Service Manager & Cireson App Store Additions

I've recently had some interesting conversations with the guys from Cireson.

Cireson are a System Center consultancy firm in the USA who have developed from the needs of their customers a range of extensions to Service Manager which help fill some of the perceived gaps in the solution.

They have a range of solutions/extensions covering many different needs:

• SCSM Web Console
• SCSM Asset Management
• SCSM My Work Items
• SCSM Group Assign
• SCSM Preview Pane
• SCSM Tier Watcher
• SCCM Power Manager
• SCSM Auto Close
• SCSM Notify Analyst
• SCSM Customizations
• SCSM Calendar Sync
• SCSM Risk Calculator
• SCSM Change Calendar
• SCSM Asset Import
• SCSM Affected User

One of the main areas I was interested in was the Asset Management solution, since that's where I began my Service Manager journey back in 2010.

Cireson have extended the console to provide you with a rich asset management solution, contained within the Configuration section of the console.

From here you can manage Contracts, Costs, Warranties, Organisational information as well as your various assets.

 

One area I specifically really do like is the Software Asset Management extensions, giving you the easy ability to start monitoring license counts and simplifying/rationalising the data pulled in from ConfigMgr in terms of versions and product names.

You can find more information about Cierson's selection of extensions for Service Manager here in their handy "App Store":
http://www.cireson.com/app-store/

I'll be posting some more around these great tools shortly so keep your eyes open for the posts!

Orchestrator & VMware vSphere – Quiesce Snapshots

While there is an official VMware vSphere Integration Pack for Orchestrator available from Microsoft (here) I was working for a customer the other week where they had an extra need that the Create Snapshot activity didn’t seem to provide.

The customer as part of their SoP (Standard Operating Proceedure) have the requirement that all snapshots are quiesced for both memory and file operations during a snapshot activity.

While the vSphere IP activity allows you to set the option for capturing the memory state with the snapshot, there is no reference as to whether it quiesces the file system by default or not.

So the quickest way to achieve this, fall back to PowerShell and script it.

VMware have a PowerShell module available for vSphere known as PowerCLI.
Once I had downloaded and installed this on both the Runbook Designer workstations and the SCORCH server I started working on the script.

The script:
$VC = "<Insert vCenter Server>"

$VMName = "<Insert VM Name>"

$Snapshot = "<Insert VM Name>"

if(-not (Get-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue))



{
  Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core



}
 Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -DefaultVIServerMode Single -InvalidCertificateAction Ignore -confirm:$false

Connect-VIServer -Server $VC -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Get-VM $VMName | New-Snapshot -Name $Snapshot -Memory:$true -Quiesce:$true -Description "Snapshot for protection while running automated process" -Confirm:$false



Basically this script will take the input of a virtual machine name and a name for the snapshot then perform a snapshot of the VM but with the options set to quiesce both the memory and file system.

Orchestrator & VMware vSphere – Calculate Datastore Capacity

While there is an official VMware vSphere Integration Pack for Orchestrator available from Microsoft (here) I was working for a customer the other week where I ran into a problem that meant we couldn’t use it and I had to work around it.

The problem looks to stem from having a vApp present within their vSphere environment, as discussed in this TechNet forum thread: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/scoscip/thread/2a1c03db-c24b-43c8-b035-f7c8cd6f6a83/

The biggest problem we had is that the Get Datastore Capacity activity which was failing was the very first step of the process that we were trying to automate.

The customer wanted to be able to check that there was sufficient space as dictated by their SoP (Standard Operating Proceedure) on the Datastore before taking snapshots of the VM’s.
So the quickest way to achieve this, fall back to PowerShell and script it.

VMware have a PowerShell module available for vSphere known as PowerCLI.
Once I had downloaded and installed this on both the Runbook Designer workstations and the SCORCH server I started working on the script.
N.B. There is also a community IP from Ryan Andorfer that wraps the PowerCLI into activities, but it's based on PowerCLI v4 and isn't compatible with PowerCLI v5 which is what I wanted to utilise.

This is a modified version of the script that LucD discusses on the VMware community forums here: http://communities.vmware.com/message/2119043

The script:

$VC = "<Enter vCenter name here>"

if(-not (Get-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue))


{   Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core 

}
 Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -DefaultVIServerMode Single -InvalidCertificateAction Ignore -confirm:$false

Connect-VIServer -Server $VC -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

$VMInfo=Get-VM "<Enter VM Name here>" | Select Name, MemoryGB, UsedSpaceGB, @{N="Cluster";E={Get-Cluster -VM $_}}, @{N="ESX Host";E={Get-VMHost -VM $_}}, @{N="Datastore";E={Get-Datastore -VM $_}}

$ESXiHost=$VMInfo.ESXHost.name

$DSName=$VMInfo.datastore.name

$VMMem=$VMInfo.MemoryGB

$VMHD=$VMInfo.UsedSpaceGB

$Datastore=Get-Datastore -Name $DSName | select Name, @{N="Capacity";E={[Math]::Round($_.CapacityMB/1024,2)}}, @{N="FreeSpace";E={[Math]::Round($_.FreeSpaceMB/1024,2)}}

$Capacity=$Datastore.Capacity

$FreeSpace=$Datastore.FreeSpace

*Sorry about the formatting, blogger mangles code*

Basically this script will take the input of a virtual machine name, lookup which datastore the VM resides on and then query that datastore for the available free space and output it as a variable that we capture onto the SCORCH databus.

While I was writing the script and finding the datastore for the VM I thought we might as well pull back some other info regarding the VM and ESX host so the script also makes some more information available as variables that we can push back onto the databus.

Variables:

Datastore Name ($Datastore)
Datastore Capacity ($Capacity)
Datastore FreeSpace ($FreeSpace)
VM Assigned Memory ($VMMem)
VM Assigned Disk Size ($VMHD)
ESX Host running the VM ($ESXiHost)

Add this into a simple runbook as shown below and we can prompt for a virtual machine name (or pass it across from a calling runbook!), query vSphere for all the details and then return the data to be used as part of the further process.

MMS 2013 - Birds of a Feather Session

I've just had the e-mail I was hoping for - My BoF session nomination at the Microsoft Management Summit 2013 has been approved.

System Center 2012 Service Manager Cookbook - Desserts Chapter

Here's your chance to quiz the Authors of the System Center 2012 Service Manager Cookbook and get some more information on topics that we couldn't squeeze into the main book chapters. These could range from more advanced topics through to real-life deployment experiences. All the "dessert" information you can eat.

Join Myself (Steve Beaumont), Sam Erskine (MCT), Anders Asp (MVP), Dieter Gasser and Andreas Baumgarten (MVP) and ask us all those pressing SCSM questions that the book may not have answered.  There may even be a prize or two for the best questions!