In the job details, we see a job called ‘PRO diagnostics’ started when we hit the Test PRO button. And from the details below, we can see it runs a cmdlet called Test-SCPROTip. This means we can test integration at any time using this cmdlet.

Testing from PowerShell

The Test-SCPROTip cmdlet tests integration between System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) and OpsMgr 2012. After creating a connection with Operations Manager and configuring PRO monitors, run Test-SCPROTip to validate that PRO integration is functioning correctly. Test-SCPROTip creates a new warning PRO alert in Operations Manager, invokes a remediation, and then implements the fix for the PRO tip.

To test this anytime from your admin workstation, open the VMM Command Shell and type Test-SCPROTip
Related Articles

Here are a few additional private cloud-related posts featuring System Center 2012 and related technologies that may be of interest

Configuring PRO integration between OpsMgr 2012 and VMM 2012

[Private Cloud]: Configuring anti-affinity between VMs on Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 and VMM 2012

Implementing rapid scale-out of a machine tier in VMM 2012 via PowerShell

Cloud: A quick note on accurately measuring Hyper-V host performance and utilization

What’s new in the Cloud Services Process Pack (CSPP) Release Candidate for System Center 2012?

Private Cloud in the real world: 5 lessons from the private cloud fabric

How to prepare for Orchestrator? Learn Opalis in a month of Friday afternoons! (free online resources)

PowerShell Scripts for System Center (Master Collection)

In VMware, you would configure this in their management UI. Hyper-V works differently, as you don't configure this setting in VMM 2012. Highly available VMs in Hyper-V are based in failover clustering, this is where anti-affinity would be configured, using the AntiAffinityClassNames property.

How anti-affinity works in Hyper-V and Failover Clustering

A cluster resource will group's AntiAffinityClassNames property consists of a user-defined string. If the AntiAffinityClassNames properties of two or more groups contain at least one identical string, the groups are said to be anti-affined. By default, all groups are affined (because their AntiAffinityClassNames property is NULL).

When a group is moved during failover, anti-affinity affects the algorithm used to determine the destination node as follows:

1. Using the preferred owner list of the group being moved, the Cluster service finds the next preferred node.

2. If the node is not hosting any group anti-affined with the group being moved, it is selected as the destination node.

3. If the next preferred available node is currently hosting a group anti-affined with the group being moved, the Cluster service moves to the next preferred available node in the preferred owner list.

4. If the only available nodes are hosting anti-affined groups, the Cluster service ignores anti-affinity and selects the next preferred available node as the destination node.

Use this property to identify groups that should not be hosted on the same node. Come up with a unique string value (MS docs suggest a GUID, but I like descriptive string) and add it to the AntiAffinityClassNames property of each group that should be anti-affined.

What will it NOT do?

As mentioned in point 4 above, sometimes you don't have enough hosts to avoid placing too VM's on the same host. With this reality in mind, anti-affinity does not guarantee that groups will never be hosted by the same node. If you have an application that cannot support more than one instance per node under any circumstances, you need to create a resource DLL to enforce that limitation.

How to configure anti-affinity

To configure anti-affinity between VM's, you basically assign each of the VM you'd like to keep separated, the same AntiAffinityClassNames value using the cluster command-line administration tool. This could be two virtual machines are more than two. The name of the resource group basically maps to the name of the VM as appears in the Failover Cluster Management tool. Syntax is shown here:

cluster group "" /prop AntiAffinityClassNames="SQLClusterNode"

After you configure these values, failover clustering will do its best to honor the settings based on the points listed above. You can also configure different preferred owners for each anti-affined VM guest in the Failover Cluster Management interface as well if you wish to ensure these hosts remain separate. With him

What about VMM and Dynamic Optimization?

In VMM 2012, where dynamic optimization re-evaluates and optimizes distribution of the VM load every 10 minutes, there is no built-in process to make sure two cluster groups (virtual servers in this case) that are anti-affined are running on different hosts.

One suggestion is to write a PowerShell script that queries the cluster service for all anti-affinity groups periodical, and then checks VMM to ensure the VMs in the anti-affinity groups are not the same physical host. You’d want to run the script every few minutes ensure that redistribution of resources didn't cause the virtual servers in a resource pool to end up on the same host. (dynamic optimization evaluates load distribution every ten minutes by default)

Another option would be to exclude guests from dynamic optimization that have anti-affinity settings defined.

