virtualboy blog

I thought I’d seen it all with System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2…

MattMcSpirit — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:39:31 GMT

but obviously not! Hat tip to Sean at one of our Partners, Computer2000, who, at a recent event, told me about a Management Pack that had been developed by one of our Gold Certified Partners in Denmark which, wait for it, monitors the health of a coffee pot.

I didn’t believe it either, but it’s true! There’s a video and everything! You have to check out the video – I don’t know how he’s keeping a straight face whilst talking about this :-)

Now, before you rush out and set this up, there are a couple of pre-requisites you’ll need to be aware of, such as you’ll need System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, the .NET Framework 3.5, and a network connected camera to monitor the coffee pot, but most importantly, you’ll need a coffee pot which is transparent. This may upset many of you who have invested in one of the many different coloured coffee pots out there. I’m sure, if you’re more of a tea drinker like me, there’s the potential to adapt this for tea too, although don’t leave the tea-bag in for too long, as you’ll end up with a ‘cuppa’ that can only be described as terrible :-)

Joking aside though, what this shows is the flexibility of something like Operations Manager. Being able to create your own customised Management Packs, tailored to what is important to you, is one of it’s key strengths and really helps you to make management relevant to your specific environment. The guys have even provided the secret sauce, I.e. the content of the management pack, so there’s potential for modification and tailoring to your environment.

New IPD Guide Published: System Center Service Manager 2010 (Beta)

MattMcSpirit — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:14:26 GMT

I’ve just received notification that the Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Service Manager 2010 has just been published, and anyone who’s weighing up a deployment, or simply wants to know more about it, should find this free guide very useful. As a quick refresher, here’s what an IPD guide actually is:

Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides streamline the planning process by:

Defining the technical decision flow through the planning process.
Listing the decisions to be made and the commonly available options and considerations.
Relating the decisions and options to the business in terms of cost, complexity, and other characteristics.
Framing decisions in terms of additional questions to the business to ensure a comprehensive alignment with the appropriate business landscape

So, in a nutshell, they’re deigned to help you plan the deployment of a technology, in this case, Service Manager 2010, but there are loads of them already published over at http://microsoft.com/ipd so chances are, if you’re weighing up certain Microsoft technologies, there should be a guide to help.

This Service Manager 2010 IPD is currently in beta, so based on feedback, some bits are subject to change, however even in it’s current state, it’ll take the IT architect through an easy-to-follow process for successfully designing the servers and components for a System Center Service Manager implementation, resulting in a design that is sized, configured, and appropriately placed to deliver the stated business benefits, while also considering the performance, capacity, and fault tolerance of the system. For me, that’s the key element. I’m currently planning (I use the term loosely) a rollout of SCSM for my lab, but I’m not quite sure of the best sizing for my small environment, and although the answer is on TechNet, somewhere in the vast library, sometimes it’s tricky to find the definitive sizing guide for my environment. Hopefully this will help!

The guide covers these key steps in the System Center Service Manager infrastructure design process:

Defining the project scope by identifying the necessary System Center Service Manager features, the requirements of the process management packs, and the targeted population of the organization.
Mapping the selected features and scope to determine the required server roles.
Designing the fault tolerance, configuration, and placement of the management servers, portals, and supporting SQL Server databases.

The IPD Guide for System Center Service Manager 2010 can help you reduce planning time and costs, and ensure a successful rollout of System Center Service Manager - helping your organization to more quickly benefit from this platform for automating and adapting IT Service Management best practices such as those found in Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

Interested? Follow these steps!

Join the IPD Guide Beta Program

Subscribe to the IPD beta program and we will notify you when new beta guides become available for your review and feedback. These are open beta downloads. If you are not already a member of the IPD Beta Program and would like to join, follow these steps:

Go here to join the IPD beta program
Sign in using a valid Windows Live ID.
Enter your registration information.
Continue to the IPD program beta page, scroll down to Infrastructure Planning and Design, and click the link to join the IPD beta program
Once you’ve joined, go here to get hold of the downloads.

If you’re already a member of the IPD Guide Beta Program, just grab the download from here.

Interested in System Center? Want to reduce costs? This event is for you!

