2. About Kristian Nese
CTO at Lumagate, vTSP at Microsoft
Working in IT since 2006
MCP, MCTS, MCITP, MVP
Experienced with virtualization, cloud computing and IT-infrastructure
Microsoft Most Valuable Professional – System Center Cloud and Datacenter
Management
Author of «Cloud Computing – Med Virtual Machine Manager 2012»
Technical Editor of «Microsoft Private Cloud Computing» and several others,
including «Hyper-V 2012 Cookbook»
3. AGENDA
o Cloud Computing – Repetition
o Cloud considerations: Addressed with Windows Server 2012
o Configure and Deploy
o Monitoring and Operating
o Service Delivery and Automation
o Q&A
4. What is Cloud Computing?
Deployment
Hybrid Cloud
Models
Private Cloud Community Public Cloud
Cloud
Software – as a Service
Service Infrastructure – as a Service Platform - as a Service
(PaaS) (SaaS)
(IaaS)
Models
On Demand Self Service
Essential
Characteristics Broad Network Access Elasticity
Resource Pooling Measured Service
5. Public Cloud
• Globally available to many customers and
organizations
• Massive scale
• SLA based
• Pay-as-you-go
• Can help to reduce cost (TCO)
• Microsoft, Amazon and Google
6. Private Cloud
• Dedicated to an organization
• Either locally or externally
• Easier to secure than Public Cloud
• Faster migration
• Same essential characteristics as a Public
Cloud
• The difference is ownership, control and
security
7. Service Models IaaS PaaS SaaS
Applications Applications Applications
Org
Data Data Data
Runtime Runtime Runtime
Org
Middleware Middleware Middleware
Cloud
O/S O/S O/S
Cloud
Virtualization Virtualization Virtualization
Servers Servers Servers
Cloud
Storage Storage Storage
Networking Networking Networking
8. Building your own cloud just
got a lot easier with
Windows Server 2012
12. System Center Helps Deliver IT as a Service
Configure
Deploy
App Controller Orchestrator
Virtual Machine Manager
Service Operations Manager
Service
Delivery
Model
and Configuration
Self Service Manager
Automation
Data Protection
App Manager DC
Owner Admin
Service Manager Service Manager
Monitor
Operate
Service Delivery and
Application Management Infrastructure Management
Automation
14. Configure and Deploy
Infrastructure/Fabric
Microsoft System Center
Virtual Machine Manager
Virtual Servers
Deploy Configure
Microsoft System Center
Configuration Manager
Physical Servers
15. Configure and Deploy
Zero to Hyper–V Cluster
Virtual Machine
Manager Server
Configure
Boot and Install
Hyper–V Cluster
Bare
Metal
Server
Storage Network
16. Configure and Deploy
Constructing the Private Cloud Standardized
services
Development
Production Delegated capacity
Assign dedicated and shared resources
Cloud abstraction
Logical and
standardized
Diverse
infrastructure
Production Datacenter One Datacenter Two
Development
19. Configure and Deploy
Standardized Application Provisioning
Service template (Multi-tier .NET applications)
Web tier Application tier Data tier
Scale-out and health policy Scale-out and health policy Scale-out and health policy
Internet Information Service
Web Application App-V
Server server Data (SQL) SQL Server
(IIS) (IIS)
Hardware Operating Application Hardware Operating Application Hardware Operating Application
profile system profile profile system profile profile system profile
profile profile profile
Compute Storag Networ
e k
20. Configure and Deploy
Services in a heterogeneous environment
Virtual Machine Manager
Host Group
vCenter
Server
Microsoft Hyper-V VMware vSphere 5.1 Citrix XenServer 6.1
21. Configure and Deploy
Pending service
Life-Cycle Management of Services update
• Choose service
template from
library
• Deploy an instance
of the service
• Copy the service
template, update
version number, and Service Template
update virtual disk Service Template
v1.5v1.0
or application
• Publish the template
and set the service
to the new template
• Apply the update
while maintaining
availability of the
service by replacing
the virtual hard disk v1.
