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Hello again Readers/Viewers! Like my previous post over at “Blog D'Joy” , this post will act as a reference to the various posts that I have done in the past and be updated to include the new ones that I have continued to publish here on Building Clouds! Recently, Jim Britt and I curated...

Hello Readers and Viewers! Today’s post will not have a video, but it will have some very popular and hopefully informative information about some “Best Practices” around Orchestrator Architecture and Runbook Deployment. For those of you that have been following me for the past...

Hello readers! I have a post that I think will be very interesting to those of you who have wanted to execute PowerShell v3 through Orchestrator and have had issues. The core of Orchestrator (if you didn’t already know) was built around an x86 PowerShell base for execution of PowerShell. Meaning...

I’ve been getting questions about the overall architecture of MAT and then specifically how the PowerShell functions work together. Of course, it’s all right there in the scripts, but it would probably take you a while to sort through the 2,000 or so lines of code. So in the spirit of trying to make...

Hello Readers/Viewers! I realize it has been a little while since I posted, but I thought I would come back with a tip/trick that might just help your next Orchestrator / Service Manager project. This post is all about a Runbook configuration that can be implemented, which will workaround some unexpected...

Hello Readers, welcome to the 4th and final post in this series on deploying the example VMM Service Template forSharePoint 2013 to your Microsoft private cloud. To recap where we’ve been: Application Management-Example-Deploying a Service to Your Private Cloud (Part 1) Introduction...

Hey readers, I hope you had a great time at MMS 2013 (if you were able to make it!). If you did make it, you may have seen this service template featured on the big stage during Brad Anderson’s keynote. Pretty cool! Before we continue on to Part 3, review Parts 1 and 2 for background if you haven’t...

Hey Readers, welcome back to another post on Orchestrator Best Practices. In my previous post Automation–System Center 2012 – Orchestrator Best Practice Series–Naming Conventions , I talked about Runbook and folder naming best practices as well as lightly touching on a concept called...

Hello Readers and Viewers! I hope you are ready for this, the next installment of my Building Clouds Blog Video Demonstration Series! As this is a series of “behind the scenes” demonstrations for the automation portions of “SCDemo Cloud” offering , this post and video is a long time in the making. And...

When I introduced the MAT last post, I didn’t spend much time discussing how to convert using multiple servers. So I better get to it. This post details how to configure the MAT to use multiple machines to convert at the same time (let’s call these “Helpers”). Using the MAT on...

Hello Readers and Viewers (new and alumni)! I just wanted to send a big THANK YOU and WELCOME to all the MMS 2013 Attendees and New Blog Readers! It was a fantastic event with so much great information… What is in your top 5 list of favorites from MMS2013? And, whether you attended MMS 2013 or not, you...

Introducing the MAT MAT, meet the blogosphere. Blogosphere, meet MAT. There, that was easy. In my earlier posts I’ve talked a lot about migration and automation. In my V2V series I covered lots of ways you might go about automating your conversions using VMM’s V2V. Helpful, right? Well...

Hey Readers, so you’ve taken a look at the initial post and are ready for some more information I suppose. Well if you haven’t seen the previous post, before we dive in, make sure you review on where we started in Part 1 where you can get an idea of the high level goals, some information...

Trying to decide which sessions to attend at the 2013 Microsoft Management Summit ?  There are a lot of great options this year, and here are ten reasons we think you should check out the sessions hosted by the authors of the Building Clouds blog… You’ll get to learn all about the Fundamentals of...

Hello Readers and Viewers! Headed to MMS 2013 in Las Vegas next week? We are! Who? Well, I actually believe the entire Technical Enablement & Delivery (TED) team will be there along with thousands of our closest friends and colleagues! What? Where? When? http://www.2013mms.com Why? It is all for...

Featured during Brad Anderson's Keynote at MMS 2013!   " href="http://blogs.technet.com/b/in_the_cloud/archive/2013/04/09/as-seen-at-mms-scripts-and-overviews-of-all-six-keynote-demos.aspx" target="_blank"> Featured during Brad Anderson's Keynote at MMS 2013! Hey Readers...

In my last post we covered some ways of removing VMware Tools from your VMs so that your conversion would go more smoothly. Next we need to tee up the conversion by getting the VMs to the VMM Library so that we can start our V2V. Getting the VM to the VMM Library Before VMM can convert the VM, it needs...

Last time we went through the basic mechanics of V2V. In this post we will roll up our virtual sleeves (lest we get ketchup on them… again) and start digging into what needs to happen to get this thing automated. NOTE: You really want to back up your VM somehow before you start any conversion. You can...

Hello Readers/Viewers! Today I have a special treat for you…well some of you, specifically the folks that are starting to dig deeper into the integration between Service Manager and Orchestrator. Background Many of you know this integration is not just a one-way street. It is completely bi-directional...

Hello Readers/Viewers! Just a quick “tip/trick” post today… and one that you may not know about, but will definitely need to have in your toolbox if the need ever arrives. Use Case Update or Create User Input data for a Service Request from Orchestrator. Why? Appending to User Input may be required as...

I’ve mentioned Microsoft’s two VM conversion tools before but I wanted to spend some time digging a little deeper into both. I’m starting with VMM’s V2V which has been in market (in one version or another) for a few years now. What is V2V? V2V is shorthand for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012...

So, you want to send email leveraging Orchestrator activities to jazz up some of your automation?  This blog post will focus on a couple of ways to accomplish this.  In fact, this is a nice way to add some finishing touches on any user facing communication that may be executed within your IT...

Hello Readers/Viewers! In this post, I am presenting you with a simple “tip/trick” for Orchestrating Service Manager - More specifically, Action Log entries. Let’s get to it!   What is the use case? Create new Action Log entries for Service Manger Work Items from Orchestrator.   Why? Well,...

Hello Readers/Viewers! As you can see, I am really trying hard to get both of my quotas met: blog posts + fun… That said, this post, while dealing a very small amount with Automation and System Center Orchestrator, is really just me getting my geek on for a few technologies I was exploring...

Hey Readers! Some of you may know me from my blog on TechNet where I’ve covered topics on automation around System Center 2012 – Orchestrator and Opalis. Well, I’m joining the fun in the Building Clouds blog space to provide my experience in all things automation within the Automation...