Category Archives: System Center 2012 SP1
#SCVMM TEAM Blogpost : Setting up a Highly-Available VMM 2012 R2 Environment #sysctr
~ John Patterson | Program Manager | Microsoft
This article will guide you through the recommended way to setup and configure a typical, highly available (HA) System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) installation. Topics we’ll cover include the following:
- Overview of a VMM 2012 Environment
- What We Will Be Installing
- The VMM Service Account
- The Container in AD DS for Distributed Key Management
- The VMM Failover Cluster
- Installing Highly Available VMM
You can read more about John Patterson blogpost about SCVMM (HA) here on the Team Blog
I Wish you all the Best and a Happy New Year ! #sysctr #Azure #Hyperv #SCVMM #SQL #Office365 #HybridCloud #Winserv
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I wish you all the best and Happiness in 2015 !
#Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 DPM Scale-Out Protection #sysctr #SCDPM #Azure #HybridCloud
High Level Design System Center 2012 R2 Backup with Azure
In this fast Hybrid Cloud world where a lot is changing, backing up your data is important for Enterprise organisations.
With System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager you can do a lot. I made a High Level Design of our
System Center 2012 R2 DPM POD’s ( Dell PowerEdge R620 Server with MD1200 SAS Storage Enclosures ).
For the first time we skipped to buy a Tape Library for long time protection, we now backup to Microsoft Azure Backup Vault storage for long time protection. So we have no tape management any more.
When you have more System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager Servers in your Datacenter, you can think of Scale-Out protection where you are more flexibel in your Datacenter to save your data.
Here you can read more about System Center 2012 R2 DPM Scale-Out protection
System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) offers backup to Azure for long term protection by leveraging Azure Backup. The first step in configuring DPM-A (DPM backup to Azure) is to register the DPM server to the Azure Backup vault. This article explains how the registration process is greatly simplified and enhanced with Update rollup UR4 for DPM.
Till Update Rollup 3 (UR3), users were required to generate a self-signed certificate and upload this certificate to the backup vault through the portal. During the registration process, the certificate was used to register the server to the backup vault. While this process ensured security, it was a bit overwhelming.
With UR4, registration of the DPM server to the Azure Backup vault is simplified without compromising on the security by using a concept called “vault credential”. A vault credential is an authentication entity that can be downloaded from the backup vault on the portal. The vault credential is valid for 48 hours from the downloaded time and can only be used during the registration process to authenticate the server with the backup vault.
Here you can read more on Simplified workflow to configure backup to Azure from DPM
To Protect SQL Server 2014 using DPM 2012 R2
Two Powerful ways to use Azure to Back Up your Enterprise
Keep thinking of “how to save your Data”
UPDATE : Microsoft System Center 2012 Management Pack for Microsoft Azure #sysctr #SCOM #Azure
Update System Center Management Pack for Microsoft Azure Fabric :
| Oct 2014 | Fix for an issue in version 1.1.42.0, where Azure VMs do not persist on the “Virtual machines” tab when you click OK and reopen the template UI. This happens when you configure Azure monitoring using the template. |
The Management Pack for Microsoft Azure enables you to monitor the availability and performance of Azure fabric resources that are running on Microsoft Azure. The management pack runs on a specified server pool and then uses various Microsoft Azure APIs to remotely discover and collect instrumentation information about a specified Microsoft Azure resource, such as a Cloud Service, Storage, or Virtual Machines. The Management Pack for Microsoft Azure provides no functionality on import. For each Microsoft Azure subscription that contains Azure resources you want to monitor, you must configure discovery and monitoring by first using the Microsoft Azure wizard in the administration section of the Operations Console, then the Microsoft Azure Monitoring template in the authoring section of the Operations Console. For more information, see Configuring the Management Pack for Microsoft Azure Fabric.
After configuration, the Management Pack for Microsoft Azure Fabric offers the following functionality:
• Discovers Microsoft Azure Cloud services.
• Provides status of each role instance.
• Collects and monitors performance information per role instance.
• Collects and monitors Windows events per role instance
• Collects and monitors the .NET Framework trace messages from each role instance.
• Grooms performance, event, and the .NET Framework trace data from Microsoft Azure storage.
• Changes the number of role instances.
