System Center Event: SMSE on Microsoft AR
August 21st, 2008
Next week Southworks SRL will take part of the SMSE (Systems Management Server Enterprise) event series on Microsoft Argentina, targeted for MS EPG customers. From Southworks we will be involved as expert in the System Center family Solutions. I will be a speaker on sessions about: System Center Operations Manager, System Center Configuration Manager, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center Data Protection Manager and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V sharing the stage with the great Alejandro Ponicke and Leandro Sgallari the magician 
Sessions Details
The series will be:
- SMSE Live Day 1: Wednesday 27-Aug (9-13 Hs): Live Event – Clients by invitation only.
- SMSE Live Day 2: Thursday 28-Aug (9-13 Hs): Live Event – Clients by invitation only.
- SMSE WC Day 1: Thursday 28-Aug (14:30-16 Hs): Public webcast
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032383808&EventCategory=4&culture=es-AR&CountryCode=AR - SMSE WC Day 1: Friday 29-Aug (14:30-16 Hs): Public webcast
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032383810&EventCategory=4&culture=es-AR&CountryCode=AR
The outline for the Live sessions is (still developing on our UNMG network!):
- SMSE Live Day 1
- SCVMM: Platform showcase | Intro | Snapshots | Live Migration
- SCOM: Intro | SUSE Monitoring | Service Level Dashboard | Custom MP
- SCCM: Intro | Win2k8/Vista Mgmt | Asset Intelligence | Update Mgmt
- SCDPM: Intro | DB recovery | End User File recovery
- SMSE Live Day 2
- Intel: VPro (By Gabriela Gallardo, Intel)
- SCVMM: Live Migration Drill-Down | Self Service Portal
- SCCM + SCOM: Control Panel Advertisements | SCCM Monitoring | Desired Configuration Management | Internet based clients
- SCDPM + SCCM + SCOM: VM backup | DPM Reporting | DPM Health with Ops Mgr | SCCM Recovery from DPM triggered by Ops Mgr
The agenda for the Webcasts sessions will be a sub-set of the above focused on SCVMM 2008 Beta and Hyper-V. Subscribe today using the above links so you will have a reminder on your calendar!
SMSE is a licensing model developed this year by Microsoft to encourage the adoption of System Center products on the Enterprise. 
Operations Management Processes - MOF & SCOM
September 8th, 2007
The IT industry has learned so far that efficient operations without consistent/adaptative processess is not possible. The knowlodge has to be extracted from peoples brain and documented in tangible artifacts. We cannot sill relying on heroes for solving every infrastructure issue.
Jason Osborne (Microsoft - Frameworks PM) has started posting about what is comming in MOF. In his last post: The Operations and Support Phase of the MOF Lifecycle he has began talking about Operations Management proceses.
Here is a little overview about how Operations Management process is being defined. For a depth understanding, not only read the previous post, but also take 5 mins to download and review the PPT Jason has attached.
Deliver Managed Applications under the MS platform! Develop a custom Management Pack - Prologue
September 3rd, 2007
Hi all! I am willing to write a post series about Operations Manager Management Pack development. However, it is impossible to talk about Management Packs without talking about the Microsoft Systems Management vision. This is what this post is about. Right now we walking-through the 4th year of the 10 years Microsoft DSI (Dynamic System Initiative) vision. This is how Microsoft has vision the future of datacenters and the path for IT departments to be finally aligned to business. There is so much to talk about this vision but I will focus in one of its pillars the so-called DFO (Design For Operations) practice. DFO proposes a model-based management over IT systems. DFO claims to be the answer to existing poor communications between development teams and the IT support staff, what we see today is that development teams has much more deep technical understanding of developed LOB applications than the IT Staff. Sadly IT Pros are the ones who has to operate and enforce any existing SLA over this LOB app. So, how could IT Pros troubleshoot performance or operational issues spotted on running LOB apps? How could they give end-users qualified answers about what is going wrong? DFO is the answer. Again, so much to talk about DFO. David Aiken (Microsoft Architect Evangelist) has been writing about this probably more than anyone in the world in his blog. This is a must read if you are a Management-enabled ITPro J. We mentioned “model-based” management. We talk about models because Microsoft