The reason System Center applies to non-enterprise environments: full visibility and control capabilities

Travis Morrison is a high-quality beer maker at the New Belgium beer factory in Fort Collins, Colorado, and is particularly famous for its Fat Tire Ale beer) Senior system administrator, he has a direct understanding of the powerful functions of comprehensive network visibility. New Belgium is a well-known enterprise, but IT is definitely not what we call "Enterprise". IT needs to be able to access its IT infrastructure continuously and reliably. The company handles customer matters through its servers and workstations, ensures product delivery and manages complex production plans.

Not long ago, Morrison was busy dealing with repeated problems in a New Belgium sales application, a complicated solution, integrates SQL Server, IIS, and internal batch processing functions.

This sales application stops running when IT encounters problems. IT often takes the IT department a whole day to restore its services. New Belgium employees cannot handle customer issues. The sales team cannot view the sales records or find the data required to remind customers of the trend changes. Obviously, this is not a good thing for enterprises. After a series of painful and costly shutdown events, Morrison believes that he needs to take the initiative to fundamentally solve the problem before the user notices it. After researching multiple products, he decided to use System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. "In fact, the value this system has created for us within 24 hours offset its cost. With a little help, we completed the task of starting and running servers, installing proxies throughout the network, and enabling pager alarms within one day, "said Morrison.

"At about 3 o'clock that night, we received a call and found that the database space for the sales application was insufficient. This is a problem that has always existed. The difference is that this time we are able to shut down SQL Server to provide it with more space needed, and the beer factory has not paid the price to shut down the whole day again, "said Morrison, new Belgium immediately received a return on investment from Operations Manager.

Proactive monitoring of non-enterprise environments

The following are some of the reasons for the special interest of morerson. New Belgium is not a typical enterprise customer of System Center. New Belgium operates only one beer factory in one place, even though sales staff are traveling across the United States. Therefore, IT is not an enterprise IT organization in the general sense, but closer to small and medium enterprises with small and medium scale demands. However, from the perspective of high-availability IT infrastructure, New Belgium is very similar to a typical enterprise. It requires nearly 100% running time to implement core services, such as email, file server, and customer database. It needs to know when the problem occurs, and it is best to discover the problem before the user calls and complains. IT requires a comprehensive monitoring solution that works normally in its heterogeneous IT environment, although mostly Microsoft products.

The Operations Manager software package is designed to implement a solution suitable for the Mori environment. Operations Manager creates a platform to monitor system behavior of servers, workstations, and Other endpoints such as storage and network. Operations Manager infrastructure can be expanded to meet network needs of any scale. Operations Manager is only a part of Microsoft's System Center product portfolio. Others include System Center Configuration Manager for Configuration management), System Center Virtual Machine Manager for unified Virtual Machine Management), and System Center Data Protection Manager for enterprise quality backup and recovery ).

The number of 350 users and 40 servers in the Morrison environment), Operations Manager can be installed on one server to meet the performance requirements. Install an SQL Server instance on the same Server or another Server in the environment to store Operations Manager monitoring data. Most other monitoring solutions use a central location to merge and analyze Event Logs and system performance data. Operations Manager differs significantly from these solutions. Operations Manager uses the management package (MP) to further process this process. These MP are designed by Microsoft and other product vendors for their own hardware and software. They are actually rule sets used to filter incoming raw data, so that administrators can only be reminded of the actions they are interested in.

Consider the types of behaviors that your IT organization needs to know as soon as possible. Is the disk storage space on the server insufficient? Does the event log entry contain information about the failed application? Has the performance of important servers reduced to an acceptable threshold? Timely understanding of the situation when these behaviors occur can help your organization solve these problems before they affect the business.

However, today's IT infrastructure is extremely complex, especially for non-enterprise organizations with small IT teams. This means that IT professionals must be proficient in many of the technologies involved in the infrastructure, not just a few technologies. For any IT professional, IT is almost impossible to find out the root cause of each problem, although IT is expected.

This is the real role of MP. MP is usually created by a product development team or consultant with hundreds of thousands of successful experiences to filter out the actions that are important to administrators from raw data. By using overwrites and thresholds, IT organizations can customize the MP to deliver the type of information they need most. For example, if you are not very concerned about whether the processor usage exceeds 80%, but want to know immediately when the usage reaches 95%, you can customize a threshold value in the Operations Manager monitor to achieve this sensitivity. By setting alert feature coverage and applying this coverage to each server or the entire environment, you can adjust specific alerts for server behavior.