Deployed Service Instance Template Library
and redeploying the 5
0
application using
Upgrade Domains
22. DEMO
• Create Private Clouds with VMM
• Assign capacity to Self-Service Users and Tenants
• Exploring Services in VMM
24. Configure and Deploy
Managing applications across multiple clouds
Deplo Monito
y r
Hyper-V
Manag
e
Application
management
across private
and public
25. Configure and Deploy
Deep insight into application performance
Server-Side Code execution– Client-Side
level information
• Collect data from the .NET • Page load times and where
calls the time was spent (such as
• Application methods images, and CSS)
• Variables and parameters • JavaScript exceptions
• Types of calls being made,
• Data is collected by injecting
web methods, internal
custom JavaScript on the
execution, SQL commands
page
Rich visualization
26. Configure and Deploy
Open the conversation Server-side
monitoring shows
the application is
functioning
“The Network
“My application Client-side, looks good”
is running however, shows
there is a problem
slowly!”
“The servers
“The code are running
passed all fine”
testing” Application performance monitoring pinpoints
exactly where the issue is, reducing the mean time
to resolution
27. Configure and Deploy
Flexible, Dynamic, and Well-Managed Private Cloud
OPTIMIZED CONTROLLED STANDARDIZED RIGHT-SIZED
Help ensure that the Help protect your private Standardize your Report on the current
services running in your cloud infrastructure by approach to application utilization of your private
private cloud get the setting limits on your and OS updating. Use a cloud, trend usage over
resources they need, and clouds while ensuring the controlled process to time, and forecast future
that your cloud correct application update services through needs.
dynamically reallocates owners have access to service templates.
resources as demand their cloud resources.
changes.
28. Configure and Deploy
Create visibility into application performance
Create and publish
meaningful
dashboards
Deep application
insight
Rich visualization of
application performance and
business impact
32. Configure and Deploy Inbound to System Center
Bi-directional from Orchestrator
Integration Bi-directional for notifications/reporting
Bi-directional runbook integration
Virtual Machine Manager
Operations Manager
Service Manager
Orchestrator
Data Warehouse
Configuration Manager
Active Directory
Notifications via Exchange
LOB
Service
Third-Party
Manager
Management Tools
Automation commands issued toitems outbound notificationspopulated into CMDB workflows
Bi-directional connector forand and automation data executing automation
Configuration System Center, third-party tools, and line-of-business applications
Inbound automation activities and and reporting
33. Configure and Deploy
Service Delivery and Automation Architecture
Release Change Self-Service Operations Incident IT GRC
Management Management Management Management
Mobile Email Portal
Self Service Reporting and
data warehousing
Service catalog
CMDB Templates
Work Items
Knowledge
Standardization
Configuration
Items
Workflows
Third party
Automation management
tools
34. Configure and Deploy
Automated Request Fulfillment in Six Steps
Create a „New VM‟
request
Import deploy Build „New VM‟ Publish „New 4
VM request offering VM‟ to Service
CREATE
runbook and Catalog
data
1 2 3
INVOKE
MONITOR 5
6 Invoke
deploy VM
runbook
Monitor for new VM
created and
deployed
35. Configure and Deploy
Automate Remediation
Service Manager
IR2667
Orchestrator
Operations Manager Virtual Machine Manager
SQL Server 1 SQL Server 2
Data Protection
Manager
Goal:Frame how System Center 2012 enables delivering IT as a Service between the App Owner and DC Admin personas that we defined. Talking Points Considering the needs of the two types of roles we just discussed, let’s walk through the processes and capabilities that are required to deliver IT as a service and better satisfy the needs of both data center admins and application owners. As we do this, we’ll discuss how System Center makes it possible for you to work with your existing physical and virtual resources to better achieve this IT as a service state.If we think about the two personas we just discussed, let’s discuss the capabilities that are required to deliver IT as a service by using a hybrid computing model. <click> First, you need a “simple” self-service experience to let your application owners specify their requirements. For example, let’s suppose they want to provision a SharePoint service with the following specs: Has 3-tier .NET Framework architectureHas a set of configuration and deployment parameters to conform with (for example, perf thresholds, scale out rules, update domains)Needs 99.95% availability SLAAdheres to compliance/security controls around SOX/HIPAA Need on-demand reporting on key availability metrics that track against SLA<click> Next, you need a way to understand the topology and architecture of the application service in question. Anapplication that is deployed on an abstracted or cloud computing model is called a “service”. This would necessitate a “service model” that accurately binds the application’s architecture to the underlying resources where it will be hosted. The “service model” would be comprised of: Service definition information, deployed as “roles”. Roles are like DLLs, that is, a collection of code with an entry point that runs in its own virtual machineFront end: load-balanced stateless web serversMiddle worker tier: order processing, encodingBackend storage: SQL tables or filesService Configuration informationUpdate domainsAvailability domainsScale out rules<click> You will need a set of process automation capabilities to break down this application provisioning request into the enterprise change requests that need to be implemented. This could include setting up the underlying infrastructure and then a set of application configuration/release requests that need to be tracked (and ideally implemented with orchestrated automation).