Additional Resources

Here are a few additional private cloud-related posts featuring System Center 2012 and related technologies that may be of interest

Implementing rapid scale-out of a machine tier in VMM 2012 via PowerShell

Cloud: A quick note on accurately measuring Hyper-V host performance and utilization

What’s new in the Cloud Services Process Pack (CSPP) Release Candidate for System Center 2012?

Private Cloud in the real world: 5 lessons from the private cloud fabric

How to prepare for Orchestrator? Learn Opalis in a month of Friday afternoons! (free online resources)

PowerShell Scripts for System Center (Master Collection)

The new templates are:

Monitors

• UNIX/Linux Shell Command Three State Monitor
• UNIX/Linux Shell Command Two State Monitor

Rules

• UNIX/Linux Shell Command (Alert)
• UNIX/Linux Shell Command (Performance)

Tasks

• Run a UNIX/Linux Shell Command

Great step-by-step tutorial at http://operatingquadrant.com/2012/01/30/opsmgr-2012-unixlinux-authoring-templates-shell-command/

The service template can exist in one or more machine tiers (like web, app and data as you would see in a typical 3-tier web application), it can consist a little as one tier. Even with a service template that contains only a single VM, you can benefit from the benefits of service templates, including

With the advent of private cloud comes the perception of continuous availability as well as the perception of infinite capacity. These customer expectations raise the bar in terms of provisioning, as users may expect that application infrastructure can be scaled out almost instantly. How can we scale this rapidly? For example , what we need to do to double capacity of the web tier very quickly?

Enter Rapid Scale-out via PowerShell

Along with many features added to VMM 2012, there is also a major update to the PowerShell management interface. This makes it easy to provision multiple new machines in parallel without ever opening the VMM 2012 Admin console. The sample script below demonstrates how you can easily scale out the machine tier within the service template given a list of names in a text file. In the real world the input may more likely come from a service request in Service Manager or be triggered in response to capacity alerts via Operations Manager and Orchestrator, but this sample demonstrates the concept that would facilitate scaling out multiple VM instances provisioned in parallel.

Sample Script

Here’s a sample script to demonstrate this concept simply. As it is a sample, I assume you know 1) that no existing VMs of the same name have already been deployed and 2) the machine tier within the service template has scale out limits that allows the number of VMs you are attempting to create.

#import list of VMs 

$List = Import-Csv C:\scripts\ScaleOut.txt 

#Loop through each and deploy a new VM instance 

ForEach ($entry in $list){ 

$Service = $($entry.Service)

$Tier = $($entry.Tier)

$Guest= $($entry.Guest) 

#retrieve the target service instance 

$serviceInstance = Get-SCService -Name "$Service"

#retrieve the target computer tier 

$computerTier = Get-SCComputerTier -Service $serviceInstance | where { $_.Name -eq "$Tier" }

#create the new VM in the target computer tier 

New-SCVirtualMachine -ComputerTier $computerTier -Name "$Guest" -Description "" -ReturnImmediately -ComputerName "$Guest" `

 -StartAction "NeverAutoTurnOnVM" -StopAction "SaveVM"

}

#end of sample script

Note: You may be tempted to call this rapid scale-out method of a machine tier “cloud bursting” (many I have talked to use ‘cloud bursting’ in this way), but it’s not the same really. Click the cloud bursting link for the proper definition.

Additional Resources

Here are a few additional 'private cloud-related posts featuring System Center 2012 and related technologies that may be of interest

Cloud: A quick note on accurately measuring Hyper-V host performance and utilization

What’s new in the Cloud Services Process Pack (CSPP) Release Candidate for System Center 2012?

Private Cloud in the real world: 5 lessons from the private cloud fabric

How to prepare for Orchestrator? Learn Opalis in a month of Friday afternoons! (free online resources)

PowerShell Scripts for System Center (Master Collection)

Why? For purposes of measuring processor utilization, the host operating system is logically viewed as just another guest operating system. Therefore, the “\Processor(*)\% Processor Time” monitor counter measures the processor utilization of the host operating system only. To measure total physical processor utilization of the host operating system and all guest operating systems, use the “\Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor(_Total)\% Total Run Time” performance monitor counter. This counter measures the total percentage of time spent by the processor running the both the host operating system and all guest operating systems.

Which counters are most important?