MattMcSpirit — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 15:11:00 GMT

That image won’t make much sense at this stage, but work with me here! On Friday 5th November, one of our key System Center Partners, Inframon, are hosting an event in London focused purely on System Center, and the range of technologies which exist as part of the brand. Whether you’re a ‘Configuration Manager kinda-guy’, or maybe Operations Manager floats your boat, there’s going to be something for everyone. Don’t forget the sparkly new Service Manager, along with the awesome Opalis – these, and more, will all be showcased on the day, and if that’s not enough, Inframon have snagged a speaker list which reads like a ‘who’s who’ in the System Center world….

Oh, and it’s held at the Cabinet War Rooms in London, a historic underground complex that housed a British government command centre throughout the Second World War. With a theme like ‘The War on Cost 2010’, where else could you hold it? I presented at the event last year, and it was on HMS Belfast if I recall correctly! I’ll be on my holidays whilst the event is on this year which is a shame for me, as it’s a great opportunity to connect directly with the Product Teams who are working on the technologies over in the US. If you are free on the 5th November, I would strongly recommend going along, but to entice you a little more, here’s the line-up:

0830-0900	Registration
0900-0930	Inframon Keynote - Gordon McKenna, Inframon CEO & MVP System Center
0930-1030	Microsoft Keynote: Datacenter to the Cloud - Ryan O’Hara - Senior Director, System Center Product Management, Microsoft
1030-1050	Break
1050-1150	Microsoft Keynote: Desktop & Security Convergence - Andrew Conway - Senior Director, Identity and Security Business Group, Microsoft Breakout #1: The Microsoft Private Cloud Story: Sean Roberts, Inframon CFO & Simon Skinner, Inframon Technical Architect & MVP System Center
1150-1250	Breakout #2: Operations Manager 2007 R2 & vNext - Justin Incarnato & Daniel Savage, Senior Product Managers, System Center, Microsoft Breakout #3: Managing Mobile Devices with Athena™ for SCCM 2007 - Odyssey Software Breakout #4: Heterogeneous Management With Operations Manager 2007 – Bridgeways
1250-1350	Lunch
1350-1450	Breakout #5: System Center Configuration Manager vNext Highlights - Jeff Wettlaufer, Senior Technical Product Manager, System Center, Microsoft Breakout #6: Service Manager – The Better Together Story – Sean Christensen, Senior Technical Product Manager, System Center, Microsoft
1450-1510	Break
1510-1610	Breakout #7: Intelligent Datacenter Application Protection - Jason Buffington, Senior Technical Product Manager, Microsoft Breakout #8: Datacenter IT Process Automation - Adam Hall, Senior Technical Product Manager & Greg Charman, Opalis Technical Specialist, Microsoft
1610-1630	Closing Keynote - Gordon McKenna, Inframon CEO & MVP System Center
1630-1700	Venue Tour

So there you have it – a plethora of System Center knowledge concentrated in one place – definitely worth a day of your time if you can spare it! You can read the whole, detailed agenda over on the War on Cost website.

Don’t forget to Register if you want to attend!

DPM 2010 - Management Pack for Operations Manager Released

MattMcSpirit — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 07:56:10 GMT

Hat tip to Jonathan Almquist for this one – it’s something I’ll be installing ASAP!

For those of you who have rolled out, or are planning to roll out, a combination of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, and System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, this free Management Pack could be of use to you. The management pack monitors the health status of System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 and its components. It alerts the admin on critical health state and it provides certain break fix tasks to take corrective actions. The management pack is targeted to provide central monitoring solution for System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 customers.

Feature Summary

The DPM 2010 Management Pack enables the user to reduce unnecessary alerts appearing on your console by using service level agreement (SLA)-based alerting and duplicate–error suppression.
- Through SLA-based alerting, alerts appear only if a particular job has failed for a certain period.
- Through duplicate-error suppression, the management pack suppresses alerts raised as a reaction to a root-cause event. For example, if a DPM protection agent service is unreachable, or a protected computer is not working, and the backup jobs of all data sources are failing, the management pack updates the state of each affected data source without raising a data source-specific alert.
- If you are using a ticketing system and are using Operations Manager, DPM 2010 Management Pack enables you to use rules instead of the monitors. By default, DPM Management Pack enables monitors. If you want to use rules, you must enable them.

It’s currently available in English only at this time, but will be localised in a few weeks. You can read more about the Management Pack, and download it, here.

Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Release Candidate Available

MattMcSpirit — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:35:27 GMT

Hot off the press, the Release Candidate for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 has been released!

You can grab the Release Candidate from here, however there are a couple of things you should know about before you steam right ahead!

In order to download and install the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Release Candidate you must currently have a Release to Manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 already installed.
If you have previously installed the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta on your machine, you must uninstall the beta before installing the Release Candidate

Go to Windows Update in the Control Panel, uninstall the beta, select Check for Updates, then install the release candidate. You do not need to run the WUSignupTool a second time to be offered the release candidate. You do not need to install any updates before installing the release candidate

There are also a couple of useful resources that you may want to take a look at:

If you’re managing your Hyper-V hosts with SCVMM 2008 R2, you may want to hold off on the SP1 build for your hosts initially (or play with it on an alternative server) as the current release of SCVMM won’t support SP1 of Hyper-V just yet, but I’m sure there will be an accompanying build in the near future.

If all of this is new to you, and you’re not even sure what’s coming with SP1, then this should help you get up to speed:

Remote FX: With Microsoft RemoteFX, users will be able to work remotely in a Windows Aero desktop environment, watch full-motion video, enjoy Silverlight animations, and run 3D applications within a Hyper-V VM – all with the fidelity of a local-like performance.
Hyper-V Dynamic Memory: With Hyper-V Dynamic Memory, Hyper-V will enable greater virtual machine density suitable for servers and VDI deployments.

No more advice from me – again, the download is here!

Interesting read on Citrix’s HDX and VMware’s PCoIP…

MattMcSpirit — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:37:36 GMT

As many of your know, one of the key elements of my job is to work with Partners and Customers around our Optimised Desktop story. If you’re not familiar, it’s the idea that actually, believe it or not, VDI isn’t the right solution for everyone and that an optimised desktop, with associated benefits, can be achieved through a variety of ways, VDI being one of them. Terminal Services, now replaced by Remote Desktop Services, RDS, is one area that always sparks a bit of debate. Many people assume session-based computing has been superseded by VDI, and that it’s very much a one or the other type scenario. I wonder who gave them that idea? This couldn’t be further from the truth, with both Microsoft and Citrix still continuing to invest in the platform to provide the highest density, and greatest ROI for a remote working environment, especially suited to the task/knowledge workers. Many of the Partners, and more specifically, the customers that see me demonstrate our RDS solution, typically follow up with ‘So does this mean I don’t need Citrix anymore?’. One of the reasons they are asking this question, is because they’ve just seen me deliver a local, LAN-based RDS demo, utilising RDP 7.0 (soon to be 7.1…) and for all intents and purposes, the user experience is pretty darn good, and naturally, the tendency is to compare it with their, perhaps legacy, Presentation Server deployment that’s due for an upgrade.

It’s when we introduce the unpredictable WAN element that things begin to change.

Don’t get me wrong, RDP is leaps and bounds better than what it was, but it’s still designed primarily for the LAN, and hence the upcoming feature in Service Pack 1; RemoteFX, will only function over the LAN (with RDP anyway). This is where protocols like Citrix HDX (High Definition eXperience), VMware PCoIP (PC over IP), Quest’s EOP Xtream, and Ericom Blaze all claim to streamline and enhance the connection to a remote environment over WAN links, but the claim is, some do it better than others…

This is where the interesting read comes in.

Over on Virtualization.info, Alessandro provides details on what I would describe as a lightweight test performed by Chris Wolf, at Gartner, where, at 200ms latency, in a real-world scenario, Citrix HDX outperforms VMware PCoIP. It was a simple test, and by no means took into account all of the best practices that I’m sure exist for both platforms (as detailed on this blog, talking about the PCoIP performance in the scenario tested by Chris) but still, Citrix won out at 200ms, but both performed well at 120ms latency. How would RDP compare here? I wouldn’t like to say. As the latency starts to creep up, inevitably the user experience will start to deteriorate more so than the other protocols discussed, but just remember what it;s designed for. You can read more about the improvements in RDP 7 here.

