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Transcript of 3 management and automation
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Cloud and mobility are two major trends that have started to affect the IT landscape, in general,
and the datacenter, in particular. There are four key IT questions that customers claim are
keeping them up at night:
How do I embrace the cloud?
With a private cloud, you get many of the benefits of public cloud computing—including self-
service, scalability, and elasticity—with the additional control and customization available from
dedicated resources. Microsoft customers can build a private cloud today with Windows Server,
Microsoft Hyper-V, and Microsoft System Center, but there are many questions about how to best
scale and secure workloads on private clouds and how to cost effectively build private clouds,
offer cloud services, and connect more securely to cloud services.
How do I increase the efficiency in my datacenter?
Whether you are building your own private cloud, are in the business of offering cloud services,
or simply want to improve the operations of your traditional datacenter, lowering infrastructure
costs and operating expenses while increasing overall availability of your production systems is
critical. Microsoft understands that efficiency built into your server platform and good
management of your cloud and datacenter infrastructure are important to achieving operational
excellence.
How do I deliver next-generation applications?
As the interest in cloud computing and providing web-based IT services grows, our customers
tell us that they need a scalable web platform and the ability to build, deploy, and support cloud
applications that can run on-premises or in the cloud. They also want to be able to use a broad
range of tools and frameworks for their next-generation applications, including open source
tools.
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How do I enable modern work styles?
As the lines between people’s lives and their work blur, their personalities and individual work
styles have an increasing impact on how they get their work done—and which technologies they
prefer to use. As a result, people increasingly want a say in what technologies they use to
complete work. This trend is called “Consumerization of IT.” As an example of consumerization,
more and more people are bringing and using their own PCs, slates, and phones to work.
Consumerization is great as it unleashes people’s productivity, passion, innovation, and
competitive advantage. We at Microsoft believe that there is power in saying “yes” to people and
their technology requests in a responsible way. Our goal at Microsoft is to partner with you in IT,
to help you embrace these trends while ensuring that the environment is more secure and better
managed.
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Optimize your IT for the cloud with Windows Server 2012
When you optimize your IT for the cloud with Windows Server 2012, you take advantage of the
skills and investment you’ve already made in building a familiar and consistent platform.
Windows Server 2012 builds on that familiarity. With Windows Server 2012, you gain all the
Microsoft experience behind building and operating private and public clouds, delivered as a
dynamic, available, and cost-effective server platform.
Windows Server 2012 delivers value in four key ways:
1. It takes you beyond virtualization. Windows Server 2012 offers a dynamic, multitenant
infrastructure that goes beyond virtualization technology to a complete platform for building a
private cloud.
2. It delivers the power of many servers, with the simplicity of one. Windows Server 2012
offers you excellent economics by integrating a highly available and easy-to-manage multiple-
server platform.
3. It opens the door to every app on any cloud. Windows Server 2012 is a broad, scalable, and
elastic web and application platform that gives you the flexibility to build and deploy
applications on-premises, in the cloud, and in a hybrid environment through a consistent set
of tools and frameworks.
4. It enables the modern workstyle. Windows Server 2012 empowers IT to provide users with
flexible access to data and applications anywhere, on any device, and while simplifying
management and maintaining security, control, and compliance.
With Windows Server 2012, Microsoft has made significant investments in each of these four areas
that allow customers to take their datacenter operations to the next level. Now, let’s take a look
how Windows Server 2012 helps customers to:
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• Build and deploy a modern datacenter infrastructure
• Build and run modern applications
• Enable modern work styles for their end users
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In today’s datacenters, IT Professionals have to meet the increasing demand for high-performing,
continuous services delivered to their customers. Customer expect IT services to be available and
perform to expected service levels.
IT Professionals also need to manage compute, storage and networking across a diverse
datacenter ecosystem. This is another way of saying that very few datacenters have a uniform
set of hardware, software operating systems, networking equipment and storage equipment – IT
Pros need to manage these diverse environments quickly and efficiently in order to support the
first point of delivering continuous, high performing services.
And lastly this increase in efficiency of managing services must come in a cost effective manner.
IT budgets historically spend 60 to 80% of the overall budget just to keep services running
smoothly which means that the greater the efficiency of datacenter operations, the more money
there is to focus on new services.
