SCOM 2012 RC is now available

As of last week, you can now download and evaluate the RC of SCOM 2012. The new features are (cut from download site):

• Setup
  Operations Manager 2012 has a new Setup wizard. For important instructions about how to install Operations Manager 2012, see Install Operations Manager 2012 Beta.
• Highly Available Management Group Out of the Box
  In Operations Manager 2012, all management servers are peers; there is no root management server. The workload is split among all management servers in a management group, which provides high availability without requiring a cluster.
• Resource pools
  A resource pool provides the ability to distribute workloads across multiple management servers, such as availability, network device monitoring, distributed monitor health rollup, and group calculation.
• Agent Configuration
  Operations Manager 2012 provides an easy method for configuring agents to report to multiple management servers by adding an Operations Manager Agent application to Control Panel on each agent-managed computer.
• Operations Console
  You will notice some subtle changes to the Operations console. The Actions pane is now the Tasks pane, and includes a new section called Navigation Tasks that makes it easy for you to open views for a selected object. The Tasks pane offers two tabs: one for actions and one for resources and Help links. The Navigation and Tasks panes can be hidden or revealed instantly by clicking the arrow in the title bar of the pane.
• Web console
  Operations Manager 2012 introduces a new Web console. In Operations Manager 2012, all Operations Manager views are available in the Web console.
• Network monitoring
  Operations Manager 2012 provides the ability to discover and monitor network routers and switches, including the network interfaces and ports on those devices and the virtual LAN (VLAN) that they participate in. You can also delete discovered network devices and prevent the deleted network devices from being rediscovered the next time discovery runs. For more information, see Monitor Network Devices.
• Application monitoring
  In Operations Manager 2012, you can monitor ASP.NET applications in server- and client-side environments to get details about application availability and performance. Configure monitoring settings, such as polling frequency and transaction threshold. Then use results, including how frequently a problem is occurring, how a server was performing when a problem occurred, and the distributed chain for a transaction in question to pinpoint problems and solutions. For more information, see Monitor a .NET Application.
• Dashboard views
  As part of the network monitoring and application monitoring capabilities, Operations Manager 2012 includes new comprehensive dashboard views that combine multiple panels of information into a single view. In Operations Manager 2012, you can add the new dashboard views to My Workspace.
• Display dashboard views using SharePoint
  The Operations Manager web part displays specified dashboard views and can be added to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 sites. For more information, see Add a Dashboard View to a SharePoint Site.
• Creating dashboard views
  Dashboard views have been significantly upgraded in Operations Manager 2012 from their capabilities in Operations Manager 2007 R2, including custom layouts and nested dashboard views. For more information, see Create a Dashboard View.
• Operations Manager Module for Windows PowerShell
  Operations Manager 2012 provides a Windows PowerShell 2.0 module containing a full set of new cmdlets. The cmdlets in this module are only compatible with Operations Manager 2012. You can recognize the Operations Manager 2012 cmdlets by the "SC" preceding the noun. For additional information about the Operations Manager 2012 cmdlets, open the Operations Manager command shell and type Get-Help about_OpsMgr_WhatsNew. For information about how the Operations Manager 2007 cmdlets map to the Operations Manager 2012 cmdlets, type Get-Help about_OpsMgr_Cmdlet_Names.To use the Operations Manager 2012 cmdlets, you must establish a connection to an Operations Manager management group. You can establish either a persistent connection in which you can run multiple cmdlets, or a temporary connection when running a single cmdlet. For more information about connections, open the Operations Manager Shell and type Get-Help about_OpsMgr_Connections.
• UNIX- and Linux-based computers
  In Operations Manager 2012, the Discovery Wizard is easier to use for discovering UNIX- and Linux-based computers. You can now use Windows PowerShell to manage UNIX- and Linux-based computers, for more information, see the UNIX and Linux section in the release notes. High availability is also supported.
• UNIX/Linux Shell Command Template Management Pack
  This Management Pack implements authoring templates that allow the creation of rules, tasks, and monitors based on execution of shell commands on UNIX/Linux agents.
• JEE Management Packs
  These management packs monitor JEE (Java Enterprise Edition) application servers. Management packs are available for IBM WebSphere, Oracle WebLogic, Red Hat JBoss and Apache Tomcat.

