Xerox CentreWare for SCOM

I came across this today. You need to register to get the download. I have not tried it as I do not have Xerox printers but if you do it may be useful.

Xerox CentreWare for Microsoft SCOM is a device manager software application that provides the ability to identify, view, and centrally manage Xerox network printers and multifunction printers within Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007.
Free Download
The Xerox CentreWare for Microsoft SCOM is available to download (English only) at no charge.
> download now

Key Features

• Printer discovery: Provides the identification of Xerox printers on your network and populates the SCOM database
• Color-coded device status: Automatically changes the status and color in the printer icon to reflect the printer status in each view. Events and alerts are also available in the Operator console
• Access to the printer embedded web server: If your printer contains an embedded web server, you can easily access it through the icon displayed in the Xerox Agent
• Supports all Operator Console views: Manages the Xerox printers on your network by displaying all the discovered Xerox printers in a folder in any available Operator console view
• Full integration with the features of SCOM 2007: Provides full use of Management Packs, Administrator and Operator console to ease management process
• SNMP trap registration: Using SNMP trap-capable Xerox devices enables unsolicited device feedback for device events (for example, machine out of toner)

Trichotomy

OK. Trichotomy is not a real word but it seems to sum up things better than dichotomy. I find it easier to think of SCOM 2007 as three separate programs bundled as one – think of very early versions of Office. My previous post on SCOM 2007 Architecture (my most read post) goes into more details. As with Office, the integration within the components and with other members of the System Center family will get better. Just look at how well integrated Office 2007 is with SharePoint 2007.

As I was reading the new Design Guide it struck me again how this is really 3 programs and that makes it hard to write the documentation (and to read it). If I was new to SCOM I am not sure that I would be able to design a system based on the Design Guide – although it is a useful technical overview with some good tips. The Deployment Guide and Security Guide also show this problem. It would be better if Microsoft made separate guides (Design, Security and Deployment) for each component (OM, ACS and AEM) with an additional paper outlining how to combine them in a single management group.

Ever since MMS I have been trying to come up with a standardised way to approach a design and deployment but it truly is one of those areas that requires you to sit down with the customer and talk about things like which components will they be using, no of servers and potentially clients, no of MPs, geographical locations and WAN bandwidth, who will be using the console and so on. Real consultancy with an answer based on your knowledge and experience.

Mind you the complexity does help freelance consultants and Microsoft partners. Well that would me me then!

System Centre Webcasts for July

Thanks to Eileen

TechNet Webcast: Deploying System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (Level 200)
Monday, July 02, 2007 – 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM Pacific Time
Wally Mead, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032343568&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Deploying System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Clients (Level 300)
Friday, July 06, 2007 – 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM Pacific Time
Wally Mead, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032343641&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Monitoring with System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Level 200)
Monday, July 09, 2007 – 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM Pacific Time
John Weston, IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032343630&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Security and Enterprise Features of System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Level 200)
Monday, July 16, 2007 – 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM Pacific Time
John Baker, IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032343648&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: System Center Operations Manager 2007 Technical Overview (Level 200)
Monday, July 23, 2007 – 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM Pacific Time
John Baker, IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032343664&Culture=en-US

AD Integration and DCs

Why Domain Controllers can’t be used with AD Integration.

Good response from Marc Reyhner (Microsoft Developer).

“To control which agents go in to what management groups we set an ACL on the object in AD representing the management group.  Computers which should have access to the management group are granted read permissions to the SCP (service connection point) object for the management group.  When an agent with AD integration is turned on it looks for all the SCPs it has read access to and learns what AD integrated management groups it should be a member of from this.  This happens as part of the Health Service which is running as local system.  On a domain controller local system has access to pretty much everything in AD so it can read the SCP for every management group whether or not you really wanted that DC to be in that management group.  The consequence of having AD integration turned on for an agent on a domain controller then is that it tries to join every AD integrated management group.  Since this isn’t desirable behavior we disable AD integration on domain controllers.”

MP Notify for 2007

With the current range of MPs and the upcoming list that Walter blogged about there was no mention of MP Notify. The MP Notifier MP for MOM 2005 generated an information alert when an updated management pack was released. So I wondered what had happened to. I was reading the MP guide and found the answer.

In “System Center Management Pack Guide for Operations Manager 2007″ it mentions:-
“The Operations Manager Management Pack includes a rule, Check for Updated Management Packs, which checks whether an updated version of an installed Management Pack is available. The rule runs a script, Powershell.exe, which requires the action account on the Root Management Server to be a member of the Operations Manager Administrators Group.”
“If you configured the action account by using Local System or a user that is not part of the Operations Manager Administrators Group, the script will not work.”

So the mystery is solved. Also a good reason to use a domain account as the root management server action account rather than Local System.

It is worth reading the whole MP guide as there are a number of configurations that can be done.

What’s Going on With AEM Licensing?

I was under the impression that AEM was free (certainly to SA customers) because CER was free to SA customers. But it looks like I was wrong. Mike Betts (www.momanswers.net) posted a question in the newsgroup about it.

So I did some digging (and I did have to dig to find the document – and when I went to look for it a second time I could not find it searching on Google or Microsoft). Luckily Stefan’s blog has the link to the document. System Center Operations Manager 2007 Licensing Brief.

It appears that if you use AEM that you still need a client license at $32 per client. Now if I had the OpsMgr agent on and was using ACS as well then the cost is taken care of. But if I am just using AEM it seems a lot for collecting some Dr Watson and Windows Error reports. I think it is a useful tool but I would find it hard to justify that level of spend.

Here are the relevant paragraphs from that document.