In addressing these needs, the IT Pro needs to overcome a number of challenges:
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1) Provide greater flexibility and scale in managing physical and virtual environments, both
locally based in a datacenter, and those that are located in a remote location from the
datacenter.
2) Automate as much of datacenter operations as possible
3) Work within budget limitations by developing a standardized approach to managing server
environments.
This next section, “Make it Real” is intended to take us beyond the hype and look at some real
features of the Manageability and Automation capabilities of Windows Server 2012.
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The manageability and automation capabilities of Windows Server 2012 are highlighted best
through the following key areas:
1) Standards-based management – Windows Server 2012 focused on making it easier to
manage a diverse ecosystem of datacenter components by adopting industry standards in its
approach.
2) Robust automation – simply put, the more that can be automated, either by out of the box
features or through scripting, the better.
3) Multiserver management – Windows Server 2012 makes it easier to connect to, view,
configure, and manage, multiple servers from a single Server Manager console.
4) Ecosystem and extensibility – with the changes made it’s possible to extend management
capabilities beyond just the Windows platform to other components of the datacenter.
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The first stop in these scenarios is the standards-based management approach that Windows
Server 2012 has adopted. Leveraging the Windows Management framework we can simplify the
management of a diverse datacenter ecosystem by adopting standardized models, protocols
and APIs to make managing and automating datacenter components easier and more efficient.
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The foundation of our overall management experience
Current ecosystem – challenge – illustrating a proprietary approach to building management
providers. Multiple devices, multiple methods, no consistency.
Number of devices that need to be managed – most provide unique management experience
specific to that device.
Difficult for people to interact with that system
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Creates a more consistent way of managing your environment
This slide illustrates the Standards based way – better for ecosystem and partners
WMF – our management platform for people providing artifacts to manage, we can expose them
in a standards based way.
N x N problem into an N x 1 problem -
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We live in an ecosystem of windows and non-Windows devices
Standard models – describing instrumentation – based on CIM – how you describe and expose
the management components for devices
Standard protocol – access to server/machine – WS-Man, REST, http or PowerShell remoting
Standard API set – MIClient improvements, PowerShell and ODATA – all improved in the box.
Helps consumers leverage these common tools to build tools and solutions for the Windows
platform with greater flexibility and capability
As we move to a Cloud Optimized OS, this enables this.
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WS-MAN is enabled by default – the server core is the default configuration.
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We can manage non-windows from windows devices and windows devices from non-windows
devices
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Populate the demo title depending upon which demo you plan to deliver. If you don’t plan to
deliver demos, please hide this slide.
Automation address the challenges of …
The world is intrinsically messy
Lack of consistency across existing systems
Reliability across and between systems
Rapidly changing landscape through continuous innovation
Managing increasing scale
Result of increased virtualization
Shifts to cloud-based models
Matching my needs
In-house tools customized to my process and organizational needs
Standardize my world to be repeatable
Ad-hoc management
Manage the unexpected
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One-off tasks
More Intuitive
Enhanced ISE with Intellisense
Simplified language syntax
Updatable help system
Easy command discovery and import
Broader Coverage
Over 2,300 cmdlets across Windows
Support for thriving community
Script Explorer & Script Library
Greater Resiliency
Robust session connectivity
Integrated workflow
Connect/disconnect remote sessions
Scheduled jobs
PowerShell 3.0 is a better 2.0
Many suggestions addressed
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On-the-fly compilation allows scripts to run up to 6x faster
Enhanced interactive console experience
Core cmdlet and provider improvements
Windows PowerShell 3.0 provides a comprehensive management platform for all aspects of
the data center: servers, network, and storage.
Windows PowerShell 3.0 includes 260 core cmdlets. Windows Server 2012 includes more than
2,300 total cmdlets in 85 available modules.
