System Center Guide

Two recent acquisitions demonstrate that the consolidation of the Systems Management space is still running full throttle.

In the quietest acquisition category, we have Quest Software picking up eXc Software to extend the company’s reach in custom management pack offerings for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. Neither company website list specifics of the deal. In fact, beyond the Quest logo on excsoftware.com, you’d be hard pressed to find anything relevant to the transaction.

Now for the loudest acquisition, Dell has annouced plans to purchase EqualLogic for $1.4B – the largest price tag Dell has paid to acquire a company. EqualLogic has become a growing concern in the Storage Management space, providing attractive alternatives to the pricey EMC-based storage solutions. The industry analyst are all over this one and of course the media outlets are questioning if this means splitsville for the longstanding Dell/EMC relationship.

While I don’t work with the SAN stuff enough to comment on the Dell acquisition, I will say that eXc Software has had a great history of working tightly with customers to identify needs, and create a solution that will work. And, they typically can turn a management pack around for a customer in about 48 hours. On the other hand, you have a NASDAQ traded company that SKUs their products, produces the supporting collaterals and ships them to the regional sales offices worldwide. Will the lowly eXc offerings continue to have the initimate approach of addressing an individual customer’s needs? Time will tell.

For those that haven’t been following Destination: Ireland, I’ve accepted a role as System Center Practice Manager for a Dublin-based Micrsoft Gold Certified partner and will be heading to Ireland on 2 Oct. 2007. Obviously, this is a dream come true and amazing opportunity for my wife, Amanda, and I.

Some of you will recall that she was diagnosed with breast cancer a year & a half ago. If there is one thing that surviving that experience taught us it is to grab life by the horns and hang on! And, if a great opportunity comes along, take it! You don’t know when or if you’ll be able to do it again later in life.

So, it’s with mixed emotions that we say goodbye to Texas. But, with eager anticipation that we look towards what our future holds in the Emerald Isle.

May God bless our journey.

If you experience problems using the registration form to download the HP Proliant management packs, you can FTP the HP website at ftp.compaq.com and download the file hpProliantServerMPKits1_0.zip. While I normally wouldn’t post means of avoiding a vendor’s registration process, the CGI form that processes the registration for download has been broken for days.

I find it amazing that after working with System Center Operations Manager 2007  for the past year, training all the other Microsoft partners on it, reading countless volumes of whitepapers and guides on OpsMgr, that in all that time I’ve not once seen or heard a single thing about the Mobile Console.

What? There’s a mobile console? Yup! You bet your arse there is.

Just fire up your web browser and connect to your standard OpsMgr Web Console. Now, add /mobile to the end of the URL. You’ll have mobilized alerts with associated knowledge and response actions. All within the palm of your hand. Supply this URL on your Windows Mobile device and go hit the local pub. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be alerted.

Microsoft recently announced that the Configuration Manager 2007 SDK Beta 2 has been released and is available for download from the Connect site. This is Microsoft’s first public release of ConfigMgr 2007 SDK.

The Configuration Manager 2007 SDK Beta 2 contains documentation and code samples to support the following core features:

• Desired Configuration Management
• Management Point API
• Administrator Console Extension
• Software Distribution
• Operating System Deployment
• Software Updates Management

Documentation and code samples on other core features of Configuration Manager 2007 will be added in future SDK pre-release versions.

I recently found myself needing to burn and mount an ISO image file for a System Center Operations Manager Boot Camp I was delivering for Microsoft. After getting frustrated with several of the well know commercial packages that had way too many options and applications included with their installers, a more targeted search turned me onto MagicISO which neatly installs itself with Windows Explorer extensions that allow you to select a group of files, right-click and select the option to Add to ISO. Whola! You’re done.

MagicISO also has a device driver, MagicDisc, for mounting the resulting ISO image, however I’ve had less success with MagicDisc mounting than I’ve had with creating ISOs with MagicISO. MagicDisc 2.5.74 still seems to have issues loading the virtual disk drivers on Vista. So, I would avoid using it for the time being (unless you’re familiar with Windows Safe Mode). Instead, I’ve chosen to use Virtual CloneDrive from SlySoft. Not only is this a great ISO mounting program and absolutely free, but it also has probably one of the coolest shortcut icons I’ve seen in a long while.

Once you’ve stepped through the very brief installation process for Virtual CloneDrive, you can automatically mount and open any ISO file by simply double-clicking it. This requires that you associate ISO file with Virtual CloneDrive during setup. Otherwise, you can right-click, select Open With and choose Mount Files with Virtual CloneDrive.

While Virtual CloneDrive is freeware, MagicISO is trialware and requires a $29 registration to create an ISO file larger than 300MB. Similarly, SlySoft’s other programs (including those that create ISO images) vary in prices ranging from $39 to $49.

If you have any experiences with these or other tools for Windows Vista or the System Center suite, I’d love to hear from you. Just send me a note using the Contact Me form.

Keeping true to their word, the Microsoft product group made available the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Release Candidate 1, build 5831 over the weekend. In this build, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 is now supported for site server and site system roles, and is correctly detected as part of setup prerequisite checking (no more /NoPreReq switch!). SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 is now required for the SQL database server role and Windows Server Update Services 3.0 RTM is now required for the Software Update Point site system role.

To download the bits, please visit the http://connect.microsoft.com website.

As many of you know, I like to dabbling in photography. A few weeks ago I had been notified that one of my Flickr photos had been shortlisted for inclusion in the worldwide travel guide website, Schmap. Well, this morning I was informed that my photo had been selected to showcase the Seattle Seahawks as an area attraction.

Check out the website, it is pretty cool.

Jeff Tondt, Senior Consultant for Microsoft Consulting Services, has recently made public a utility he has developed to map an SMS infrastructure. The tool, SMSMap, creates a visually appealing Visio diagram of your SMS topology and exports site settings to an XML file.

 

Fig. 1 SMSMap Radial View of an SMS Hierarchy

Built using Visual Studio .NET, SMS managed libraries, and Visio automation, Tondt provides a deep dive into its operations in this month’s issue of TechNet Magazine. 

The download includes both a compiled version of the tool, and the supporting source code for further customizing for your specific needs.

Thank you, Jeff, for providing such a useful (and necessary) tool!

Apparently Microsoft is providing a QFE update for OpsMgr 2007 to support SNMP v1 devices. More after the jump.

Link: Advisec Blog