Are Operations Manager 2007 Client OMLs required for Agentless Exception Monitoring (?AEM?)?
Yes, except when the client device is also licensed for the Microsoft® Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance (?MDOP?) or when the exceptions are received from a server device which requires at least a Standard OML.

Is client monitoring or AEM also available through Windows Client SA?
The use of the AEM feature without an Operations Manager 2007 Client OML is available for Windows Client SA customers who purchase the MDOP. There is a special version of the Operations Manager 2007 server called Microsoft® System Center Desktop Error Monitoring (?DEM?) that is part of MDOP which is limited to just agentless exception monitoring of clients and does not have the right to use the Operations Manager Connector Framework (?MCF?) connectors to forward alerts to other management systems.

Is it possible to upgrade the DEM Server to the Operations Manager 2007 Server?
Yes. DEM servers can be upgraded to full Operations Manager servers with the purchase of an Operations Manager 2007 server license to enable use of connectors, and with the purchase of additional Operations Manager 2007 Client OMLs, full agented client monitoring.

Can MDOP customers using the DEM component use AEM without a Client OML in their full Operations Manager 2007 environments?
Yes, as long as the client device is licensed for MDOP and only AEM is used to monitor the client. Deploying an agent and management packs for client monitoring always requires a Client OML or Enterprise CAL.

Well the plot thickens as the document mentions you can get this licence under the Desktop Optimization Pack. And at TechEd there was an announcement about the new DOP.
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/06/04/teched-2007-day-one-microsoft-desktop-optimization-pack-update.aspx
And now there is a fifth element to the DOP – Microsoft System Center Desktop Error Monitoring. So now we have SC DEM or DEM.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/enterprise/mdopoverview.mspx

When it first came out DOP was $10 per client. I can not find if that is still true due to the weirdness of the Microsoft Licensing system and the arcane structure of the licensing web site. But as DOP also contains Advanced GP Management, Asset Inventory Service, Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (Sysinternals) and the amazing SoftGrid then I would buy that if I wanted AEM and was not planning to use OpsMgr agents on the clients for monitoring or ACS.

What is Microsoft playing at? Spreading the uptake of CER/AEM/DEM? Or are they saying that AEM does not belong in SCOM even though you can upgrade you DOP version to it? Or just trying to confuse us? Especially having multiple names for the same thing. Maybe they are just being nice and given us choices. Who knows?

New System Center Webcasts for June

Thanks to Eileen for this info.

TechNet Webcast: System Center Operations Manager 2007 Technical Overview (Level 200)
Monday, June 11, 2007 – 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM Pacific Time
Chris Avis, IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032340807&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Client Monitoring with System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Level 200)
Monday, June 18, 2007 – 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM Pacific Time
Blain Barton, IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032341227&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: What’s New in Systems Management Server 2003 SP3 (Level 200)
Tuesday, June 19, 2007 – 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM Pacific Time
Wally Mead, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032341247&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: System Center Operations Manager 2007 Installation and Management Pack Migration (Level 200)
Friday, June 22, 2007 – 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM Pacific Time
Bryan Von Axelson, IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032341253&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Introduction to System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (Level 200)
Tuesday, June 26, 2007 – 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM Pacific Time
Wally Mead, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032341255&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Microsoft Windows PowerShell: The Future of Server Administration (Level 300)
Tuesday, June 05, 2007 – 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM Pacific Time
Don Jones, Scripting Guru and Author, SAPIEN Technology
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90647

TechNet Webcast: Under-the-Hood Extensions in Windows PowerShell (Level 200)
Tuesday, June 19, 2007 – 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Don Jones, Scripting Guru and Author, SAPIEN Technology
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032321876&Culture=en-US

VHD Demos

SC VMM 2007 beta 2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d4e8bc52-3c3b-4bae-b937-987da892fad7&DisplayLang=en

SCE 2007

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=27342759-e9d6-4073-918c-e9dff77d0206&DisplayLang=en

Both require registration.

Not Everyone likes SCE

I posted a while back that I liked System Center Essentials (SCE) and Pete and Bjorn have also been complimentary about it. There is a good article on SystemCenterForum.org on when you should use SCE and when you should consider SCOM, WSUS and SMS. However we do tend to blog about MOM and SCOM mainly. So it was interesting to read a perspective from an SMS expert.  Garth is less complimentary about SCE.

http://smsug.ca/blogs/garth_jones/archive/2007/06/05/429.aspx

I think he has missed it a bit - it is not MOM Lite nor AD application deployment but as an SMS expert he is used to the total control that a product like SMS can give him. It is for companies with less than 30 servers and 500 PCs. I could not imagine a small organization trying to run SMS for about 50 PCs but I could imagine them using SCE.

Database Size Estimation

Kerrie and Cameron have done some good investigative work and come up with a good rule of thumb for sizing up the three SCOM 2007 databases. Much easier to use than to try and put all the info into System Center Capacity Manager. You get three tables with number of agents v grooming interval (or retention period) and a figure in MB.

http://ops-mgr.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!3D3B8489FCAA9B51!171.entry

My only suggestion would be to show the results in GB. Mind you as they have given you the formula it only takes minutes to recreate it in Excel. Put in numbers along the top for agents and grooming days down the rows. Have 3 cells with 5 for the MB/day (so you can change it) [K2 in my formula], 510 for their base figure [K5] and 1024 to convert to GB (I am a purist – you could use 1000) [K6]. The formula for the cell is =+(($A3*B$2*$K$2)+$K$5)/$K$6 where the first cell of the table is B3. Then paste that into all the other cells

Remember to take into account the log file and also if you take database backups. I have had that problem where the database team at one company forgot to tell me that they automatically take a back up each night onto the same server and keep three backups. Soon ran out of disk space. Luckily it was a pilot running as a virtual machine.

Good work guys.