Value added to the PowerShell ecosystem:
• End-Users
• Remote management
• Access anywhere
• Partners
• Return from their PowerShell investment
Requirements:
• Client
• Browser (HTML + Ajax)
• Gateway
• Windows Server 2012, PowerShell Web Access role
• Target
• PowerShell Remoting
More Intuitive
Enhanced ISE with Intellisense
Simplified language syntax
Updatable help system
Easy command discovery and import
Broader Coverage
Over 2,300 cmdlets across Windows
Support for thriving community
Script Explorer & Script Library
Greater Resiliency
Robust session connectivity
Integrated workflow
Connect/disconnect remote sessions
Scheduled jobs
PowerShell 3.0 is a better 2.0
Many suggestions addressed
On-the-fly compilation allows scripts to run up to 6x faster
Enhanced interactive console experience
Core cmdlet and provider improvements
New Windows PowerShell ISE Features. The Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE)
3.0 includes many new features to ease beginning users into Windows PowerShell and provide advanced
editing support for scripters. Some of the new features are:
• Show-Command pane lets users find and run cmdlets in a dialog box.
• IntelliSense provides context-sensitive command completion for cmdlet and script names, parameter
names and enumerated values, and property and method names. IntelliSense also supports paths, types,
and variables.
The ForEach-Object and Where-Object cmdlets have been updated to support an intuitive command
structure that more closely models natural language. Users can construct commands without script block,
braces, the current object automatic variable ($_), or dot operators to get properties and methods. In short,
the “punctuation” that plagued beginning users is no longer required.
New Windows PowerShell ISE Features. Windows PowerShell ISE 3.0 includes many other new features to
ease beginning users into Windows PowerShell and provide advanced editing support for scripters. Some of
the new features are:
• Windows PowerShell 3.0 helps IT Pros by providing access to a library of Windows PowerShell code
snippets, within Windows PowerShell ISE. To access Integrated Script Snippets, the user presses the
keystroke (Ctrl+J). The user can then select from a list of script templates, select the appropriate template,
and have partially completed script inserted into the editor.
• Collapsible regions in scripts and XML files make navigation in long scripts easier.
Windows Server 2012 includes more than 2,300 cmdlets, which you can learn and discover easily. Modules are
easier than ever to find, explore, create, and use, and users no longer have to import modules manually to
use cmdlets. Users can just run a cmdlet, and Windows PowerShell will import the module automatically. In
addition, Get-Command has been updated to find all cmdlets installed on the system. For example, to find
all networking cmdlets, you can run GetCommand *-Net*.
In Windows PowerShell 3.0, new Update-Help and Save-Help cmdlets download and install the newest Help
files for each module. The cmdlets find the Help files on the Internet, determining whether they are newer
than local files, unpack them, and install them in the correct location. The updated files are ready for
immediate use in Get-Help—you don't need to restart Windows PowerShell. Help files for Windows
PowerShell 3.0 are guaranteed to be up to date on first use because they do not ship in the box. Get-Help
displays auto-generated Help for commands and then prompts you to use the Update-Help cmdlet to install
or update the Help files for your modules.
For some environments, such as large enterprises behind Internet firewalls, it is preferable to be able to
update Help files from a local share instead of from the Internet. In these cases, you can use Save-Help -
DestinationPath <share> to create a local share that stores the latest Windows PowerShell Help files. Users
within the organization can then update their Help files by pointing to that share and running Update-Help –
SourcePath <share>.
Download Required.
Note the script explorer is a pre-release currently at the time this deck was created and will be updated.
More Intuitive
Enhanced ISE with Intellisense
Simplified language syntax
Updatable help system
Easy command discovery and import
Broader Coverage
Over 2,300 cmdlets across Windows
Support for thriving community
Script Explorer & Script Library
Greater Resiliency
Robust session connectivity
Integrated workflow
Connect/disconnect remote sessions
Scheduled jobs
PowerShell 3.0 is a better 2.0
Many suggestions addressed
On-the-fly compilation allows scripts to run up to 6x faster
Enhanced interactive console experience
Core cmdlet and provider improvements
With the new release of Windows PowerShell, sessions aren't just persistent; they are resilient. Robust Session
Connectivity allows sessions to remain in a connected state even when network connectivity is briefly
disrupted.
With Robust Session Connectivity, remote sessions can remain in a connected state for up to 4 minutes, even
if the client computer crashes or becomes inaccessible, and tasks on the managed nodes continue to run on
their own making the end to end system more reliable. If connectivity cannot be restored within 4 minutes,
execution on the managed nodes is suspended with no loss of data and remote sessions automatically
transition to a disconnected state, allowing them to be reconnected after network connectivity is restored.