When it comes to Hyper-V performance, Tony Voellm (Microsoft) is the master and he has compiled a great explanation of how to dig deep into Hyper-V performance using the Hyper-V related performance objects and counters in PerfMon.

Tony’s top performance counters are

Here are the top level performance counters to monitor and I’ll go into more detail on each;

• Overall health:
  • Hyper-V Virtual Machine Health Summary
  • Hyper-V Hypervisor
• Processor:
  • Processor
  • Hyper-V Hypervisor Logical Processor
  • Hyper-V Hypervisor Root Virtual Processor
  • Hyper-V Hypervisor Virtual Processor
• Memory:
  • Memory
  • Hyper-V Hypervisor Partition
  • Hyper-V Root Partition
  • Hyper-V VM Vid Partition
• Networking:
  • Network Interface
  • Hyper-V Virtual Switch
  • Hyper-V Legacy Network Adapter
  • Hyper-V Virtual Network Adapter
• Storage:
• Physical Disk
• Hyper-V Virtual Storage Device
• Hyper-V Virtual IDE Controller

What thresholds are appropriate?

Visit Tony’s blog directly and settle in for a great read on analyzing Hyper-V performance.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tvoellm/archive/2009/04/23/monitoring-hyper-v-performance.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tvoellm/archive/2008/05/12/hyper-v-performance-counters-part-four-of-many-hyper-v-hypervisor-virtual-processor-and-hyper-v-hypervisor-root-virtual-processor-counter-set.aspx

In terms of interest by technology, not surprisingly ConfigMgr, OpsMgr and Orchestrator top the list in terms of interest. However, private cloud finished very respectably, showing up on the interest list of nearly 1 in 2 respondents (45%).

While VMware is still the leader, clearly Hyper-V is gaining a lot of ground in recent months.

Only 1 in 3 are primarily responsible for management of the virtualization layer, a testament to the management focus of MMS attendees.

People clearly see the value in MMS as a conference. One third report they will be paying for some or all of their trip….quite an investment.

Register for MMS 2012

MMS 2012 promises to be a groundbreaking conference, with System Center 2012 announcements no doubt coming in April. Register for MMS 2012 at http://www.mms-2012.com

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28726&ocid=aff-n-we-loc--ITPRO40886&WT.mc_id=aff-n-we-loc—ITPRO40886

I wanted to put together a quick post on what's new in this release of the pack, and address the lingering question of chargeback reporting

Virtual Machine Report - The Virtual Machine Report allows the Service Provider, Project Administrator and Capacity Pool Users to be able to view the Virtual Machines along with VM Properties.

Chargeback Report Per VM - The Chargeback Report Per VM Report allows the Service Provider, Project Administrator and Capacity Pool Users to be able to view the chargeback report for the Virtual Machines which they manage.

Chargeback Report Per Project - The Chargeback Report Per Project report allows users to view chargeback costs per project.

Virtual Machines Daily Specs - The Virtual Machines Daily Specs report allows users to view properties of virtual machines.

VM Cost Settings Daily Report - The VM Cost Settings Daily Report specifies changes made to cost configurations.

Other chargeback reporting you may have missed…

I think many people miss the chargeback reporting is delivered in the VMM 2012 management pack for Operations Manager 2012. The Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Management Pack delivers reports for analyzing current capacity and resource utilization in the cloud fabric (storage, network, and compute) and VMs, as well as forecasting reports to help predict future needs. The Chargeback reports provides utilization data based on the dimensions of cloud capacity.

Reports in the Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Management Pack

Environment prerequisites

You do have to get a few things in place to take advantage of the CSPP,which of course you can download from the Microsoft website

• System Center Service Manager 2012 RC
• System Center Orchestrator 2012 RC
• System Center Operations Manager 2012 RC
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 RC

Definitely the is definitely some time before we see the System Center 2012 suite as a whole released, so now is a great time to get started familiarizing yourself with the new technology.

Here are a few things you must get right before anything else matters.

Lesson 1: SAN copy is critical for a happy cloud (or more specifically, happy users of  a private cloud)

Let's face it,copying many gigabytes of data (in the form of a virtual machine in this case) is not fast enough. Go into this with your eyes open,understanding the requirements to deliver rapid virtual machine provisioning. Counting the time required to deploy virtual machine in minutes is anti-climactic and the end result less impressive in inverse proportion to the time required to deploy VMs. To paraphrase the TechNet article:

Before you begin, make sure that the following prerequisites are met:

• The storage array must support the new storage management features in VMM.
• The storage array must support cloning or snapshots, and have the feature enabled.

