5 Valuable Microsoft Products that will change your IT career

5 Valuable Microsoft Products that will change your IT career and working conditions.

• Microsoft Lync
• Microsoft System Center Configurations Manager
• Microsoft System Center Operations Manager
• Microsoft System Center Service Manager
• Microsoft Windows 8

SCOM 2012 RMS

RMS is dead. Scalibality is an applicable option now and allowing multiple management servers to balance the functionality that the RMS used to provide alone should also increase scalability.

Microsoft takes a different approach in Operations Manager 2012, and removes the
RMS role. Instead, there is a pool of management servers. The work previously performed by the RMS is managed by this pool, which is a logical grouping of multiple health services instances. In this peer-to-peer topology, all management servers act as equals. The workload is distributed across multiple management services. Should a management server in the pool become unavailable, its workload is moved elsewhere in the pool. This gives automatic fault tolerance and load balancing.
Operations Manager 2012 provides topology simplification by removing the RMS and introducing of the All Management Servers Pool.

Installing SCOM 2012

SCOM 2012 Download LINKS.


Download the beta release of SCOM 2012 for testing and evaluation at this link:
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/om-vnext-beta.aspx

You can download just the documentation, such as the “Quick Start Guide to Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2012 Beta” at this link: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=26804

The SQL Server Management Pack automatically installs two Run As Profiles: the SQL Server Discovery Account and the SQL Server Monitoring Account. Unless you specify accounts for these two profiles, the Management Pack will use the Default Action Account.

Low-Privilege Environments
To configure your system to restrict access to SQL Server functions, you change Run As Profiles to use low-privilege accounts. This action restricts the level of access that the Management Pack and Operations Manager 2007 operators have on monitored computers running SQL Server. Conversely, if the default action account is too restricted to discover and monitor SQL Server, you can change Run As Profiles to use accounts with elevated privileges.
The minimum required permissions for monitoring objects are DBO privileges.
The minimum requirements for discovery are described in the following table.


Read more!

Discovery Target	Description
Database Engine, Reporting Services, Analysis Services	The Run As Account must be able to do the following:  Read registry keys under HKLM\SoftwareMicrosoft\MicrosoftSQLServer  Connect to and read from WMI Namespace root/cimv2  Connect to and read from WMI Namespace/root/Microsoft/SqlServer
Agents	The Run As Account must be able to do the following: Connect to and read from WMI Namespace/root/cimv2
Databases	The Run As Account must be able to do the following:  Have connect right to all databases in the instance (sp_helpdb"dbname")  Select from sys.databases table
File and FileGroup	The Run As Account must be able to do the following: Have connect right to all databases in the instance (sp_helpdb"dbname")
Jobs	The Run As Account must be able to do the following:  Run sp_help_job in the msdb database
Replication components	The Run As Account must be able to do the following:  Run the following stored procedures.  sp_get_distributor  sp_helpdistributorsp_distpublisher  Select from the sys.databases table
Replication publications and subscriptions	The Run As Account must be able to do the following:  Run sp_helppullsubscription (Requires sysadmin or db_owner role)  Run sp_helppublication

How to Configure Clients for Client Monitoring in Operations Manager 2007

This topic provides the procedure to configure clients for the Client Monitoring feature of Operations Manager 2007.
Important
You must first configure a Management Server for the server component of Client Monitoring by running the Client Monitoring Configuration Wizard. For more information, see How to Configure a Management Server for Client Monitoring in Operations Manager 2007.
To configure clients for Client Monitoring in Operations Manager 2007
Run the Group Policy Object Editor (gpedit.msc) for the domain or local computer.
Note
For information about Group Policy, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=70168.
If needed, enable the Turn off Windows Error Reporting policy. This policy can be found in Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/System/Internet Communication Management/Internet Communication settings.
Add the Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) Group Policy administrative template (.ADM) to the domain or local computer policy. The ADM file is created when the Client Monitoring Configuration Wizard is run.
Note
Use the same procedure to Disable the Group Policy settings, thereby disabling Client Monitoring on the clients.

System Center Operations Manager Firewall Requirements

The following table describes the necessary firewall requirements for the Root/Management Server, Agent, Operations Console and Web Console components:

Root/Management Server <== Port 1433 ==> Operations Manager Database

Management Server <== Port 5723 ==> Root Management Server

Agent <== Port 5723 ==> Management Server

Operations Console <== Port 5724 ==> Root Management Server

Web Browser <== Port 51908 ==> Web Console Server

Schedule a machine into maintenance mode

The following code can be used to schedule a machine into maintenance mode.
Note: Machines cannot be scheduled into maintenance mode in the future so for example, adding a machine into maintenance mode at 10pm, the script should launch at 9:55pm and the maintenance mode should be scheduled to start at 9:50pm (in the past).

$computer = Get-Agent where {$_.Name -like ‘computer*’} $computer.HostComputer New-MaintenanceWindow -StartTime: ‘5/22/2007 00:30’ -EndTime: ‘5/22/2007 12:30’ -Comment: "Install security patch"