Celebrate 10 years of Microsoft TechDays in Belgium! Year after year thousands of technology professionals come together to network with peers and experts, while diving deep into Microsoft technologies and learning about the latest products and solutions. TechDays is one of the premier technical events in Belgium & Luxembourg and not to be missed!

Some SCUG members will deliver great sessions during this event, I hope to see you there

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

Cheers · microsoft · premier · sessions · TechDays

Hello Microsoft Community,

I’m proud to tell you that I just received a Microsoft Community Contributor 2011 Award for my contribution to the Microsoft Online Community through Technet Forums, vNext.be and Scug.be  

Thank you !

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

Christopher · Community · KEYAERT · microsoft · Scug

Today, a new Runbook based only on the default activities, I will show you how to monitor an Internet Application with System Center Orchestrator 2012 beta.

Work case : we have an intranet website, we want to ensure the availability. If the website is not available we want to restart a service, re-check the availability, and if still unavailable, we want to be notify.

For that we will use the following activities :

1. Runbook design : Every x seconds, we check the availability of the website. If available, we just do an entry in the log with the information “Site up”. If the website is not available, we restart the World Wide Web Publishing Service. If the site become available after the service restarted, we do an entry in the log with the information “Site up”, if still available, we do an entry in the log with the information “Site down” and we send an email.

2. Monitor Date/Time activity : We decide to run this Runbook every 30 seconds.

3. Get Internet Application activity : In that activity, we define the website that we want to monitor. It’s also possible to check a particular word on the website.

This activity allows to monitor http website availability, but not only, the following protocols are available in General  part :

4. If the website is available the activity returns Success
 

5. Thanks to the Send Platform Event activity, We could now write in the log that the site web is available.

6. Now, if the website is not available, the Get Internet Application activity returns Failed.



We have to edit the link between the Get Internet Application activity and Start/Stop Service activity for using the failed condition.

7. The Start/Stop Service activity will restart the World Wide Web Publishing Service on the webserver.

8. If the service successfully started, we re-check the website availability for a second time. If available we could now link back to the previous Send Platform Event activity, that will write in the log that the site web is available.

9. If the Start/Stop Service activity didn’t succeed to restart the service, or if the website is still unavailable at the second check, we will use a second Send Platform Event activity for writing in the log that the site is down.

10. Send Platform Event activity configuration:

11. Last but not least, we could use the Send Email activity for being notify of the website unavailability.

12. Let’s testing the policy, the web site is available.

13. Start the Runbook :

14. Stop the World Wide Web Publishing Service, the website is now unavailable. 

15. The Runbook detects this unavailability, start the service, check again the availability and notify that the site a now available.

16. If the Runbook doesn’t succeed to start the service, or if the site is still unavailable after the service restart, we are notify.

Et voilà, how to simply monitor a website availability. As always, the Runbook is available here : DOWNLOAD

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Resources :

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 beta is available as public beta at the Microsoft Download Center : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26503

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 Team Blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/scorch/

TechNet Forums for System Center Cross Platform and Interoperability : http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/scinterop

Cheers
Christopher KEYAERT
http://twitter.com/keyaertc

intranet · microsoft · Runbook · wide web publishing · wide web publishing service

The first of four sessions on Operations Manager 2012 has been presented at the Tech Ed North America 2011. This session provides you with an overview of the capabilities in Operations Manager 2012.

microsoft · operations manager · opsmgr · Scom · sessions

I just arrived to Paris for the Best of MMS2011, I’ll update this post with the content of the conference. Stay tune

2:00pm : Conference is starting with a quick overview of Microsoft Management over the past years.

2:15pm : Claire Henry presents the challenge of application experience between home and work. Productivity, Device …

Sccm2012 presentation : empower users, unify
infrastructure, simplify administration

2:16pm : Forefront Endpoint 2010, Intune présentation

2:24pm : Microsoft cloud advantage

2:50pm : how to build a private cloud ?