So to answer my question from earlier – ‘Does this mean I don’t need Citrix anymore?’ – the answer is, if you’re doing anything over the WAN, with higher latencies, then Citrix, for the session based environment, will certainly provide you with a richer experience. Don’t also forget the other benefits around increased scalability, manageability, USB device support, end-device flexibility (iPhone, iPad, Linux, Mac etc.) and this is just scratching the surface. Citrix, along with Partners such as Quest, Ericom and more, will always offer value-add on top of the Microsoft platform – the key thing is, for many organisations, is working out what’s right for you, what functionality you need, and keeping it within budget!

No benchmark test will allow you to simulate your conditions, and your environment, hence gathering detailed user requirements and delivering a Proof of Concept is essential, but just from reading the article on Virtualization.info, and also across on Chris Wolf’s blog, you’d be inevitably leaning towards Citrix from a protocol perspective, however don’t write off others such as Quest, who with EOP Xtream may just surprise you!

Upcoming Partner Academy Live: Virtualisation Licensing

MattMcSpirit — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 17:56:39 GMT

Judging by the number of questions I receive on licensing, both via this blog, and also face to face, I’ve got a feeling these sessions will be of use to you. If you feel that you don’t quite get our licensing around both Server Virtualisation and Desktop Virtualisation, then these 2 sessions could be for you.

Deciphering Windows Server Licensing w/ a Focus on Server Virtualisation

Confused about the options available to license Windows Server? Interested in virtualising your existing Windows Servers but aren’t sure how this will impact your licensing requirements? This session breaks down the components of Windows Server licensing, especially virtualisation.

Date: 9th November 2010
Time: 1600-1700 GMT
Presenter: Adam Baron, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft

How to License Microsoft’s Virtual Desktop Technology

Virtual Desktop represents a major opportunity for customers to simplify the management and deployment of technology. This session will provide the basics as well as examples of how to license virtual desktops.

Date: 10th November 2010
Time: 1600-1700 GMT
Presenter: Adam Baron, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft

Don’t forget, these sessions are free for Microsoft Partners, and will be recorded, so if you can’t make the actual time, make sure you still register as you’ll then be notified when the recording is available for you to download.

July to November - where did it go?

MattMcSpirit — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 17:44:57 GMT

I’ve been writing this blog for a number of years now, and I don’t think I’ve ever had such a barren spell of posts. You have to look back to the 15th July for the last real post on Microsoft technology, and frankly, I’m disappointed and embarrassed! So much has happened since July. I flew out to the US right at the end of July for our annual internal technical conference, which effectively involves many Microsoft people from across the globe learning about the latest and greatest Microsoft technologies, both released, and upcoming. The best way to think about it is like an internal TechEd, minus the confidential stuff obviously. I spent a large amount of my time in System Center sessions, as for me, System Center is going to be the key to the Dynamic Datacenter, the Optimised Datacenter, or, the Private Cloud. Some of the things I saw, across products like Opalis and Service Manager, I thought, were absolutely fantastic, yet still to this day I just haven’t had time to get them installed in my lab – shocking! Aside from the absorption of technical information (think plugging into the Matrix) there is inevitably the copious amount of shopping, especially from the UK guys. I’m yet to find anyone who’s actually bought the Abercrombie and Fitch after shave/cologne, but all you see around the office in the weeks after the conference are people in A&F!

Post July, one of the chaps in our team decided to move on to pastures new, and we have literally just hired the new head to replace him, but in the meantime, his workload, and work with his Partners had to be distributed, and because he looked after System Center, and Management & Virtualisation are so inherently linked, it came over to me. Nightmare! Still – that’s what I love about this role – the immersion in technology. I’m one of those people who needs to understand a technology fully before I can talk about and explain it to others. Hyper-V is one of those technologies, however System Center, especially with some of the newer technologies, is a new learning ground for me, so it’s been all hands to the pumps since then both learning, and presenting!

Both VMworld’s came and went, and Citrix Synergy, Microsoft’s TechEd, and more are just around the corner, and you can bet your bottom dollar there will be plenty of announcements coming soon, especially in relation to my newly adopted technologies in the System Center suite. It’s been an incredibly exciting and fast moving couple of months, technology wise, and I’ll certainly be trying to keep up on the blog, fingers crossed!

I’ve got a whopping 99 items in my Newsletter/Blog folder, excluding this one, some of which is so old now, that if I posted it here, you’d start to question my sanity, especially if you keep up with technology news on a daily basis, however there will be instances where I do post some of the older stuff, because chances are, somebody, somewhere, will be looking for that, and in my view, every little helps. Plus, then I can remove it from my Newsletter/Blog folder!

