basic hardware reporting customizations

Check out Windows Intune: http://bit.ly/omSa5Z

Tech Ed NZ: Managing IT as a Service

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:48:00 +0000

THe second topic that we presented at Tech Ed New Zealand.

Covered how to use solutions such as Operations Manager, Service Manager, Orchestrator and the upcoming VMM2012 to assist in Private Cloud deployments and managing infrastructures that will be providing IT services

Check it out: http://www.ms4u.info/2011/08/microsoft-tech-ed-new-zealand-2011_4418.html

Tech Ed New Zealand: What's Coming in VMM 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:46:00 +0000

Presented the upcoming features of VMM 2012 at Tech Ed New Zealand 2011 with my colleague Lai Yoong Seng.

Covered Deployment and Infrastructure changes, Fabric Management, Cloud Management and Services Management.

Check it out: http://www.ms4u.info/2011/08/microsoft-tech-ed-new-zealand-2011_26.html

System Center App Controller announced

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:56:00 +0000

At the 2nd day keynote of WPC today, Satya Nadella announced the official name for Project Concero... system Center App Controller. System Center App Controller will provide a single console for managing both your Private and Public Cloud infrastructures. From the console you will be able to manage your virtual machines in the private cloud, provision more, create clouds etc. It's key differentiator is tha ability to manage the cloud infrastructure from a Sevice standpoint. Using the designer tool, an administrator can create a relationship of applications with the necessary operating system and virtual machine settings. When provisioning a Service, SCAP will then automatically create the necessary virtual machines, configurations, and applications to both the private or private cloud infra depending on the admin.

SCOM 2007 R2 Resource Kit is released

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 09:46:00 +0000

The Resource Kit for SCOM 2007 R2 has been released. It will include 3 important tools:

Scheduled Maintenance Mode
Clean MOM - to cleanly remove installation of R2
MP Event Analyzer - to analyze event based rules and monitors

Check out Rob's post on the SCOM Product Team Blogsite: http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2011/06/03/system-center-operations-manager-2007-r2-admin-reskit-released.aspx

MDT 2012 Beta launched

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 02:41:00 +0000

The MDT 2012 Beta program is publicly launched. Access it here:

https://connect.microsoft.com/site14

The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit has been used very effectively by our team to assist in deployment of Windows 7 operating systems. Using the MDT2010 tool, we've used it together with SCCM to extend capabilities of the Task Sequencing engine.

excerpt from the from the Beta Team...

"

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2012 Beta 1 rides the next wave of System Center releases with support for System Center Configuration Manager 2012. For Lite Touch installations, MDT 2012 improves the overall client-side user experience, while also providing behind-the-scenes enhancements for partitioning, UEFI, and user state migration. These features, combined with many small enhancements, bug fixes, and a smooth and simple upgrade process, make MDT 2012 Beta 1 more reliable and flexible than ever.

Key Benefits:

Fully leverages the capabilities provided by System Center Configuration Manager 2012 for OS deployment.

Improved Lite Touch user experience and functionality.

A smooth and simple upgrade process for all existing MDT users.

Comparing SMS2003, SCCM 2007 and SCCM 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:55:00 +0000

I started listing down comparative differences between SMS 2003, SCCM 2007 and SCCM 2012 and with the help of Wei King to finish off the list, here is what we came up with...

