Essentials 2010 uses up to three agents to manage computers:

• Windows Update agent - built into the Windows operating system, configured via Group Policy - provides update distribution, software distribution and hardware & software inventory
• Operations Manager agent - deployed to managed computer using 'Push Install' capability from Essentials server - provides rich model-based monitoring and remote task execuation
• Virtual Machine Manager agent - deployed when using the 'Designate a host' task - provide server virtualization management

I'll focus this article on troubleshooting the deployment of the Operations Manager agent using the Computer and Device Management Wizard (aka Discovery Wizard), the most common agent deployment mechansim, explain how the Windows Update agent is configured once the Operations Manager agent has been installed, and close with an explanation of the backup agent deployment mechanism we introduced in Essentials 2010 RC.

Discovery

Before the Operations Manager agent can be deployed to a computer, it first must be discovered.  This is accomplished using a LDAP search against Active Directory.  Check out this OpsMgr blog article for a deep dive into the discovery process: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2007/12/10/how-does-computer-discovery-work-in-opsmgr-2007.aspx

Essentials also includes scheduled 'Computer Discovery' which performs the LDAP scan on a daily schedule, discovering new un-managed computers, and attempting to deploy the OpsMgr agent to these newly discovered computers.

 Agent Deployment

Once a computer has been discovered, Essentials deploys the agent by copying over the agent installation files and starting the momagentinstaller process.

 You can view the agent deployment status in the task window that is displayed from the Discovery Wizard, by looking through the Task Status view in the Monitoring space, or by checking to see if the computer is in the Managed Agents or Pending Actions view in the Administration space. 

Agent Deployment Failures

If deployment of the OpsMgr agent has failed, you will see the failure messages in the Task Status window or Pending Actions view.  Check ou this great resource from OpsMgr MVP Cameron Fuller which contains many of the agent installation failure reasons and how to resolve them: http://cameronfuller.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!A231E4EB0417CB76!928.entry

Windows Update Agent configuration

Once the Operations Manager agent has been deployed to the computer and has succcessfully contacted the Essentials server, the Windows Update agent is configured to be controlled by the Essentials server.  If Essentials has been configured to use domain group policy, this occurs by adding the AD computer account for the computer into the 'SCE Managed Computers <management group>' security group in AD, which grants the computer the 'Apply GPO' privilege to 'SCE Managed Computers <management group>' GPO which includes the configuration settings that will cause the agent to be configured.  If Essentials has been configured to use local group policy, a runtime task will use the SCECertPolicyConfigUtil.exe (installed with the OpsMgr agent installation files) to configure the local GPO on the managed computers, again applying settings that will configure the Windows Update agent.

 Backup Agent Deployment

New in Essentials 2010 RC is a backup agent deployment process that kicks in if Essentials is configured to use domain group policy and OpsMgr agent deployment has failed.  The process uses both Group Policy and the ability of Essentials to distribute software to install the Operations Manager agent after first configuring the Windows Update agent on the computer for which agent deployment has failed.  This process happens in the background; you'll know that its working when a few hours have passed after agents failed to deploy and they have 'automagically' been installed on the same computers.

 We hope that you experience a trouble-free agent deployment experience in Essentials 2010 and start to get a ton of manageability from it very shortly after installation!

We hope you’re enjoying evaluating the release candidate of Essentials 2010 and look forward to reviewing your feedback in the Forums.

For people in the US we have a free gift – a Zune HD 32 - for the first 20 people who use the virtualization functionality in the release candidate of Essentials 2010 and give us feedback.

The promotion runs from 19 January 2010 to 9 February 2010, while supplies last.

Eligibility*

• Register on Connect.microsoft.com and join the Virtualize with System Center Essentials 2010 RC program to participate
• Install System Center Essentials 2010 Release Candidate
• Manage 2 or more Hyper-V hosts running on Windows Server 2008 or later with System Center Essentials 2010 Release Candidate
• Manage 10 or more virtualized servers with System Center Essentials 2010 Release Candidate
• Give Feedback via:
  • Feedback survey on Connect.microsoft.com
  • 1:1 1 hour LiveMeeting (scheduled on Connect.microsoft.com)
  • Complete the process by February 9th 2010

* Offer good only in the 50 United States (includes D. of C.) to those employed in the field of IT Administration, Operations or Management who are registered on Connect.microsoft.com. Offer good only to the first 20 people who respond. Limit one gift per person and per company. This offer is non-transferable and cannot be combined with any other offer. This offer ends on 9 February 2010 while supplies last, and is not redeemable for cash. Taxes, if any, are the sole responsibility of the recipient. Any gift returned as non-deliverable will not be re-sent. Please allow 6 - 8 weeks for shipment of your gift. Due to government gift and ethics laws, government employees (including military and employees of public education institutions) are not eligible to participate.

Essentials 2010 simplifies software distribution, including easy distribution for common applications such as Microsoft Office. Essentials also provides support for

• Common targeting filters
• Changing the properties of existing software packages
• Adding localized title and description during package creation
• Many other features

The Essentials team and the Office team have partnered to provide you with the simplest possible deployment experience. The Office team has provided both a guide to deployment options for Office 2010 that includes Essentials 2010 and a blog post containing the detailed steps for deploying Office 2010 (Beta) using System Center Essentials 2010.

The Office 2010 documentation containing deployment options for Office that include Essentials 2010:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee624360(office.14).aspx

Office Resource toolkit team posted a detailed blog entry on how to “Use System Center Essentials 2010 (Beta) to Deploy Office 2010 (Beta):“

http://blogs.technet.com/office_resource_kit/archive/2009/12/14/use-system-center-essentials-2010-beta-to-deploy-office-2010-beta.aspx

We’re very happy to announce that the Release Candidate of Essentials 2010 is now available.

The download package is in 4 self-extracting files which need to be unpacked to the same folder (e.g. c:\Essentials). The total download size is about 5GB.

Once you have downloaded the RC and extracted the installation image, double click on the SetupSCE.exe and install.

Note 1: If you currently have the Beta of Essentials 2010 installed you will need to uninstall the Beta before installing the RC.

Note 2: If you currently use Essentials 2007 you will not be able to upgrade to Essentials 2010 RC.

What’s New in the Release Candidate?

Based on your feedback, the following new functionality is included in the RC:

• Support for Hyper-V Clusters and Live Migration
• Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) Tips
• Virtualization Jobs Status
• Improved Updates and Software Overview Pages

For information on known issues in the release candidate, please refer to the release notes.

Updated documentation for the RC:

• Deployment Guide
• Operations Guide

Goals for the Release Candidate

We have two goals for the release candidate that we need your help with:

• Validating the new virtualization features
• Identifying quality issues that need to be fixed before shipping

You can give us feedback on the release candidate in the Essentials 2010 Forum.

If you experience issues while evaluating Essentials 2010 Beta, please go to Forums or Microsoft Connect(if you are in TAP program) and report the issue. Please send the log files for the issue at scedata@microsoft.com. Log file details and locations associated with the feature area are listed below.

SETUP

Deployment and Configuration

Software and Updates

General

We are presenting two webcasts that include information on Essentials 2010. Join the webcasts to find out more about Essentials 2010, and have a chance to ask questions. Both webcasts will feature Essentials 2010 and Data Protection Manager 2010.

Integrated Virtual and Physical IT Management for Midsize Businesses (Level 100)

Wednesday December 9th 11AM PST (7pm UTC)

As more midsize businesses start realizing the cost benefits of consolidating server workloads using virtualization technologies, Microsoft is developing two new product releases to help midsize businesses more easily manage your virtual and physical IT resources in an integrated way. In this webcast, we show you how Microsoft System Center Essentials 2010 and Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager can help you easily consolidate server workloads, increase critical server availability, and reduce the risk of critical data loss.

Managing Windows Clients in a Midsize Business (Level 200)

Monday December 14th 11AM PST (7pm UTC)

In this webcast, we look at two upcoming Microsoft system management products, System Center Essentials 2010 and System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, that are designed with small to medium-sized businesses in mind. Discover how Essentials 2010 provides monitoring and management for client computers running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 operating systems, including patching and installation of new software without carrying DVDs to every workstation. Learn how DPM 2010 can now protect client systems running Windows while users are on the network or working from home or in a hotel.

On Demand Webcast

If you didn’t get a chance to attend in person, you can now watch the following webcast on demand:

What's New with System Center Essentials 2010? (Level 300)

Attend this webcast for a first look at the beta version of System Center Essentials 2010, and discover how System Center Essentials 2010 is easy to deploy and maintain, while simplifying complex management tasks and providing expert diagnostic information for faster problem diagnosis and resolution.

More information on Webcast levels.

Edited on Jan 4, 2010 to have first two webcast links point to on demand versions.

This table indicates the current support for the indicated operating systems by System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 components.

System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 supports managing computers running either the Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems. However, the following steps are required to enable management:

1. Upgrade the System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 Server  to WSUS 3.0 SP2. For instructions on how to download WSUS 3.0 SP2 and the improvements in WSUS 3.0 SP2, please see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972455.

2.  For Windows 7, download  the Windows Client 2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7 Operating System management packs for Operations Manager 2007 and import it into System Center Essentials 2007 SP1.

3. For Windows Server 2008 R2, download the Windows Server Operating System management packs for Operations Manager 2007 and import it into System Center Essentials 2007 SP1.

Known Issues:

For known issues refer to KB article KB974722

I saw this question from a customer on a forum I read quite often:

I've been meaning to check out the System Center Essentials package for a while now, I finally found time to setup a VM get it installed recently.

After I installed it, I applied all available updates via Microsoft Update (I update the server and my laptop with the newest round of updates). I can launch the console from the VM fine. However when I try to open the console from my Windows 7 machine I get the following error:
The underlying connection was closed: an unexpected error occurred on send.

Well, that’s pretty generic, and you won’t likely come up with an answer to the problem on any search engine. If you take a look at the error details though, you might see something like this at the top:

Application: System Center Essentials
Application Version: 6.0.1885.0
Severity: Error
Message: Error connecting to Update server 'XXXXXX'
System.Net.WebException: The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send. ---> System.IO.IOException: Authentication failed because the remote party has closed the transport stream.
at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReadFrame(Byte[] buffer, Int32 readBytes, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReceiveBlob(Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
at System.Net.Security.SslState.ForceAuthentication(Boolean receiveFirst, Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
at System.Net.Security.SslState.ProcessAuthentication(LazyAsyncResult lazyResult)

So what’s going on here is that there’s an SSL certificate issue. Essentially, what happened in this case was the SCE server in a VM was in its own private domain, and the user was trying to connect to it from a machine outside that domain. WSUS needs to connect via SSL, but couldn’t find a usable certificate and failed.

Given that, there is a Technet article

How to Install a Remote System Center Essentials Console

Which describes how to create and set up certificates for use. So the user ran the Feature Configuration Wizard in on the Server’s SCE Console, followed the directions to use the newly created certificate on his Remote console, and voila!

Recently, the folks at TechNet Edge sat down with David Mills and Edwin Yuen for a brief discussion of Microsoft’s IT management and virtualization solution for midsize businesses.

With the release of public betas for System Center Essentials 2010 and Data Protection Manager 2010, customers will have the capability to easily manage, backup and restore their physical and virtual servers in an integrated way. 

After discussing the benefits of using Hyper-V, SCE 2010 and DPM 2010, Edwin gives us a quick demo of SCE 2010’s integrated virtual and physical management capabilities.

For more information and to download public betas, go to:

SCE 2010: www.microsoft.com/SCE

DPM 2010: www.microsoft.com/DPM

If you are using the Beta of System Center Essentials 2010, thank you!

We value your opinion! Your feedback helps us continue to make System Center Essentials everything you need it to be. We have two easy ways for you to provide feedback: online and in person.

Online

Please take a moment and fill in our survey.

If you are having technical issues with the Essentials 2010 Beta, or want to connect with other IT administrators using Essentials 2010 Beta you can post on the Essentials 2010 Beta Forum.

In Person at Tech Ed Europe

If you are going to be in Berlin for Tech Ed Europe, you can meet some of the Essentials team and provide feedback and ask questions directly. Stop by the Essentials booth or attend the following sessions:

Do you know what time it is? Yes, it’s THAT time…time for you to check out the next full release of System Center Essentials – SCE 2010! For those of you who were with us for the release of System Center Essentials 2007 a little over two years ago, you know that this is Microsoft’s IT management solution specifically designed for midsized businesses. From one console, SCE allows you to monitor and manage your servers, clients, hardware, software, and IT services.

Over the last two years, we’ve been getting some great feedback from customers using SCE 2007, investigating ways to improve on the existing features AND address a new trend we’ve been seeing with customers’ virtualizing server workloads. Based on all this input, the engineering team has invested a lot of work into making the following updates in this next release. We’ve - 

•  Integrated server virtualization management support, built on VMM 2008 R2 technology, including easy template-based creation of new virtual servers and live migration
• Adjusted licensing limits to allow for management of virtual servers
• Rewritten setup for an easier, intuitive installation
• Built-in automatic Microsoft Update subscription maintenance
• Provided flexible computer grouping
• Added additional software distribution target criteria

Plus a lot, lot more!So, what are you waiting for? Stop reading my blog entry and head to this URL to download the SCE 2010 trial! http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ee470677.aspx

David Mills

Sr. Product Manager

Essentials 2007 SP1 Support for WSUS 3.0 SP2

System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 supports WSUS 3.0 SP1 being upgraded to WSUS 3.0 SP2. Customers who are currently running Essentials 2007 SP1 can upgrade to WSUS 3.0 SP2. For how to download WSUS 3.0 SP2 and the improvements in WSUS 3.0 SP2, please see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972455.

FAQs:

Q) I currently have Essentials 2007 SP1 installed on Windows Server 2003. Can I upgrade WSUS 3.0 SP1 to WSUS 3.0 SP2?

A) Yes. You can upgrade to WSUS 3.0 SP2, if you have installed Essentials 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2003 (either 32-bit or 64-bit).

Q) I currently have Essentials 2007 SP1 installed on Windows Server 2008. Can I upgrade WSUS 3.0 SP1 to WSUS 3.0 SP2?

A) Yes. You can upgrade to WSUS 3.0 SP2, if you have installed Essentials 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008 (either 32-bit or 64-bit).

Q) I currently have Essentials 2007 SP1 installed on Windows Server 2003 with SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. Can I upgrade WSUS 3.0 SP1 to       WSUS 3.0 SP2?

A) Yes. Essentials 2007 SP1 supports upgrading WSUS 3.0 SP1 to WSUS 3.0 SP2 with SQL Server 2005 Express Edition or SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition. This is supported regardless of whether the database is installed on the Essentials management server or installed on a remote computer.

Q)  Can I install Essentials 2007 SP1 on a system on which WSUS 3.0 SP2 is already installed?

A) The Essentials product team is investigating this and will be updating this issue in an upcoming blog post

Essentials 2007 SP1 Support for SQL Server 2008

Q: Is Essentials 2007 SP1 supported with SQL Server 2008.

A) No, Essentials 2007 SP1 is not supported with SQL Server 2008. Essentials 2010 will support SQL Server 2008.

We’ve seen reports of people unsuccessfully attempting to install Essentials 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008 x64 and wanting to use SQL Server 2005 Express as the database.

We have published KB 975344 to provide more information on supported configurations involving Windows Server 2008 x64.

We recommend the following options for customers wanting to use Windows Server 2008:

• Run Essentials 2007 on a 32 bit version of Windows Server 2008 (this may be a virtualized OS)
• Run Essentials 2007 on a 64 bit version of Windows Server 2008 and use SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition x64

You will soon have a third option available – use System Center Essentials 2010. In early October the public Beta for Essentials 2010 will be available, and it fully supports installation on 64 bit versions of Windows Server 2008. There will be more information about Essentials 2010 available when the Beta is released.

System Center Essentials provides several ways to remotely manage computers, including:

• Computer Management MMC
• Remote Desktop
• Remote Assistance
• Tasks to show current information, such as process usage

Sometimes though what is wanted is just a remote command window without the overhead of opening a full remote desktop session.

The PsExec tool which is one of the SysInternals tools provides a way to open a remote command window without needing to install anything on the remote computer.

You can find out more about PsExec from:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx

With psExec installed you can open a remote command prompt by calling it as follows:

If you have psExec installed on your computer with the Essentials console you can create a task in Essentials to open a remote command window from within Essentials.

To create this task:

1. Go to the Authoring workspace
2. In the navigation pane on the left hand side, expand Management Pack Objects and select Tasks
3. From the Tasks pane, select Create a New Task
4. Select Command Line from the Console Tasks folder and click Next
5. In the Task Name field, type "Remote Command Window"
6. In the Description type "Use the SysInternals PsExec tool to open a remote command window for the selected computer. PsExec must be installed on the computer with the Essentials console."
7. In the Task Target, click Select and then choose Windows Computer and click OK
8. Click Next
9. In the Application field, type the full path the psexec.exe on the Essentials console (e.g. C:\pstools\psexec.exe). If you have the console on multiple computers you will need psExec installed in the same location on each of them.
10. Enter \\ then Click the arrow at the end of the Parameters field and select Net BIOS Computer Name, then add a space and enter cmd
11. Uncheck the Display output when this task is run box
12. Click Create

In the Computers workspace, with a computer selected there is now a "Remote Command Window" task that is available. Selecting this task will open a remote command window for the selected computer.