Part of a series of specialized guides on System Center - this book provides focused guidance for deploying and customizing Service Manager, an integrated platform for automating and adapting an organization’s IT service management best practices. Led by series editor Mitch Tulloch, a team of System Center experts step you through key technical scenarios and tasks.
This comprehensive resource will help you automate and optimize all facets of service management with System Center 2012 Service Manager. Expert consultants offer deep “in the trenches” insights for improving problem resolution, change control, release management, asset lifecycle management, chargeback, and more. You’ll learn how to implement high-value best practices from ITIL and the Microsoft Operations Framework. The authors begin with an expert overview of Service Manager, its evolution, and its new capabilities. Next, they walk through overall planning, design, implementation, and upgrades. Then, to help you focus your efforts, they present stepwise coverage of all topics in each feature area, linking technical information about Service Manager with essential knowledge about the technologies it depends on. Whatever your role in deploying or running Service Manager, this guide will help you deliver more responsive support at lower cost and drive more value from all your IT investments. • Leverage MOF and ITIL processes built into System Center 2012 Service Manager • Plan and design your Service Manager deployment • Install Service Manager or upgrade from earlier versions • Efficiently administer work and configuration items • Use connectors to integrate with Active Directory, Exchange, and System Center components • Create service maps • Enable end user access through Service Manager’s self-service portal • Implement incident, problem, change, and release management • Utilize workflows to automate key support processes • Create service level agreements with calendars, metrics, and objectives • Provide quick access to a standardized catalog of services • Use notification to ensure that Service Manager items are promptly addressed • Secure Service Manager and its data warehouse/reporting platform • Perform maintenance, backup, and recovery • Manage Service Manager performance • Customize Service Manager
Part of a series of specialized guides on System Center, this book focuses on Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. For the seasoned professional, it covers the role of the Operations Manager product, the best practices for working with management packs, how to use the reporting feature to simplify managing the product, how to thoroughly troubleshoot, and how to use and install Operations Manager in the Microsoft Azure Public Cloud environment.
Part of a series of specialized guides on System Center - this book delivers a focused drilldown into designing runbooks for Orchestrator workflow management solutions. Series editor Mitch Tulloch and a team of System Center experts provide concise technical guidance as they step you through key design concepts, criteria, and tasks.
The System Center Operations Manager data warehouse stores many objects, making it possible to report on performance, availability, configuration, and security. You can use data collected by Operations Manager for issue tracking, awareness, planning, and forecasting, all of which are important factors for maintaining and managing your environment. But understanding what to report on and how to do so is what actually contributes to the stability of your infrastructure. If you're not using the data you collect about your environment, you're simply wasting space. If you use Operations Manager to monitor your environment, whether your infrastructure or a public, private, or hybrid cloud, this book is a good resource to help you understand the basics of reporting and how to build queries and stored procedures for your reports. It can also help you understand the various elements of Operations Manager management packs that are used when you create reports.
System Center Service Manager 2010 offers enterprises a complete, integrated platform for adopting and automating service management best practices, such as those found in ITIL and Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF). Now, there’s a comprehensive, independent reference and technical guide to this powerful product. A team of expert authors offers step-by-step coverage of related topics in every feature area, organized to help IT professionals quickly plan, design, implement, and use Service Manager 2010. After introducing the product and its relationship with the rest of Microsoft’s System Center suite, the authors present authoritative coverage of Service Manager’s capabilities for incident and problem resolution, change control, configuration management, and compliance. Readers will also find expert guidance for integrating Service Manager with related Microsoft technologies. This book is an indispensable resource for every IT professional planning, installing, deploying, and/or administering Service Manager, including ITIL, MOF, and other IT consultants; system administrators; and developers creating customized solutions. • Understand Service Manager’s architecture and components • Discover how Service Manager supports ITIL and MOF processes • Accurately scope and specify your implementation to reflect organizational needs • Plan to provide redundancy, ensure scalability, and support virtualization • Design, deploy, and maintain Service Manager with security in mind • Use Service Manager’s consoles and portals to provide the right resources to each user • Create complete service maps with Service Manager’s business services • Fully automate incident management and ticketing • Implement best processes for identifying and addressing root causes of problems • Systematically manage the life cycle of changes • Use Service Manager to strengthen governance, risk management, and compliance • Customize Service Manager’s data layer, workflows, and presentation layer • Use management packs to simplify service desk customization • Make the most of Service Manager’s reporting and dashboards
