The exhibition hall isn’t open so here I am.\u00a0 Much of what’s discussed is old technology but it’s good to get it all as one message – a nice refresher.\u00a0 I’ve either deployed already or am doing it in the next couple of months.<\/p>\n
Jeff Wettlaufer and Sacha Dawes from MS speaking.\u00a0 The two big complaints they hear about is space and power management.\u00a0 True enough – I can relate to that.<\/p>\n
System Center can assist with some of this:<\/p>\n
There’s too much time being spent in the presentation telling us what we already know – the pain points in the data centre.\u00a0 It’s very repetitive.<\/p>\n
Planning<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n The first step in deployment is modelling, i.e. System Center Capacity Planning.\u00a0 It’s limited to SCOM and Exchange still.\u00a0 Has been for years unfortunately.\u00a0 That’s a powerful tool that should be more widely adopted by MS, e.g. Hyper-V.\u00a0 We get a demo of Capacity Planner for OpsMgr 2007.\u00a0 SCCP is a free download and having used it for Exchange 2007 I’d say it’s a bit clunky to use but well worth getting used to because it’s a powerful estimation tool for hardware specification and Exchange deployment.\u00a0 There’s not too many of us who really need to use it for OpsMgr 2007 to be honest.<\/p>\n Deployment<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Use System Center to deploy operating systems.\u00a0 Same for Vista as for W2008.\u00a0 Same for XP as for W2003.\u00a0 You’ve got MDT, WDS or ConfigMgr.\u00a0 Can also use these deployment tools for VM’s – better to use System Center VMM for template deployment.<\/p>\n Multicast was added in WDS – that’s the built into Windows Server imaging solution.\u00a0 BTW, it’s very disk efficient on the WD server.\u00a0 It’s creates file based images and uses single instance storage across images… hence a file is stored once on the server.\u00a0 Ghost is sector based so you can’t do this.\u00a0 But, WDS is limited to NTFS file systems.<\/p>\n Leverages "panther" the new installation routive introduced in Vista.\u00a0 Steep learning curve but well worth doing.\u00a0 If you’re here, talk to Rhonda Layfield in "Ask The Experts": she’s the queen of this stuff.<\/p>\n W2008 configuration is very easy to script and hence can be automated 100% using SCCM task sequences or by using an unattend script which runs after install using WDS.\u00a0 Check my Server Manager document<\/a>.\u00a0 SCCM task sequences was the big coding project in the last release.\u00a0 You know what that means: it’s going to be leveraged more in the future.\u00a0 It lives on top of WDS so you’re using WIM images just like WDS, ImageX, MDT, BDD, etc.\u00a0 Task sequences also allow you to deploy BitLocker and configure it via the wizard.\u00a0 Useful for branch office W2008 servers in insecure locations.<\/p>\n Update Management<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Deploy via WSUS.\u00a0 ConfigMgr allows you to set up scheduled and recurring maintenance windows for reboots and integrates with the OpsMgr 2007 agent to avoid unnecessary alerts.\u00a0 Check my blog for a scripted solution for WSUS and OpsMgr maintenance mode.\u00a0 ConfigMgr allows integration with W2008 Network Access Protection to ensure compliance.\u00a0 Advanced reporting on compliance and updates.\u00a0 Desired Configuration Management can highlight absolutely critical updates not being installed with a tiny bit of customisation.<\/p>\n Consolidation = Virtualisation<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Use OpsMgr 2007 and Virtual Machine Manager 2008 via PRO connector to audit potential hosts and VM’s.\u00a0 ConfigMgr can audit hardware specs for potential hosts.\u00a0 VMM is recommended if you run a few Hyper-V hosts and can also manage ESX … obviously so you can migrate to Hyper-V \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 PRO connector also allows rating and recommendations of which hosts to best deploy a VM on using a simple star rating mechanism. ESX admins using Virtual Center will find it familiar to use.<\/p>\n End-End Monitoring<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n OpsMgr 2007 can monitor everything it can discover and offer best practice guidance.\u00a0 It monitors everything from hardware to application and all points between, including the Hyper-V hypervisor.\u00a0 Health, performance including in this section.\u00a0 I can confirm from experience that it really works.\u00a0 It can ID failing hardware (HP written free Proliant management pack) before the hardware fails.\u00a0 I’ve replaced RAM proactively before it totally failed in the past.\u00a0 MS bringing in Linux\/UNIX support natively using cross platform extensions.\u00a0 You can model "services" (ITIL point of view) using components: network devices, servers, disks, functions, synthetic session monitoring, etc.\u00a0 If anything in the model fails – the owner of the "service" knows and can easily drill down to ID the issue.\u00a0 SLA monitoring can sit on top of this.\u00a0 Lots of reports on granular or SLA detail.\u00a0 You can model your security to control access to the service (admin or operator or read only operator).\u00a0 You can have granular control, e.g. monitored object classes, e.g. SQL, or a set of servers so: a DBA can monitor all SQL servers or an application owner can monitor all equipment that runs their "service".\u00a0 This all uses management packs written by the vendors of the monitored products, e.g. HP, Dell, Citrix, MS development teams, etc.\u00a0 There are 3rd party management packs and you can author your own (a true black art).<\/p>\n Compliance<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Two products.\u00a0 ConfigMgr Desired Configuration management allows you to define templates of what compliance is for your servers\/applications.\u00a0 You can author your own or download ones, e.g. SOX, HIPPA, EU data protection, for MS products.<\/p>\n OpsMgr Audit Collection Services sucks security log entries up in "near realtime" into a central database.\u00a0 You can secure this so administrators have no access and only security officers\/auditors have access.\u00a0 You can run reports on all this stuff, e.g. who logged on using privileged accounts, where, when and what did they do.<\/p>\n Service Manager (probably end of 2009 or early 2010 – it keeps slipping) will tie the tools and their databases together.\u00a0 It’s a work allocation tool – more than just a helpdesk.\u00a0 Work allocation doesn’t mean more work for engineers – it can be allocation to automation solutions.<\/p>\n A new term: "configuration drift".\u00a0 This is a measure of how far your services move away from desired configuration over time.<\/p>\n Release Dates: Config Mgr V3: 2010.\u00a0 DPM V3 2010.\u00a0 OpsMgr R2 2009.\u00a0 Service Manager V1 2010.\u00a0 Ops Mgr V4 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The exhibition hall isn’t open so here I am.\u00a0 Much of what’s discussed is old technology but it’s good to get it all as one message – a nice refresher.\u00a0 I’ve either deployed already or am doing it in the next couple of months. Jeff Wettlaufer and Sacha Dawes from MS speaking.\u00a0 The two big … Continue reading “Day 2: System Center And The Data Centre”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teched-emea-it-pro"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}