Last week I posted about using a PowerShell script to automate VM cluster maintenance , and talked about how the VMM PowerShell snap-in is 64-bit, while Opalis is 32-bit (and therefore runs PowerShell in 32-bit mode). I thought I would take a second and create a separate post on this to call this out specifically because it's important, it's already being asked about, and will likely be a source of confusion unless you know about it before you try it. If you're running Opalis on a 64-bit OS like...

Emmanuel walks you through how to build a SharePoint cloud automation system using Opalis 6.3. Go check it out over on MSDN. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/emberger/archive/2010/11/23/opalis-6-3-to-orchestrate-sharepoint-2010.aspx

So now that you are provisioning VMs and checkpointing them regularly you may find that there is a sudden growth in your storage devices . This is good, and it is important to manage VM sprawl with good processes that identify and remove old VMs. For checkpoints it is useful to have a rolling a checkpoint strategy. So if you have put your checkpointing on a schedule, you can also put your checkpoint cleanup on a schedule. This is a really simple workflow that will keep your checkpoints from growing...

The great thing about virtual machines is that their state is capture as data on a drive. System Center Virtual Machine Manager lets you record this state at any time in a checkpoint. These checkpointing a vm gives you an at-the-moment revision of the virtual machine that you can revert to. Using Opalis 6.3 you can now orchestrate checkpoint processes so that they happen consistently every time.   The Custom Start activity kicks off the workflow by requiring a Batch Number parameter. The Batch...

A typical scenario for Opalis in virtualization environments is to be the engine that orchestrates the provisioning of virtual machines. Process owners design change request forms and approval processes in System Center Service Manager and then virtualization IT specialists will create automation that will take those change requests and transform them into virtual machines. The Integration Pack for System Center Virtual Machine Manager allows you to build workflows that will provision virtual machines...

It’s only natural that a new Service Desk solution should have to interoperate with an existing Service Desk solution. The reason for this should be pretty obvious: Everyone in IT uses the Service Desk pretty much every day. So migrating is bound to present certain challenges as a new, modern system is built out and the older legacy system is spun down. The traditional approach of addressing this change has been to build out the new system and then gradually migrate users off of the old...

You shouldn’t be shocked to discover that System Center Service Manager has a CMDB. A CMDB is at the beating heart of any Service Desk solution… a very basic definition of Change Management is the process which maintains the CMDB. Service Manager provides for various ways one can build an initial set of data in the CMDB and maintain this information over time as part of standard IT processes. This includes connectors between Service Manager and Configuration Manager, Operations Manager...