I am very happy to announce that we have just released Service Manager 2010 Beta 2!

You can download Beta 2 along with the first Beta of the Service Manager Authoring tool from the Connect website at http://connect.microsoft.com

I’ll start doing a series of posts around this release over the next few weeks and so will my teammates on the Service Manager blog.

Service Manager 2010 Beta 2 is coming very soon!

In advance of the Beta 2 release, folks from the team are starting to post demo videos on TechNet Edge.

There is one on Managing Applications with Service Maps, and a few are starting to come out about the Self-service User Portal.

More will follow soon…

I have exciting news to share!

We have a Service Manager Test Drive preview of Beta 2 available to try out now.  It’s on hosted VMs, so all you need to do is log in with your Windows Live ID and start playing with it.

The VMs have all of the same sample data we used in our demonstrations at the Microsoft Management Summit.  You will be able to evaluate the core Incident, Change, and Configuration Management features, as well as integration with Active Directory, System Center Configuration Manager and System Center Operations Manager.  There is also some sample data for a few reports available in the Test Drive.

Please check it out and let us know what you think – you can post feedback and questions in the Service Manager TechNet forum.

I’m headed down to the 2009 Microsoft Management Summit next week in Las Vegas, representing System Center Service Manager.

We are having a breakout session on Service Manager integration with other systems, including many demos of how SvcMgr integrates with Active Directory, Exchange, and System Center Configuration Manager, System Center Operations Manager.

SO22: Using Service Manager to Achieve Process Integration Across System Center

Thursday 2:30 PM - 3:45 PM, Veronese 2405 

Speaker(s): Charlie Chase, Marc Umeno

Track(s): Operations Management

Session Type: Breakout Session

Products(s): Operations Manager 2007, Service Manager

A technical drill-down on the integration features of Service Manager: This session will explain how Service Manager consolidates configuration item information between Operations Manager, Configuration Manager and Active Directory. It will demonstrate the integration of incident and change management with Operations Manager through auto-ticketing of alerts and the integration with Configuration Manager with auto-ticketing via Desired Configuration Management (DCM).

Check out the next post by Travis on the Service Manager team blog on the Data Access Service (formerly SDK service):

http://blogs.technet.com/servicemanager/archive/2009/02/27/the-system-center-platform-in-service-manager-part-3-the-data-access-service.aspx

There is a great post by Travis Wright on the Service Manager model-based database on the SM team blog:

http://blogs.technet.com/servicemanager/archive/2009/01/27/the-system-center-platform-in-service-manager-part-2-the-model-based-database.aspx

System Center Configuration Manager 2007(SCCM) has introduced a valuable feature, Desired Configuration Management (DCM), that enables assessment of client configuration compliance with specified configuration baselines.  With Service Manager Beta 1, we have introduced integration with DCM where incidents are created for out-of-compliance clients.

We do this by collecting DCM non-compliance data using the SCCM connector and then continuously running a Service Manager workflow that creates incidents for non-compliant SCCM clients.  You decide which specific DCM Baselines and DCM CIs generate incidents.

To initiate DCM incidents, you must create an connector to an SCCM site that is using the DCM feature.  Next, select the Incident Settings view and start configuring the Desired Configuration Management settings using the Configure Workflow task.

This launches a dialog where all DCM workflows are managed:

The Add button launches the Add Desired Configuration Management Workflow wizard.

You can select DCM baselines and DCM CIs to include in the workflow – for each client that has a non-compliant report, an incident will be created.  You can apply a pre-configured template and notification rules for the workflow as well.  Once you have configured your first DCM workflow, incidents will be created for any current non-compliant clients.  After the first DCM workflows are run, incidents will only be created for new non-compliant issues.

Note:  You should be careful about which DCM Baselines and CIs you choose to create incidents – for example, if you choose DCM CIs that describe software update non-compliance, you could potentially generate an incident for each unpatched computer in your SCCM site, which could result in thousands of excess incidents.

Newly-created DCM incidents can be viewed in the Work Items –> Incident Management –> All Open DCM Incidents view.

DCM incident forms have a special Compliance Errors tab that adds additional details about the affected SCCM computer, including computer owner, computer name, DCM baseline, DCM scan date, and details from the DCM report about why the computer was non-compliant.

Once DCM incidents are created, they can managed like any other incidents in Service Manager.

If you would like to get a count of Configuration Items for Service Manager Beta 1, there is a quick way to do this. 

The steps are below in the picture.  Go to the Configuration Items workspace, click on a node and open any CI form.  Go to the related Items tab and then click on any “Add” button.  This will bring the Select Objects Dialog.

Just pick a class you are interested in and then you will get the count of objects in that class.

This is off-topic from my usual System Center posts, but I still wanted to leave a pointer to the Windows Team Blog post on downloading and installing Windows 7 Beta:

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/01/07/information-on-downloading-and-installing-windows-7-beta.aspx

Quick points on users for Service Manager Beta 1:

1.  You can automatically populate users in Service Manager by creating an Active Directory connector.

2.  It may not be obvious, but you can view users in the Administration workspace under the Security node:

3.  You can also create a new user by selecting the “create user” task after selecting the Users node in the Administration workspace:

Early feedback on Service Manager Beta 1 has highlighted that many folks would like more information around administration of connectors, especially on how to track the progress of a connector.

