System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Beta Available

Updated documentation has been popping up on TechNet the last couple of days and now the downloads for SP1 Beta for System Center 2012 has turned up.

Before you go running off to install, remember this is Beta software and is not supported for production use unless working with Microsoft on the TAP program.

The main SP1 download can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34607

This contains the updates for:
SC2012 ConfigMgr & EndPoint Protection - 377.3 MB

SC2012 App Controller - 15.1 MB

SC2012 Data Protection Manager Part 1 - 818.6 MB

SC2012 Data Protection Manager Part 2 - 1.5 GB

SC2012 Orchestrator - 68.6 MB

SC2012 Operations Manager - 905.9 MB

SC2012 Service Manager - 400.2 MB

SC2012 Virtual Machine Manager - 756.4 MB

N.B. Both parts for DPM are required, download and extract to the same folder before running setup

There are also additional ConfigMgr clients for more Operating Systems to be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34609

• AIX Version 7.1 (Power)
• AIX Version 6.1 (Power)
• AIX Version 5.3 (Power)
• HP-UX Version 11iv3 (IA64 & PA-RISC)
• HP-UX Version 11iv2 (IA64 & PA-RISC)
• RHEL Version 6 (x86 & x64)
• RHEL Version 5 (x86 & x64)
• RHEL Version 4 (x86 & x64)
• Solaris Version 10 (x86 & SPARC)
• Solaris Version 9 (SPARC)
• SLES Version 11 (x86 & x64)
• SLES Version 10 SP1 (x86 & x64)
• SLES Version 9 (x86)

 There are also some more SP1 Beta Integration Packs for Orchestrator:

• HP Operations Manager
• HP Service Manager
• VMware vSphere

Brief summary of Service Pack 1 features from the download page:

Virtual Machine Manager

• Improved Support for Network Virtualization
• Extend the VMM console with Add-ins
• Support for Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service, thin provisioning of logical units and discovery of SAS storage
• Ability to convert VHD to VHDX, use VHDX as base Operating System image

Configuration Manager

• Deployment and management of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012
• Distribution point for Windows Azure to help reduce infrastructure costs
• Automation of administrative tasks through PowerShell support
• Management of Mac OS X clients and Linux and UNIX servers
• Real-time administrative actions for Endpoint Protection related tasks

Data Protection Manager

• Improved backup performance of Hyper-V over CSV 2.0
• Protection for Hyper-V over remote SMB share
• Protection for Windows Server 2012 de-duplicated volumes
• Uninterrupted protection for VM live migration

App Controller

• Service Provider Foundation API to create and operate Virtual Machines
• Support for Azure VM; migrate VHDs from VMM to Windows Azure, manage from on-premise System Center

Operations Manager

• Support for IIS 8
• Monitoring of WCF, MVC and .NET NT services
• Azure SDK support

Orchestrator

• Support for Integration Packs, including 3rd party
• Manage VMM self-service User Roles
• Manage multiple VMM ‘stamps’ (scale units), aggregate results from multiple stamps
• Integration with App Controller to consume Hosted clouds

Service Manager

• Apply price sheets to VMM clouds
• Create chargeback reports
• Pivot by cost center, VMM clouds, Pricesheets

Server App-V

• Support for applications that create scheduled tasks during packaging
• Create virtual application packages from applications installed remotely on native server

Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Just a quick post, as I've just finished installing the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and wondered why some of the built in apps such as xbox live, videos etc weren't signing my account in.

Turns out Microsoft deemed the UK not to be important :(

Come on MS, sort it out!!


From http://www.zune.net/en-GB/support/webhelp/general.htm?&webhelp_mpver=0.1.0.0&webhelp_id=C00D1388&webhelp_contextid=0&webhelp_originalid=C00D1388&webhelp_locale=en-GB

What's Going On?

Account/Location Mismatch — C00D1353

Typically, this error occurs for one of the following reasons:

• You're trying to sign in to the app in countries or regions where the service is unavailable; or
• The computer that you're trying to sign in on is in a different Windows region than where your account is based.

More information

The apps affected by this issue include Xbox Companion, Xbox LIVE Games, Music, and Video. Note that the Windows 8 Consumer Preview Apps are only available in the following locations:

• United states
• Japan
• Germany
• France

System Center 2012 Wave

I thought I'd post a quick one on how the System Center 2012 stack is starting to line up and some bits to note for testing and in preparation for implementations.

At present we have the following table that shows the parts of the System Center stack available and their current release stage:

Configuration Manager	Release Candidate 1
Operations Manager	Release Candidate 1
Service Manager	Beta 1
Virtual Machine Manager	Release Candidate 1
Data Protection Manager	Beta 1
Orchestrator	Release Candidate 1
App Controller	Beta 1

All of the System Center solutions are undergoing a branding change.
If you haven't noticed, the branding has now changed to:
"System Center 2012 Product Name"

So this makes it:

• System Center 2012 Configuration Manager
• System Center 2012 Operations Manager
• System Center 2012 Service Manager
• etc etc etc....