• Discovers Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines
• Provides status of each role instance of the Virtual Machine
• Discovers Microsoft Azure Storage
• Monitors availability and size of each Storage and optionally alerts
• Discover relationships between discovered Azure resources, to see which other resources a particular Azure resource uses. This information is then displayed in a topology dashboard
• Monitors management and cloud service certificates and alerts if the certificates are about to expire
• Includes a new Distributed Application template that lets you create distributed applications that span Azure as well as on-premise resources, for Hybrid monitoring scenarios.
• Includes a set of dashboards for the Hybrid monitoring scenarios
Monitoring a Large Number of Azure Instances
The Operations Manager Management Pack monitors memory usage of the proxy agent. If you are monitoring more than 500 Microsoft Azure instances from a particular agent, you should increase the threshold for the Monitoring Host Private Bytes Threshold monitor to 350 MB or higher.
Prerequisites
The following requirements must be met to run this Management Pack:
• You must have an Operations Manager 2012 SP1 or later environment, this Management Pack will not import on Operations Manager 2007 R2 or Operations Manager 2012 RTM.
• At least one machine in your server pool must have internet connectivity in order to be able to communicate with Microsoft Azure
• Microsoft Azure Diagnostics must be enabled. For more information about Microsoft Azure Diagnostics, see Collect Logging Data by Using Microsoft Azure Diagnostics
• Microsoft Azure Diagnostics must be configured to forward diagnostic data to a Microsoft Azure storage. For more information about configuring Microsoft Azure Diagnostics, see Transferring Diagnostic Data to Microsoft Azure Storage
• If you create an Azure subscription on a console computer that is not connected to the Internet – even when all management servers in the group are connected to the Internet, you will receive the following exception:
Severity: Warning
Message: Could not get subscription details
System.Exception: Azure Management REST request is failed. Method:GET URI:https://management.core.windows.net/a906c760-2c06-4af1-9ef0-0fc7309476b7 StatusCode:0, ErrorCode: ErrorMessage: Exception:The remote name could not be resolved: ‘management.core.windows.net’
Important
The connection string for Microsoft Azure Diagnostics must be specified in the service configuration file (.cscfg) and should not be hardcoded in the application. By default, the Management Pack for Microsoft Azure Applications references the DiagnosticsConnectionString setting name in the service configuration file. If a different name is used in the service configuration file, you must override the Diagnostics Storage Account Setting Name parameter for Microsoft Azure Hosted Service Total Discovery.
You must manually ensure that the prerequisites are met. The management pack does not validate that prerequisites are met.
You can download the System Center Management Pack for Microsoft Azure Fabric here
JOIN System Center Universe 2014 Europe #sysctr #Hyperv #Azure #SCVMM #HybridCloud
Microsoft Cmdlet Reference Download for System Center 2012 #sysctr #Powershell
This page lists the Microsoft Powershell Cmdlet Reference downloads that are available for System Center 2012 components :
Download here the Cmdlet Reference for System Center 2012 Suite
Awesome Free E-Book Building a Virtualized Network Solution #sysctr #SCVMM #Hyperv #NVGRE #SDN
Microsoft System Center: Building a Virtualized Network Solution
Mitch Tulloch with Nigel Cain, Alvin Morales, Michel Luescher, Damian Flynn
February 2014
136 pages
Mitch Tulloch with Nigel Cain, Alvin Morales, Michel Luescher, Damian Flynn
February 2014
136 pages
This book is geared to private and hybrid cloud architects preparing to design and build a virtualized network solution based on Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1, or later. Written by experts on the Microsoft System Center team and with Microsoft MVP Mitch Tulloch as series editor, this title focuses on architecture and design.
You can download “Building a Virtualized Network Solution” here
AWESOME Free E-Book 🙂
#Microsoft Cmdlet Reference Download for System Center 2012 #sysctr
NEW Website System Center User Group Netherlands SCUG.NL #sysctr #SCVMM #Cloud
Thank you Taco van Gerven for this Great Website !
I’m very Proud and honored to be an Member of the Dutch System Center User Group of the Netherlands for the community together with this Great Team :
- Brenda Kager
- Helmer Zandbergen
- Robert Smit
- Ronny de Jong
- James van den Berg
Cloud and Datacenter Management Blog 