Corruption of application and system state from premature termination of running tasks due to unexpected
client disconnection is virtually eliminated
The Disconnected Sessions feature allows administrators to create a session, alter its state, disconnect from
the session, and then reconnect to it from a different Windows PowerShell session. When administrators are
disconnected from the session, commands and jobs continue to run.
The Disconnected Sessions feature works because Windows PowerShell sessions are stored on the remote
(server-side) computer. This arrangement allows users to search and reconnect to sessions at a later time.
Users can disconnect from and then reconnect to any session without losing state, whether they disconnect
unintentionally through a network failure, or intentionally, by shutting down their computer and reconnecting
from a different computer hours later.
Windows PowerShell 3.0 allows administrators to schedule jobs to be run at a later time or according to a
particular schedule.
To create a scheduled job, you first create a job definition, which names the job and specifies the commands
that it runs, and then you create a job trigger, which specifies the job schedule.
The Windows Task Scheduler is used to schedule and start the job, and a per-user job repository is used to
store job output so it’s available later in any Windows PowerShell session on the computer.
Workflows are scripts written in the Windows PowerShell language, typically run from a client computer to
gather data from or make changes to a few or hundreds of target computers. Workflows can be written in the
Windows PowerShell language or in XAML and are executed by the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)
engine.
When you create a session, the session configuration defines the environment for the session. Windows
PowerShell includes a specially designed session configuration or "endpoint" that’s designed to optimize
Workflows. This endpoint provides the benefit of a shared hosting for Workflow execution, which in turn
gives you implicit disconnect/reconnect functionality.
When you add a Workflow to a Windows PowerShell session, either by typing it at the command line,
including it in a script, or using the Import-Module command to import a XAML-based Workflow, it
becomes a command in the session, just like a cmdlet. The component commands inside the Workflow are
called activities. Each activity inherits the properties of the Workflow, including the powerful Workflow
common parameters.
Commands and scripts in the Workflow that restart a computer (Restart-Computer) can wait for the computer
to resume, or wait for Windows PowerShell, the network, or a particular service on the restarted computer to
be available. In addition, a Suspend-Resume feature enables you to stop a running workflow job and restart it
later.
Christensen: Hello everybody. My name is Sean Christensen. I’m a Senior Product Marketing
Manager here at Microsoft on the [Microsoft] System Center Team. And on this segment of
DriveTime we’re talking about System Center Orchestrator and [Microsoft Windows] PowerShell.
Joining us to talk more about this is Charles Joy from our Technical Enablement Team.
Charles, thanks for joining us.
Joy: Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Christensen: Fantastic. Hey Charles, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you
do here at Microsoft?
Joy: Sure. I’m part of a newly formed team for Technical Enablement. I’ve been involved with
orchestration and process automation for a number of years now. I implemented and sold Opalis
before it was acquired by Microsoft and I’ve been in the enablement, readiness and evangelist role
since I’ve been with Microsoft for almost three years now.
Christensen: So let’s get into this. Charles, what is Orchestrator and where does it fit into the
whole Private Cloud and System Center 2012 story?
Joy: So, Orchestrator brings process automation to the private cloud. It brought process
automation to the datacenter before private cloud was the thing to talk about. It’s a workflow
management solution for the datacenter. It enable automated creation, monitoring and
deployment of resources in your environment and it comes with Integration Packs to each of the
[Microsoft] System Center components, enabling unlimited scenarios for solving the majority of
datacenter headaches.
In fact, it comes with Integration Packs for non-System Center products for third-party
applications. And it’s extensible through the Orchestration Integration Toolkit.
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Christensen: Sweet. Drill down a little bit. What is an Integration Pack? What does it do?
Joy: An Integration Pack is preconfigured. We’ve done all the work for you. And you don’t
have to worry about the APIs [application programming interfaces] or any of the programming
aspect. You just fill out the form just like you would in any of the other activities that are
available. The information gets passed via the preconfigured connections to the integration
points and you’re off and running to integrate and automate and orchestrate after that.
