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.

We're getting close to releasing the public beta of System Center Essentials 2010!  

Why should you be interested?  We've listened to your feedback and requests!

• Added server virtualization management support
• Rewritten setup for an easier, intuitive installation
• Built automatic Microsoft Update subscription maintenance
• Provided flexible computer grouping
• Added additional software distribution target criteria
• Plus a lot, lot more!

Sign up here to be notified when the beta is released!

At the Microsoft Management Summit and TechEd this year we announced  System Center Essentials 2010, the next version of Essentials. We also started to talk about the new features, in particular how we’ve placed virtualization capabilities in Essentials, providing a single location for monitoring and managing virtual computers.

You don’t need to wait for Essentials 2010 though to get started with virtualization management in Essentials.

Essentials 2007 supports virtualization in the following ways:

• Essentials server can run on a virtualized operating system, i.e. you don’t need a physical server for Essentials.
• Managed computers can be virtual. The Essentials agent will monitor and manage your virtual computers the same as your physical computers.

If you have System Center Virtual Machine Manager (including Workgroup Edition) you can go one step further and not only monitor virtual computers, but also create and control (start/stop etc) virtual computers.

Instructions for configuring Essentials and VMM are now available on TechNet to help you get started.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd759392.aspx 

If you’ve previously followed Pete Zerger’s instructions for configuring Essentials and VMM you’ll be pleased to know that there are updated MPs available that include reports for Virtualization.

With Essentials 2007 and VMM you will use 2 consoles, but when Essentials 2010 is released you will have a single console for monitoring and managing both your virtual and physical computers.

David Mills and I hooked up with the TechNet Edge folks at TechEd 2009 and shot another video on System Center Essentials 2010.

http://edge.technet.com/Media/System-Center-Essentials-with-David-Mills-and-Dustin-Jones/

Check out this video that we shot at TechEd 2009 for details on the next release of System Center Essentials.

http://www.msteched.com/online/view.aspx?tid=bf478844-4f77-4f92-9119-67eae225ecb5

Have you wondered why some of the performance views and dashboards in the Monitoring Space don’t have any data to display, yet others do?

You can see an example of this by going to the Monitoring Space, expanding the Microsoft Windows Server folder and then expanding the Performance sub Folder.  

The "Disk Capacity", "Memory Utilization (Page File)" and "Processor Performance" dashboards all let you select performance counters for your servers and view pretty graphs. 

The "Disk Performance", "Disk Utilization", "Memory Utilization (Physical)" and "Network Adapter Utilization" don’t show a list of performance counters to select. Why is this, and how do we get a list of performance counters to display?

The performance counters available for display are controlled by rules in management packs. Not all of the rules responsible for data collection are enabled by default and this is why we don’t see a list of counters to select from in the views listed above.

To get a list of counters for these views we need to enable data collection by setting overrides on performance collection rules, and this is done in the Authoring Space.

Note: Enabling performance collection rules will increase the size of the Essentials database. If you are using SQL Server Express, collecting additional performance data may reduce the number of days of historical data available for reporting.

Let’s work through an example and enable data collection to populate the Windows Server Performance graphs we listed above.

For the Disk Performance dashboard view we will need to override the following rules:

• Collection Rule for the Average Disk Queue Length
• Collection Rule for Current Disk Queue Length
• Collection Rule for Average Disk Seconds Per Read
• Collection Rule for Average Disk Seconds Per Write

For the Disk Utilization dashboard view we will need to override the following rules:

• Collection Rule for Disk Bytes Per Second
• Collection Rule for Disk Reads Per Second
• Collection Rule for Disk Writes Per Second

For the Memory Utilization (Physical) dashboard view we will need to override the following rules:

• Memory Pool Paged Bytes
• Memory Pool Non-paged Bytes

For the Network Adapter Utilization dashboard view we will need to override the following rules:

• Network Adapter Bytes Received per Second
• Network Adapter Bytes Sent per Second

To override a rule to enable performance data collection:

1. Go to the Authoring Space
2. Expand Management Pack Objects
3. Select Rules
4. Click Change Scope
5. Click Clear All
6. Type Windows Server in the “Look for” box
7. Place a check mark next to all targets starting “Windows Server”
8. Click OK
9. Find the rule to Override
   You can either scroll through, or use the “Look for” functionality to filter the list.
   In this case, use one of the following words for each category: logical, memory, network
   You can only use one of the filter words at a time
10. Select the rule, then from the Actions Menu, select Overrides -> Override the Rule -> For all objects of type: Windows Server 2003 Logical Disk
    For the Memory and Network rules the type will be slightly different
11. Check the box in the Override Column next to Enabled.
12. Click Apply
13. The Effective Value for the Enabled Parameter will change from False to True
14. Click OK

You will have noticed at Step 9 that for each rule there is a copy of the in the rule in the Windows Server 2000 Operating System and Windows Server 2003 Operating System Management Packs. If you want to enable collection for both Operating Systems you will need to override both copies of the rule.

As a general guide, the title of the graph in the dashboard view identifies the performance counter being collected. The rule to collect this counter will also have the counter name in it. You can use this information to find the rules that you need to enable for a particular graph.

As Dustin mentioned in the previous post, we recently released an update to the Microsoft.SystemCenter.Essentials.2007.mp. We have also released KB956890 which provides additional details.

This update resolves an issue where the Remote Assistance task fails to execute if the System Center Essentials console is running on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008. Without the fix, attempting to run Remote Assistance results in the following error message:

Application: C:\Windows\pchealth\helpsctr\binaries\helpctr.exe

Parameters: -FromStartHelp –url hcp://CN=Microsoft%20Corporation,L=Redmond,S=Washington,C=US/Remote%20Assistance/Escalation/Unsolicited/SCEUnsolicitedRCUI.htm -ExtraArgument NOVICECOMPUTER=<ComputerName>&NOVICEUSERID=

Error Message: The system cannot find the file specified

In Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, Remote Assistance is started from the Help and Support Center (helpctr.exe), while in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, Remote Assistance is started via msra.exe.

This update modifies the Remote Assistance task to call the correct command line based on the operating system that the Essentials console is running on.

You are recommended to install this update if you use the Essentials console on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 and want to use the Remote Assistance task.

When using Windows Server 2008, please ensure you have the Remote Assistance feature installed. The Remote Assistance feature is not installed by default, but you can use the Add Feature Wizard within Server Manager to enable it.

More information is available in KB956890.

This update is available from the Microsoft Download Center via the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8F74CC26-5E0E-42F1-96CC-7AE064099190&displaylang=en