System Center Guide

Diane Prescott, Product Manager for System Center, takes time to provide a quick update on the expected release date for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and also provides some key insights into changes in the System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE) licensing. Expect a 10-15% increase to come soon, but read the following post for an explanation as to why.

http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2008/07/09/virtual-machine-manager-2008-and-smse-updates-coming-later-this-year.aspx

If you haven’t heard already, the Microsoft Management Summit 2008 has sold out. Over 4000 IT professionals will come together at the end of the month to take part in Microsoft’s annual conference dedicated to enterprise management technologies.

For those of us that helped form and supported the first conference held back in 1998 this is an amazing accomplishment, as it’s the first time in the conference’s long and sorted history that it has been completely sold out. While I hate to think of those that will be denied access, it’s a great statement about Microsoft’s commitment to this area and the customer’s adoption of Microsoft management technologies.

I’m proud to have been an early part of what has become such a successful event for Microsoft and the community-at-large.

P.S. Sadly, I won’t be attending this year as I’m returning to the States on the same day as the Summit kicks off. But, rest assured, I’ll be returning with a vengeance next year!

Great little tip on this particular issue related to SMTP relay restrictions. 

Read the post: SMS&MOM : OpsMgr 2007: Email notification to external email address fails with error 31500

Sorry I haven’t been very active with blogging in the past couple of weeks but I’ve been busy getting ready for my System Center presentation the Microsoft Launch event being held tomorrow at the Tripod, Harcourt Street, in Dublin. There’s three 2-hour sessions beginning at 12PM and then repeating at 3PM and 6PM. So, if you’re an Irish reader, come on by and check out what’s coming from Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. Plus, if you pop into my session, you’ll get a sneak peek at the latest member of the System Center product family - due to go to beta very soon!

Courtesy of: Björn Axéll

Dell v.3.0

The Dell Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and System Center Essentials integrates Dell PowerEdge server alerts into Ops Manager. The Management Pack provides a list of Dell-specific views that you can use to observe and drill down the system status in a network

1) Added support for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 and System Center Essentials 2007.
2) Enhanced health drill down model in Diagram views from overall Dell Hardware health to individual hardware components.
3) Includes support for the latest versions of Dell OpenManage Server Administrator v5.2 (including the enhanced Storage Management Service 2.2).
4) Supports monitoring of Dell printers using SNMPv2

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R168582&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=229201

Intel

Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT) Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and System Center Essentials is now available. This management pack enables the users of these applications to take advantage of the advanced, hardware-based system management capabilities of Intel® AMT, which are built into PCs with Intel® VPro™ processor technology. These capabilities will help reduce the cost of discovering, managing and securing desktop and mobile PCs in the enterprise and thereby improving compliance with corporate policies. Information Technology (IT) support staff can now rapidly and remotely communicate with, power up, reboot, control, inventory assets, and remediate desktop PCs with Intel® VPro™ processor technology even if the PC is powered off or the operating system is not functioning. Support staff are able to manage PCs more effectively from the IT support center which leads to a reduction in desk-side visits and hence the total cost of ownership of computing systems equipped with Intel® VPro™ processor technology.

Download the latest version of Intel® Active Management Technology Management Pack for Microsof System Center Operations and System Center Essentials

More information about AMT MP

Download Intel® Server Management Pack

HP 1.5 (Note that this is a special version for SCE that inlcudes both the Proliant and Blade MP’s)

The HP ProLiant Server and BladeSystem Management Packs for Microsoft System Essentials (SCE) expose the native management capabilities of HP ProLiant Servers and BladeSystems through SCE

• Obtain greater visibiltiy of ProLiant servers and BladeSystems utilizing SCE System, State, and Alert views
• Quick root cause analysis with graphical server and blade characterization down to the subsystem level
• Easily manage custom data for HP ProLiant servers with HP’s integrated Custom Data Manager

http://h18013.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/mpp2007/index.html

OpsMgr Community,

If you are receiving alerts “Performance Module could not find a performance counter” in the Operations Manager Console, please perform thefollowing steps to disable the rule via override.

Note: When you run the Operations Console on a computer that is not a Management Server, the Connect To Server dialog box displays. In the Server name text box, type the name of the Operations Manager 2007 Management Server to which you want the Operations Console to connect.

1. Navigate to the Authoring Space in the Console.

2. Select “Rules” under “Management Pack Objects”.

3. Type “Performance Data Source Module” in the “Look for:” box and click “Find Now”. Be sure a Scope is not set or filtering the “Health Service” Target.

4. Find the rule, “Performance Data Source Module could not find a performance counter” under “Type: Health Service (2)”, right-click, select “Overrides”, “Disable the Rule”, “For all objects of type: Health Service”.

5. When prompted, “Are you sure you want to disable this rule for Health Service?” click “Yes”.

Microsoft is working on the long-term solution to address this problem.

Thanks, Justin Incarnato

Operations Manager Product Team Blog : "Performance Module could not find a performance counter" temporary workaround

The following is an early look at the architecture of Virtual Machine Manager v2, codename v.Next. While still approaching its Q2CY08 beta release, my personal viewing of the alpha product demos are indeed impressive!

Positioned as a heterogeneous virtual machine management solution, v.Next will support Virtual Server 2005, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX servers (with Xen server support in a future release).

Click the image above for a larger view.

Tomorrow I’ll be presenting at the Irish Computer Society on the topic of Managing the Virtual Environment. As you know, the introduction of Virtual Machine Manager into the System Center family has broadened the suite to the highly volatile realm of virtualisation. This topic will cover the following high-level areas:

• Microsoft’s Virtualisation Commitment
• Harnessing Virtualisation to Meet Dynamic Business Demands
• Effective Virtualisation: Creating the Foundation for Dynamic IT
• Business Solutions That Span Both Virtual and Physical Resources

If interested in attending, please visit the ICS website.

OK, only in Ireland would you have a PubForum 2008 event! And, of course, it didn’t take long for me to pick up on it. In fact, I’ll be co-presenting with the amazing Dave Northey on Microsoft System Center and Windows Server 2008 Virtualisation.

The event runs from May 9, through May 11. Registration is only €175 and includes an open bar on two of the nights - hence, PUB Forum.

The feedback from this cross-Europe event has been great! Previous cities have included Amsterdam, London, Paris, Munich, Nice, Brussels, and Lisbon. Running twice a year since 2003, this is the 10th such event. About half of the presenters this year are fellow Microsoft MVPs.

Click here for more details or to register.

Forgive my sarcasm, but I find it ironic that two websites - one officially Microsoft, one community-based (but still working for Microsoft) - have two distinctly different viewpoints on the same subject matter. However, I’ll let you decide for yourself: 

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and System Center (the Microsoft source)

vs.

http://blogs.technet.com/cliveeastwood/archive/2008/02/22/a-note-on-operations-manager-2007-service-pack-1-support-for-windows-server-2008.aspx

What’s the deal?

One says:

Microsoft System Center solutions can work together to provide an integrated, end-to-end management solution for your Windows Server 2008 environment. Learn about the benefits of managing Windows Server 2008 with System Center Operations Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Configruation Manager, and Data Protection Manager.

While the other states:

Bottom line = [Operations Manager 2007] SP1 does not yet provide support for any role running on Windows Server 2008.

Now, since both sources are officially Microsoft sources, which one do we believe? My money is on Clive. 10-fold! And while I realise we’re probably just speaking about OpsMgr 2007 roles being unsupported on the new OS, the high-level message from MS and the field could use some tuning to ensure subject lines aren’t providing the wrong message. But again… I’ll let you decide for yourself.