IT professionals can even use Operations Manager to monitor non-Microsoft components, such as the network itself. In Bynet Data Communications Ltd., Operations Manager network integration quantitatively refuted users' complaints about the slow network. The company's management solution expert Idan Yona said. "We just deployed Operations Manager and installed it, which helped us a lot. Operations Manager is deployed for a specific purpose, that is, to estimate the network experience of remote office users. After the system was started, we quickly collected network statistics for comparing the user experience of the Headquarters site and branch office. The data shows that remote users think that the network is too slow. Therefore, we have canceled a major WAN Upgrade Project. The result is that the company saved more than $60,000, "he said.

You can obtain the Microsoft MP directory online, which provides detailed information about the monitoring types supported by each MP. MP has many numbers and types. Even the most heterogeneous organization can find the appropriate integration that meets its needs, even if it is integrated into a third-party technology that is usually not associated with Microsoft. Many mpps can be downloaded for free, while others can be purchased from a specific vendor. Each MP can provide a set of data to the Operations Manager infrastructure to proactively send alerts when a problem occurs.

From monitoring to operations

To achieve the goal of full control, the monitoring environment only completes part of the work. The second important feature is to make changes on servers and workstations in a traceable, repeatable, and predictable manner. If the organization arranges technical personnel for the user's help desk to solve software installation, common troubleshooting or patch management problems, it will find that the management fails during small network expansion. This requires too many manual operations and cannot be performed repeatedly on a large number of computers. You need some centralized tools to deploy software, updates, and even complete operating systems to any number of computers at the same time.

Eric Schmidt is a senior System engineer at a medium-sized defense contractor in Colorado. For him, System Center Configuration Manager provides security for environments that contain nearly 2,000 desktop systems. If this product is not used, this environment is not safe, he said.

"Before using [Configuration Manager], we tried many different repair solutions with different results. Some solutions are ideal for patching Microsoft products, but cannot deploy updates that are not Microsoft software. Our environment has multiple owners and multiple IT organizations on the same network. Therefore, these solutions are not suitable for our organizational model. Some solutions require a lot of manual operations and do not have the unified reporting function. These are the most useless solutions. We believe that in the worst case, we only meet 20% of the patch requirements. The situation must be changed ." Configuration Manager solves Schmidt's problem by implementing an automatic update management infrastructure and collaborating with multiple IT teams of the company. "With [Configuration Manager], we can create multiple computer sets, each of which is managed by a group of specified IT administrators," he said. "Because [Configuration Manager] is integrated locally with Windows Server Update Services, every IT team can easily determine which patches are useful to their computers. If we find that very important updates need to be deployed to all computers immediately, we only need to push them to the 'all computers 'collection ."

Therefore, Configuration Manager creates a Dynamic Computer Group through a set. In other solutions, the Administrator creates a group based on the computer name or other static metrics. Configuration Manager is different and creates a set based on the dynamic characteristics of each computer. Creating a group of computers based on their locations in the IP subnet is as easy as creating a group for "All computers with Microsoft Office Word 2007 installed. When the features of a computer change over time, the administrator can regularly add and delete the computer in the set. This dynamic nature is the main advantage of Configuration Manager. The set is layered, so the administrator can create a child set that uses more constraints. In Schmidt's case, the top-level set is related to the IT team owner of the computer, and each team has the right to create a child set under IT.

Although Configuration Manager is ideal for deploying Microsoft updates, its powerful feature is that it can also handle software or Configuration changes for non-Microsoft products. Schmidt used this feature in his environment. "With [Configuration Manager], we can deploy updates to Rational ClearCase or Adobe Acrobat with the same infrastructure as the deployment patch. As long as the administrator knows how to create a silent package for automatic distribution, people can basically deploy any changes to any number of computers at the same time, "he said.

Brita Rood is an IT system analysis expert in belveyou, wa. He also uses Configuration Manager to deploy non-Microsoft products. "We use the software distribution feature of Configuration Manager to push third-party software products to computers. For example, it may take an hour to manually install a product. We can enable automatic installation and push it to more than 70 clients overnight. This saves time and a lot of money because we don't have to hire external service providers to assist with installation, "she said.

Configuration Manager's change management solution is scalable, so it can be used in small environments or large enterprise environments with tens of thousands of users and hundreds of sites. Regardless of the Environment size, the same process and operation are used when the deployment is changed. Do I need to deploy the software or the entire operating system to a group of computers? You only need to use local or third-party tools to create the installation package, and then inject the package into the Configuration Manager infrastructure. You can use the console to combine deployment packages, broadcasts, and collections to create change events. In this case, the set defines the computers on which the package is to be deployed, and broadcasting determines the deployment schedule. By using the broadcasting and associated maintenance window in Configuration Manager, the administrator can schedule the deployment only after the following non-active time periods.