Microsoft System Center Enterprise Suite Unleashed is the first and only definitive real-world guide to the entire Microsoft System Center Enterprise Suite. It brings together tips, tricks, best practices, and lessons learned by top consultants who’ve deployed System Center in some of the world’s largest enterprises and most successful small businesses. Drawing on years of early adopter and production experience, Rand Morimoto, Chris Amaris, and their team cover the entire System Center lifecycle and its components for system configuration, operations management, data protection, virtual machine management, help desk support, change management, asset control, capacity planning, and mobile device management. You’ll learn about individual components and how to integrate them to build automated, exceptionally efficient managed environments. For smaller businesses, the book also presents Microsoft’s streamlined, lower-cost IT management offering, System Center Essentials 2010. Use System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to image, update, manage, and support servers and clients Proactively monitor your systems to identify and fix problems before they fail Use System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 to provide reliable, timely backup/recovery Implement and manage all aspects of virtualization, including virtual guest sessions on both Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware Make the most of System Center Service Manager 2010’s integrated tools for managing help desks, incidents, assets, and changes Use System Center Capacity Planner to properly size, procure, and deploy new systems Remotely track, secure, patch, update, and support mobile devices with System Center Mobile Device Manager Simplify small business IT management with System Center Essentials 2010’s wizards and auto-configuration components
An essential guide on the latest version of Microsoft's server management tool Microsoft's powerful Mastering System Center 2012 Operations Manager introduces many exciting new and enhanced feature sets that allow for large-scale management of mission-critical servers. This comprehensive guide provides invaluable coverage to help organizations monitor their environments across computers, network, and storage infrastructures while maintaining efficient and effective service levels across their applications. Provides intermediate and advanced coverage of all aspects of Systems Center 2012 Operations Manager, including designing, planning, deploying, managing, maintaining, and scripting Operations Manager Offers a hands-on approach by providing many real-world scenarios to show you how to use the tool in various contexts Anchors conceptual explanations in practical application Mastering System Center 2012 Operations Manager clearly shows you how this powerful server management tool can best be used to serve your organization's needs.
NOTE: This title is also available as a free eBook. It is offered for sale in print format as a convenience. Get a head start evaluating System Center 2012 R2 - with technical insights from a Microsoft MVP and members of the System Center product team. This guide introduces new features and capabilities, with scenario-based advice on how the platform can meet the needs of your business. Get the high-level overview you need to begin preparing your deployment now. Preview new features and enhancements, including: Virtual Machine Manager App Controller Configuration Manager Data Protection Manager Operations Manager Advisor Service Manager Orchestrator
This is the first comprehensive Operations Manager 2012 technical resource for every IT implementer and administrator. Building on their bestselling OpsMgr 2007 book, three Microsoft System Center Cloud and Data Center Management MVPs thoroughly illuminate major improvements in Microsoft’s newest version–including new enhancements just added in Service Pack 1. You’ll find all the information you need to efficiently manage cloud and datacenter applications and services in even the most complex environment. The authors provide up-to-date best practices for planning, installation, migration, configuration, administration, security, compliance, dashboards, forecasting, backup/recovery, management packs, monitoring including .NET monitoring, PowerShell automation, and much more. Drawing on decades of enterprise and service provider experience, they also offer indispensable insights for integrating with your existing Microsoft and third-party infrastructure. Detailed information on how to... Plan and execute a smooth OpsMgr 2012 deployment or migration Move toward application-centered management in complex environments Secure OpsMgr 2012, and assure compliance through Audit Collection Services Implement dashboards, identify trends, and improve forecasting Maintain and protect each of your OpsMgr 2012 databases Monitor virtually any application, environment, or device: client-based, .NET, distributed, networked, agentless, or agent-managed Use synthetic transactions to monitor application performance and responsiveness Install UNIX/Linux cross-platform agents Integrate OpsMgr into virtualized environments Manage and author management packs and reports Automate key tasks with PowerShell, agents, and alerts Create scalable management clouds for service provider/multi-tenant environments Use OpsMgr 2012 Service Pack 1 with Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012