Infrastructure & Management User Group–31/1/2012

Hi guys,

Thank you all for attending the meeting last week, it was great seeing a lot of familiar faces.

Attached below are the two presentations from the event, first one the overview I gave on System Center 2012 (and we will delve more deeply into each product in the next UG meetings) second presentation is the one Daniel Petri gave about migrating from AD 2003 to AD 2008 R2.

Next meeting is scheduled for March 18th and will be on two of the most requested topics from our poll:

1. Hyper-V Tips and Tricks
2. How to achieve the most out of your TS environment

Registration for the next meeting is at http://infra.eventbrite.com

And as usual, the place to get updates and discuss is at our LinkedIn group - http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=2389097

Take care,

                   Amit

And lastly, some pictures from the event (you can tag yourself if you want here ):

System Center 2012 Technical Overviews

Check out the following presentations from a recent open house we held:

Windows Server “8” Hyper-V Features

Check out this summary on Hyper-V 3.0 features.

I don’t know about you, but if those features will actually get into the product as planned (fingers crossed ) I think the Hyper-V and Windows “8” dev teams can really be proud on a job well done.

• Updated virtual switch, providing multi-tenancy capabilities providing network isolation and network virtualization. Comparable to the VXLAN functionality introduced by VMware/Cisco and others. The virtual switch is also extensible providing capture, filter and forwarding extensions, using an API provided by Microsoft. Support for multiple concurrent Live Migrations
• Support for Storage Live Migration,without a requirement for a shared storage backend.
• New virtual disk format, called VHDX breaking the 2TB limit for the currently used VHD format, with a maximum of 16 TB. VHDX also provides better performance, support for large block sizes and is more resilient to corruption.
• Introduction of Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX), which enables Hyper-V to offload storage features to the backend storage subsystem, comparable with the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) functionality provided by VMware.
• Virtual Fibre Channel Support, where each VM can have up to 4 virtual Fibre Channel host adapters, and direct access to SAN LUNs using Multi-Path I/O (MPIO)
• VM boot support from fiber channel and iSCSI SANs
• SR-IOW for privileged access to PCI devices
• CPU metering
• Resource pools
• Support for Data de-duplication, providing compression of data stored on a Volume, with no significant performance implications. This also will reduce backup windows dramatically.
• Offloaded Data Transfer, providing direct data transfer between servers.
• Support for NIC Teaming, load balancing and failover in the OS, which until now was only supported by 3rd party vendors like Broadcom and Intel
• Build in support for JBODs, and Thin Provision on JBODs.
• Support for Bitlocker on Clustered disks.
• Cluster Shared Volume 2.0 with support for built-in replication and hardware snapshotting.
• IP address management UI (IPAM)
• Support for SMB storage using Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) networks.
• Hyper-V replica providing asynchronous/consistent replication functionality
• Remote Desktop Session Host now fully supports RemoteFX and is enabled out of the box
• Template feature for Virtual Desktops from a gold master image on disk and instantiated in memory as a single VM. Individual sessions can be customized using roaming profiles, customized desktops and apps and personal storage using system policy.
• Windows Server 8 provides the ability to turn on and off the GUI, basically providing Server Core, with a GUI on demand when needed.
• Active Directory will be virtualization aware, providing snapshot support for VMs running Domain Controllers, and support for DC cloning.
• Support for up to 160 logical processors on Hyper-V hosts
• Support for up to 2TB RAM
• Support for 32 vCPUs with up to 512 GB RAM per VM
• Support for NUMA in the guest, so that the VM has processor and memory affinity with the host

Two Events for September

Hi,

We are sponsoring two events this September.

First one is on the 18th, I will be lecturing @ Microsoft Infra Days 2011 on a seminar called “The Future of Microsoft Infrastructure Platform – The Complete Roadmap”, below is the invitation (follow the link for more details):

The other event we sponsor is Microsoft main event for Middle-Market clients, an event titled “Be what’s next” that will be held on the 19th.

I will be presenting the session on “Building & Managing Services with Microsoft Private Cloud”:

Hope to see you on both events!!

Take care.

Our new blog is a link away - Two Events for September

SCOM 2007 R2 Cumulative Update 5 has been released

Cumulative Update 5 for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 resolves the following issues:

· Restart of non-Operations Manager services when the agent is updated.

· Updated ACS reports.

· TCP Port Probe incorrectly reports negative ping latency.

· MissingEvent Manual Reset Monitor does not work as expected.

· Drill-through fails due to rsParameterTypeMismatch in the EnterpriseManagementChartControl.

· ACS - Event log message is truncated or corrupted in SCDW.

· UI hang caused by SDK locking.