Please note:

“Upgrades from RC to RTM in *any* scenario will not be supported by Microsoft support unless the customer is part of the TAP program for the specific product that they are trying to upgrade.  Only TAP customers are licensed to run pre-RTM software in production.”

Download SCOM 2012 RC from Microsoft

MDT 2012 beta 2 is now available

MDT 2012 Beta 2 offers new User-Driven Installation components and extensibility for Configuration Manager 2007 and Configuration Manager 2012 as well as integration with the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolkit (DaRT) for Lite Touch Installation remote control and diagnostics.

Key benefits include:

• Full use of the capabilities provided by System Center Configuration Manager 2012 for OS deployment.
• Improved Lite Touch user experience and functionality.
• A smooth and simple upgrade process for all existing MDT users.

New features For System Center Configuration Manager customers:

• Support for Configuration Manager 2012 (while still supporting Configuration Manager 2007)
• New User-Driven Installation components for Configuration Manager 2007 and Configuration Manager 2012
  • Extensible wizard and designer, additional integration with Configuration Manager to deliver a more customized OS experience, support for more imaging scenarios, and an enhanced end-user deployment experience
• Ability to migrate MDT 2012 task sequences from Configuration Manager 2007 to Configuration Manager 2012

New features For Lite Touch Installation:

• Integration with the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolkit (DaRT) for remote control and diagnostics
• New monitoring capabilities to see the progress of currently running deployments
• Support for deploying Windows to computers using UEFI
• Ability to deploy Windows 7 so that the computer will start from a new VHD file, “Deploy to VHD”
• Improved deployment wizard user experience

MDT 2012 Beta 2 will be available for beta download through to January 2012.  

Download MDT 2012 beta 2 from Microsoft Connect

Slides från Best Of MMS Sverige

Tack till er alla som kom och lyssnade på min Windows Intune dragning på Best of MMS Sverige –

Windows Intyne v2 – Framtidens System Management Verktyg. För er som önskar titta igenom presentationen så kan ni nu ladda hem den.

Ladda hem presentationen

Windows Intune v2 released

As promised, yesterday Microsoft released version 2 of Windows Intune. Compared to standard software that require you to plan your upgrade etc. you will not have to do anything to get your Intune infrastructure upgraded. In the upcoming weeks, Intune customers will reciew an mail informing them that their account will be upgraded.

Intune v2 has the following new features:

• Software distribution
• Third Party License Management
• Enhanced Hardware Reporting
• Improved Policy Conflict Handling
• Remote Tasks
• User Interface enhancements
• Read-only Access:

For more information, visit the Intune team blog at – http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsintune/archive/2011/10/17/the-next-release-of-windows-intune-is-now-available.aspx

Want to test Intune v2 now – Sign up for a free 30 trial today

Updated management packs from Dell

Four of the Dell MP’s has been updated in the last weeks. Please download and read the guides to get started.

EqualLogic

What’s new:

• Support for PS5000, PS5500, PS4000, PS4100, PS6000, PS6010, PS6100, PS6500 and PS6510 Arrays
• Support for EqualLogic firmware upto 5.1
• Support for Storage Pool Monitoring
• Ability to turn on/off detailed monitoring for scalability

Download Dell EqualLogic Storage Management Pack Suite for SCOM, v.4.1, A00

Print

What’s new

• Support for latest Dell Printers

Dell Printer Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager, v.4.1, A00

Client

What’s new:

• Supports OpenManage Client Instrumentation (OMCI) 7.8, OMCI 8.0 and OMCI 8.0.1.
• Provides launch of remote desktop console for Dell Clients.
• Provides support to display Manufacture Ship date and Battery Part numbers of
  the Dell Client.

Download Dell Client Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, v.4.1, A00

MD Storage

What’s new

• Scalability and performance improvements over the previous releases.
  Support for the following MD Storage devices: MD3200, MD3200i, MD3220, MD3220i, MD3600i,MD3620i, MD3600f, and MD3620f.
• Revised and updated knowledge articles for recovery failures.
• Launching the Dell Discovery Utility from the SCOM console.
• Option for Scalable or Detailed Monitoring.