An Education in ICT Efficiencies - 3rd November 2010

MattMcSpirit — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:15:52 GMT

So the budget cuts have arrived – and it appears that for the moment, the biggest cuts are in schools’ capital budgets. Firstly we saw the Harnessing Technology Grant cut by £50M, then the BSF programme was cancelled, and on the same day another £50M was cut from the Harnessing Technology Grant – the only dedicated ICT grant for schools.

There have been various doom-laden forecasts of the impact of these cuts, but although the government have cut the specific ring-fenced ICT spend by 50%, schools have always decided how much of their own budget they too will invest in ICT to support teaching and learning. Last year, the Harnessing Technology Grant accounted for around one quarter of all schools ICT spending - so the overwhelming majority of investment came from each school’s individual budget decisions, taken after they’d decided on the relative priority of investing in ICT compared to other resources, and their staffing budgets.

Of course, things are not good. It’s going to be tougher to justify investment in ICT – especially after so many years of plenty. And ICT leaders in schools around the country are going to need to hone their skills to justify the investments they are bidding for.

There are areas where ICT can help you make simple and effective cost savings in your school budget. From the work so far, it’s clear that you could make a big difference in a secondary school by saving up to a staggering £350,000 over 3 years or £90,000 in a Primary School, ensuring that learning in schools is not jeopardised.

If you’re in the education sector, this could be a very valuable session indeed.

Find out how to get started on cost saving with ICT

Through technologies like virtualisation, power management, or embracing unified communications, the savings can soon mount up, and the savings are year on year, every year. It’s time to switch, stop and save. You can see more examples of saving through technology here.

Dimension Data, in partnership with Microsoft want to take you on a journey, to show you the art of the possible, and the real world savings that can be made through technology. You’ll also hear from a real-world educational establishment on their experiences, and the savings they’ve made.

If you’re interested in understanding how Dimension Data and Microsoft can help you, please register here providing your relevant attendee info and we’ll be in touch. The event will be held on the 3^rd November at Microsoft Campus, Thames Valley Park, Reading.

And as a special offer, the first 10 people to register today before 3:00pm (16^th September), and attend, will receive a free Infrastructure Optimisation Assessment, courtesy of a Microsoft-trained consultant from Dimension Data, enabling you to understand how your existing investments, combined with new technologies can help you better address your challenges.

Vizioncore release free VMware Management Pack for OpsMgr…

MattMcSpirit — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:11:59 GMT

Vizioncore, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quest (the vWorkspace guys!), have released a free Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 which enables the monitoring of VMware virtual infrastructures. Now, before I get into the features and capabilities of what the MP gives you, it’s important to point out that this is the first free MP to deliver these capabilities, and may stir things up a little over at both Veeam and Bridgeways, who both have established MP’s for OpsMgr to enable monitoring of VMware environments. It’s important to say, both Veeam and Bridgeways offer trails of their solutions, so it would be important to compare the different MP’s for yourselves, however looking at a high level, one of the key elements that Veeam seems to have today, is that it’s PRO-enabled, thus provides more automated, dynamic and agile responses within the environment based on changing conditions. That’s not to say both Bridgeways and Vizioncore won’t evolve their technologies in the future, and bring in PRO capabilities, however today, you would have to classify it as a differentiator for Veeam. One you have to pay for however.

So, what are the key features of the Vizioncore MP?

Essential alerts from the virtual infrastructure to reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) of problems
Integration to System Center Operations Manager to centralize and consolidate monitoring efforts
Low cost and simple to use while allowing administrators to work in their familiar System Center Operations Manager views
Native management pack delivers alert and event management as well as trending inside the SCOM console
Agentless architecture for simple deployment and low overhead
Performance monitoring & availability event monitoring for fast resolution in the virtual environment
Out-of-the-box reports for host and guest metrics provides flexibility and clear communication between stakeholders

There’s even more features here…

What’s nice from my perspective, is the growth of the ecosystem around the Microsoft virtualisation platform, from Partners that have, in the past, been quite VMware focused. That’s more Vizioncore than Quest, but still, it’s moving in the right direction.

If you’re interested, you can get all the info, and download the MP, from here.