Trickle of releases - System Center 2012 Downloads

With the release of System Center 2012 marching ever closer, a trickle of releases are starting to sneak out of the gate from Microsoft in preperation.

Over the last couple of days the following Solution Accelerators, Management Packs, Integration Packs and Add-ons have appeared:

Solution Accelerators

• Microsoft Security Compliance Manager

Management Packs

• System Center Monitoring Pack for System Center 2012 - Orchestrator
• System Center Monitoring Pack for System Center 2012 - Configuration Manager
• System Center Security Monitoring Pack for Endpoint Protection
• System Center Monitoring Pack for WS-Management and SMASH Device Discovery
• System Center Monitoring Pack for Active Directory (AD) - (This isn't 2012 specific, just updated!)
• SystemCenter Monitoring pack for SQL Server (now includes support for SQL 2012 Monitoring)

Add-ons

• System Center 2012 - Operations Manager Component Add - On
• System Center 2012 – Service Manager Component Add-ons and Extensions
• System Center 2012 – Orchestrator Component Add-ons and Extensions
• System Center 2012 – Configuration Manager Component Add-ons and Extensions
• Microsoft Visio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Extensions for System Center 2012

Integration Packs

• System Center Integration Pack for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus
• System Center Integration Pack for HP Operations Manager
• System Center Integration Pack for Active Directory
• System Center Integration Pack for HP Service Manager
• System Center Integration Pack for VMware vSphere
• System Center Integration Pack for HP iLO and OA

Technical Documentation

• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 - Service Manager
• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 – Operations Manager
• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager
• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 - Orchestrator
• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 - Unified Installer

Community Technical Preview (Think Early Beta) of SP1 for System Center 2012

• System Center 2012 CTP for Windows Server "8" Beta support
• CTP of System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Documentation

If you notice on some of these links, things like the Service Manager authoring tool are now named RTM, roll on the release of everything!

I'm not going to write a raft of explantion text for each one, either the name is fairly self explanatory, or click the link and read the description there.

Scheduling SCOM Maintenance Mode - Centrally, not via a scheduled task!

I've just noticed over on the Operations Manager blog that they've released the OpsMgr 2007 R2 Admin Resource Kit.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2011/06/03/system-center-operations-manager-2007-r2-admin-reskit-released.aspx

The tool that caught my eye was the Scheduled Maintenance Mode Tool, giving the ability to schedule and manage maintenance mode in the management group.

From the blog post:

The tool provides the following features:

• Ability to schedule any type of object to be placed into maintenance mode in the form of a Job
• Group support including nested groups
• Automatically places Health Service Watcher in maintenance with computer
• Blocks RMS from being placed in maintenance
• Support for Run Once, daily, weekly, and monthly schedules (including complex scenarios like "second Tuesday of the month")
• Ability to cancel a maintenance Job where everything will be removed from maintenance automatically
• History Report

I can't wait to get this tested, the biggest points for me are:

1. Being able to pop servers into and out of maint mode without scripting or setting up individual tasks, i.e. Being able to control Maint Mode from a central point
2. Having all the data in the SCOM DB, allowing for reporting and backup/DR

Download can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=e37ab90b-ec7b-4130-8e3f-9691a76530db&displaylang=en

 

After taking a quick look at the included guide, it's got some errors in it :(

 

After you've installed the ResKit, you'll find the files in the default location of:

C:\Program Files (x86)\System Center\SystemCenter Operations Manager 2007 R2 Admin Reskit

In the "Getting Started" part of the guide, it says:

• 2. Import the Management Pack (ScheduleMaintenanceMode.Library.xml)

This should be...

• 2. Import the Management Pack (ScheduleMaintenanceMode.Library.mp)

In the "Setting up the Management Pack" part of the guide, it says:

• On the RMS, copy the following files to the install path (in most cases C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007)
• o EnableMmodeWriteActionModule.dll
• o Interop.MOMSCRIPTAPILib.dll

This should be...

• On the RMS, copy the following files to the install path (in most cases C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2007)
• o EnableMmodeWriteActionModule.dll
• o MOMSCRIPTAPILib.dll

In the "Setting up the Console" part of the guide, it says:

From the correct platform (x64 or x86) file, unzip and copy SchedulingAlertSuppression.exe to a directory on the computer you wish to run the console on. 

Double-click SchedulingAlertSuppression.exe

 

This should be...

 

Nothing to unzip, copy ScheduleMaintenanceMode.exe to a directory on the computer you wish to run the console on.

 

 

 

I haven't been any further in the documentation yet as I've not presently got access to an RMS, however these are minor errors in the document, just be aware that names etc may have changed between writing the guide and release.

 

I am however looking forward to seeing the console views and reports etc.

 

  

 

 

Opalis 6.3 Operator Console Installation Utility

Always one to find the easiest way possible to do things, I thought I'd quickly mention this post from the Opalis Blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/opalis/archive/2011/01/26/new-utility-to-automate-the-installation-of-the-opalis-ops-console.aspx

A new utility has been released by Kelverion that automates the entire installation of the Opalis 6.3 operator console by removing all of the complexity of the install and making it very simple and quick to get up and running.

More details of the util can be found here

You can watch a demo of the util here

And finally you can register for the download here.  It's free but you need to fill out a quick form first to get the download link e-mailed to you.

Service Manager Resource Kit

A new resource kit for Service Manager is on it's way!

http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2010/09/07/coming-soon-system-center-service-manager-resource-kit.aspx

Expect to see some things like:
•Bulk Enumeration Value Creator Spreadsheet
•Ramp up materials – twelve one hour+ recorded Live Meeting sessions with the Program Managers covering a wide range of topics
•Architecture Visio diagram
•FastSeal.exe
•Database queries
•Service Manager Visio stencil shapes
•Various solution management packs for things like sending notifications to reviewers, hiding the extensions tab, etc.
•CSV Connector
•Basic Service Requests
•SLA Management
•Code samples like how to work with enumerations, type projections, creating and updating objects like incidents, etc.

And some very exciting NEW things!:

•Exchange connector: Process emails sent to an email inbox on an Exchange server. Convert new emails to new incidents and update incidents for replies to an email address.
•Send message to a user related to the incident from the console. Message can be optionally logged in the action log.
•Visio diagram of the entire SCSM data model including classes, properties, and relationships.