Dell MD Storage Array Management Pack Suite for System Center Operations Manager, v.4.1, A00

and if you want the 4.1 version for servers you can download the

Dell Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, v.4.1, A00

Installation and configuration of Zune in an enterprise

If your company is starting to adopt Windows Phone 7, one thing you will need is the Microsoft Zune application (if you use Windows, for MAC you need the Windows Phone Connector for MAC but that’s out of scope for this blog post). The reason you need it is because this is the only tool today that can update your phone with updates (for example the new Mango release). So, how hard can it be?

The problem is that the Zune software was developed for the consumer business to be used for the Zune music player (compare with ITunes from Apple and their Ipod) and it has not been updates to fit the enterprise (in my opinion).

Problems I have seen are:

· Installation/uninstallation

• Since enterprises use software distribution tools to deploy and update applications – the software needs to support silent install. The documentation of supported parameters for Zune is very bad
  • The ZunePackage.exe doesn’t support /? so no information about parameters in the binary itself
  • You can extract the ZunePackage.exe and here you can see that the Zune software is MSI based but if you try to install it from the MSI you get an error
  • I haven’t found any silent parameter for uninstalling Zune and all language pack it install
• If you use a software distribution tool that install applications as “system” (almost all tools do this) and your users aren’t local administrators on their machines – a dialog box will pop-up and ask for administrative credentials the first time a user connect their phone(I have seen this on other application and drivers and I think this is a bug). If user don’t add admin credentials everything will work but user will be prompted every time you connect your phone to the computer)

· Configuration

• No Adm/admx files so Zune options can be configured with Group Policy
• No documentation on where the updates/backups is stored (or other files that might be needed). This is very important information when you reinstall client machines
• When you first start Zune software it ask the user where it want to store music, photos etc. In an enterprise, this is something you want to control. One example is if you use folder redirect, you might want to configure the Zune folders to not store photos and Music under My music and My photos since this will take up storage on your servers (this is true if you think your users saves personal music and pictures etc.)

Workaround for getting Zune installed and configured in an enterprise

Installation

Install parameters

Below you see the installation command that works.

Uninstall parameters

Below you see the uninstallation command that works .

Configuration

After installing Zune, some initial configuration is required. Some of these questions are not something the user should have to answer and can also effect the server infrastructure negative in some situations (for example if you use folder redirect and the user select to save all personal music and pictures to My music and my pictures). Below are some registry tweaks I have found to do some initial configuration of the Zune application.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Zune\FUE]

"AcceptedPrivacyStatemen"=dword:00000001

"SettingsVersion"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,40

"ShowFUE"=dword:00000000

"ShowFirstLaunchVideo"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Zune\Groveler]

"PhotoMediaFolder"="C:\\temp"

"PodcastMediaFolder"="C:\\temp"

"VideoMediaFolder"="C:\\temp"

"RipDirectory"="C:\\temp"

"LibrarySync"=dword:ffffffff

To get the above registry settings configured on the client I recommend using Group Policy Preferences (see below screenshot). With GPP you can set the registry values per user and you can also filter to a group by using the item-level target function (see the blow pictures).

Known issues

As described in the “Problem I have seen” above – If you have a software distribution tool that install applications as “systems” you will get a dialog box asking for admin credentials. I haven’t found any workaround for this except having an admin logging on once. If you use SCCM you can configure the program with the “Allow users to interact with this program”.

Note that you cannot have this selected if you want to install the software during OSD nor if you want to have it as a mandatory assignment.

My recommendation to Microsoft

• In short term
  • Create a document that describe how Zune can be configured in an Enterprise
  • Document all install/uninstall parameters
  • Fix the bug so software deployment tools can deploy Zune to machines where users isn’t local admins
• Long term
  • Create an application that only handles updates/backups since enterprises don’t want multiple applications for media etc.
  • Update the Windows Phone 7 to support of OTA (for both OS+Updates)

If you have any experience/feedback, please post in as a comment.

