Best Practices – Page 2

System Center Technical Preview Released: What’s New in SCOM

Posted on October 12, 2014October 12, 2014by OpsConfig

For those of you with MSDN accounts System Center Technical Preview is now out.

I haven’t had a huge amount of time to dig in to see what’s new, but here are a few things that have caught my eye so far with the Preview for SCOM:

Open PowerShell Task

What is interesting about this task is that it isn’t simply launching an administrative PowerShell prompt on your local system. It is contextual to whatever server you have selected in the windows computer view and thus takes care of the fun of invoking a remote session for you in a single click.

(I had originally thought this was exclusive to the MP’s in the Technical Preview, but @StanZhelyazkov kindly pointed that this was added in the latest version of the Windows OS MP’s that came out on 8/27/2014: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx%3Fid%3D9296)

I was hoping for some new Dashboards, but it looks like for now we have all the same Dashboards from 2012 R2 plus those that were added in UR2. The only change I have noticed so far is that some of the names of the dashboards have been modified.

There are some new Management Pack Wizards. The TFS wizard may have already existed I haven’t imported that MP before, but I believe the Unix/Linux Service Monitoring Wizard is new:

New Monitors: (Two new Unix/Linux Script Monitors)

New Task Option:(Run a UNIX/Linux Script)

Best Practices

Best Practices: Building a home System Center Test environment Part V

Posted on March 1, 2014March 1, 2014by OpsConfig

Part V (Installing Operations Manager 2012 R2) To start at the beginning check out: Part I

Install the SCOM pre-reqs:

Report Viewer

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35747

Launch PowerShell as an admin

Add-WindowsFeature NET-WCF-HTTP-Activation45,Web-Static-Content,Web-Default-Doc,Web-Dir-Browsing,Web-Http-Errors,Web-Http-Logging,Web-Request-Monitor,Web-Filtering,Web-Stat-Compression,Web-Mgmt-Console,Web-Metabase,Web-Asp-Net,Web-Windows-Auth –Restart

Download SCOM 2012 R2 Media and Mount the media

Launch Setup

Click Install

Select All features and click Install

Click Next

Since we are installing on a DC it will prompt you to alert you this is not recommended. If this were anything other than a stand-alone test environment you should never do this.

Click Next

Create the first Management server in a new management group (Choose a Management group name)

Agree to the license terms — Click Next

Enter localhost or FQDN for the servername

Enter localhost or FQDN in the servername field

Click Next

Best practices is to use a separate account for each of these, but for the sake of these instructions one account will suffice

You will receive this prompt, again using a domain admin account is not recommended, but this is an isolated test environment so for simplicity I am making an exception.

Click Next

On (recommended) Next

Click Install

Click Close

Best Practices

Best Practices: Building a home System Center Test environment Part IV

Posted on March 1, 2014March 1, 2014by OpsConfig

Part IV (Installing SQL)

At this point depending on which System Center Product you are installing you may need to spin up more VMs. With SCOM you can create an all in one domain controller, SQL, SCOM Management Server though ultimately it is better to create a distributed environment with each of these items on a different VM. To save a bit on instruction writing I am going to create an all-in-one SCOM environment, but ultimately from this point it is easy to take what you have already learned to create a distributed environment. For excellent documentation on how to spin up test environments for each System Center product once you have Hyper-V and a domain controller in place I recommend taking a look at Kevin Holman’s quickstart guides:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2013/10/18/opsmgr-2012-r2-quickstart-deployment-guide.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2013/10/30/configmgr-2012-r2-quickstart-deployment-guide.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2013/10/18/orchestrator-2012-r2-quickstart-deployment-guide.aspx

https://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2013/10/18/service-manager-2012-r2-quickstart-deployment-guide.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2013/10/18/app-controller-2012-r2-quickstart-deployment-guide.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2013/11/07/dpm-2012-r2-quickstart-deployment-guide.aspx

https://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2013/10/18/scvmm-2012-r2-quickstart-deployment-guide.aspx

Since screenshots can sometimes be a little bit more helpful I will walk you through a slightly more visual guide to installing SQL and then SCOM in Part V

Log into the Domain Controller with your sysctr account

Download SQL 2012 enterprise edition with SP1 x64

Right click and mount the media

Run setup

Select New SQL Server stand-alone

Click OK

Click Next

Click I Accept & Next

Click Next

SQL Server All Features with Defaults– Next