TASKS

First, I would like to point out some of the tasks available for Service Manager Beta 1 for a connector:

The Sync Now task initiates an on-demand data sync for a connector.  However, contrary to what you might think, this sync will not be completed immediately as there are often many underlying processes that are involved with a connector sync.  I will touch more on the details around connector syncs later on in this post.

The Delete Connector task will do a couple of things, one of which may be surprising.  First the connector is deleted and removed from the Service Manager database.  What may be a surprise to you is that deletion of a connector will also delete any Configuration Items (CIs) it created, unless those CIs were also updated by another data source.  This capability can be very convenient if you need to remove a lot of data from the Service Manager CMDB.

The Disable task will prevent future connector syncs from happening for a particular connector.  In-progress syncs will complete even after this task is used.

The Enable task will re-enable a disabled connector and in Beta 1 at least, this will also initiate an immediate connector sync.

The Edit Connector task will pop-up a property dialog for the connector.

TRACKING SYNCS

As I mentioned above, each data sync for a connector is actually comprised of a number of smaller processes that actually run asynchronously. 

Each sync for the AD and SCCM connectors comes in 2 asynchronous steps – the first step extracts data from the source and puts it into a staging data cache; the second step takes data from the staging data cache and writes into the Service Manager CMDB.

You can follow the progress of these data syncs in Service Manager Beta 1 by looking at the Event Viewer under Administrative Tools:

If you click on the “Filter Current Log” action and pick the “Lfx Datacenter” “Lfx Service” and “Lfx Source Config” Event services, you will narrow down the events to those related to connectors.

If you are only interested in tracking the progress of a connector, you can filter to just the “Lfx Service” events. 

For an SCCM Connector, you will see a sequence that looks something like this – once all of these events are done, the sync is completed.

During the running of a sync, even if the connector has not completed all of the processes, Configuration Items might be created or updated & can be visible in the Service Manager console.  For example, you might see a number of computer CIs created during an SCCM sync.  However, if you were to look at the Software or Software Updates installed on that computer, you might find they are still missing if the sync has not completed.

In Service Manager Beta 1, you can create a Connector to a System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 database.

The SCCM Connector brings Configuration Item data about computers managed by SCCM, including Hardware & Software Inventory, Software Updates, and Desired Configuration Management (DCM) data.

To create an SCCM Connector, you need to be a Service Manager administrator.  Connectors are found in the Administration workspace.

Start by clicking on the “Create Connector” task and choose the Configuration Manager Connector option.

That launches the SCCM Connector wizard:

After supplying a Name and Description, you are given an option to provide an SCCM database server and database instance as well an account to access the database. 

(Note: You cannot edit the database server name or database name for an existing SCCM connector – you have to create a new SCCM connector in this case)

TIP: The account must have rights for smsroledb_extract and databasereaders in SQL.

TIP: You should always check the validity of the credentials by pressing the “Test Connection” button.

Next you have provide the schedule for running the SCCM connector, which can run once a day or once a week.

You are then shown a summary screen and a completion screen when the connector is created.

I am going to write a series of posts about using Service Manager Beta 1, adding some tips that we have learned during our time leading up to the release.

For this post, I will start with a walkthrough of the Setup for the basic Service Manager server, without going through the optional Data Warehouse (DW) installation.

To run setup, the logged-in account must be an admin on the local machine running the install.

You start at the Service Manager Setup splash screen:

If you are going to do the DW install, you need to start with that first.  You are also able to install only the SM console on a client machine.  In this case, I will skip the options and go straight into the basic SM management server installation.

After a couple of screens of EULA and install directory, you get to the prerequisites screen:

You can look at the prereq check log for details by clicking on the “View log for more details” link:

(BTW, If your machine has 4 GB or less of RAM, you will get a warning).

On the next screen you specify the SM database details:

You then get an optional DW screen (which I am skipping), and then you can specify the Management Group name and Service Manager Administrators Management group/account. 

TIP: You must be sure to have the Service Manager Service account be a member of the Service Manager Administrators Management group (or the same account if using an individual account).

The next screen asks for the Service Manager Service account.

TIP: The SM Service account must be an administrator on the Service Manager Management server machine and must be a sysadmin on the SQL database.

Pressing the “Next” button takes you to a summary screen:

After hitting Install, you will get to a installation progress screen, which should run for only a few minutes:

And finally, success!

If some reason, there is a problem with the installation, you can find the setup logs here:

%homedrive%%homepath%\appdata\local\scsm\setup\*.log

(there should be 2 files there SCSMInstall.log and SCSMSetupwizard.log)

System Center Service Manager Beta 1 has shipped!

You can download the Beta from Connect:

https://connect.microsoft.com/SelfNomination.aspx?ProgramID=2733&pageType=1&SiteID=446

It’s been a while since I posted as we have been feverishly working on the Beta 1 for System Center Service Manager.  Now that we are getting close to shipping Beta 1, I will start blogging again.

Beta 1 has a number of great features, including Incident Management (including automatic creation of incidents from SCCM Desired Configuration Management compliance errors), Change Management, Configuration Management/CMDB, and Connectors to Active Directory & System Center Configuration Manager.

We are very excited about sharing what we have been putting together – it’s coming soon!