Christensen: So basically without doing a whole lot of coding, I can build an automation using
these Integration Packs that are in Orchestrator?
Joy: That’s exactly right.
Christensen: Cool. So we got Orchestrator and we got [Windows] PowerShell. How do you see
these technologies differing?
Joy: At a very high-level, [Windows] PowerShell is about scripting and at a high-level,
Orchestrator is about graphic user interface [GUI] and linking things together logically and
graphically on the screen. Now that’s not necessarily the case with [Windows] PowerShell
because you’re typing and you’re picking reserve words and commands and stuff like that. It’s
very easy to do and it’s a powerful scripting engine, but it’s not a graphical user interface like
Orchestrator. [Windows] PowerShell is definitely more widely known. But Orchestrator is
catching up. Orchestrator is essentially a new product from Microsoft coming out with System
Center 2012; and we did have a version of Opalis that was out there right after acquisition that’s
been market since the acquisition. Now, [Windows] PowerShell’s baked right into the OS
[operating system]. Orchestrator is a component of System Center. [Windows] PowerShell is a
critical feature of many powerful technologies today, including all of the System Center products
and many third-party products. In fact, we see many vendors and our partners coming out with
[Windows] PowerShell Management Packs that allow for easy scripting to those third-party
products, which means it opens the door for users to interact via [Windows] PowerShell, which
means you can interact with Orchestrator because a lot of the [Windows] PowerShell stuff is built
into Orchestrator.
And my final point would be many people think automation equals [Windows]
PowerShell and orchestration equals Orchestrator. Well, you’d be partly right on the Orchestrator
side, since that’s in its name. And while this is true, Orchestrator offers orchestration as well as
automation integration. Orchestrator can even leverage existing [Windows] PowerShell scripts, as
I’ve previously mentioned. In fact, [Windows] PowerShell can execute Orchestrator runbooks via
the Web service that’s available.
So the relationship is more symbiotic than competitive. It’s all about choosing the right
tool for the job. And in most cases the answer is a combination of the two.
Christensen: So what I hear is this is not an either/or. This is a Orchestrator and [Windows]
PowerShell ‘better together’ story for our customers to be able to automate and integrate and
orchestrate whatever workflows they want to achieve to automate their IT and business
processes.
Joy: That is correct. And when it comes down to it, there’s things in [Windows]
PowerShell that you’re going to be able to do very easily and there’s things in Orchestrator you’re
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going to be doing very easily. The best case scenario is merging those two and having a better
together story.
Christensen: So Charles, can you give us a better idea of, how do I know when to use
[Windows] PowerShell vs. Orchestrator? And is this a case of do I invest in one or the other or
should I invest in both?
Joy: I definitely recommend investing in both. In all my years of developing and
implementing solutions, I’ve never only exclusively used one or the other. There’s always going
to be solutions where both are needed and need to be leveraged heavily in whatever area
because you use the best-of-breed for the actions that you want to take because it’s all about
automation and solving that problem. So if Orchestrator’s good at one thing here and
[Windows] PowerShell’s good at one thing here, do those separately. But the good thing about
Orchestrator is it can orchestrate everything, not just the Orchestrator bits or not just the
[Windows] PowerShell bits. You can mix them completely.
In fact, investing in both will ensure a greater number of scenarios can be handled easier.
Christensen: And if I remember correctly, you can actually call a [Windows] PowerShell script
from within Orchestrator?
Joy: That’s correct. We have multiple ways to call [Windows] PowerShell. There’s a native
activity, the run.net script activity. And it if you have PS1 files that you want to execute, we have a
mechanism to do that using our run program object, which is essentially a command-line that’ll
automate that command-line. And then there are a number of community-based Integration
Packs that have been created. One for myself that’s been heavily used because one of the main
questions I get from customers is, how do I execute [Windows] PowerShell in Orchestrator? I see
the value of [Windows] PowerShell. I see the value of Orchestrator. But how do I make them
work together? And that’s why we have so many options.
