System Center: Orchestrator Engineering Team Blog

Patching Orchestrator Runbook Servers while Maintaining High-Availability

2013-04-21T21:52:00Z

Balancing server patching with maintaining the availability of the services that run on these servers can be a difficult task for an IT Pro, with lots of repetitive, time-consuming, and error-prone steps. Luckily, Orchestrator has emerged as an effective automation tool to help IT Pros manage the patching process. But what about when the Orchestrator service itself needs to be patched? How can an IT Pro ensure their enterprise automation continues to function despite the patching of the servers running...(read more)

Update Rollup 2 for System Center 2012 Service Pack 1–Orchestrator updates

2013-04-11T18:15:38Z

Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is now available and includes the following updates for Orchestrator: Issue 1: The Monitor SNMP Trap activity publishes incorrect values for strings when a Microsoft SNMP Trap Service connection is used. Issue 2: Inconsistent results when you use Orchestrator to query an Oracle database. You can get all the details and a download link here: KB2802159 - Description of Update Rollup 2 for System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 ( http...(read more)

KB: Orchestrator 'Monitor Event Log' activity fires every time there is a new event, regardless of filters

2013-03-19T16:08:10Z

We just published a new KB article that explains an issue where in Orchestrator 2012, the Monitor Event Log fires every time there is any new event on the specified computer regardless of filters, or if the event does not match the filters, the published data of the ‘Monitor Event Log’ activity will be empty for all the usual fields (‘Log Entry ID’, ‘Log entry description’, etc). You can find the complete article here: KB2821208 - Orchestrator 'Monitor Event Log' activity fires every time there is...(read more)

Code Sample for “Cascading Dependencies”

2013-03-11T22:35:50Z

A new capability in System Center 2012 SP1 - Orchestrator allows an activity developer to define "cascading dependencies" between input parameters. For example if the user chooses a state like 'California' in the State input parameter the City input parameter could be immediately updated to only allow the user to choose cities in California like Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Francisco. This code sample shows an example of how to create a cascading dependency like this...(read more)

KB: The Orchestrator Send SNMP Trap activity always sets Generic Identifier as "coldStart(0)"

2013-02-27T20:30:23Z

We just published a new KB article that talks about an issue where the System Center 2012 Orchestrator Send SNMP Trap activity always sets the Generic Identifier value as coldStart(0) regardless of the value selected. The work around is pretty straight forward and you can find all the details here: KB2818892 - The Orchestrator Send SNMP Trap activity always sets Generic Identifier as "coldStart(0)" ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2818892 ) J.C. Hornbeck | Knowledge Engineer | Microsoft...(read more)

System Center 2012 SP1 Update Rollup 1 Breaks Service Provider Foundation

2013-02-11T20:07:10Z

Hi Everybody, This has been covered in the blogosphere pretty heavily now, but maybe a little bit more will help prevent the next accidental "discovery" of the issue. The following was sent to me from Paul Chen, and he asked me to post it for him (he's too busy fielding e-mails on this topic ; ) ==========From Paul=========== Folks, some members in the community have reported System Center 2012 SP1 Update Rollup 1 breaking Service Provider Foundation (SPF) connectivity with Service Management...(read more)

Service Provider Foundation, URLs for testing that it's up and running after installation

2013-02-09T00:05:49Z

So John Messec and I were delivering our session at Tech Ready 16 yesterday (SCIM351 - Enabling Hosted IaaS Clouds for Service Providers, big shout out and my thanks to all who attended) and I was asked to put out a quick blog post showing the URLs that I used in my first demo to test that SPF is up, running, and responsive. In the first part of my demo I used Internet Explorer to hit the web service endpoint, starting with following: https://<server>:8090/SC2012/VMM/Microsoft.Management...(read more)

KB: Orchestrator Runbooks, Folders and/or Statistics are not displayed or updated in the Orchestration Console

2013-02-04T19:57:04Z

We just published a KB article about an issue where new Orchestrator Runbooks and/or folders that have been created using the Runbook Designer are not displayed even though the user has the appropriate permissions to see them. You may also notice that summary pages have incorrect results for all statistics. The issue is resolved in System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 but the article has a couple alternate workarounds as well. You can find it here: KB2738490 - Orchestrator Runbooks, Folders and/or Statistics...(read more)

KB: NetCool/Omnibus integration pack for Orchestrator returns "Invalid ObjectServer data type" error

2013-01-31T18:20:30Z

We just published a new KB article that explains an issue where the NetCool/Omnibus integration pack for System Center 2012 Orchestrator returns an "Invalid ObjectServer data type" error. This is fixed in SP1 but there’s an alternate workaround in the KB. You can find the article here: KB2805835 - NetCool/Omnibus integration pack for Orchestrator returns "Invalid ObjectServer data type" error ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2805835 ) J.C. Hornbeck | Knowledge Engineer | Management...(read more)

KB: Triggered Runbook never completes in System Center 2012 Orchestrator

2013-01-30T17:30:09Z

We just published a new KB article for System Center 2012 Orchestrator describing an issue where a triggered Runbook never finishes and the policy module log shows the process as terminated. This can occur if disallow results from triggers is enabled on the SQL Server and is fixed in System Center 2012 Orchestrator Service Pack 1 (SP1) but the Kb article below has more details. KB2805832 - Triggered Runbook never completes in System Center 2012 Orchestrator ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2805832...(read more)