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  • Book Overview & Buying Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 R2 Essentials
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Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 R2 Essentials

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 R2 Essentials

By : Oliveira
5 (1)
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Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 R2 Essentials

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 R2 Essentials

5 (1)
By: Oliveira
Buy this Book

Overview of this book

With the increasing complexity of systems in our infrastructure designs, administrating these systems has become more complex and repetitive. This ultimately translates into an inefficient environment and loss of time. System Center Orchestrator 2012 R2 is the tool that can help you regain that time again, by simplifying repetitive tasks (or complex ones) into a simple one that will require minimum intervention from you, or even none. This technology will drive you one step forward towards a more dynamic infrastructure and can also be used to make a customized Private Cloud environment setup. Starting off with the fundamentals of Orchestrator, this book helps you to learn the configuration and deployment of the Orchestrator 2012 R2 in a corporate environment to successfully deploy and mitigate real-life issues that you might encounter. You’ll learn the most used part of Orchestrator, the Runbook Designer, with all its components and mechanisms to help you efficiently design and implement your Runbooks from top to bottom. Additionally, you will also get familiarized with configuring key Integration Packs available for Orchestrator to extend its functionality and enhance the automation solution. Furthermore, you will explore the possibilities of extending and integrating Orchestrator with other parties and learn to set up core infrastructure administrative tasks that can save time and effort when automated with Orchestrator. You finally round off by gaining insights on the maintenance aspects of Orchestrator, while simultaneously covering the troubleshooting, backup, and recovery features.
Table of Contents (8 chapters)
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Preface
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Preface
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What is Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 R2?
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What this book covers
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What you need for this book
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Who this book is for
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Conventions
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Reader feedback
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Customer support
Lock Free Chapter
1
1. Configuring and Deploying Orchestrator 2012 R2
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1. Configuring and Deploying Orchestrator 2012 R2
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An overview of the Orchestrator components
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Planning the Orchestrator architecture
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Deploying a single-server solution
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Deploying a multi-server solution
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Summary
2
2. Runbook Designer
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2. Runbook Designer
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Runbook Designer overview
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Runbooks overview
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Creation of a Runbook
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Summary
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3. Orchestrator Integration Packs
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3. Orchestrator Integration Packs
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Deployment Manager
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Integration Packs
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Configuring the new categories
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Summary
4
4. Extending Orchestrator
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4. Extending Orchestrator
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An overview of the Orchestration console
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Deployment Manager
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The Orchestrator Integration Toolkit
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The web service
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Summary
5
5. Runbook Examples
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5. Runbook Examples
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Runbook for Active Directory User Account Provisioning
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Runbook for Active Directory User Password Reset
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Runbook for Automatic System Log Archival
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Runbook for Workstation Power Saving
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Runbook for Weekend Maintenance Routine
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Summary
6
6. Maintaining an Orchestrator Infrastructure
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6. Maintaining an Orchestrator Infrastructure
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High Availability
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Scalability
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Security
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Troubleshooting
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Backup and recovery
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Fine-tuning Orchestrator
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The Best Practices Analyzer
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Summary
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Index
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Index

Deploying a single-server solution

As discussed in the previous section, we can use a single-server to host all the components of Orchestrator if we're targeting a small environment and/or we have the objective of having an Orchestrator for the development and quality assessment of our Runbooks before getting them into production. If you jumped straight into this part, we strongly suggest you read the Planning the Orchestrator architecture section before proceeding.

As of the time of writing, Windows Server 2012 R2 has been out for quite a while and it's the OS selected to host our Orchestrator. So, once you have chosen the OS and deployed it, and after having joined to the domain and having done the basic configurations, we can move on with deploying the prerequisites:

  1. Verify that you have permissions on the SQL Server selected to host the database, that the collation is the one specified in the previous section, and finally that Windows Authentication is the authentication mechanism selected. If you choose to install the SQL Server locally, don't forget to get the Database Engine Services options and the share features by navigating to Management Tools | Basic.
  2. Add the Orchestrator Administrators group and the Management Service account to the local Administrators group of the server.
    Deploying a single-server solution
  3. Enable the Web Server (IIS) role, accept the features added, and proceed with the installation. The default settings of this role will suffice as the Orchestrator will configure it accordingly for you. If the Orchestrator installation doesn't detect this role on the server, it will install it for you.
  4. Install the .NET 3.5 SP1 feature. Don't forget to indicate the alternative source for the installation to occur.
  5. (Only if you're installing on Windows Server 2008 R2): Install the .NET 4.5 feature. If you forget to activate the ASP.NET and HTTP Activation features, the installer will take care of activating them for you.
  6. Install Silverlight. If you start the console without installing it, you'll be required to install it.
  7. Launch the installation using the SetupOrchestrator.exe. Select Install on the System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator Setup section of the wizard.
    Deploying a single-server solution
  8. On the Product registration page, enter your organization's details and product key, and then click on Next.
  9. Take your time to read the license terms, and if you accept them, continue the installation by clicking on Next.
  10. On Select features to install, by default you'll have all of them selected. As we're installing a single-server, this is the desired selection, so just press Next.
    Deploying a single-server solution
  11. As seen in step 4 of this installation, we didn't include the ASP.NET features on IIS, so Orchestrator will install them for us (press Next) and then it will confirm that everything's OK.
    Deploying a single-server solution
  12. At the Configure the service account step, we'll use the Management Service scorchmssvc account. The explanation on this screen can be a bit misleading, but this is the management service that we're talking about. In a multi-server deployment, this will be different. We'll get there…
    Deploying a single-server solution
  13. Now, at Configure the database server, we'll use our server/instance (if any instance), and the port, and we'll verify the connectivity. If everything's OK, we'll move on with Next.
    Deploying a single-server solution
  14. Verify the database settings at the Configure the database page and specify the database name if you want something different. The default is Orchestrator. Proceed with Next.
    Deploying a single-server solution
  15. Now it's time to configure Orchestrators users group, but although the title of the page can be deceiving, this is not the normal users group, but rather the Administrators group. Click on Browse and select the proper group that you've defined (Scorch_Admins in this example). Click on Next when ready.
    Deploying a single-server solution
  16. At the Configure the ports for the web services page, usually the default ports 81 and 82 are OK, but if these ports are not compliant with your environment or you wish to make the service available at some other port, this is the time to do it. If you do change the ports, don't forget to keep them in mind for the rest of this book as we'll use the default ones for every sample and configuration. Push Next.
  17. Time to select the installation location. Usually, the default is OK, but, once again, you can specify another location that is more suitable for your needs. Push Next.
  18. On the Help improve Microsoft System Center Orchestrator, select the options you prefer and click on Next.
  19. Review Installation summary, and if everything's OK, click on Install to start the installation.
  20. Once the installation finishes, you'll be given the status of the installation along with a few options to consider before finishing the setup:
    1. Launch Windows Update.
    2. Visit System Center Orchestrator Online.
    3. When the setup closes, start Runbook Designer.

All these steps can be automated with Powershell. The following is a sample of the command line to execute in order to install it in an unattended way with the Orchestrator in a single-server:

D:\Setup\Setup.exe /DbServer:SQLSERVER\INSTANCE /DbNameNew:Orchestrator /WebServicePort:81 /WebConsolePort:82 /OrchestratorRemote /UseMicrosoftUpdate:1 /SendCEIPReports:0 /EnableErrorReporting:never /Components:all /ServiceUserName:DOMAIN\scorchmssvc /ServicePassword:IWontTellYou /OrchestratorUsersGroup:(Group's SID) /Key:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXX /Silent

As we're setting up only one server, we're only going to use the Management Service account for the Management Service and for the Runbook Service. In this type of deployment, only one account is required. The Runbook Server service account will be used for any additional Runbook Servers that we may like to deploy in the future, and it's best practice to separate the two services into separate accounts to avoid a single point of failure in the future.

If you choose to go with the command-line installation, don't forget to retrieve the Scorch_Admins group SID. If you don't want to specify the group, it will use the default one locally called OrchestratorUsersGroup. If you would like to install Orchestrator into another directory, you can use the InstallDir() function and specify the directory.

In any case, you need to verify the installation logs. They will be under C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local\Microsoft System Center 2012\Orchestrator\Logs.

With this complete, you will have a fully functional Orchestrator 2012 R2 deployment.

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