· ACS Filter fails for certain wildcard queries.

· Edit Schedule button is disabled with SQL Server 2008 R2.

· Web console is timing out while opening the left navigation tree.

· Scheduled Reports view for Windows Server 2003 and SQL SRS 2005 SP3 CU9 - returns System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.

· Signed MPs cannot be imported when new attributes are added to existing classes.

Cross Platform Cumulative Update 5 for Operations Manager 2007 R2 resolves the following issues:

· Performance data for LVM managed partitions is not available

· Process monitor does not retain name if run via symbolic link

· AIX with large number of processes crashes with bad alloc

Cross Platform Cumulative Update 5 for Operations Manager 2007 R2 adds the following features:

· Support for Red Hat 6

For additional information about this release, please see the CU5 KB article on TechNet.

SCVMM 2012 Beta Announced–some major improvements are expected

With this release you will be able to do:

• Fabric Management
  • Hyper-V and Cluster Lifecycle Management – Deploy Hyper-V to bare metal server, create Hyper-V clusters, orchestrate patching of a Hyper-V Cluster
  • Third Party Virtualization Platforms - Add and Manage Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX Hosts and Clusters
  • Network Management – Manage IP Address Pools, MAC Address Pools and Load Balancers
  • Storage Management – Classify storage, Manage Storage Pools and LUNs
• Resource Optimization
  • Dynamic Optimization – proactively balance the load of VMs across a cluster
  • Power Optimization – schedule power savings to use the right number of hosts to run your workloads – power the rest off until they are needed.
  • PRO – integrate with System Center Operations Manager to respond to application-level performance monitors.
• Cloud Management
  • Abstract server, network and storage resources into private clouds
  • Delegate access to private clouds with control of capacity, capabilities and user quotas
  • Enable self-service usage for application administrator to author, deploy, manage and decommission applications in the private cloud
• Service Lifecycle Management
  • Define service templates to create sets of connected virtual machines, os images and application packages
  • Compose operating system images and applications during service deployment
  • Scale out the number of virtual machines in a service
  • Service performance and health monitoring integrated with  System Center Operations Manager
  • Decouple OS image and application updates through image-based servicing.
  • Leverage powerful application virtualization technologies such as Server App-V

To read more info, go to Dario Blog - SCVMM 2012 Beta Announced–some major improvements are expected

Infrastructure & Management Virtual User Group – "Best of Tech-Ed" Meeting No.2–Opalis

מפגש וירטואלי לקהילת Management & Infrastructure בנושא:

Best of Tech-Ed 2010 – מפגש 2

10.02.2011, 16:00 – 17:30

אירוע TechEd 2010 מתקיים השנה באילת בסוף נובמבר. מיד לאחר אירוע נקיים בקבוצת המשתמשים סדרת הרצאות בשם Best of TechEd 2010 אשר בהן יועברו מיטב ההרצאות מ-TechEd, לטובת כאלה שלא היו או כאלה שרוצים לבוא שוב ולשאול שאלות.

מפגש מספר 2 יוקדש לפתרון ה-IT Automation מבית מיקרוסופט – System Center Opalis

סדר יום:

16:00-17:15 – Opalis IT Process Automation - Introduction and Technical Overview

17:15-17:30 – שאלות

אתר הרישום - http://imug-no2.eventbrite.com

לקבלת עידכונים על מפגשים נוספים של קבוצת המשתמשים -  http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=2389097

אודות המרצה:

עמית גטניו, מנהל תחום תשתיות ואבטחת מידע בחברת דריו ו-MRD Windows Server & Security אשר במהלך 12 השנים האחרונות ביצע מאות פרויקטי תשתית בארץ ובחו"ל.

LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/amitgatenyo

Blog: http:/www.dario.co.il/blog

UG Session No.1 Summary

Hi,

Sorry for publishing the PowerPoint slides so late, end of year is always a bit hectic for me

Our next UG meeting is on January 13th, I’ll post the agenda later this week.

Tech-Ed Israel 2010–Jalasoft implementation @ Egged

Hi,

This Tech-Ed We had the pleasure of hosting Chen Amram, Open Systems Department Manager @ Egged who talked about the successful Jalasoft implementation Dario did.

Egged has a large-scale SCOM implementation, monitoring hundreds of server, switches, routers & databases (SQL & Oracle) etc. and they use their monitoring and management solutions in a way that enable them to control a very large environment with few IT people.