Note: Realize that this may require additional licensing from your storage vendor. (yes, some vendors license the right to clone and shapshot luns!)

• The storage pool that you want to use for rapid provisioning must be under VMM management. This involves adding the SMI-S provider for the array, discovering storage pools, classifying the storage, and setting the preferred allocation method for the storage array to either snapshot or cloning.

There’s more. See “Rapid Provisioning a Virtual Machine by Using SAN Copy Overview” at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610594.aspx

Lesson 2: Configure your VMM Library share PROPERLY

Yes Virginia, there is a wrong way to configure VMM library…and this wrong way results in media being copied into your VM directories. And if you do it wrong, not only do VM copies take forever, so do ISO mounts.

as so eloquently stated by Michael Michael of Microsoft (that guy has a great name)  “First, you need to follow Jose Barreto's blog post on how to properly enable constrained delegation on the Hyper-V servers. You need to follow these steps for every Hyper-V host on which you want to create a Virtual Machine and attach a shared ISO. Additionally, these steps need to be followed for every library server that will host ISO files that are going to be linked from Virtual Machines.”

In the end, this allow you to use the “share image file instead of copying it “ option, avoiding slow and frustrating ISO mounts.

See “How to properly share ISO files in VMM with Hyper-V”

Lesson 3: With new technology comes new responsibility

Or as I like to say, “System Center won't teach itself to you”. If your VMware admin today, you will have to learn new tools and administrative tasks. In the end, I believe your total cost of ownership (TCO) will be lower, but there will be a transition period. By looking carefully at how you do things today, it is possible to minimize the impact of this change. The good news is, Microsoft offers loads of free training to get folks familiar with System Center 2012 and related private cloud technologies. VMware certainly can't make this claim  today.

Sign-up for the Microsoft System Center 2012 Private Cloud Jumpstart at http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=298

Lesson 4: Configure which network adapter handles Live Migration

If you allow Hyper-V and Windows to do as they will, the network you intended for Live Migration may not be the network that is used for live migration and the result will be, well….disappointing. The perceptions of continuous availability and infinite capacity cannot be realized when live migration performs like quick migration…quick migration never seemed that quick to me.

You set this value in the Failover Cluster management interface. When you choose the Live migration network for one VM, It applies the setting globally to the cluster.  For Proper configuration steps And related considerations, see Windows Server 2008 R2 & Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 - Hyper-V Live Migration Overview & Architecture

Lesson 5:  Create VM templates in a few sizes, along with a few VHDs

This one isn't too complicated, but can save a lot of time building VMs after you get started. Once you begin deploying in the cloud, you want to deploy Web servers, app servers and database servers. These roles will come with their own virtual machine requirements. Build templates before you get started is to avoid interrupting the deployment process with template creation activities. This could be as simple as small, medium and large templates. No hard and fast right answer here, but something that is driven by needs in your environment. For example, if your DBAs require specific drive letters for databases and database log files, you could create a template with this configuration built-in.

Conclusion 

To build a stable home, you cannot build on sand. Likewise, you have to build a solid foundation of network, compute and storage for successful private cloud deployment. All of the promises of agility and economy require careful planning and execution. Next time, we’ll talk about considerations in a heterogeneous environment,  or whatever related lessons I have for you from the cloud fabric.

“Should I learn learn System Center now, or what until System Center 2012 comes out?”

I hear this question fairly often from customers.

What if I told you that a month from now, you could add a relevant, important skill to your resume in a month of Friday afternoons? System Center Orchestrator 2012 - what's changing? and you’ll see that the core of Opalis survives in Orchestrator. In short, if you know Opalis, you know Orchestrator 2012.

Here are the free resources that will help you wrap your head around the core concepts and get your hands on advanced runbook authoring with less than 3 days of your time.

