Unified physical and virtual IT management for midsized businesses
When a computer group is created in Essentials 2010 using Create a Computer Group in the Computers space, a corresponding group is created in the WSUS database. This can be seen in the WSUS console.
Figure 1. Computer groups in the WSUS console.
Deleting these computer groups from the WSUS console will result in the computer group not showing in the Computers space.
Use this tool if you no longer see some or all computer groups in the Essentials console that you had previously created.
The Fix Computer Group tool must be run on the Essentials 2010 server.
To run this tool:
1. Open a Command Prompt window with Administrator rights.
2. Navigate to the Essentials 2010 installation directory.
3. Run LinkDG.exe.
The Fix Computer Group tool does not take any arguments. It will connect to the Essentials 2010 server and identify or fix any broken computer group relationships. The tool will display a list of completed tasks in the command prompt window after completion.
Figure 2. Default Essentials 2010 computer groups fixed.
Figure 3. Customized Essentials 2010 computer groups fixed.
During Essentials installation, Setup creates a number of log files in the %localAppData%\SCE\Logs folder:
To help identify installation issues, the Essentials Resource Kit includes a log parsing tool, SetupLogParser.exe. SetupLogParser can parse both the managed bootstrapper log file (SCESetupWizard.log) and the Essentials Windows Installer log file (SCEMSI.log).
Start the log parser tool by double-clicking SetupLogParser.exe in the Resource Kit installation folder. On the File menu, click Open to load a log file, as shown:
In the Open dialog box, select a log file:
Click Open to load the selected log file. SetupLogParser will check the contents of the log file to verify that the contents are in the correct format for either the managed bootstrapper file or the Essentials Windows Installer log. If SetupLogParser cannot validate that the file contains data in a recognized log file format it will show error message:
If the content of the file is in one of the supported log file formats, the program will show a progress window:
After the parsing and conversion is completed, SetupLogParser reads the log file and creates a report, as shown:
Possible issues Essentials Setup encountered during installation will be shown in red:
SetupLogParser does not offer an explanation of possible reasons for failure, but in many cases the log message itself is self-explanatory.
For example, Setup will fail if a pending reboot request is detected:
In the case of the Essentials Windows Installer log, the failure of a custom action does not always cause Setup as a whole to fail. In this case, the log contains a record in green informing you that Windows Installer converted an error result to a success result:
For large Essentials Windows Installer log files, the time that it takes to generate a report can be a few minutes or more. To avoid the time required to generate the report again from the same log files at a later time, you can save the generated report. To save the report, on the File menu, click Save As:
In the Save As dialog box, select XAML files (.xaml) in the Save as type: list, and then click Save:
To open previously saved report, on the File menu, click Open. In the Files of type: list, select XAML files (.xaml) and click Open:
SetupLogParser converts text log file to XML format before generating a report. If you want to use the log file information in some other application, you might want to save the XML version of the log file. However, the SetupLogParser tool does not support loading XML log files.
To save the log file in XML format, on the File menu, click Save As, select XML files (.xml) in the Files of type: list, and then click Open:
Here is a sample tour through one of the log files generated during Essentials Setup testing. The report contains a header for the main Setup log file:
Next, you will see the various report sections, examples of which are included here.
Here is an example that shows the date and time when installation started and command line that was used to start the installation.
This reports that User CHOCOLATE\testAdmin started the installation of OEM English version of System Center Essentials on computer SCETEST015D. Local system is 64-bit Windows NT 6.1.7600.0.
This reports that Windows Update is not installed on local computer, and that neither Essentials 2007 nor 2010 are installed in the local domain.
You will see an entry like this when Setup successfully ran Windows Update prerequisites check.
Here is an example of an error: The database check failed. The local ESSENTIALS instance of SQL Server already has a System Center Essentials database.
This prerequisite check generated a warning message. Warning messages will not block Setup.
This lists successfully passed prerequisite checks.
In this example, the user cancelled the installation.
Here is a possible reason why the user cancelled Setup.
Sometimes, failed prerequisite is not really a problem, just an indication that one of the required prerequisites is not installed. In this case, “Failed prerequisites” section will follow with “Prerequisites passed with choices” and “Prerequisites selected for installation”:
In this example, Setup could not find any instance of SQL Server.
In this example, Setup has offered to install SQL Server 2008 SP1 Express Edition on the local computer.
In this example, the user opted to install SQL Server 2008 SP1 Express Edition on the local computer.
Setup successfully installed SQL Server 2008 SP1 Express on the local system.
In this example, Setup successfully installed System Center Essentials.
This entry indicates that Setup successfully installed Windows Update.
In this example, the System Center Essentials Setup program failed. The Setup logs include Windows Installer process log entries.
Here is one of the log files generated during Essentials Setup testing:
This is a header for Essentials Windows Installer log report. The log entries begin with the date and time when installation started and command line used to start the installation.
In this example, an error has been reported. The entry Action: INSTALL starts the initial phase of the Windows Installer process. During the initial phase, the installer collects information about the local computer and prepares the installer for the deferred phase. No changes to the local computer are made during the initial phase. The result shown is the overall installation result. Actions in the initial installation phase start with word “Action”. All properties set or modified by the custom action are shown. For example, the WindowsFolder.F0DF3458_A845_11D3_8D0A_0050046416B9 custom action set the property WindowsFolder.F0DF3458_A845_11D3_8D0A_0050046416B9 to a string value “E:\WINNT\”.
The entry Action: InstallFinalize represents the start of the deferred phase of the Windows installer process. During deferred phase Windows Installer is making changes to the local computer, such as copying or deleting files, creating or removing registry keys and values, and so on.
The result for the InstallFinalize action shows the overall result of the deferred phase.
Here is an error example: the _CreateDatabase custom action failed to create the database.
Here is an example of a failed installation: The installation failed with an error code of 1603. The description for error code 1603 is “Fatal error during installation,” which is a common error when Setup fails because of one of the custom actions failed.
For a complete list of Windows Installer error codes, see the following Knowledge Base article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/229683.
When a monitored object, such as a computer or distributed application, is taken offline for maintenance, Essentials 2010 detects that no agent heartbeat is being received and, as a result, might generate numerous alerts and notifications. To prevent alerts and notifications, monitored objects can be put into maintenance mode. When a monitored object is in maintenance mode, alerts, notifications, rules, monitors, automatic responses, state changes, and new alerts are suppressed at the agent.
Maintenance mode can only be initiated at the current time by manually selecting the object in the Actions pane of the Monitoring area in the console and clicking Start Maintenance Mode.
However, there may be users who need to schedule maintenance mode for some objects at a future recurring time. For example, a group of computers may need to be turned off every Saturday and Sunday night from 11PM for 3 hours. This tool will allow users to schedule a maintenance interval for computer groups, beginning at a certain time and lasting for certain duration on a weekly recurring basis. At the scheduled time on the scheduled days, all the computers in the specified computer group will be automatically put into maintenance mode for the specified duration.
The tool should only be run on the server where Essentials 2010 is installed. When the tool starts up, the user will see a table with a list of previously scheduled maintenance modes. Each maintenance mode will have the following attributes,
The user can also hover over individual rows in the table to see a tooltip with the comments the user may have entered when creating the maintenance mode.
The New button lets a user schedule maintenance mode, the Delete button deletes a previously scheduled maintenance mode and the Close button closes the application. Note that the tool will not allow any editing of previously scheduled maintenance modes.
Click on the New button in the main window to show the “Schedule a new maintenance interval” window. In this window,
If the tool is able to successfully schedule maintenance mode, an appropriate message will be displayed.
If an error occurred when scheduling maintenance mode, an appropriate error message will be displayed. To close the “Schedule a new maintenance interval” window and return to the main screen, click the Close button.
It is recommended that you never put the Essentials management server into maintenance mode because configuration distribution, the heartbeat feature, and other features for the system might become unreliable. Hence the tool will never put the Essentials management server into maintenance mode even if it is part of the selected group.
How to delete a new maintenance interval for a computer group:
To delete a previously scheduled maintenance mode,
A confirmation dialog box is shown. Click Yes to delete and No to cancel the deletion.
With the release of System Center Essentials 2010 and the general excitement around some of the new features like virtualization, some customers are asking about our upgrade/migration story from the previous version.
SCENARIO
You read about the 2010 release and are excited about the virtualization features in the new version. You purchase the 2010 version of SCE and run back to your office to do the install. When you launch the install, you see the support for upgrading your existing Essentials 2007 sp1 install. You starting the upgrade process and before long, you have deployed the new version of Essentials.
You go to add the virtualization component and get a message telling you that your x86 system does not support this component. Luckily you have another server that does meet the system requirements for the Essentials 2010 virtualization component… but you don’t want to lose all the data you have on your existing Essentials server… you just need better hardware and a newer OS.
We have anticipated this scenario and have provided a solution in the resource kit that can be leveraged to solve this issue. In the resource kit, there is a tool called MigrationAdvisor.exe. The migration advisor is a wizard which will allow you to migrate your existing Essentials 2010 data from one server to another server with the same FQDN. Here is how it works.
Things You will need
First you install the resource kit on your existing server. The steps for that are:
Now that you have the migration advisor up and running, you will see the following screen:
Choose the “Migrate Essentials 2010 to another server” radio button. On the next screen, you will need to provide a location for the backup files and a password used to secure your rmsbackup and certs.
Make sure the location has plenty of free space as all your Sce data will be stored there. I would suggest using a Network location as you will not have access to the old Sce server during the migration restore phase (hit the browse button to change the location). Make sure you have write access to the location you select.
Now your ready to start the backup. Hit the begin button and wait for successful completion of the backup as seen below. (This will take a few min. depending on the amount of data on your server.)
Congrats, your halfway through the process…
The Tricky Part
The next thing you need to do is decommission your existing server. Since the migration of essentials is ONLY supported onto another server with EXACTLY the same FQDN, you have a couple of choices.
You could:
A. Uninstall Essentials from your existing server and then change that servers FQDN to another name so that it will not conflict with the new Essentials server.
Or
B. Shut the Essentials server down and then format the disk and use the hardware to create a different machine on your network later.
Once the old Essentials server has been removed from the domain, you will need to add a new server to your domain with EXACTLY the same name as your original Essentials server. This is the server with the hardware and OS that can support the Virtualization component of Essentials 2010.
Important Note
Having EXACTLY the same FQDN is important… if the FQDN is not the same as the previous machine, you will not be able to successfully migrate your previous Essentials data to this machine using the MigrationAdvisor.exe.
The next step is to install Essentials 2010, using the same settings components and account information as your previous install
Selecting the same components it very important as the MigrationAdvisor will not allow you to migrate your data to the new machine if the component settings do not match. For example, if you do not have Virtualization on the box you are migrating from, don’t install it on the new box (you will add it using the ARP after the migration is complete).
Once the install is complete you will need to close the installation wizard. Do not run the configuration wizard as your settings will be configured by the migrationadvisor as it restores your existing data.
Now you need to install the resource kit tools on this server and launch the migrationadvisor. This can be done following the same steps you did to install the resource kit tools on your previous Essentials server (see the top of this document).
Now you need to choose the “Restore Essentials 2010 from a complete Essentials backup” option then hit next.
Then you need to provide the storage location you used during the migration step and the password you used during the backup, and hit begin.
The Migration Advisor will begin processing….
A few minutes later (on my server which had very little data, the restore took about 10 minutes to finish), the wizard will finish.
Now you should have a working Sce server with your original data.
AEM settings are not preserved so if you were using AEM, you will need to go into the console and enable it again.
At this point, if you want the virtualization component, you will be able to install it by running the setup wizard again and choosing to add the Virtualization component. Then you can begin deploying and managing your virtual machines. Enjoy.
Essentials 2010 uses a certificate for signing locally published content. The released version of System Center Essentials 2010 is designed to use an updated type of certificate. Use the UpdatePublisherCert.exe tool to replace the existing certificate with a new certificate.
The UpdatePublisherCert.exe tool performs the following tasks:
1. Save the current policy configuration
2. Uninstall the current policy
3. Delete certificates from the certificate store
4. Delete certificates from the system
5. Reconfigure the policy and generate new certificates
6. Resign all locally published software and update packages.
Essentials will automatically push out the new certificates to all the managed computers if Essentials is configured to use domain policy. If you have one or more workgroup joined computers managed by Essentials 2007 or Essentials 2010 it will be necessary to manually update the certificate on workgroup joined computers using the instructions in the Deployment Guide. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc339469.aspx
Who should use this tool:
Use the UpdatePublisher.exe tool if one of the following conditions apply:
· You are currently using System Center Essentials 2007
· You are upgrading from Essentials 2007 to Essentials 2010
· You are installing Essentials 2010 RTM, after installing and uninstalling Essentials 2010 Beta or RC (uninstalling Essentials 2010 Beta or RC does not remove the certificate)
Using UpdatePublisherCert.exe
UpdatePublisherCert.exe is a command-line tool that replaces the certificate used for signing locally published content and resigns all locally published content with the new certificate.
2. Run UpdatePublisherCert.exe (there are no command-line-parameters).
Figure 1. Running UpdatePublisherCert.exe from a command line.