But more importantly, it’s nice to see how they are willing to share their experiences with other clients (who frequently visit Egged datacenter). nice people

Chen Amram talking on stage about how adding Jalasoft to Egged’s SCOM environment boosted up their ability to pinpoint the exact cause of a problem:

Egged Network Operations Center (NOC) screens:

Infrastructure & Management User Group - "Best of Tech-Ed" Meeting No.1

מפגש קהילת Management & Infrastructure בנושא:

Best of Tech-Ed 2010 – מפגש 1

09.12.2010, 17:30 – 19:30

אירוע TechEd 2010 מתקיים השנה באילת בסוף נובמבר. מיד לאחר אירוע נקיים בקבוצת המשתמשים סדרת הרצאות בשם Best of TechEd 2010 אשר בהן יועברו מיטב ההרצאות מ-TechEd, לטובת כאלה שלא היו או כאלה שרוצים לבוא שוב ולשאול שאלות.

סדר יום:

17:30-17:45 - התכנסות

17:45-18:45 – Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 - Here it Comes!

18:45-19:00 - הפסקה וכיבוד קל

19:00-19:30 – Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 - Here it Comes!

19:30 - סיום משוער

אודות המרצה:

עמית גטניו, מנהל תחום תשתיות ואבטחת מידע בחברת דריו ו-MRD Windows Server & Security אשר במהלך 12 השנים האחרונות ביצע מאות פרויקטי תשתית בארץ ובחו"ל.

לקבלת עידכונים על מפגשים נוספים של קבוצת המשתמשים:  http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=2389097

לרישום לאירוע:

Tech-Ed Israel 2010–Service Manager Session Summary

Hi all,

I still cant believe how many of you got up so early in the morning after the party to attend my session… I thought I’ll be alone, luckily I didn’t stay in the hotel room to sleep some more…

Thank you for all your feedback about the session, I’m very happy to know a lot of people liked it, thanks.

As I said in my previous post about the Opalis session,  you are more then welcome to come to the “Best of Tech-Ed” batch of sessions at “Infrastructure & Management User Group” – first one is 14.12 @ 17:30 and you can register here -

For more session dates join the LinkedIn group

Feel free to contact me with any follow-up question or request.

For those who is interested in more information, there is a also good podcast on SM with Provance - Podcast: Asset Management with Service Manager 2010 and the Provance Management Pack

Have a good week!

Tech-Ed Israel 2010– Opalis Session Summary

Hi guys,

Thanks for so many of you for coming to my session today on Opalis, I got some really good feedback from you (via SMSs, emails and face-to-face) and I really appreciate it

I’m attaching the PPT from the session, and a quick list of all URL links:

–Dario Blog - Opalis

–8 Minutes Videos

–System Center Opalis Home

–Microsoft Pathways – Opalis

–TechNet Webcasts

Oh, one last thing, do come to the “Best of Tech-Ed” batch of sessions at “Infrastructure & Management User Group” – first one is 14.12 @ 17:30.

For more session dates join the LinkedIn group

Feel free to contact me with any follow-up question or request.

Update:

If you know Hebrew (if you don’t, now would be a good time to learn ), the audio recording of my session has been published here - http://techedagenda.mscom.co.il/Online/?pq=148#

Tech-Ed Israel 2010 - 3-Tier Remediation using Opalis

Hi,

As I wrote in a previous post, on of my Tech-Ed sessions this year is on Opalis.

As a quick preview, I wanted to tell you about one of the many demos I’m going to show in the session.

Consider this scenario, an application uses multiple servers – an IIS server, an Application server and an SQL server. I’m sure you’ll agree that most (if not all) monitoring solutions (like SCOM, Patrol, Unicenter etc.) can perform some kind of basic recovery operation (like restarting a stopped service) if they detect an error, but what if a more complex recovery process is needed? what if the detected problem require running tasks on the IIS, checking their outcome, then running tasks on the SQL server or something like that?

This recovery scenario (which is relevant for most problems if you ask me) is where Opalis really shines, Opalis can be used to watch a monitoring product like Operations Manager for incoming alerts that match a specific pattern known to be associated with an application outage. Normally, procedures would be manually executed that would attempt to “fix” each tier of the application. Opalis automates this whole problem solving process.

First, the alert is annotated to indicate that remediation is proceeding. This is important to people watching the alert, since it will let them know action is being taken on issue. Then the service is “re-tested” several time to rule out a false alarm or intermittent issue. If after retesting the application remains down, the remediation process begins. The “Get Server Names” activity is a Map Publish Data foundation activity. It looks at the name of the application and returns the involved web, MS SQL Server and application server associated with a given application. In some environments this might be replaced with a query to a CMDB. Once the server names to be targeted for remediation are identified, the remediation process begins in parallel on each tier.