<click> Next you need a set of provisioning tools that actually configure and deploy the infra and application layers.<click> The underlying data center resources could be physical, virtual, private or public cloud as per the requirements that are dictated by the application’s service model.<click> After the underlying infrastructure and application service are deployed, they would immediately need to be “discovered” and monitored for reporting and health tracking.<click> There you see how the System Center 2012 components offer these life cycle management capabilities in combination to help you deliver hybrid IT as a service as per your organization’s requirements: App Controller would offer that self-service experience that allows your application owners manage their applications across private and public environments. Service Manager offers the standardized self-service catalog that defines “templates” for your applications and infrastructure. App Controller, Virtual Machine Manager, Service Manager, and Operations Manager work together to maintain the service model through the application service life cycle.Orchestrator and Service Manager offer orchestrated automation for the process workflows required to drive your provisioning and monitoring tools.Virtual Machine Manager and Configuration Manager can provision physical, virtual and cloud environments.Operations Manager (AVIcode capabilities will be built into Operations Manager) monitors your application services end to end and offers deep app insight to help you deliver predictable SLA.Your data center resources could be deployed anywhere from physical boxes to virtual to private to public with Windows Server/ Hyper-V and Windows Azure. However, to get to this agile self-service end-state, you will have to start with abstracting your infrastructure and allocating it appropriately so that your business units can deploy and manage their applications on top. Transition: So, how does System Center 2012 get you to this point where you can deliver IT as a service?Talking points:If we think about all the processes involved in delivering IT as a service, they can really be categorized into three buckets: Application Management: Deploying and operating your business applications. Service Delivery & Automation: Standardizing and automating service and resource provisioning, managing change and access controls, etc.Infrastructure Management: Deploying and operating all the underlying infrastructure on which your business applications and services run.
<Build note: After configure, make single bare–metal server disappear and three server cluster shows up with triangles connecting it to storage and network.>Physical ServerManage multiple hypervisors – Hyper–V, VMware, Citrix XenServerIntegration with remote management – IPMI/DCMI, SMASH, iLO Bare–metal provisioning – from bare metal to Hyper–VCluster creation with storage provisioningNetworkDefine network using Logical NetworksAssign IP, VIP, and MAC from poolsIntegrate with load–balancersStorageDiscover storage device to VM relationshipClassify storage according to capabilitiesAssign new storage to Hyper–V clusterProvision new storage with VM deploymentISV Partner: Talking points for the latest information on these partners and customer ready collateral go to http://tool.microsoftsca.com.Note: Each partner logo contains a hyperlink to more information about the partnerSanbolic: Self-Service Storage ManagementAPC: Power & Cooling ManagementF5: Network Appliance Management Sanbolic: Melio enables shared access to critical data, independent of the underlying storage hardware. Melio and Hyper-V enable a cost-effective, scalable, and highly available private cloud. A powerful abstraction layer alleviates dependence on expensive and complex SAN. Application-to-disk awareness enables application agility and performance. APC: APC provides a : ManagementPackproviding automatic discovery and organization of physical infrastructure within System Center Operations Manager. A PROPackfor automatic migration of virtual machines via System Center Virtual Machine Manager to healthy host environments in the event of an impact on the physical infrastructure.F5:F5 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2012 (SCOM 2012) reports health statistics for applications delivered through BIG-IP products as alerts within the SCOM management console. SCOM can also be used to enable/disable server nodes and updated BIG-IP traffic instructions simultaneously. : F5 offers five means of integration with System Center: Direct programming against our open API called iControl, PowerShell scripting, Microsoft .NET development, SCOM 2012 Management Pack and SCVMM 2012 Load-balancer Provider.
Discover:SMI-S support for array based discoveryExternal storage array, pools, logical units (LUN), storage groups, endpoints, and initiatorsLocal Host sidedisks, volumes, initiators (FC, iSCSI), portsClassify:Generate user defined capability of a storage Create tiers of storage definitionsAssociate a storage pool to the classificationAllocate:Control what storage consumed by hosts and clustersAssociate storage pools and logical units with a host group before assigning to clusterCreate new logical units from storage poolAssign:Expose new logical units to a host or clusterUnmasking operations, initialization of disk, creation of volumeCreates CSV automatically in the cluster caseCreate:LUN From available capacityWriteable snapshot of logical unitFull clone of logical unitAssociate a storage pool and/or logical unit to host group for consumption by hosts/clusters contained in host groupYou can provision LUNs, Snapshot LUNs, or Copy LUNs depending on need and capabilities of SANYou can assign to Hosts as LUNs, Passthrough disks, and Cluster Shared VolumesExpose iSCSI storage to host/cluster using VMM Creation of persistent sessionsPresent iSCSI array to existing host/clusterPresent host/cluster to existing iSCSI arraySupport for MultiPortPerView, AllPortsPerView, OnePortPerViewSimplify multi-path claiming of storage devicesUsing default MSDSMAutomatic creation of storage groupsStandalone host - per hostCluster – per node or per cluster
Private Cloud is hardware and resources grouping and provisioning designed to provide a unified structure in services allocation, offering opacity, elasticity, optimization, delegation of control, and capacity management.Before we create our private cloud, we need to prepare some resources that should be available to it.Host Groups: You must add the servers that host virtual machines into host groups. Hyper–V and Hyper–V Server 2008 SP2 and R2, VMware ESX / ESXi Server 3.5 and 4.1 and Citrix XenServer 5.6 with Feature Pack 1 can be used as a member of a host groups. For more information about host groups, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en–us/library/gg610645.aspx Library: To host the virtual machine templates, scripts, profiles, images in ISO format, and other resources, you need to add a shared network folder called Virtual Machine Manager Library Server. For more details about the Library Servers, see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en–us/library/gg610598.aspx Storage: The physical storage resources from the private cloud will be stored in the storages, which may be added, discovered, and even managed through Virtual MachineManager 2012. For more information about storage in Virtual Machine Manager, access http://technet.microsoft.com/en–us/library/gg610600.aspx Networking: You also can create and define logical networks, static IP and DHCP configuration, MAC pooling, and Load Balancers integration. These resources will be essential to private cloud configuration. For more information about the network in Virtual Machine Manager, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en–us/library/gg610596.aspx Goal: Position typical challenges that customers face in deploying their heterogeneous infrastructure, and the benefits that System Center 2012 provides to address those challengesTalking PointsCustomer challengesMost customers deal with a mix of physical and virtual resources they need to deploy and configure in an efficient way so they can get up and running as quickly as possible. We often hear comments like the following, related to discussions about infrastructure deployment:“I need to be able to quickly provision bare–metal servers for specific workload or service usage.”“I have different types of storage that have different costs, and I want to ensure that the correct storage is being used for my virtual machines.”“I have a complex networking environment, and I don’t want to expose that complexity to folks who don’t need to know it.”The Microsoft approachEasily administer storage classification, allocations, and access More than hypervisor management with Logical Network Abstractions with IP, and MAC Address Management, with Load Balancer SupportZero–to–cluster Microsoft Hyper–V deploymentBenefits we help customers realize (why they should care)Lower cost for deployment of infrastructureDecreased operational costsBetter utilization and tiering of storage infrastructureLess time waiting for other groups (like networking) to provide accessQuicker time to valueReduced effort and expenseStandardized and compliant
How do we handle dynamically changing workloads?As System Center notices that the workloads upon a particular hypervisor pass a threshold, they will automatically adjust the VM distribution to better handle the current load, and as we all know, this load will change depending on many factors (time of day/month, popularity of the application, seasonality, etc.) and you need to adjust the workloads throughout the day, and you don’t want to have to sit there and watch it all the time.Optimized configurationIncreased availabilityReduced power consumptionTalking points:VMM replaces the host load balancing available in earlier versions through Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO). This also features built–in Dynamic Optimization and Power Optimization. Dynamic Optimization is another new feature of VMM that keeps a cluster balanced for resource usage; Live Migration avoids VM downtime and the feature does not require Operations Manager. It supports Hyper–V, VMware and Citrix XenServer clusters. DO has two modes – manual and automatic, with the default being manual. The feature optimizes for CPU, memory, Disk I/O and Network I/O. It optimizes when resource usage goes above the DO threshold. There is a configurable level of aggressiveness … more aggressive = more migrations = more balanced. The default is least aggressive.Once a host group has Dynamic Optimization enabled, VMM live migrates VMs between hosts every 10 minutes (with the “low aggressiveness” setting—you can choose from high, medium and low) to balance the load. You can also manually optimize hosts for groups where Dynamic Optimization isn’t enabled.If a host group has Dynamic Optimization enabled, you can also activate Power Optimization. It optimizes for the same resources as in DO and optimizes when resource usage goes below PO threshold. What PO does is powers off and on the physical hosts when it can move guests elsewhere. It evacuates a host before powering off and ensures that evacuation will not cause other nodes to go above the DO threshold, or that powering off will not violate cluster quorum requirements. It leverages out–of–band management for power off/on. As long as VMM can communicate directly with the hosts, it will evacuate VMs and shut down hosts in a group during times of lower load. As the need arises, it can then power them on later. This feature is enabled 24x7 by default, but you can limit it to certain times and days.There is also Power Optimization, which extends DO and can only be enabled if DO is in automatic mode.
Goal of the slideRepresent how System Center 2012 simplifies application provisioning for private clouds by enabling a standardized approach.Drive CTA to identify a customer application(s) that might benefit from using capabilities like service templatesTalking points <Click> Through service templates, System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager offers you the ability to define standardized application blueprints, which can be used to automatically deploy application services to shared resource pools, thus simplifying application provisioning. Defining your application requirements with a repeatable construct like service templates makes provisioning faster and less error-prone.Service templates provide the blueprint for the application service, including specifications for the hardware, operating system, and application packages. System Center 2012 supports multiple package types for .NET applications, including MS Deploy for the web tier (IIS), SAV for the application tier, and SQL DAC for the data tier.Operationalizing service templates across your service-consumer and service-provider organizations will likely require active collaboration between the App Devs, App Ops, and DC Admin roles to discuss and standardize the initial set of hardware, OS, and app profiles that new applications could adhere to. It might be beneficial to take an incremental approach to testing this capability before rolling out across a broader set of applications. This process will likely require broad sponsorship across the LOB application IT and infrastructure IT organizations.<Click>Once organizationally approved application blueprints are established and stored in the Virtual Machine Manager service template library, your application owners are ready to deploy applications on their own. They can go to the application owner self-service experience in System Center 2012 - App Controller, where they can access and select service templates that they’ve been authorized for. They can easily specify configuration requirements like application topology, scale-out rules, health thresholds, andupgrade rules into the service template and then kick-start a “one-click deployment.” Before the application owner hits deploy, App Controller provides a compelling visualization of the of the holistic application service, including all the requested service tiers, the underlying virtual instance templates, and storage, compute, and network resources. This enables application owners to “think services, not servers” by offering a “service-centric” approach to provisioning.Virtual Machine Manager uses the service template specifications to build out the application tiers, including the various logical instances associated with each tier. In the real world, you are likely to encounter scaled-out (or multi-instance) web front ends and application tiers, but scaled-up (or singleinstance–based) database tiers. Virtual Machine Manager uses the service template specifications to ensure that the application is deployed to the appropriate virtualized resource pools.
VMware ESX managed through VMware vCenter ServerCitrix XenServer managed host directly. No dependency on XenCenterBoth - Add host and clusters into any host group
[Click] – The template for the VM is the “Source of Truth” for the VM.[Click] – We can now deploy some services off of that template.[Click] – We want to make updates to the application and apply them to the template. In this example we are making updates to the application running in the middle tier.[Click] – After updating the template we can now “Set” the template which allows us to correlate the services that used the older template. Once the template is set, the Service moves into a “Pending Service Update” mode.[Click] – At this point you can apply the changes and the service is now running with the updated application.
Let’s look at how we manage application across multiple clouds. This is a conversation that comes up a lot where our customers have some on-premise application and maybe they’re looking at Windows Azure applications and they need to understand, “Well how do I actually do this?” And this is how we do it. We have the two constructs here. We have private cloud on the left hand side, which is a Virtual Machine Manager cloud. And we have multiple hypervisors , we support Hyper-V, VMware and Xen Server. And then we have a service template model that sits on top of that to deliver our applications.On the right hand side we have Windows Azure, which has a package and configuration model, and we want to able to do is deploy, monitor and manage your applications , regardless of where they are running. The way we can do this is with App Controller. And App Controller enables us to manage both on the left hand side, a virtual machine manager service, and on the right hand side either Windows Azure application from within a single console. We can see information on what’s running, we can see how many instances are running, and so forth and we can also see go through and perform actions against these services as well deploy new application on both the private cloud and public cloud.
Getting deep inside into the application performance is the key bit. When we look at the server side monitoring and we touch on this in the “Configure and Deploy” presentation, what we’re really doing here is we’re collecting data from the .NET calls, we’re reading the application methods, all the variable and parameters, the types of calls being made, the web methods, the internal execution the SQL commands and so forth, all of the information comes together.With the client-side, it shows the page load times, where the time was spent - was it spent loading images, CSS, etc. , was it a JavaScript exceptions, all that data is collected using a JavaScript injection on the page side. And what we get out of all of that is at the code-execution level information, where we can drill in and see exactly where was the time spent. What that means is that we can get rich visualization and a breakdown of how long did that transaction take, where was the threshold and what was the problem actually causing them.
So the first thing we want to take a look at is opening up this conversation at the start of the “Configure and Deploy” and the “IT as a Service” slide at the front we look at the application owner and the datacenter admin and how those two have different sets of personas with quite different views on the world in terms of what should and shouldn’t be and how things are run and come together. So here we have and end-user or application owner who’s saying, “Well my application is running slowly!” The network though might look fine. We’re green across the board, everything is ok, there’s no problem whatsoever from the network guys. We have the developers saying “The code passed all testing,” there’s no bugs, there’s no crashing, everything is fine. And then we have the infrastructure monitoring guys saying, “The servers are all running fine,” there’s no problem here whatsoever. However, the end-user is still having a poor performance. This is actually a fairly common scenario. And the way this comes together is that the server-side availability monitoring shows the application is functioning just fine. This is where we get into the difference between availability and monitoring vs. performance monitoring.From an availability point of view, its highly available, we have green across the board, but that doesn’t really show the true state, which is from the client side it is running slowly and there are some issues happening from the client side. Its highly available, but performing slowly. What we get with application performance monitoring is to understand exactly where the issue is, what piece of code is causing the problem and then the ability to share that information out. So let’s take a look at what this looks like.
Cloud ModelCompute, Storage, Network FabricCloudApps You don’t have 1 cloud, you have multiple clouds and they sit on your infrastructure and share your infrastructureConcepts are actually in the product (land that we have this and think about it in the product).When you think about managing a private cloud, you want to ensure that you provide the resources in a way that effectively delivers the cloud resources without compromising the integrity of your infrastructure. You private cloud is:Optimized – Dynamically adjusting the resources to accommodate loadI need to ensure that my applications get the resources they need when they need them, and I can handle these changes dynamically.Controlled – Assuring the correct people are accessing the correct resourcesI need a way to control the amount of resources I assign to my application owners. I want them to have self service, but I want to place limits on what they are using.Systematic – Updating the applications or services with approved updatesI need a more systematic approach to application updates. I would like to update once and push those updates to all deployed services. Right-Sized – Understanding the resources utilization of your cloud now and forecasting for future growthI need to know before I outgrow capacity, and be able to plan for future growth?
Creating the visibility, we talked about creating these dashboards in the first part, this is how they come together. You choose where it is, you see the deep insight, you can see the end-user experience, what the backend looks like and its really about making this information accessible in a very easy manner.
We start as Service Manager as the repository for our CMDB and then Orchestrator which provides us our automation engine. We have a bi-directional connector those automation activities to come into Service Manager, as well as for Service Manager to issue and execute those automation workflows within Orchestrator. We then have our other external repositories, either System Center related or Line of Business application related or 3rd Party management tools and inbound connectors to pull in configuration items and automation data to be populated into our CMDB and be reconciled together so that we’re looking at single record for a piece of our infrastructure even though some pieces came from Virtual Machine Manager, Operations or Configuration Manager or even Active Directory. Once we have our reconciled view of data within our infrastructure we can then do something with that. We have within the System Center suite a bi-directional interface through Orchestrator to issue automation commands to System Center products or 3rd party tools or Line of business application if you build your own integration pack using the SDK to actually drive automation within those tools, to respond to errors to deliver changes to manage changes with your infrastructure. And then lastly part of doing all this work we have to do two things: keep people aware and what’s happening and we got to be able to report on it. And we provide that inbound and outbound notifications capability through Service Manager and Orchestrator to Exchange as well as to our Service Manager data warehouse for dash boarding and reporting capabilities.
So we’ve talked about delivering IT services consistently. Let’s take a look a little bit deeper at what this looks at from a self-service, a standardization, and an automation experience. By self-service, we are looking at how we deliver these services through our service catalog, through the reports that users consume, and through the various clients or mechanisms for accessing and requesting service. That might be by sending an email, through a mobile device, or accessing an online portal through your mobile device or through a browser sitting on your client. From a standardization standpoint, it is about the configuration management database, or the CMDB. This is something that you may have heard a lot about from a number of different vendors in the industry. System Center 2012 provides that CMDB that encapsulates the different work items, the requests for service, the incidences of problems of changes that you need to manage within your organization. We capture the configuration items that are present within your IT environment, as well as the knowledge about each of those, the performance information or the knowledge-based articles, all pulled together in a central repository. And added to that or supporting all of that in the process work flow, the systems work flows, the forms to access that information and the reporting and data warehouse capabilities to actually present that back to the users. Behind all of that is the automation, the automation through System Center 2012 suite of products, through Orchestrator and Virtual Machine Manager, Configuration Manager, and through Windows Server. (Specifically Active Directory where we can pull, automatically, details about users and groups and locations right into out CMDB with minimal configuration requirements. When I mean minimal, I mean a couple of button clicks.) And one of the things to really point out when you are talking to Consumers is we can do this across third party management tools. System Center Orchestrator is our integration solution to not just within the System Center suite but also to third party tools. And we ship almost twenty different integration packs to those third party tools, allowing us to drive that automation, not just through the System Center stack, not just through Microsoft, but out to the third party tools.
Really solidify to your attendees the idea that request offerings and building that self-service experience is as simple as six key steps. Importing the information about your environment into the CMDB Building that consolidated picture and building those request offeringsPublishing them out through the portalAllowing users to create their requests for serviceThat invoke the necessary automation activitiesAnd that you can monitor for completion or for any action that needs to take placeWe are going to build on this slide over the course of the rest of the presentation.
Goal: Show customers the power of automation capabilities in System Center 2012.Talking pointsIn addition to providing deep monitoring and diagnostic insight for your IT infrastructure, System Center 2012 provides integration and automation capabilities which can be configured to support many different incident or error remediation scenarios. Orchestrator is the component providing automated runbook capabilities combined with connectivity to other management components (System Center and third party) with the use of Integration Packs. In this example we’re going to automatically migrate a SQL Server database. After investigating the alert in Operations Manager we just saw, we’ve decided we should migrate the database on that virtual manager to another SQL Server instance. As you can see in this screen, Orchestrator's runbook designer can be used to create automated workflows that perform several tasks while integrating with all the necessary management components. The icons and the interface are very user friendly so it’s easy to see what activities will happen and in what order.Detailed flow for this automation example<click> The SQL Server migration runbook can either be started from within the Orchestrator console, or triggered by Orchestrator pulling the alert information from Operations Manager.<click> Once the process is kicked off, Orchestrator communicates with Virtual Machine Manager, and then Virtual Machine Managerchecks for valid names of the source and destination servers, plus the database to be migrated. <click> Next, Orchestrator communicates with Service Manager to create an incident ID associated with the database migration ensuring there’s a record of this process.<click> At this point, Data Protection Manager is pulled into process to create a recovery point for the database and exports it to a designated network share.<click> Now that the database is backed up, Orchestrator is going to kick-off a Windows PowerShell script to run the actual database migration to the new SQL Server virtual machine.<click> Once the migration is complete, Operations Manager will be put into maintenance mode for the source server we migrated the database from so that when Virtual Machine Manager shuts it down, an error will not be thrown.<click> And, finally, once the source virtual machine is shut down the associated incident logged in Service Manager will resolve.This is just one example of the powerful integrated automation capabilities being delivered with System Center 2012. So, what else can be automated? Things like:Incident responseProvisioningDisaster recoveryCompliance requirementsChange controlCapacity management