Learn the core concepts of Opalis / Orchestrator in less than 2 hours

Start with this series of articles designed to get you up to speed on Opalis concepts in a few minutes time:

Opalis Runbook Automation Fundamentals (Part 1)

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/opalis-runbook-automation-fundamentals-part-1

Opalis Runbook Automation Fundamentals (Part 2)

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/opalis-runbook-automation-fundamentals-part-2

Opalis Runbook Automation Fundamentals (Part 3)

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/opalis-runbook-automation-fundamentals-part-3

How the power of Orchestrator delivers the magic of the Cloud

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/how-power-opalis-delivers-magic-cloud

Take Opalis training online for free

Follow it up with some hands on experience. Can’t attend the Opalis Integration Server training course in person? Try the TechNet virtual labs which includes several hours of runbook authoring from the basics to advanced and System Center integrated runbooks straight from the Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) course! 

• TechNet Virtual Lab: Opalis: Building Advanced Policies
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Opalis: Building Error Handling into Policies
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Opalis: Controlling Policy Execution with Advanced Functions
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Opalis: Creating Basic Policies with Foundation Objects
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Opalis: Creating Your Own Integration Pack with the QIK
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Opalis: Incorporating Advanced Logic into Your Policies
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Introduction to Opalis

Have fun, learn System Center!

-Pete Zerger, MVP (Cloud and Datacenter)

Symptoms

When using System Center Operations Manager 2007, the audit database data retention period is set to 100 days but Audit Collection Services (ACS) reports return no more than 42 days data.

Cause

The ACS collector service uses DbCreatePartition.sql to create the partition tables and DbDeletePartition.sql (C:\Windows\System32\Security\AdtServer on the Collector server) to delete the partition tables based on the retention period. It also creates the views AdtServer.dvall, AdtServer.dvall5 and AdtServer.dvheader. In DbCreatePartition.sql and DbDeletePartition.sql, the dvall , dvall5 and dvheader views use a union of only the top 42 partition tables.

Resolution

Read more at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2663919

More on ACS on the WIKI

Read more about ACS on the site wiki at http://www.systemcentercentral.com/WIKI/WIKIDetails/tabid/146/IndexId/20526/Default.aspx

$SourceMP = Get-ManagementPack | Where-Object { $_.Name –match ‘Microsoft.SQLServer.2008.Monitoring’ }

$mp = Get- ManagementPack | Where-Object {$_.FriendlyName -match ‘SQL 2008 Overrides’ }

#This section retrieves the source MP containing the rule.

$rule = Get-Rule -ManagementPack $SourceMP | Where-Object { $_.Name -match ‘Microsoft.SQLServer.2008.NumberDeadlocksPerSecond’ }

$Target = Get-MonitoringClass | Where-Object { $_.Name -match ‘Microsoft.SQLServer.2008.DBEngine’ }

$override = New-Object Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Configuration.Management`

PackRulePropertyOverride($mp,’DeadlockOverride’)

# Casting some of the generic types needed by the monitor override properties using reflection (::op_Implicit())

$Rule = [Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Configuration.ManagementPackElementReference``1[Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Configuration.ManagementPackRule]]::op_Implicit($Rule);

$override.Rule = $Rule

$Override.Property = ‘Enabled’

$override.Value = ‘false’

$override.Context = $Target

$override.DisplayName = ‘Disable deadlock monitoring for SQL 2008’

$mp.Verify()

$mp.AcceptChanges()

Additional Resources

You can find all sorts of PowerShell scripts for System Center products at PowerShell Scripts for System Center (Master Collection) or in our Downloads section.

Follow System Center Central via Twitter and RSS

If you’ve never run the Instance Space report, give it a try. Here’s a screenshot

Additional Resources

You can find all sorts of PowerShell scripts for System Center products at PowerShell Scripts for System Center (Master Collection) or in our Downloads section.

Follow System Center Central via Twitter and RSS

A friend on a tight schedule just called with a good question:

How do I know which base class to use creating a custom class?

When you choose the base classes for the object classes in our Management Pack, it is important to understand that Microsoft has provided some common base classes for Windows applications to make this task much easier. Choosing a base class for your custom class is easier if you understand the role of the application on a computer and how the health of the application should affect (or not affect) the health state of the computer. To illustrate this point, let’s review some of the common base classes for Windows applications (and application components) in Operations Manager.

There are three commonly used base classes that can be used in Windows application monitoring scenarios:

• Windows Computer Role – Which is the Primary function of server and it’s hosted by Windows Computer, and has an Automatic Health Rollup to Computer.
• Windows Local Application – that is where the applications are often installed and it’s hosted by Windows Computer, but hasn’t got a Health Rollup to Computer.
• Windows Application Component - Component of a local application or computer role, there aren’t any type of relationships here, they need to be created from scratch.