3:15pm : Adam demantrates how to do a sql migration with System Center Orchestrator 2012

3:17pm : System Center 2012 Community Evaluation Program

3:20pm : System center 2012 roadmap

3:35pm : Sccm2012 live demo

3:56pm : System center service manager introduction

4:40pm : same presentation than earlier but with French speakers now… Quite strange…

content · microsoft · MMS · post · Stay

System Center Advisor (formerly Microsoft codename “Atlanta”) is a cloud service that enables IT professionals to assess their server configuration and proactively avoid problems. With System Center Advisor, support staff is able to resolve issues faster by accessing current and historical configuration data, all with the security features that meet their needs. Additionally, System Center Advisor helps reduce downtime by providing suggestions for improvement, and notifying customers of key updates specific to their configuration.

The basic idea is to have your servers monitored in a Microsoft Cloud, with a web interface for the management part. Technically, you will need to have a gateway server in your enterprise (A gateway is just a server which has an internet access and all your monitored servers will contact to that gateway for updating informations to the cloud and not directly to internet).

Attention, currently System Center Advisor only supports the monitor of Windows Server 2008, Sql Server 2008 and some AD part.

System Requirements

The System Center Advisor agent and gateway require either 32-bit or 64-bit versions of:
Windows Server 2008 or later

The System Center Advisor agent analyzes both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of:

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or later
Windows Server 2008 or later

To access the System Center Advisor web portal you will need a browser that supports Silverlight 4.0, such as Internet Explorer 7.0 or later.

Let’s starting:

Microsoft just published the RC of Advisor, and as it’s free for the moment, it’s the right time to test it. Just go on https://www.systemcenteradvisor.com/ and create an account thanks to you Windows Live ID.

Once your account created, you have to download the Certificate and the setup program. This certificate will be used for authentication between the Microsoft Advisor Cloud and your Gateway server. You don’t need to add this certificate in your certificate store, the setup will ask for it during the installation process, nothing more.

Once your gateway ready, the process will install the Operations Manager Agent. You don’t need to have a Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 infrastructure in place, System Center Advisor will just installed the agent and configured it for working with the Microsoft Advisor Cloud.

When everything, we will have to wait some times for having data retrieved in your web console

Overview

The web console has 5 min parts:

• Alerts: in that view, we could see all your servers’ alerts and manage it. Changing the status, disabling not needed alert…

• Configuration : In that part, we have a global snapshot of the current configuration of your servers

  

• Change History : History of your configuration changes

• Servers : View of all your monitored servers and gateways

  

   

• Account: In that part we could manage your user access (base on Windows Live Id), the name of your company and closing your company account.

Conclusion

Microsoft System Center Advisor could be really a great product for small companies that don’t have the money and the resources for the implementation of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. The setup is really quick and the entire configuration is saved in the Microsoft Cloud.

Currently Advisor has only a few monitoring rules for AD, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. I hope that Microsoft will soon add all the rules/monitors available in the different OpsMgr Management packs.

I invite you to read the comment of Paul Mestemaker / Sr. Program Manager / Microsoft / System Center Advisor below.

Below, all the alerts that could you have with Microsoft System Center Advisor RC:

I invite you to read the comment of Paul Mestemaker / Sr. Program Manager / Microsoft / System Center Advisor below.

advisor · cloud · microsoft · monitoring · system center

Introduction

Lync Server 2010 Monitoring Management Pack is a comprehensive End-to-End monitoring management pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. Extensive component event and performance monitoring is available, and new in this release is full support for Synthetic Transactions against a distributed Lync Server 2010 deployment.

The most part of the next lines are directly coming from the Microsoft Documentation available on pinpoint portal: http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/applications/Lync-Server-2010-Monitoring-Management-Pack-12884908254

But as I found that the “Synthetic Transaction” part a little bit complicated for non Lync 2010 Administrator, I added my comments, advises and screenshots below. I hope this will help in your Lync 2010 management pack deployment.

Setting up Synthetic transaction watcher node

Synthetic transactions are Lync Server 2010 cmdlets that are automatically triggered by the management pack on a preset interval. These are executed on a synthetic transaction watcher node which is an administrator designated server responsible for discovery and execution of STs for each pool.

It is not recommended to use an existing Lync Server 2010 server as a synthetic transaction watcher node. This is due to the high CPU/memory utilization requirements for running STs. It’s recommended to use a new server machine (or a virtual machine) for the synthetic transaction watcher node. (Recommended configuration is available in Microsoft documentation).

Add ST Watcher Node as a trusted Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Application pool

The following actions must be executed from any of your existing Lync servers.

• Create external application pool with synthetic transaction watcher node machine as a member. While creating use machine FQDN as pool FQDN. To create the pool you can run the following cmdlet from the Lync Server Management Shell on any of your existing Lync server:

  New-CsTrustedApplicationPool -Identity <PoolFQDN> -Site <SiteID> -Registrar <RegistrarPoolFQDN> -Verbose
  

  Where
  

  <PoolFQDN>: Is the FQDN of the external application pool to be created. Use watcher node machine FQDN (the fresh installed server) as Pool FQDN
  

  <SiteID>: The ID of the site where the application pool belongs to
  

  <RegistrarPoolFQDN>: The FQDN of the registrar pool that the external application pool depends on
  

  Example:
  

  New-CsTrustedApplicationPool -Identity bramomlyc001.dir.ucb-group.com -Site 1 -Registrar hqpool.dir.ucb-group.com -Verbose
  

• Verify that external application pool has been added by running Get-CsPool
  
• Create an external application service entry in topology by using following cmdlet from the Lync Server Management Shell:

  New-CsTrustedApplication -ApplicationId <AppID> -TrustedApplicationPoolFqdn <externalAppPoolFQDN> -Port <PortNumber> -Verbose
  

Where

<AppID>: Is an ID for the application. For example, you can use “STWatcherNode”

<externalAppPoolFQDN>: Is the FQDN of the external application pool that you created in step 1

<PortNumber>: Any unused port number.

Example:

New-CsTrustedApplication -ApplicationId “StWatcherNode” -TrustedApplicationPoolFqdn bramomlyc001.dir.ucb-group.com -Port 9999 –Verbose

Configure ST Watcher Node machine

The following actions must be executed from the new installed server.

• Install Lync Server 2010 core MSI, after that launch the Deployment Wizard and install the “Local Configuration Store”

  

• Skip the Step and go directly to the Step 3: Request, Install and Assign Certificates.

   

• From the Lync Server Management Shell, run Enable-CsComputer –verbose. This will assign group memberships and resource permissions to support Lync Server services running on the host computer.

• In your Active Directory, create two domain users that will be used by the Synthetic transaction monitoring scripts. Don’t forget to fill the email field in the user configuration screen. (Just the Email field, a real mailbox is not necessary)

   

• In your Lync configuration panel, enable the two users that you just created as Enterprise Voice. Verify that these two users have well received the Conferencing Policy and the External Access Policy but executing the following command :

  Get-CSUser username
  

  

   

• Assign Test Users to registrar and user service clusters by using Health Monitoring Configuration cmdlet

  New-CsHealthMonitoringConfiguration -TargetFQDN <PoolFQDN> -FirstTestUserSipUri <FirstUserSipUri> -SecondTestUserSipUri <SecondUserSipUri> -Verbose
  

Where

<PoolFQDN>: Is the Pool FQDN you wish to run STs against (where users are hosted).

<FirstUserSipUri>: Sip Uri of first test user to be used for synthetic transaction.

<SecondUserSipUri>: Sip Uri of second test user to be used for synthetic transaction.

Example:

New-CsHealthMonitoringConfiguration hqpool.dir.ucb-group.com -FirstTestUserSipUri “sip:gbl.gmso.lyc1@ucb.com” -SecondTestUserSipUri “sip: gbl.gmso.lyc2@ucb.com ” –Verbose

• Make sure synthetic transactions are working by running the following cmdlet from in the Lync Server Management Shell.

  Test-CsRegistration <RegistrarPoolFQDN> -verbose
  

• Set registry key for watcher node discovery and optionally for enabling logging by executing the following cmdlets from Lync Server Management Shell:

   

  New-Item -Path “HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Real-Time Communications\Health”
  

  New-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Real-Time Communications\Health” -Name “IsSTWatcherNode” -Value true | Out-Null
  

  New-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Real-Time Communications\Health” -Name “LogOpsMgr” -PropertyType DWord -value 2
  

Configuring Active directory

• Add the synthetic transaction watcher node machine as a member of RTCUniversalReadOnlyAdmins group.
• From Lync Server Management Shell on watcher node run Enable-CsComputer –Verbose

• Restart Machine (this is required after machine is added to RtcUniversalReadOnlyAdmins)

Configure Operations Manager Agent settings on ST Watcher Node

• Increase the thread pool count for synthetic transaction watcher node by modifying the value for the below registry key.
  • HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\HealthService\Parameters

    [DWORD]    Thread Pool CLR Max Thread Count Min        200 decimal

Note: Spaces between the words should be reserved as shown above.

If the registry key does not exist you can create it by running the following PS cmdlet

New-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\HealthService\Parameters” -Name “Thread Pool CLR Max Thread Count Min” -propertytype DWord -value 200

• Restart health service:
  Net stop healthservice & Net start healthservice

Other Settings for Synthetic Transactions

Web (HTTP) Synthetic Transactions required the folder %SystemRoot%\temp to have write access by the Network Service identity. Please make sure that the ACL on %SystemRoot%\temp include write access for Network Service.

Testing the Synthetic Transaction with PowerShell

Execute the following command to ensure that the Synthetic Transaction are working well

Now, I invite you to continue the configuration of your Lync 2010 management pack with the official Microsoft documentation. http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/applications/Lync-Server-2010-Monitoring-Management-Pack-12884908254

Christopher KEYAERT

lync 2010 · microsoft · OperationsManager · opsmgr · PowerShell · Scom · Synthetic transactions

Sometime, you have a Virtual Machine in a Microsoft VHD format and you would like to use it with your VMware Workstation application. So this little guide will explain how to perform this operation.

Pre-requisites

• A Microsoft VHD File
• VMware Converter 4 standalone (http://www.vmware.com/download/converter/)

Step 1

Create a working folder on one of your computer drive and paste your VHD file into it.

Step 2

For the conversion, VMware Converter needs a VMC file. A VMC is the configuration file of the Microsoft Virtual Machine, it’s in this file that you the all the settings of the VM.

So, download the VMC file that is available here (http://www.vnext.be/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/MyVM.Rename-to-dot-vmc.txt), rename the extension to .vmc and paste it to your working folder:

Open it with notepad and edit the path to your VHD file like below:

Step 3

Start VMware Converter 4 standalone

Click on Convert Machine:

• Select source type : Backup image or third-party virtual machine
• Virtual machine file : The path to your VHD file

Click on Next and choose the following parameters:

• Select destination type : VMware Workstation or other VMware virtual machine
• Select VMware product : VMware Workstation 7.0.x

Click on Next and choose the following parameters:
Adapt the parameters to your need, but be sure that Install VMware Tools is set to YES

Click on Next and review all the information:

Click on Finish and wait the end of the process:

After a few minutes, the process is complete:

Go to your working folder, enter in the new created folder and double click on the .vmx file.

VMware workstation will now start:

Review your Virtual Machine configuration and start your new VM:

After you’re first Log on, Windows will install the drivers related to VMware Workstation, so let the process continue and restart you virtual machine when it’s done:

When all the drivers have been installed and you virtual machine restarted, you will have to reactive your copy of Windows:

When the activation process ended, you could now enjoy your virtual machine with VMware Workstation:

Christopher KEYAERT

conversion · microsoft · vhd · virtual machine · vmk · VMWare

Issue:
If you try to install a secondary Management Server (MS) in a scenario with Root Management Server(RMS) and Reporting installed with Data Warehouse(DW) action account and Root Management Server action account (default action account) is the same, the secondary Management Server setup rolls back with an error (value 3) in the setup log:

deployment · hotfix · kb · management server · microsoft · ms · rms · run as acocount · Scom · support