developed a model approach for describing any IT service called Service Modeling Language (SML). And through SML is how we finally get to Operations Manager Management Packs. Microsoft has been concretely applying model-based management since the release of MOM 2005 and enhanced the platform management capabilities with the release of SCOM 2007 (System Center Operations Manager 2007). Management Packs (MP) provides ITPros what they always wanted, a consistent way for operating applications like they were experts, without really being experts. For example, nowadays I can provide high levels of availability/reliability/performance of my Exchange 2007 deployment without being an Exchange guru. This is possible simply by importing the Exchange Server Management Pack to my SCOM infrastructure. By importing Management Packs I am importing a huge knowledge-base provided by the Exchange Server development team itself! At this point you can probably begin connecting the dots. Microsoft proposal with DFO is that every development team takes into account into theirs SDLC the effort required to develop a Management Pack (no matter over which platform the app is developed). By the means of a MP a development team communicates which aspects of the instrumented app are critical and has to be fully monitored 7×24x365. SCOM provides an extensible platform for developing MPs and this is what we will be talking about during this post series. Well, this was longer than I expected when I began writing (an hour ago J) but we have went through the basis to have the big picture when talking about MPs. PS: I promise to get more technician the next post J
Thanks to Wallis for this Management Packs Roadmap:
The installation media contains
- Exchange Server 2003
- Windows Server 2000/2003 AD
- Information Worker
- MS Server 2000/03 OS
- MS Client 2000 XP OS
- Windows Server IIS 2000/03
- SharePoint Portal Server 2003
- Windows SharePoint Services 2003
- Windows Server 2000/03 Terminal Services
- SQL Server 2000/05
May 2007
- SMS 2003
- Office SharePoint Server 2007
- Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
- Windows DHCP Server 2003/2000
- Windows File Replication Service 2003/2000
- Windows Group Policy 2003
- Windows Print Server 2003
June 2007
- Windows DNS Server 2003/2000
- Virtual Server 2005
- ISA Server 2006
- BizTalk Server 2006
- Windows Distributed File Systems Replication Service 2003
Q3 2007
- Configuration Manager 2007
- Virtual Server 2005
- System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007
- Exchange 2007
- Windows Server Clusters 2000/03
- Host Integration Server 2006
- Office Live Communications Server 2005 SP1
- System Center Data Protection Manager 2006
- Forefront Security for Exchange
- Forefront Security for SharePoint
- Identity Integration Server 2003
- Office Project Server 2007
- Windows Routing and Remote Access Service 2003
- Windows Network Load Balancing 2003
- Windows Distributed Transaction Coordinator 2003
- Computer Cluster Server 2003
- Windows AD Federation Services 2003
- Windows Print Server 2000
- Windows Internet Name Service 2003
- Windows Rights Management Services 2003
- Windows Key Management Services 2003
- ISA Server 2004
Q4 2007
- Office SharePoint Server 2007
- Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
- Commerce Server 2007
- Host Integration Server 2006
- Windows Password Change Notification Service 2003
- Antigen 9.0 MOM Pack
- Windows Server Automated Deployment Services 2003
- Windows Server Performance Advisor 2003
- Windows System Resource Manager 2003
- Communicator Web Access 2005
We could expect to get the Exchange 2007 MP at CYQ3 (between July and September), in the meantime we can convert the Exchange 2007 Management Pack created for MOM 2005 to a SCOM MP using the guidelines provided by the SCOM help. You will get almost full monitoring functionality but Client Side Monitoring won't work until the SCOM MP is released.
System Center Operations Manager webcast at www.Capa8.com
June 4th, 2007
Hi all! Well, after doing all the planning and designing stuff with SC Capacity Planner now it is time to deploy the solution. This Wednesday 6th we will deploy SCOM 2007 to enhace monitoring capabilities that today Capa8 has with MOM 2005.
The session will be about:
- Assess HW and SW requirements. Most output from SCCP.
- Deploy SCOM 2007 side-by-side with MOM 2005.
- Convert & Import all customized MOM 2005 Management Packs to SCOM 2007.
- Monitoring transitioning from MOM 2005 and SCOM 2007.
- Performing initial tune-up to SCOM 2007.
- Exploring the SCOM 2007 UI.
You can join the webcast Here.