Below is a more complete list of classes that are commonly used as base classes by authors creating custom management packs and when to use them.

MP Authoring Concepts in Less than 60 Minutes

If you haven’t much time and want  a quick study on MP authoring basics, have a look at MP Authoring Zen: Part 1 - Concepts and Application Modeling It  provides a look at these and many other concepts, along with some MP authoring job aids. For the more verbose(and more clinical) version, see the MP Authoring Guide on TechNet at http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/F/D/BFDD0F66-1637-4EA3-8E6E-8D03001E5E66/OM2007R2_MPAuthoringGuide.docx

Registration

Register Now for the virtual event
Tuesday, January 17th
8:30 AM PST | 16:30 UTC
Hear from other senior IT professionals about how cloud computing can help you gain maximum competitive advantage with minimal risk.
Learn about Microsoft cloud offerings, including private, public, and hybrid cloud models.
Experience Microsoft private cloud solutions through the Microsoft Technology Center.

• 70-243: System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, Part 1: Administration (5-days)

This five-day instructor-led course provides students with the knowledge and skills to configure and manage a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager site and its associated site systems in the role of Configuration Manager administrators.

• 70-243: System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, Part 2: Deployment (3-days)

This course describes how to plan and deploy a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager hierarchy, including the central administration site, one or more primary sites and secondary sites, and all associated site systems. This course also covers migration from System Center Configuration Manager 2007.

DPM 2012 is going to be different for me I think. Not in a ‘we can backup all heterogeneous workloads’ sense, but in the sense that the UI and functionality improvements are smart. They deliver efficiencies that begin to bring the DPM experience to a level of parity with some other enterprise backup products.

Data Protection  2012 brings a lot of new functionality and additional features making it a much better fit not only in enterprise environments, but private cloud scenarios. In private cloud, where where a high degree of automation is necessary to ensure adequate protection for self-provisioned resource, be they VM guests provisioned by application owners or Hyper-V hosts provisioned through bare-metal deployment to facilitate scale out. If there is not a datacenter administrator at the helm, we need to ensure resources are monitored and backed up appropriately.

In this post, we’ll have a quick look at UI improvements and System Center integration that delivers centralized administration for DPM 2010 / 2012 across the enterprise, including

• My Favorite Improvement
• Centralized Management
• Other Improvements
• Tour of the DPM 2012 UI

My Favorite Improvement

DPM 2012 delivers full integration with Operations Manager 2012, allowing you to use tasks in OpsMgr 2012 to launch targeted remediation actions with a single click. In short, centralized administration and role-based delegation are delivered via the OpsMgr 2012 Operations console. OpsMgr tasks in the DPM 2012 MP provide single click shortcuts that lead you directly to the portion of the DPM console required to perform the necessary administrative task. I have tested a variety of scenarios and they all seem to work as advertised. A few things I tested included: Allocation of additional space to a DPM volume that filled up Automatic resolution of active alerts in OpsMgr when the condition has been corrected Recovery of a SQL data source in the event of catastrophic failure (I deleted the .mdf and .ldf files) Alert consolidation (I simulated failure of multiple database backup failures on a single server (due to an MSSQL service failure) and I didn’t get an alert storm from the DPM mgmt pack. In a future post, I’ll demonstrate some these OpsMgr features in action. My colleague Mike Resseler demonstrates some of these features in his webcast: DPM 2012: What’s Coming?

Centralized Management

Other Improvements

Centralized management was just one design pillar in the coming 2012 release. Other improvements on the way include:

Role-based management – You still need admin rights on the DPM box, but you can customize the experience in

Certificate Base Protection – Rather than pass-through authentication, a more palatable solution for security-conscious enterprises

Tape Media Co-location – Now we can co-locate multiple protection groups on a single media set

SharePoint item-level recovery – This received a big upgrade in DPM 2012, as you no longer need a full recovery farm – much faster to restore a single item now.

Virtual DPM Enhancements – We can now perform item-level recovery in Hyper-V even when DPM is running in a

Generic Data Source Protection – This enables DPM to protect about every MS workload (I assume the preference would be that the target app provide a VSS writer, not sure)

Tour of the DPM 2012 UI

DPM 2012 console the same look-and-feel as the other members of the new System Center 2012 family.