Links

Windows Phone Connector for MAC – http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/apps/mac-connector.aspx

Zune 4.8 for PC – http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27163

Step-by-step instructions on how to deploy Zune with SCCM 2007 – http://blogs.technet.com/b/configurationmgr/archive/2011/08/18/how-to-deploy-the-zune-desktop-client-using-microsoft-system-center-configuration-manager-2007.aspx

Best of MMS Sverige

Den 25-26 oktober 2011 går Best Of MMS Sverige 2011 av stapeln. Har ni lust att lära er lite om nästa version av Windows Intune, kom då och kolla på min session kl 10:15 dag 2.

Windows Intyne v2 – Framtidens System Management Verktyg

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Windows Deployment Service (WDS) in “Windows 8” server

As you probably haven’t missed, Microsoft has released a lot of information about there next client&server OS this week. One cool thing was that they also released both the OS beta bits to the public and this weekend I tested to install a couple of clients and some servers with different roles. In this post I will show a couple of new things I found in the Windows Deployment role (WDS).

Install WDS in Standalone mode

In W2008 R2 you could install WDS as a standalone but you had to do a lot of manual steps. The good news is that Johan Arwidmark has documented all the steps. But in Windows 8 server, you can select this in the configuration wizard and it will do all the configuration for you.

Better filters for driver groups

In W2008 Microsoft added the function to import drivers and group them in drivers groups. The problem was that the list of filters that could be used very poor. One that you can’t live without is for example “model”. The good news is that Microsoft extended the filters and models is now included (and we also got Image ID and Device Group as filter options). Unfortunately we still miss some “”operators”, not all the vendors have a easy and clean model description.

Deploy OS on ARM

As you know, Windows will be able to run on ARM based processors in Windows 8. It looks like we might be able to deploy them in WDS.

Två spännande seminarier du inte vill missa

I höst erbjuder Microsoft TechNet i samarbete med Knowledge Factory två intressanta seminariedagar för dig som vill utvecklas – såväl personligt som professionellt. Missa inte dem!

Gurun Richard Klees till Sverige

Lär dig att övertyga din chef, dina kunder eller andra i din omgivning! Kom och lyssna till en helt magisk presentation med Richard Klees, som har tränat några av de bästa föreläsarna i världen. Detta seminarium är ett måste för dig som skall föreläsa på stora konferenser så som t ex Best of MMS, eller TechDays – men även för dig som vill utvecklas personligt och förbättra dina möjligheter på arbetsmarknaden.
› Stockholm (29 september)

Mer information och anmälan »

Deployment Roadshow vNext

Vill du lära dig mer om nyheterna i ConfigMgr 2012 och MDT 2012? Anmäl dig till Deployment Roadshow vNext! Då får du en teknisk heldag om Systems Management och Windows Deployment med Wally Mead, som är en legend inom Systems Management. Missa inte chansen att träffa honom och tre tunga MVP:er – Mikael Nyström, Andreas Stenhall och Johan Arwidmark. Johan blev dessutom topprankad bland de 523 talarna vid senaste TechEd i Atlanta.
› Göteborg (29 november)
› Sundsvall (30 november)
› Stockholm (1 december)
› Malmö (2 december)

Mer information och anmälan »

Device Drivers for Microsoft Windows OS deployment

As you all know, Dell has been proving easy to use driver pack that can be used in SCCM and MDT for a couple of years. What you might not know is that HP started to do the same and they call it “Integrated Device Drivers for Microsoft Windows 7”. As far as I can see, they only do this for some of there models and only for Windows 7.

To find you Dell Driver Pack for Latitude, Optiplex or Precision you have a summary page on Dell Tech Center that links to all of them or you can access the CABs from http://support.dell.com — Select Drivers & Downloads, and enter the system model. You will find the supported driver .cab file in the "Systems Management" section under "Driver Pack"

Please note that Dell only support the System cabs. The Combo CABs are designed for deployment to multiple models and are developed and supported by the Dell TechCenter community

For HP you will find the driver under “Software – System Management”. An example is for the HP Compaq 6005 Pro business PC