Hi Ho – Neil Peterson here, the in-laws have invaded my house, so I am coming to you today from the corner booth at my local coffee shop. I have a quick little treat this morning, nothing to complicated, but pretty cool and important never the less. Quite recently I have begun work on some runbook...

Often times when automating a multi-step process, there is a need to build into this automation a certain amount of delay. For instance, if I have rebooted an application server, we not only need to wait for the OS to come back online, but also the application host services to come back online before...

Good day all – if you were able to attend MMS2013 hope you had a great time, if not, no worries you are in luck. All MMS2013 sessions should now be available on Channel 9. Check out my session ‘Complex Maintenance Using System Center 2012 Configuration Manager and Orchestrator: Patching...

As I am working with the 2012 Configuration Manager SP1 (and CU1) PowerShell CMDLETs, the potential for automation around both the management and deployment spaces of Configuration Manager are expanding. That said, I have run against a few automation solution requirements that could not be met using...

While recently working on a Runbook solution for patching Windows Failover Clusters, I ran into the need of detecting if the Software Update installation process had placed the target system into a reboot pending state. After doing some research, I found many ‘loose’ methods for reboot detection...

Well I thought I was Mr. Smarty Pants and had the whole ‘running 2012 Configuration Manager cmdlets from an Orchestrator Run .Net Script activity’ figured out ( as documented in this post ). As it turns out, there is bit more to the story. Everything documented in the initial post is valid...

Introduction - Approaching my ten-year of systems management using SMS / Configuration Manager I can reflect back on many scripts, applications, and in some circumstances full systems I’ve implemented in order to facilitate a ‘self-service / approval friendly’ software delivery mechanism...

I love the integration of System Center 2012 Configuration Manage and System Center Orchestrator . Any day in which I get to work in a mutual space between these two technologies is a good day. As seen in some of my previous blog postings I have written an application that allows for the manual execution...

Original ‘Deep Dive’ Posting with recorded demonstration - http://blogs.technet.com/b/neilp/archive/2012/02/10/updating-a-sql-cluster-using-system-center-configuration-manager-and-system-center-orchestrator.aspx Download Location - http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Patching-a-SQL...

UPDATED 5/26/2012 Download location – http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Runbook-Commander-An-dba1fd33 Update 1 Additions - http://blogs.technet.com/b/neilp/archive/2012/06/27/runbook-commander-update-1-5-an-orchestrator-console-extension-for-system-center-2012-configuration-manager.aspx...

Updated 10/26/2012 - Runbook Commander 2.0 has been released. Information can be found and the following links. Download Location - http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Runbook-Commander-20-116ec91c Runbook Commander 2.0 Overview - http://blogs.technet.com/b/neilp/archive/2012/10/19/runbook-commander...

Continuing on with the automated SQL Cluster patching process, let’s examine some creative ways in which we can provide real time and summary feedback. At a high level we will see how to write data from the orchestrated process into an external database, and then use this data for reporting purposes...

Welcome to another System Center PFE blog post. In this publication I will continue to highlight how the System Center Suite of products can help manage and automate complex processes. If you’ve read my first post in this series, you will recall that the process being detailed is the graceful application...