	The Monitoring workspace shows the current status of DPM agent/backup jobs, as well as showing any notifications or alerts/errors DPM may receive.
	The Protection workspace is where we configure protection groups and manage protection of data, as well as view the current status of protection group members.
	The Recovery workspace is used to restore data or services.
	The Reporting workspace contains reports for tracking the status of jobs, reviewing disk and tape usage, and monitoring usage trends. Reports can be scheduled and subscribed to via email
	The Management workspace is where DPM configuration takes place The Disks link lets you add or remove disk storage using the DPM 2012 Administrator Console The Libraries link lets you to manage your tape backup library in DPM 2012. Options allows configuration of a number of options, including notifications, alert publishing (for OpsMgr monitoring), end-user recovery (user self-service) and scheduling auto-discovery of new Windows computers on the network. NOTE: I suspect the buttons on the ‘Alert Publishing’ tab are legacy at this point, because the OpsMgr 2012 integration was fully functional before I even noticed they were there.

Have fun, learn System Center! Download System Center 2012 betas at http://microsoft.com/cloud

With the proliferation of cloud (public, private, hybrid, thunder, etc.) in the last 24 months, software companies have been scrambling for position like squirrels fighting for the last acorn on earth. With System Center 2012, Microsoft has incredible management capability, but it’s but it’s going to take more than raw potential to win the race to dominate private cloud in the enterprise. As a System Center consultant working in this space, I see and hear about VMware (vCloud Director), IBM (Service Delivery Manager) frequently and they come to the game with a big bag-o-knuckles and they are playing to win.

With enterprises putting these products through the paces side-by-side, the winner is going the one with more than raw capabilities and a good marketing message. The winner will be the one with a solution addressing the full service delivery lifecycle….a solution with ready-made artifacts enabling rapid time-to-value…a solution that’s polished.

The road to the cloud runs through Vegas

Based on where things are in the product development cycle, it’s not hard to guess that Microsoft will be making some announcements at the MS Management Summit in Vegas in April 2012. In this series, we are going to take a closer look at what System Center 2012 brings to the table, and where Microsoft can improve to come out on top. With System Center 2012 components in various stages of beta and release candidate, there is still work to be done if Microsoft intends to emerge as the clear winner…but with the Cloud Services Process Pack still in development, it’s not too late!

Bringing clarity to the private cloud

Over the next few weeks, we will provide notes from the field as we examine how the Microsoft private cloud  with System Center 2012 performs throughout the service delivery lifecycle and why you should care. Installments in this series include:

• Part 1: What does the cloud deliver that virtualization doesn’t?
• Part 2: Managing the cloud fabric with a  heterogeneous hypervisor layer
• Part 3: Building and provisioning services on VMware (Notes from the field)
• Part 4: Real-world strategies for self-service with System Center 2012
• Part 5: The formula for update management and compliance in the MS private cloud

First installment coming soon…

The Fix

If you change the “System Center Virtual Machine Manager” service account, you need to update the following registry key:

HKLM\software\microsoft\microsoft system center virtual machine manager server\setup\VmmServiceAccount

Failing to update the registry key can possibly cause attempts to add any domain fabric resources like Hyper-V hosts, library servers, update servers, etc. to fail.

The Problem

I first ran into this problem when I tried to add the physical Hyper-V host to VMM. When I installed VMM in the lab, I used contoso\administrator as the VMM management service account.  If you do this, when you attempt to add domain-based fabric resources to VMM, the task checks to see that you are not using the same account as the VMM management service account.  If you are, it throws you an error stating “account cannot be same as VMM service account” or something similar and won’t let you complete the wizard.  I set up a Domain Run As Account using the contoso\administrator credentials. Whenever I attempted to use the Domain RAA or manually enter the administrator credentials in a task, I got the error. 

Changing the VMM management service

After I saw that error for the first time, I created the contoso\svc_SCVMM service account and set it up as the VMM management service account and made it DBO on the VMM database.  However, I was still getting that error even with contoso\svc_SCVMM as the service account and the task account as contoso\administrator, which didn’t make any sense.  When I attempted the task using the svc_SCVMM as the task account, the resource was added properly…which made NO sense.

Later, when I tried to add the Update Server to VMM, I got that same error again for about the 10^th time, and I realized the problem had to be a registry entry.  So I went searching the registry and found the key mentioned above.  I changed it to match the current service account name and rebooted the VM.  Problem solved.

