MMS 2008: Keynote Highlights

MMS Keynote Bob Muglia kicked off the annual Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) at the wonderful Venetian in Las Vegas by talking about Dynamic IT. Dynamic IT is about the vision that Microsoft is having for dynamic datacenters and centers around 4 key pillars; Unified & Virtualized, Service-Enabled, User-Focused and Proces-Led & Model-Driven. This vision is a 10 year effort, and Microsoft is currently at the 5-year milestone.

The keynote talked about how the datacenter could evolve to a true Dynamic Datacenter. The first part into a Dynamic Datacenter is efficiently handling the physical datacenter. On top of that physical datacenter Microsoft will push the hardware virtualization aspect to gain dynamic placement of operating systems. The third layer is Application Virtualization where you separate the application for the OS layer and dynamically provide them throughout the datacenter. The last layer in Microsoft's vision is the Models. These models standardize how services can be provided and managed throughout the lifecycle. Bob used a fake company called Dinner Now to give more detail about every layer. (more)

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Shitasnhu Verma: As we are aware that SCCM admin full access provide a lot of privilege to manage all desktop in an enterprise so it’s critical to manage the SCCM admin access with role based security model. And recently we have introduced the new security group model for managing SCCM operations and having least admin access on SCCM as role based which is very much align to SCCM out of box security classes.(continue at source)

More details for SCCM security planning are available on following link : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680768.aspx

Description of the Data Protection Manager 2007 hotfix rollup 3.
Issues Resolved:

- Recovery of SSL Sites does not work
- Consistency Check on compressed volume results in full Initial Replication
- Deleting old Recovery Points is not freeing space on Recovery Point Volume
- Consistency check does not complete in reasonable time
- User intent for Max Duration of Consistency Check job is not honored
- Increase verbosity in default DPM error logs*
- Restore security option for item recovery on the Recovery User Interface sometimes fails

This article is not yet public, contact Microsoft to receive this package.

Adam Meltzer: After my original post on configuring ISA bridging with ConfigMgr 2007, I've had several conversations with both the ISA team and customers and have been able to work out a different way to configure bridging with ConfigMgr 2007. This is still a complicated solution with some overhead, but I think that folks will find this much more palatable than the original solution.(continue at source)

Will Kaiser: Event log monitoring is arguably the bread and butter of SCOM. There is plenty of flexibility in other directions, but from the customers I've dealt with most custom monitors that are needed deal with the event log. In this post I'll discussing Event Log properties.(continue at source)

J.C. Hornbeck: For a long time we've been trying to cover most System Center and WSUS related support news on the same blog (here) but since Windows Server Update Services is becoming such a large part of our business I think it's about time we spun it off on its own blog.  My hope is that we can keep the ConfigMgr 2007, OpsMgr 2007, SMS 2003 and MOM 2005 stuff segregated here and keep all the WSUS stuff on the new blog so if you use both it may be a little more work keeping up with two separate feeds, but in the long run I think it'll allow us to get more information out and help you find what you're looking for easier and faster.

Andrzej Lipka: There is a tab when you select Tools->Connect from Ops Console that is called "Registered Servers". It actually will go into your AD and query for CN=SDKServiceSCP, which is a container that stores information on your Management Groups and RMS servers.

It normally works well, but there are a few gotcha's.(continue at source)

In this article Shitasnhu Verma explains how Microsoft setup Windows Server Update Services and the Software Update Point role using Network Load Balancing.

(continue at source)

J.C. Hornbeck: We recently released the System Center Essentials 2007 Technical Walkthrough CD which is an interactive self-paced learning tool that explains the process of installing and operating Essentials 2007.

If you ever thought about System Center Essentials and whether it fit the needs of your organization, this is a great place to start.

Download the ISO for more information.

Stefan Stranger: Some time ago I showed you can use PowerShell to create Events for OpsMgr 2007. And according to the comments quite some people have questions about Event parameters. After creating the first version of the PowerShell Create Events for OpsMgr 2007 script, Ken added some functionality and one was modifying the question to not only add a EventLog Description but also a EventLog Parameter.