A small change I'm sure you'll agree, but important in the long run as we start to see really tight integration between all the solutions, and the development and release schedules of all the parts of the System Center align up.
(Hopefully we'll also see the Start Menu program groups be consolidated together unlike the random scatterings it is at present)

SQL Collations between the solutions are also drawing together with the need for the following collations per solution:

Configuration Manager	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
Operations Manager	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
Service Manager	See: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh495583.aspx
Virtual Machine Manager	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
Data Protection Manager	Unsure - Doesn't seem to specify
Orchestrator	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
App Controller	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS

Anyone else see the running theme here?
SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS seems now to be the de-facto SQL Collation for the System Center 2012 wave.

You can also expect SQL 2008 R2 to be the prefered SQL version, 2008 may be supported for some of them, but 2005 is definitely a no go.

Service Manager 2012 Beta has been released!!

Again, another System Center product sneaks out without a major announcement from the teams blog :S


At last, the Beta for Service Manager 2012 has been released.

This latest version brings the following additions to the product:

• Service Requests
• Release Management
• Service Catalog
• Service Level Agreement support for Incident and Service Requests
• Parent – child support for incident and release management
• A Dynamic, Super Duper, Share Point based Self Service Portal
• Parallel Activities
• Build & Environments
• Connector Enhancements
• Orchestrator Runbook Integration
• Virtual Machine Manager Integration
• Console Performance Improvements
• Reporting and Data Warehouse improvements (OLAP Cubes, Excel Pivot Tables, Sharepoint Dashboards)
• Service Manager 2010 can be upgraded to SCSM 2012 Beta

Installation hasn't changed that much from 2010, other than it explains the pre-requisites a bit better and Share Point Foundation or above is now required for the Self Service Portal.

You can find the download link here:
www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27844


The hardware requirements for the servers hasn't changed, but some of the software requirements have.

Consoles:

• Windows XP and Server 2003 is no longer supported for the console, time to migrate if you haven't already!
• Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable
• Windows PowerShell 1.0 or Windows PowerShell 2.0
• ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
• Microsoft Analysis Management Objects (AMOs)
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 with SP1

Management Servers:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
• SQL Native Client
• SQL Server 2008 Analysis Management Objects
• SQL Server 2008 Analysis Data Objects
• PowerShell 2.0

For the Self Service Portal:

• SharePoint 2010 (Foundation or above)
• .Net 4.0
• Silverlight 4.0 (Client side)
• IE 8 or 9 (Client side)
• Firefox is not (presently) a supported browser for the Self Service Portal.

Reporting/Datawarehouse:

• SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services

Installing/upgrading the Beta edition will provide a time limited 180 day version, even for fully licenced 2010 installs.  However, the ability to upgrade to RTM, and the non-time limited select version is expected to be possible.  The upgrade from Beta to RTM is NOT supported by Microsoft, other than for TAP customers so do NOT be upgrading your production systems with the 2012 beta, this is purely available for you to test in a lab environment.

One big change, is the fact that if you intend to monitor your service manager servers with Operations Manager 2012 then it's worth noting that it is only supported with agentless monitoring due to compatibility issues.  Check this link for more details on how to setup agentless monitoring: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh264859.aspx

Operations Manager (SCOM) 2012 Beta now available

Microsoft released the first public beta of Operations Manager 2012 yesterday.

Main Beta page is here: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/om-vnext-beta.aspx

Downloads are here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26804

It's a bit strange that a public beta has just been released, especially since the CEP hasn't yet started, but I won't complain too much as that now completes my System Center 2012 test lab :)

Main new areas in the 2012 beta (taken from the TechNet Beta docs):

Setup

Operations Manager 2012 has a new Setup wizard. For important instructions about how to install Operations Manager 2012, see Install Operations Manager 2012 Beta.

Upgrading to Operations Manager 2012

Operations Manager 2012 provides an upgrade wizard to help you upgrade your System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 environment to Operations Manager 2012. For more information, see Upgrading to Operations Manager 2012.

Removal of root management server

In Operations Manager 2012, all management servers are peers; there is no root management server. The workload is split among all management servers in a management group, which provides high availability without requiring a cluster.

Resource pools

A resource pool provides the ability to distribute workloads across multiple management servers, such as availability, network device monitoring, distributed monitor health rollup, and group calculation.

Agent Configuration

Operations Manager 2012 provides an easy method for configuring agents to report to multiple management servers by adding an Operations Manager Agent application to Control Panel on each agent-managed Windows-based computer.