Features	SMS2003	SCCM2007	SCCM 2012
Hardware & Software Inventory	ü	ü	ü
Automatic Client Health Remediation			ü
Software Distribution	ü	ü	ü
Computer based targeting	ü	ü	ü
User based targeting		ü*P	ü
State-based Application Distribution			ü
Self-service portal			ü
App-V Package Deployment		ü	ü
Xen-App Package Deployment			ü
Uninstallation via Software Center			ü
User-Device Affinity			ü
Distribution Point Groups			ü
Boundary Groups			ü
Application Revision History			ü
Content Management			ü
Software Updates	ITMU	Via WSUS	Via WSUS
3^rd party application		ü	ü
Automatic Software Updates Deployment Rules			ü
Automatic clean-up of Superseded and Expired Updates			ü
Software Metering	ü	ü	ü
Collection-based Policies			ü
Remote Administration	Remote Tools	Remote Tools & Remote Desktop	Remote Tools + Ctrl-Alt-Del
Reporting	Basic	Basic & SQL Reporting	SQL Reporting Services
Administrator Console	ü	ü	ü
User-friendly ribbon			ü
Status reporting		ü*P	ü
Agent Managed	ü	ü	ü
Integrate with Active Directory	ü	ü	ü
Automatic Boundary Discovery			ü
Forest Discovery			ü
Discovery of Computers	ü	ü	ü
Operating System Deployment		ü	ü
Offline Servicing of OS Image			ü
Task Sequence		ü	ü
Maintenance Windows		ü	ü
Desired Configuration Management		ü	ü
Automatic Remediation of Configuration Drift			ü
Internet Based Client Management		ü	ü
Integration with Windows Server 2008 Network Access Protection		ü	ü
Intel vPro Intergration		ü SP1	ü
Role-based Access Control			ü
Power Management		ü R3	ü
User Power Management Opt-out			ü
Windows Mobile Device Management		ü	ü
Non-Windows Mobile Device Management			ü

Note: *P = Partial

NOTE: The above was done in comparison to SCCM 2012 Beta 2 and what we know that will be supported in the eventual release

Resetting my Outlook Inbox Name

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 15:03:00 +0000

For some irritating reason... my Outlook 'Inbox' got renamed to 'image001.jpg'

checking in my OWA... its the same..

What is going on??!?!?!?1

Tried to look into the right-click menus and properties etc on how to rename it.. NOTHING!

Looking around on the web I found that the Outlook.exe executable had some switches. Found something that looked like may solve my problem. So.. said a prayer.. then tried it..

Close Outlook --> Open Command Prompt --> Run '

C:\ProgramFiles\Microsoft Office\Office14\Outlook.exe /resetfoldernames'

Hooraaayyyy!!! back to 'Inbox' :)

SCORCH-ing HOT!

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 22:07:00 +0000

It is official - System Center Opalis has now been renamed to System Center Orchestrator. SCORCH! The Microsoft main page has not been changed yet but I'm sure its soon enough. http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/opalis.aspx

MMS2011: Keynote Day 2 - Brad Anderson

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:10:00 +0000

Just finished the Keynote Day 2. Here are my cliff notes:

Announcing System Center Configuration Manager Beta 2 to Public

Ability to manage and control Windows, iPhone, iPad, Symbian and Android mobile devices
Ability to report on inventory, status, on the mobile devices and even remotely wipe out the phone in the event of a lost phone
Ability to deploy Citrix XenApp and Microsoft App-V applications
Management of users devices can now be done from a single pane
Superceding feature - ability to automatically uninstall an application when installing a new version
Self Service Catalog for users to pick and choose applications to be installed on their computers
Ability to manage Citrix Xen Desktop
Extending inventory items now easily done via console instead of having to modify smsdef.mof
Auto deployment rules can be configured to automatic download of updates and deploy.

Announcing Forefront Endpoint Protection will now be part of Core CAL
Announcing the inclusion of Microsoft Bitlocker Administration and Monitoring as part of the MDOP Suite
Announcing MMS2012 will be April 16 - 20 back at the VENETIAN, Las Vegas!

