Hello everyone,

You just installed System Center Orchestrator, Great, but what's next?

On Tuesday, March 20, 2012 2:00 PM (GMT+01:00), I will do a live meeting to present the System Center Orchestrator basics for runbook creation. We will speak about bests practices, how to use out of the box activities, configuring Orchestrator Integration Packs, runbook creation and a lot more.

We will show you how to build your first System Center Orchestrator runbook from scratch.

This is a live meeting and it’s free, to register follow this link : https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032506833&Culture=en-US

Regards
Christopher Keyaert

Christopher Keyaert · creation · Integration · Runbook · Tuesday

The Audit Trail is a collection of text file logs that contain information about the interaction of a Runbook with external tools and systems. This provides a quick method to identify what and who made changes for audit purposes.

How to activate/deactivate the Audit Trail:

• Open a command prompt with the Run as administrator privilege.
  
  
• and go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft System Center\Orchestrator 2012\Opalis Integration Server\Management Service
   
  
• To activate the Audit Trail: atlc /enable
  
  
• To deactivate the Audit Trail: atlc /disable
   

Where are the audit files ?

In the folder : C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft System Center\Orchestrator 2012\Opalis Integration Server\Management Service\Audit

The file contains information about the date and time at which the policy was launched, the user name and domain that launched the policy, the name of the computer where the policy ran, and the name of the policy that was launched.

In the folder : C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft System Center\Orchestrator 2012\Opalis Integration Server\Action Server\Audit

The file contains information about the date and time at which the activity ran, the name of the action server it ran on, the ID of the Policy Module that ran it, and the Object XML.

For having a better view, I advise your to copy/paste the output into a XML indenter tool (Example : http://xmlindent.com/).

Depending on how many policies you run and how many objects those policies contain, the Audit Trail may consume a large amount of disk space on the computer that runs the management server and action server. (When a file reaches 200 megabytes in size, a new file is created) Two solutions, active it only when needed and cleaned the files after, or create a little Runbook for archiving these files to another location.

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

TechNet Library – Audit Trail : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg464925.aspx

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

collection · indenter · policy · Runbook · TechNet

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