I found some info on MOM 2005 parameters on Rory McCaw’s weblog, but except that article I could not find much info on Event Log parameters. So hopefully this will explain what parameters are and how they can be used in OpsMgr 2007.

(continue at source)

Walter Chomak: This post is a slight divergence from the typical technical postings. I’d like to discuss OpsMgr and diagnostic practices, specifcally using the ‘Differential Diagnosis (DDx)’ method. Yes. I am a big fan of House, MD. No. This is not where I thought of this. I learned about using DDx in IT some time ago by one of my professors.
You would be surprised, or maybe not, at how many customers request assistance with diagnostics and troubleshooting. I use to think that after OpsMgr was deployed and working correctly my job was done. I could not have been any more incorrect. Some, well most, of my customers were overwhelmed with the type I alerts. (I refer to type I alerts as actionable alerts, a real condition that must be resolved. Examples include low disk, failed SQL job etc.) They did not have a sound method of troubleshooting or diagnosing situations where a solution was not readily apparent. I always took for granted that once they were ‘alerted’ to a problem they could simply assign it to the correct SME and be done with it.(continue at source)

Walter Chomak: A sample script that enables you to extract a list of computer names from your custom SQL Server database and add them to an Active Directory security group. The security group can then be referenced in the Agent Assignment and Failover Wizard to automate agent assignments to Management Servers.

1. Queries customer SQL asset database.
2. Populates custom security group with computer accounts of computers returned by the SQL query.

Download Active Directory Integration Sample Script

Today Savision announced Live Maps version 2.0.

After a successful launch of Live Maps 1.0 for Operations Manager 2007 we are proud to announce Live Maps version 2.0. Live Maps 2.0 comes with a number of new features that enable you to get even more out of your System Center Operations Manager investment.

So what's new in Live Maps 2.0?
• Web console - share your maps over the web
• Audible alarms - never miss a critical alert anymore
• Improved performance - solve your problems faster
• New editions and prices - more value for money

Live Maps 2.0 is available for download today and will be on display at the Teched IT Pro in Orlando (booth 1530). The new features can also be watched in this webcast.

When CPU and memory resource consumption are running at or near 100%, the first thing an administrator wants to check is what processes are running at the time the excess resource consumption took place. The problem is that by the time you can get to a machine and retrieve a list of running processes, the condition has improved and the evidence gone.

This problem can be easily overcome in Operations Manager or Essentials 2007 using a new feature called a diagnostic to automatically perform data collection tasks at the time a condition is encountered. However, you will not find the appropriate diagnostic in place out of the box.

The diagnostics in this sample Retrieve Running Processes MP (link provided at the end of this article) , which automatically retrieve a list of running process the moment the alert threshold is breached, ensure the offending process information is captured. Simply download and import into your environment to make immediate use of this feature (no configuration required).(continue at source)

Richard Smith: Recently, I have had to create a bigger scratch space (the MDT X: drive) in Windows PE to deal with the injection of a largish driver during a Windows Vista deployment. The driver in question is the NVidia driver for the Lenovo P60 and P61 and because of the limited scratch space under PE 2.0, this was causing an issue at injection time. There is a scratch file change (registry hack) that can be made to Windows PE 2.0 and below to change the scratch file space from the default 32 Mb - however this is unsupported.(continue at source)

Arlindo Alves from Microsoft Belgium posted two articles on how to install the just released System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Beta.

Installing System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Beta Part I
In the first part Arlindo explains how to install the server components of SCVMM 2008 Beta.

Installing System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Beta Part II
In the second part Arlindo describes the console installation.

On any Operations Manager administrators daily to-do list should be alert review and rule tuning.

Effective alert tuning means that every alert should ideally have its place. This does not always work out, but you definitely want to have a bucket for classifying most common possibilities. Generally this is done with custom alert resolution states (only NEW and CLOSED exist by default).

The underlying philosophy is that consistent evaluation of alerts, and appropriate disposition leads to 1) a higher percentage of actionable alerts over time, 2) remediation of lingering service issues in the environment and 3) greater respect for Operations Manager and the importance of the monitoring function by IT support staff and service owners 4) and theoretically, better tuned (and thus better performing) IT services.(continue at source)