Operations Console

You will notice some subtle changes to the Operations console. The Actions pane is now the Tasks pane, and includes a new section called Navigation Tasks that makes it easy for you to open views for a selected object. The Tasks pane offers two tabs: one for actions and one for resources and Help links. The Navigation and Tasks panes can be minimized or expanded instantly by clicking the arrow in the title bar of the pane.

Web console

Operations Manager 2012 introduces a new web console. In Operations Manager 2012, all Operations Manager views are available in the web console.

Network monitoring

Operations Manager 2012 provides the ability to discover and monitor network routers and switches, including the network interfaces and ports on those devices and the virtual LAN (VLAN) that they participate in. You can also delete discovered network devices and prevent the deleted network devices from being rediscovered the next time discovery runs. For more information, see Monitor Network Devices.

Application monitoring

In Operations Manager 2012, you can monitor ASP.NET applications and web services from server- and client-side perspectives to get details about application availability and performance that can help you pinpoint solutions. Allowing you to specify settings, the types of events to collect, the performance goals to measure, and which servers to monitor, Operations Manager 2012 application monitoring provides insight into how web-based applications are running. You can see how frequently a problem is occurring, how a server was performing when a problem occurred, and the chain of events related to the slow request or method that is unreliable. This is the information needed to partner with software developers and database administrators to help ensure that application availability and performance are at optimal levels. For more information, see Monitor an ASP.NET Application.

Dashboard views

Operations Manager 2012 includes new comprehensive dashboard views that combine multiple panels of information into a single view. In Operations Manager 2012, you can add the new dashboard views to My Workspace and the Monitoring workspace.

Display dashboard views using SharePoint

The Operations Manager web part displays specified dashboard views and can be added to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 sites. For more information, see Add a Dashboard View to a SharePoint Site.

Creating dashboard views

Dashboard views have been significantly upgraded in Operations Manager 2012 from their capabilities in Operations Manager 2007 R2, including custom layouts and nested dashboard views. For more information, see Create a Dashboard View.

Operations Manager Module for Windows PowerShell

Operations Manager 2012 provides a Windows PowerShell 2.0 module containing a full set of new cmdlets. The cmdlets in this module are only compatible with Operations Manager 2012. You can recognize the Operations Manager 2012 cmdlets by the "SC" preceding the noun. For additional information about the Operations Manager 2012 cmdlets, open the Operations Manager command shell and type Get-Help about_OpsMgr_WhatsNew. For information about how the Operations Manager 2007 cmdlets map to the Operations Manager 2012 cmdlets, type Get-Help about_OpsMgr_Cmdlet_Names.

To use the Operations Manager 2012 cmdlets, you must establish a connection to an Operations Manager management group. You can establish either a persistent connection in which you can run multiple cmdlets, or a temporary connection when running a single cmdlet. For more information about connections, open the Operations Manager Shell and type Get-Help about_OpsMgr_Connections.

UNIX- and Linux-based computers

In Operations Manager 2012, you can perform privileged operations on UNIX-based and Linux-based computers using unprivileged Run As accounts by combining with “sudo” elevation on the target UNIX-based and Linux-based computers. This capability avoids the need for UNIX or Linux root passwords to be known on the management server, and keeps the privilege control entirely within the domain of the UNIX or Linux administrator. Operations Manager 2012 also includes new Windows PowerShell cmdlets for performing agent maintenance functions on UNIX-based and Linux-based computers, allowing for scripting and background operations. In addition, the resource pool feature supports computers running UNIX and Linux. If a management server fails, another management server in the resource pool can take over the monitoring, providing high availability.

SCOM 2012 Beta Community Evaluation Program (CEP) now open

At TechEd 2011 the Operations Manager 2012 CEP was announced.

Starting around the time of the public beta the CEP will start, providing an organized way of bringing subject matter experts (SMEs) from the product teams, the community (like MVPs and experienced users) and those interested in taking a deep look at the v.Next software for evaluation and preparation for deployment purposes.

At a guess, we can expect to see a beta around Mid-July due to the response I got when applying to the CEP:

------------------------------

Operations Manager 2012 Community Evaluation Program Application Thank you for your interest in the Operations Manager 2012 CEP! After review of your application, Microsoft will inform you of your acceptance to the program by sending an invitation email to your Windows Live ID email account from Microsoft Connect. You will be informed by mid-July regarding status of your application. ------------------------------

Click here to Apply

For an overview of the Operations Manager 2012 CEP, take a look at the OM12 CEP overview datasheet.
http://connect.microsoft.com/site1211/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=36056

More information can be found here:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2011/06/02/now-enrolling-for-the-operations-manager-2012-cep.aspx