The Junction activity guarantees that the post-remediation re-test wont’ be run until all three tiers have finished the remediation process. Once remediation has finished for each tier (successful or otherwise) the application is re-tested. If the retest fails a new alert isn’t created. Rather, we update the existing alert to indicate that manual intervention is required.

And yeah, it can even make coffee

More information can be found on Dario Blog - Tech-Ed Israel 2010 – 3-Tier Remediation using Opalis

Dario @ Tech-Ed Israel 2010

שלום לכולם,

רציתי לעדכן שהשנה התבקשתי להעביר בטקאד את ההרצאות הבאות:

1. Opalis IT Process Automation - Introduction & Technical Overview (יום שני ב-11:30) – מעבר על מוצר ה-Run Book Automation החדש שרכשה מיקרוסופט לפני שנה ונכלל היום בחבילת System Center. בהרצאה אני אראה איך אפשר להשתמש ב-Opalis כ-"מוח הניהול" המרכזי ולהגדיר בו Workflows שיאפשרו לדוגמא למשתמש קצה למלא Change Request בפורטל ה-Helpdesk שבעקבותיו ירוץ תהליך אוטומטי מורכב של יצירת סביבה וירטואלית שלמה (כולל הגדרות ב-SAN, בשרתים לא מיקרוסופטיים דוגמת FW וכו'). עוד מידע על Opalis אפשר למצוא גם בבלוג של דריו.

2. Opalis Hands On Lab (יום שני ב-14:00) – ב-Session הזה ניתן יהיה "לשחק" עם Opalis בסביבת מעבדה, לשאול שאלות ולתרגל עבודה עם הכלי.

3. Introducing System Center Service Manager (יום שלישי ב-8:15) – בהרצאה זו נעבור על יכולות מוצר ה-CMDB וה-Helpdesk החדש של מיקרוסופט (מותנה בכמות אלכוהול סבירה במסיבה). אני מתכנן להדגים את יכולות המוצר בתחום ה-Asset Management (תיעוד ה-Licenses שרכש הארגון מול השימוש בפועל, דוחות חומרה וכו'), את האינטגרציה של המוצר עם SCCM כדי לאפשר למשתמשים לבקש התקנת אפליקציות מפורטל Self-Service, את העבודה עם FIM כדי לנהל תהליך של איפוס סיסמא עצמי ועוד. המוצר חדש ולא ממש נכנס עדיין לארגונים ואני מקווה שאוכל להדגים בהרצאה מה בדיוק אפשר לעשות איתו כדי שכל אחד יוכל אחר כך להחליט אם הוא מתאים לארגון שלו או לא. עוד מידע על Service Manager אפשר למצוא גם בבלוג של דריו.

אני חייב לומר שלמרות שזה הטקאד הרביעי בו אני מרצה, אני עדיין מתרגש כשאני חושב על ההרצאות. לפני כל כנס יש התרגשות מסוימת, אבל לטקאד יש משום מה איזו הילה של אירוע מיוחד (אולי זה בעצם האלכוהול J).

האמת שגם הרבה זמן לא היה בארץ כנס גדול ולא היתה הזדמנות לפגוש "את התעשיה". מעבר להרצאות, תמיד נחמד מאוד לראות כל כך הרבה אנשים עם עיסוק משותף ולפגוש לקוחות שלא הזדמן לפגוש הרבה זמן.

אגב, מי שלא מגיע מוזמן להצטרף להרצאות “Best of Tech-Ed” – ההרצאות המעניינות ביותר מטקאד אותם נעביר במסגרת קבוצת המשתמשים שאני מנהל (Infrastructure & Management User Group) החל מהשבוע שלאחר האירוע ועד אמצע 2011 (המועד הראשון הוא ב-9.12 בשעה 17:30 במשרדי מיקרוסופט).

הזימונים לשאר ההרצאות יעודכנו קצת לפני כל מועד באתר הקבוצה ב-LinkedIn (כולכם מוזמנים להצטרף).

שיהיה שבוע מצוין ונתראה בטקאד או בשמחות אחרות

Tech-Ed Israel 2010 - Introducing System Center Service Manager

Hi Guys,

Service Manager 2010 is the newest System Center family member, announced just half a year ago.

One of my Tech-Ed sessions this year is about integrating Service Manager with products like integrating with Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) to handle user provisioning, integrating with SCCM to handle Self-Service software distribution, integrating with Opalis to create a whole set of virtual server etc.

One of the session highlight is how Service Manager integrate with Provance IT Management solution in order to offer a complete Asset Management solution, to get some more info before the session, check out the following presentation:

In Addition, you can also check out this video for another demo of one of the product possible usage:

Video/Demo of Compliance/Risk MP in Service Manager: