Book Image

Microsoft System Center 2012 Orchestrator Cookbook

By : Samuel Erskine, Andreas Baumgarten, Steve Beaumont
Book Image

Microsoft System Center 2012 Orchestrator Cookbook

By: Samuel Erskine, Andreas Baumgarten, Steve Beaumont

Overview of this book

<p>Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 simplifies the process of automating systems administration tasks. Originally a third-party product named Opalis, which Microsoft acquired in 2009, Orchestrator provides a simplified way of building complex automation. System Center Orchestrator is a complete solution that goes beyond basic automation.</p> <p>"Microsoft System Center 2012 Orchestrator Cookbook" will teach you how to plan, create and manage powerful runbooks to help you automate mission-critical and routine administration tasks.</p> <p>In this practical Cookbook you will learn how to master System Center 2012 by creating runbooks to control and automate every feature possible. You will start by learning how to efficiently install and secure System Center Orchestrator.</p> <p><br />You will then learn how to plan and create functional and fault-tolerant System Center runbooks to automate daily tasks and routine operations. Diving deep into runbooks, you will learn how to create powerful and practical runbooks for the entire System Center family of products.<br /><br />Unleashing your inner control freak, you will then master System Center automation by creating IT Service Management process runbooks and advanced runbooks to help you control every feature imaginable of System Center. If you want to save time and energy automating mission critical tasks with System Center 2012 Orchestrator, then this book is for you!</p>

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Microsoft System Center 2012 Orchestrator Cookbook
Samuel Erskine | Andreas Baumgarten | Steve Beaumont
Aug, 2013 | 318 pages
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Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Microsoft System Center 2012 Orchestrator Cookbook
Microsoft System Center 2012 Orchestrator Cookbook
Credits
Credits
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Unpacking System Center 2012 Orchestrator
Unpacking System Center 2012 Orchestrator
Introduction
Planning the Orchestrator deployment
Installing a single-server deployment
Installing the Management Server in a multiserver deployment
Installing the Runbook Server in a multiserver deployment
Installing the Orchestration Console and the Web Service server in a multi server deployment
Installing the Runbook Designer in a multiserver deployment
2
Initial Configuration and Making SCORCH Highly Available
Initial Configuration and Making SCORCH Highly Available
Introduction
Loading Integration Packs (IPs)
Configuring Integration Pack connections
Deploying Runbook Servers and Designers with Deployment Manager
Making your Runbooks highly available
Creating and maintaining a security model for Orchestrator
3
Planning and Creating Runbook Designs
Planning and Creating Runbook Designs
Introduction
Preparing Runbook scenarios
Making Runbook scenarios automation ready
Documenting Runbook designs
Understanding the Orchestrator scenario building blocks
Runbook Designer standards and primer
4
Creating Runbooks for Active Directory Tasks
Creating Runbooks for Active Directory Tasks
Introduction
Creating new users in Active Directory
Adding users to groups in Active Directory
Maintaining the organizational structure – moving accounts to new OUs
Disabling user accounts in Active Directory
Using SCORCH to remove obsolete user accounts
5
Creating Runbooks for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Tasks
Creating Runbooks for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Tasks
Introduction
Deploying software updates
Deploying software applications
Deploying client agents to workgroup devices
Gathering the client deployment status
6
Creating Runbooks for System Center 2012 Operations Manager Tasks
Creating Runbooks for System Center 2012 Operations Manager Tasks
Introduction
Checking the health status of a managed device
Remediating an alert
Bulk-enabling the maintenance mode
7
Creating Runbooks for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager Tasks
Creating Runbooks for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager Tasks
Introduction
Removing attached ISOs from Virtual Machines (VMs)
Remediating host compliance
Working with Virtual Machine snapshots (Create, Delete, and Revert)
8
Creating Runbooks for System Center 2012 Service Manager Tasks
Creating Runbooks for System Center 2012 Service Manager Tasks
Introduction
Changing incident priority for affected services
Automating manual user creation service request fulfilment
Automating manual activities for change request tasks on infrastructure servers
9
Using Advanced Techniques in Runbooks
Using Advanced Techniques in Runbooks
Introduction
Creating child Runbooks
Implementing error handling in your Runbooks
Implementing logging in your Runbooks
Creating looping Runbooks
Useful Websites and Community Resources
Useful Websites and Community Resources
Introduction
Orchestrator partner sites
Authors community blogs
Other useful community blogs
Frameworks and processes
Valuable community forums and user groups
Websites for Orchestrator solutions and extensions
Online Wikis
Social network resources
Index
Index

Deploying software updates

Deploying software updates for organizations is usually a very well documented and executed process with appropriate change controls or it is simply not done. In the latter case, this is due to the fear of the risk introduced, complexity, and the time it can consume.

This recipe will show you an example of how to automate your process for patching devices with controls using SCORCH.

The following diagram shows the defined business process covered in this recipe:

Getting ready

This recipe will leverage System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) to deploy a set of updates to a device.

Before creating this recipe you will need to create an Update Group in ConfigMgr. In this recipe it is assumed that you will be using an Update Group in ConfigMgr called Monthly Security Updates. You will also need to create a deployment template for this recipe.

How to do it...

The following steps will show you how to configure the activities in the Runbook (1.Deploy Software Update...

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