If you have PS1 files, leverage one option. If you just have a bunch of scripts you want to
copy and paste into the existing object, go there. If you need to run remote [Windows] PowerShell
commands, then you could use my IP [Internet Protocol] or one of the others that are available on
CodePlex [www.codeplex.com/ ]. It’s a very, very popular mechanism within
Orchestrator, probably the second to it is database [DB] stuff and we know how popular database
stuff is. And I’d say [Windows] PowerShell’s probably more popular than the database stuff.
Christensen: You started touching on this. Where’s the win? How have you seen this
leveraged to really win customers over [and] over the past number of years that you’ve been
working with this product?
Joy: Well, really I’ve got to answer this in the Orchestrator sense of it because [Windows]
PowerShell’s been used and it’s sold with the OS, you don’t have to worry about it. But as far as
Orchestrator’s concerned, we’re still making headway. There are many popular use cases. The
top three are: provisioning, remediation, and service management. That’s what we’ve been
talking about for years. And years now and the key for the sales person is to explore the various
pain points. Pick one and start digging into the process.
In fact, I was at a customer meeting with the sales team recently and we just asked them a
simple question, what’s the most difficult manual task that you do today? And
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they answered and we started whiteboarding. I mean it’s as simple as that.
Christensen: Can you add anymore? What are some of the other questions that you might
want to ask a customer?
Joy: Sure. In just the past two years since the acquisition of Opalis software, I’ve heard the
conversation from the sales people go from, how do I sell the suite? How do I sell the
Orchestrator? Or Opalis? Or whatever we’re selling at the time, to I lead with Orchestrator
because it closes deals. It’s as simple as that. Customers want and need orchestration
automation integration.
All you have to do as a seller is ask the following leading question, what is your top pain
point today? When they answer you, you have your in. And then whiteboard the process. 80-
90% in my experience of most painful processes can be automated in some way. Orchestrator
and [Windows] PowerShell within System Center 2012 lead that effort.
Christensen: So what do you see as some of the challenges from that that sales teams are going
to face potentially with their customers?
Joy: Usually the number one objection I see the most is nailing down just one pain point to
work on. I mean you ask them that question and you talk through the first thing and then all of a
sudden they go, I want to do this and this and this and this. But for a PoC [Proof of Concept] or
even a small implementation you’ve got to pick a low hanging fruit, something you can knock out
of the park right off the bat. And then once you get that you’re going to get buy in from a whole
bunch of other teams. You’re going to get a whole bunch of other servers involved and a whole
bunch of other solutions. And sometimes customers are skeptical as to the reality of such
powerful tool sets and that will prove to them, Look, we did it here in this group and we were able
to knock it out in a week or less.
And that objection really is being taken away when you prove it to them with something
that’s fairly easy and then you can move up the complexity as you earn more trust. So you
provide them examples that have been done successfully in the past, maybe you can’t remember
the customer names, internally we have links to solutions and things that have been done in the
past. There’s tons of links to online resources and community references and stuff like that. My
blog itself is hit many times a day [http://blogs.technet.com/b/charlesjoy/]. I have fifty videos
that I did on how to use Opalis Orchestrator with [Windows] PowerShell and with a whole bunch
of other extensibility. Those fifty videos have been viewed nearly 40,000 times in the past two
years. That means customers, partners, and internal folks are wanting to know more about this
stuff and that’s proof in itself that people are using it and learning more about it.
And the last objection that we usually get is ROI [return on investment]. Well, how fast
can I get my return on investment? If they have the data on how much time and money things
cost today, then the ROI calculation is pretty easily. Since they will see immediate value, once the
first solution is up and running, they just plug in the numbers and you see we went from ten
people doing this process over ten days once a month to this runs automatically with one person
and all we had to do was spend a week to develop and test it.
So that’s really the home run scenario to fighting back any of the objections that come up.
Christensen: Let’s step back and recap what we’ve talked about. We talked about some of the
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key messages that we see to our customers in terms of Orchestrator and [Windows] PowerShell
that it’s a better together story. That automation, orchestration and integration using
Orchestrator, using [Windows] PowerShell, along with System Center is really going to save
customers time and money, and in turn, help you win deals. And [then] leveraging some of the
examples and dealing with some of the objections, Charles, that you just mentioned. And that
the real key value here is, Hey, it’s leverage and invest in both. Invest in [Windows] PowerShell
knowledge [and] invest in Orchestrator knowledge to really drive those home.
