System Center 2012 Orchestrator is an improved version of Opalis, an acquisition of a well-established product by Microsoft. The Opalis product was acquired by Microsoft in 2009 and has seen continual feature updates to its core functionality as well as alignment to the System Center 2012 product feature offerings.
System Center 2012 Orchestrator (SCORCH) is a powerful and versatile process automation Information Technology (IT) toolset. SCORCH provides seamless interconnections between the multiple software products in use in typical IT management environments. This component of the System Center 2012 product uses a graphical workflow creation toolset, and a set of connectors between multiple vendor products known as Integration Packs (IP) to address its objectives.
The installation and post installation phases of SCORCH require you to plan and configure the product in a methodical sequence based on your requirements. The aim of the book is to address the challenges faced by many first time users of SCORCH on how to best plan, deploy, and more importantly automate the right processes in their respective organizations. The objective of the authors is to start the reader's journey of Orchestration by sharing valuable insight from real world scenarios.
The book is written in the Packt style which provides the reader with independent, task oriented steps to achieve specific SCORCH objectives. The authors recommend that you read the first three chapters as a background for subsequent chapters if you are new to SCORCH and process automation software products. The book may be read in the order of interest but where relevant the authors refer to dependent recipes in other chapters.
Chapter 1, Unpacking System Center 2012 Orchestrator, provides the steps required to install and configure SCORCH. This chapter contains recipes on the two installation scenario types for SCORCH; single server and multi-server deployments. The objective is to provide the reader with the steps required for installation of SCORCH in either scenario.
Chapter 2, Initial Configuration and Making SCORCH Highly Available, covers the initial configuration tasks a SCORCH administrator would need to perform after successfully installing the product. The chapter also delves into how SCORCH can be made highly available and the implementation of an example of configuring a security delegation model for SCORCH.
Chapter 3, Planning and Creating Runbook Designs, delves into the workflows (Runbooks) planning and designing process for SCORCH. The planning and designing of Runbooks is a prerequisite for successful value add automation using SCORCH. This chapter also provides a brief primer to the SCORCH.
Chapter 4, Creating Runbooks for Active Directory Tasks, helps SCORCH Administrators to create Runbooks to automate typical manual tasks performed in Active Directory. The recipes in this chapter are focused on the life cycle of user accounts in typical organizations.
Chapter 5, Creating Runbooks for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Tasks, focuses on automating the manual parts of scenarios addressed with System Center Configuration Manager. The specific scenarios include; deploying software updates, deploying applications, deploying agents to workgroup devices, and gathering client deployment status.
Chapter 6, Creating Runbooks for System Center 2012 Operations Manager Tasks, focuses on automating real world scenarios addressed with System Center Operations Manager Integration Pack.
Chapter 7, Creating Runbooks for System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager Tasks, focuses on automating real world scenarios addressed with System Center Virtual Machine Manager Integration Pack. The specific scenarios include; removing attached ISO images from virtual machines, automating the remediation of host compliance and working with virtual machine snapshots.
Chapter 8, Creating Runbooks for System Center 2012 Service Manager Tasks, explains the use of the System Center Service Manager Integration Pack in the automation of example ITSM tasks.
Chapter 9, Using Advanced Techniques in Runbooks, provides the recipes on advance features of Runbooks, which includes creating child Runbooks, error handling, implementing logging, and creating Looping Runbooks.
Appendix, Useful Websites and Community Resources, contains useful resources for SCORCH. SCORCH similar to most Microsoft products, has an extended solutions partner community. SCORCH has an extensive active support base on the World Wide Web. This appendix lists some of the sites which provide ready-made solutions and extensive real-world dynamic content on SCORCH.
In order to complete all the recipes in this book you will need a minimum of one server configured with System Center 2012 Orchestrator SP1 and the relevant interconnecting technologies discussed. Here are the list of technologies the recipes depend on and their relevant versions used for this book:
Microsoft Active Directory (Windows Server 2008 R2 and above)
System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1
System Center 2012 Operations Manager SP1
System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager SP1
System Center 2012 Service Manager SP1
The required software and deployment guides of System Center 2012 Product can be found at the following official Microsoft website http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/default.aspx.
The authors recommend using the online Microsoft resource due to the frequency of updates to the products supported requirements. Also note that the dynamic nature of the internet may require you to search for updated links listed in this book.
The target audience of this book is SCORCH administrators and process owners responsible for implementing the IT process automation in their respective organizations. The recipes in this book range from beginner level and touches on expert level SCORCH administration knowledge. The ultimate goal is to provide the reader with knowledge to start their SCORCH journey, enhance their existing skills, and more importantly to share real world experience from seasoned technology implementers.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "On the Select features to install wizard page ensure all options are checked."
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <[email protected]>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/support, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded on our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title. Any existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.
Piracy of copyright material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works, in any form, on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
Please contact us at <[email protected]> with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring you valuable content.
You can contact us at <[email protected]> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.