MMS2011: Keynote 1 - Brad Anderson

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:41:00 +0000

Just attended the first keynote of MMS2011 with Brad Anderson. Here are some cliff notes of what was announced:

Announcement and showcase of System Center Project Concero

A Web Based management tool directed at managing private and public clouds
Providing self service to application owners to manage their own cloud infrastructure from a cloud, VM or service model perspective.
Provides the ability to view both infrastructures on the Private Cloud and those hosted on Azure
Unique management perspective in managing the infrastructure "Services" rather than servers/VMs.
Will have built in integration with Service Manager that provides the self service portal to request for change and additional resources to the Admin

Announcement of Sytstem Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta

Will have support for Xen, VMWare, Hyper-V. Possibly the only one in the market that has cross platform hypervisor management support
Ability to manage load balancers as part of the service
ability to discover bare metal computers through protocols like IPMI and DCMI and provision OS and VMs
VMM Service Template function - kind of like a recipe of what makes up an application service. could be mixing OS, applications etc.
Ability to seperate the OS and the Application so that there is no dependency. This will allow admins to update Operating Systems individually and keep lesser images; patch them seperately from the application.
Ability to virtualize the Application via Server App-V to achieve the seperatino of App and OS. Deployment can then be seemless for multiple environments so as not neccessary to keep multiple sets of images.

Announcing System Center Operations Manager Project 2012

Will include Network Device monitoring out of the box
Ability to show the connections between the network device and the servers
Dashboards provides views such as network device average response time etc
will have deep integration with AVICODE (Application Monitoring)

Announcing Project Atlanta is now officially knowned as System Center Advisor

Provides Configuration Change Management for supported applications and OS
At launch will support SQL, Windows Server, Hyper-V, AD
Agents installed on servers, report the configuration data up to the Advisor cloud service
Rules available to check configuration against best practices, known issues, knowledgebase
Responses back to the customer could be best practice advisory, hotfixes for known configuration issues
Tracks configuration change for the servers
Licensing: FREE if you have Software Assurance on the related App/OS

TechNet Free Subscription on Passing a Virtualization Exam

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 15:50:00 +0000

Want a FREE TechNet subscription? Well.. quickly go take a Microsoft Virtualization exam and.. well.. PASS it! Offer is for first 1000 only! between March 1 - June 30 2011

http://www.anthologymarketing.com/microsoft/deployment/virtualization_cert/virtcert_landingpage_r02.html

App-V superflow published

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 22:54:00 +0000

About a week ago, a new superflow documentation was released. This is the App-V deployment Superflow. Highly useful document if u need a step by step guide to install the App-V componentt. Flowcharts are provided to showcase the steps process.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=948cb798-779c-4a39-9a16-5181dd1c45a7

Getting Rid of the Outlook 2010 Panning Hand

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:31:00 +0000

So i suddenly had this Hand in my Outlook 2010 Reading Pane and couldn't freakin get rid of it! This meant that I could not highlight any text and copy anything! Everytime I clicked the hand it would just PAN. Clik.. PAN... Click.. PAN... Spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how to get rid of it!!! ^&*(*&^..

then... i accidentally pressed [ESC] and *poof.... gone. Back to normal. DUH!!

SCOM placed in Leader Quadrant

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 02:43:00 +0000

Operations Manager 2007 R2 and its AVICode acquisition has been placed in the Gardner Magic Quadrant as a Leader. However, reading the review, there is a little error in their comment about licensing. In the Weaknesses description, it states that OpsMgr licenses can only be acquired with the System Management Suite. This is not right as OpsMgr can be purchased as a standalone product. Read it here

Opalis Integration Packs for FTP, Telnet and HTTP (by Quest)

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 15:18:00 +0000

Quest has released some FREE Opalis Integration Packs. They are for FTP, Telnet and HTTP.
http://blogs.inside.quest.com/management-extensions/2011/01/26/quest-software-opalis-integration-pack-utility-for-http-telnet-and-ftp/

Opalis Video Demos

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 01:41:00 +0000

This is a good post on demos surrounding Opalis. Check out the 8-minute video demos at http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/archive/2010/09/21/opalis-8-minute-demo-video-series-now-on-microsoft-showcase.aspx

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R3

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 02:00:00 +0000

I believe the only product which has ever gone to an R3 version.. :)

SCCM R3 is now released. http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/archive/2010/10/14/system-center-configuration-manager-2007-r3-unleashed.aspx

Opalis Customer Experience program announced. Sign up Now

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 06:12:00 +0000

The CEP for Opalis has been announced. Check out the team post here. This is a good program to participate together with Microsoft on your Opalis experience. Sign up here