After the software is deployed, you need to know the software installation location and how to troubleshoot the software faults. For medium IT environments, IT is usually tested repeatedly in many passive mode environments, and recorded with paper and pen to understand their hardware and software lists. Using Configuration Manager's inventory function with the software count and asset intelligence function can almost make this process completely automatic.

Many of today's tools can ask servers and workstations to determine their hardware and software composition. Although useful, this information is only a static representation. Configuration Manager's software count function can also determine which users and computers are actually using installed software. With the software count, IT organizations can find unused software licenses and reclaim them for use by others rather than purchasing them. By integrating this feature with the smart database of Configuration Manager's built-in assets, IT organizations can match the features of installed software with specific products, versions, and versions. As a result, an available reporting engine is formed to accurately determine which types of software are installed on all managed computers.

Using these features, the city quickly "calibrated" its license to avoid wasting unused licenses, Rood said. "Using the reporting feature of asset intelligence and software count helps us determine the use of specific software, especially third-party software, to determine our license needs ."

Many organizations also use Configuration Manager to deploy the entire operating system to the managed workstation. For many organizations that want to migrate to a modern Microsoft operating system, this complex and usually costly activity may be a huge obstacle. The reason for this complexity lies in the deployment itself. Traditional upgrade operations require technicians to process workstations one by one. They usually use image software or script-based solutions. Either way, user data in the old system installation will not be saved to the new system. Therefore, the technician must work with the user to ensure the complete and correct migration of the user's specific settings, if it is a workstation, then "personal Settings ").

The operating system deployment (OSD) function of Configuration Manager is built into basic products and provides a comprehensive approach for operating system management and deployment. Administrators can use OSD to create a standard installation for Windows operating systems, which can be installed on almost any desktop computer, portable computer, or server. With the built-in plug-and-play components provided by each modern Windows operating system, device drivers can be tailored to each type of hardware.

The device driver is only part of the operating system deployment. As mentioned above, it is also important to maintain the user's personal information when upgrading the operating system or refreshing the damaged workstation. The OSD function of Configuration Manager can automatically uninstall user settings before refreshing the computer. After the operating system is installed, these user settings will be re-applied. From the user's perspective, the final operating system looks very similar to the "old" Operating System instance, and the user can continue to work soon.

Cleber Marques is a technical consultant for Sao Paulo's 2 S Inova çç es Tecnol ógicas. He said he has used this level of automation technology for many times. "By using Configuration Manager, our customers can distribute Windows Vista to all of their 1,000 or more desktop computers, and within a few days they can coordinate with the headquarters office," he said.

Automated virtual management

Operations Manager and Configuration Manager are applicable to the physical server field. Now many IT organizations also need to handle virtual server problems. At present, virtualization seems to be everywhere, and any scale of the environment is capable of switching from a physical computer to a virtual machine. Enterprises that used Virtualization in the early days did not have much choice on the virtual platform. But now, their interest in Virtualization has increased dramatically, and the number of optional virtual platforms has also increased. You may think that when it comes to the feature set provided by the Virtual Machine Monitoring Program itself, it is difficult for platform providers to compete in the virtual war. Currently, the most intense competition is the tool used to help manage virtual infrastructure.

Therefore, Microsoft chose to adopt a multi-platform approach in its Virtual management solution System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM. When using VMM, the environment is not limited to managing virtual machines on a single Virtual Machine Monitoring Program. On the same console screen, IT administrators can manage the virtual infrastructure composed of Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESX, and vCenter products.

This means that the Hyper-V infrastructure can be easily managed in the same VMM console when VMware products are used in an earlier virtualization environment. Console view when connecting Hyper-V and ESX hosts. We can see that there is no difference between the two virtual machine monitoring programs when they display the "host group. In VMM, the Administrator does not need to consider the basic virtual platform when calling the operation.

To deploy a Virtual Machine (VM) in a Microsoft environment, you must install the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Monitoring Program, which can be found in the Windows Server 2008 operating system of the local machine. After the Hyper-V role is installed in a Windows Server 2008 instance, the Server can carry as many VMS as possible when resources permit.