What Microsoft says:

MS recommends using a dedicated service account for the VMM management service because of how the VMM agent and settings are configured on the target. The management service account is added to the local administrators group on the remote machine during import. When removing the resource, the account is removed from the local administrators group. If you use a common account, like administrator, this functionality can introduce some nasty unintended consequences, hence the check.

Log Location
Logs are located in the %LocalAppData%\SCO\Logs directory for the account under which installation was run. On a default installation on Windows 2008 R2, that would be c:\users\\Appdata\Local\SCO\Logs where is the name of the account you used to run the installation.

Logs and Log Contents
The table below provides a brief description of log files and their contents.

Log	Description
ManagementServiceMSI.log	Detailed logging of installation of the Management Server (which hosts a management server), which required for runbook registration and deployment and runbook check-in.
RunbookDesignerMSI.log	Detailed logging of installation of the Runbook Designer
RunbookServerMSI.log	Detailed logging of installation of the Runbook Server
SCOPrereqCheck.log	XML output of the prerequisite checker.
ScoSetupWizard.log	Detailed logging of installation progress
StandardActivitiesMSI.log	Detailed logging of installation of standard activities (formerly foundation objects)
WebComponentsMSI.log	Detailed logging of installation of the Orchestration console and web service.

Additional Resources
If you have not already downloaded the Orchestrator 2012 Release Candidate, it’s time to get started! Download the RC at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26503

For more information, blog posts, tutorials and examples, see the resources below

• Hours of hands-on labs for Opalis Integration Server (TechNet Virtual Labs)
• Exploring the Orchestrator 2012 Web Service via OData PowerShell Explorer
• Giveaway: Opalis Runbook Automation Fundamentals Series (Retweet this for a chance to win Opalis 6.3 Unleashed!)
• Designing and Automating Workflows with Opalis Integration Server (MS Partner Labcasts)
• Opalis Integration Pack Community Resource Catalog
• Automating bulk FTP for business-critical processes in Opalis
• Creating System Center-Integrated Policies in Opalis Integration Server to Support MOF and ITIL: An Introduction
• Opalis UI Tip: How to EXPAND to a bigger editing window
• Opalis: Interacting with Web Services (Part 1)– Making Calls and Extracting Data
• Opalis: Web Services Deep Dive (Part 2): When Invoke Web Services is not enough

The Build conference is a developer-centric affair, but it’s not without value to the IT Pro. I like listening to these sessions for  one simple reason…they give me a look from another perspective and spark ideas for extending solutions for my customers in ways I might not have thought of before. Looking at the stack from a new direction can’t hurt. Below are links to the session slides and videos I downloaded for offline viewing

I am kind of jealous that the breakout sessions speakers get to wear seemingly anything they want. I’d happily sport a cool t-shirt over the blue button-down of MMS if the option were open.

Session Video and PPT Downloads

Extending the Hyper-V switch

Slides | MP4 | WMV (Medium) | WMV (High)

A deep dive into Hyper-V networking

Slides | MP4 | WMV (Medium) | WMV (High)

Developing and testing on Windows 8 with Hyper-V

Slides | MP4 | WMV (Medium) | WMV (High)

Using Windows Server 8 for building private and public IaaS clouds

Slides | MP4 | WMV (Medium) | WMV (High)

Designing the building blocks for a Windows Server 8 cloud

Slides | MP4 | WMV (Medium) | WMV (High)

Optimal cloud performance with BranchCache

Slides | MP4 | WMV (Medium) | WMV (High)

Building secure, scalable multi-tenant clouds using Hyper-V Network Virtualization

Slides | MP4 | WMV (Medium) | WMV (High)

Windows networking with PowerShell: A foundation for data center management

Slides | MP4 | Mid Quality WMV | High Quality WMV

• SCOM R2 Console may crash while setting the scale on a performance view
• SCOM R2 Linux Agent fails to deploy: ‘The certificate Common Name (CN) does not match’
• SCOM R2 Config service consumes 100% cpu for a long time

Additional Resources

• Performance Optimizations for Operations Manager 2007 R2
• Podcast: Inside Central 10 – Troubleshooting XPlat Agent Deployment
• Robert Hearn on troubleshooting crossplat in a 4 part series:
• OpsMgr: Cross-platform Configuration Field Notes