Windows Intune first steps

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 08:27:00 +0000

Started the Beta 2 of Windows Intune yesterday. Installed the 64-bit agent that was downloaded from the Management Console. It took a couple of hours for the whole setup to initialize. Here is some of the stuff that was noticed:

My Forefront Client was uninstalled and replaced by the Intune Malware Protection
Windows Intune Center was added
Files were installed in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\OnlineManagement
Noticed several common client based management packs imported into the C:\Program Files\Microsoft\OnlineManagement\Monitoring\Management Packs folder

Error: 'Element not found'

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:06:00 +0000

While setting up an Operations Manager 2007 R2 image on Hyper-V, I came across an error when I tried to START the virtual machine.

An error occurred while attempting to start the selected virtual machine. Could not find a usable certificate. Error: 'Element not found'

I manually stopped and started the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management Service

net stop vmms
net start vmms

... and now the virtual machine could startup.

Why did this happen??

Extend Schema Log 'Failed to create attribute cn=. Error code = 8206.'

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 03:49:00 +0000

Had a bit of an issue today at a customer site while trying to extend schema for SCCM. The environment was on Windows 2000 Active Directory so the ExtAdSch.exe tool could not be run directly on the DC. Since the SCCM server was running Windows Server 2003, i ran the tool from there.

Logged on as Administrator (member of Schema Admins) but the schema extension failed. checking the logs and there was a skew of 'Failed to create attribute... Error code = 8206'

Looking around I saw some help from Wei King's blog post.

Failed to create attribute cn=. Error code = 8206.

If you get this error while trying to extend your schema for Configuration Manager 2007, it may be because your account may not have enough privileges to do so...yes even if you are the administrator (check the C:\ExtADSch.log). To do this, make sure you have your schmmgmt.dll registered before you can add this console into MMC. Once opened, add the Active Directory Schema console into your MMC. From there assign the account you are using to have rights to update the schema.

When trying this, I had an issue where I could not modify the permissions on the AD Schema snap-in. This was on a Windows 2000 DC. I realized that for this, I needed to do a Right-click --> Operations Master... and select the option for 'Schema may be modified on this Domain Controller'. But after assigning explicit permissions to the Administrator account, the ExtendAd Schema still failed with the same error.

After checking AD, I noticed that there were a few orphaned domain controllers still sitting in AD. After using the ntdsutil tool to remove the DCs from AD and clearing the replication topology, the ExtendAD Schema worked successfully!! Which leaves me to assume that the AD had replication sync errors which prevented it from updating schema.

Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cumulative Update 2 is Released

noreply@blogger.com (Raymond Chou) — Sat, 01 May 2010 02:12:00 +0000

CU2 for Operations Manager 2007 R2 has been released. It addresses a couple of key fixes as stated below taken from the Release Notes:

The Network Devices State view does not display the device name.

The discovery process fails when a double-byte character is inserted into a string that is searched.

The availability reports that are exported as TIF files or as PDF files are truncated.

The property bags of WMIEventProvider module do not support the including or excluding of specific properties.

The color of the chart lines does not match the legend in the Web console in the Performance view.

When SQL Reporting Services is enabled in SCOM by using the United States Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) security, the datawarehouse encounters an InvalidOperationException error.

The monitoring host process does not start the workflows immediately when tasks are received.

The Operations Manager console crashes when you open multiple customized views in a new window.

The Allow Anonymous discovery property in the Internet Information Services (IIS) Management Pack is incorrect in the console.

When you run updates, a restart dialog box is shown before the files for the update are delivered.

The agent update packages are not deployed to the servers that have the Terminal Services Gateway (TS Gateway) role installed or that have the Remote Desktop Gateway (RD Gateway) role service installed.

Audit Collection Services stops collecting data if the Event Log service uses the automatic backup feature.

To view Release Notes and Instructions on how to apply CU2, click here

A direct link to the download page is here

Good posting on a first hand experience by Kevin Holman here