The local Windows failover cluster provides high availability for hybrid environments. This function is an independent Hyper-V component provided for the virtual servers participating in the cluster. In a cluster, when a problem occurs, the VMS of multiple Hyper-V hosts can perform failover to the slave host. If you have not used a Windows failover cluster in some operating system versions, you should understand it now. As the installation and management are improved, you do not need to pay attention to the cluster after setting it in the environment.

Both Windows failover clusters and VMM are not required to manage Hyper-v vms. They are only used to make management easier, especially when the number of Hyper-V hosts increases. With VMM, you can manage Hyper-V hosts and Their VMS as units, perform operations on a host or VM, or perform operations on all hosts and VMS at the same time. In fact, for virtual environments, the automation types supported by VMM are the same as those provided by Configuration Manager and Operations Manager for individual server instances.

Tim Clauson is the IT manager in Fort arsburg, Oregon. He said he enjoyed the flexibility of VMM a long time ago after trying another solution but ultimately failed. "After two weeks of [on-site] work, two consultants from [another virtual platform Vendor] still cannot start any virtual machine. We finally asked them to go home and focus on Hyper-V and VMM. In fact, six hours later, we started and ran our first batch of virtual machines. As one of the only two IT staff in the city, I had to become a technical specialist but not proficient in any category. VMM is easy to understand and easy to use, "he said.

It turns out that even in Beta, the built-in physical to virtual (P2V) function of VMM is extremely useful, Clauson said. "We like the P2V feature of VMM, which is perfect for use. We hope to adopt this technology early. Therefore, we use the P2V feature of VMM Beta to virtualize the Exchange 2007 production server to Hyper-V. P2V was very successful for the first time. Since then, we have been running the email service on Hyper-V, "he added.

Clauson said that since the first installation, he has successfully virtualized the city's SQL Server and other services to Hyper-V and a fully licensed VMM instance. In addition, since the original plan to purchase other virtualization technology funds, he can use these funds to really need the project. This is good for bridging the tax gap and lowering the city budget, he added.

Enterprise Backup for non-enterprise environments

The fourth System Center solution that is not widely used by IT organizations is Data Protection Manager (DPM ). This product is relatively new. Recently, an important version of R2. IT provides a platform to back up servers and desktop computers in the entire IT environment. DPM is integrated with other Microsoft and System Center products and Flexible backup of server data to disks and tapes, which is better than other backup solutions.

DPM focuses on disk-to-disk backup, which is especially useful in non-enterprise environments where it is too expensive and unnecessary to use a large-scale tape array that supports robots. Currently, the cost of disk drives is dropping sharply every day. Backing up important servers to disks rather than tapes has many unique advantages, this includes the ability to quickly recover individual files or the entire server from disk backup.

With continuous data protection integration with Microsoft and third-party applications such as Exchange Server, SQL Server, or SharePoint Server, DPM protects data in almost real time to avoid corruption or deletion. IT managers can set short-term and long-term data protection targets and enable multiple data protection targets as needed. In addition, because DPM is a member of the System Center series, administrators can monitor its behavior on the local machine through Operations Manager.

"DPM keeps the data it captures, for example, from Exchange or SQL transaction logs) up-to-date. To make it lose data, you have to use a dot. If data is indeed lost, the amount of data is extremely small, "said James Conrad, an Accusource consultant who regularly helps customers with DPM installation.

Although disk-to-disk backup seems to facilitate rapid recovery, most organizations need to archive data to off-site storage. Typically, this means transferring the tape to an off-site storage device. DPM supports disk-to-disk and back up to tape media, changing this workflow.

"For performance considerations, many people use DPM to create the architecture from disk to tape. In this way, you can immediately recover lost files from disk backup because these files are available directly in the backup disk, "Conrad said. "This eliminates the need to search for and mount the correct tape. If you need long-term off-site data storage, you can use DPM to automatically back up the disk to tape and copy the data to the tape for other purposes. This multi-step approach eliminates common performance bottlenecks in tape-only solutions ."

Appropriate visibility and control capabilities

The four main components of System Center provide monitoring, configuration control, virtual platform management, and backup support to meet the needs of almost all IT operations. Although the System Center focuses on large enterprise environments, this product is still applicable to medium-sized enterprises that account for a significant proportion in the industry. If your organization wants to become an IT organization that responds quickly, you can solve the problem when the problem occurs, and identify the problem when the user calls and complains, please consider using Microsoft's System Center solution, achieve full visibility and control capabilities.

Greg ShieldsHe is an MVP and a partner of Concentrated Technology. ConcentratedTech.com provides Greg's "Everything goes" tips and tips.

Source

Source: Microsoft TechNet