So from a sales standpoint, look, your call to action what we want you guys to go do is
ask your customers what is that top pain point today. And the rest are going to start falling
place. Charles, as you mentioned, let’s understand what that is, understand what those
processes are, and start white boarding out how they can be automated using Orchestrator and
using [Windows] PowerShell either automated in the datacenter or implementing the private
cloud.
And, Charles, you mentioned some resources. Can you go and tell us more what those
are?
Joy: Yes. Just briefly, I’ve tried to make my blog the central point for navigation outwards. I
have a guide to my blog. I have a links to a whole bunch of other people and other resources,
including the internal System Center teams blog and stuff like that. So if you just go to
http://blogs.technet.com/b/charlesjoy/ or just [Microsoft] Bing™ my name and Opalis, you’re
going to find something. And you’re going to find lots of posts on where to go next, how to get
started, and everything like that and then there’s a lot of other resources out there.
TechNet, just search for Orchestrator, go to the Nexus blog
[http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/archive/2011/06/15/announcing-the-system-
centerorchestrator-beta.aspx]. T here’s a whole bunch of stuff out there. I try to link everything
to my blog. But just go to [Microsoft] Bing™, search as your friend, search for Orchestrator,
search for how-to, tutorial, stuff like that and you’re going to get exactly what you need.
Christensen: Fantastic. Well Charles, this has been really helpful. I really want to thank you for
participating and for your time today. And thanks to everybody in the field for listening to this
segment of DriveTime.
Joy: Thank you for having me.
I would clarify that the URL for CodePlex is: http://orchestrator.codeplex.com/
I would clarify that the URL for CodePlex is: http://orchestrator.codeplex.com/
NOTES TO PRESENTERS: Would you like to include any of the links in the resources section? It’s
not necessary, but we are happy to accommodate it.
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As far as the links I would suggest, they are all covered by the URL for my blog. Sean may have
more though…
NOTE TO PRESENTERS: Is this the correct website? Kindly confirm. Thank you.
That post may be a bit too specific… this is the System Center Nexus Blog URL:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/
Here is a url for a search for “Orchestrator” within the blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/search/searchresults.aspx?q=orchestrator§ions=5930
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More Intuitive
Enhanced ISE with Intellisense
Simplified language syntax
Updatable help system
Easy command discovery and import
Broader Coverage
Over 2,300 cmdlets across Windows
Support for thriving community
Script Explorer & Script Library
Greater Resiliency
Robust session connectivity
Integrated workflow
Connect/disconnect remote sessions
Scheduled jobs
PowerShell 3.0 is a better 2.0
Many suggestions addressed
On-the-fly compilation allows scripts to run up to 6x faster
Enhanced interactive console experience
Core cmdlet and provider improvements
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Glance-able –
Down-level-able – we can use this across Windows Server 2012, 2008 R2 and 2008 servers – we
don’t pull all the information, but we do provide a central view of server information.
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In Windows Server 2008 R2, roles and features are deployed by using the Add Roles Wizard or
Add Features Wizard in Server Manager running on a local server. This requires either physical
access to the server or Remote Desktop access by using RDP. Installing Remote Server
Administration Tools lets you run Server Manager on a Windows-based client computer, but
adding roles and features is disabled, because remote deployment isn’t supported.
In Windows Server 2012 the deployment capabilities are extended to support robust remote
deployment of roles and features. Using Server Manager in Windows Server 2012, IT Pros can
provision servers from their desktops without requiring either physical access to the systems or
the need to enable RDP connection to each server.
Windows Server 2012 with Server Manager can deploy both roles and features in a single session
using the unified Add Roles and Features Wizard. The Add Roles and Features Wizard in
Windows Server 2012 performs validation passes on a server you select for deployment as part
of the installation process; there’s no need to pre-verify that a server in your Server Manager
server pool is properly configured to support a role.
Jeffrey Snover provides additional perspective on multiserver management in Windows Server
2012 in the following blog post:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/03/07/rocking-the-windows-server-
8administrative-experience.aspx
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Potential Questions:
Why cannot I select multiple servers in “Add Roles and Features” window and perform an
operation in a bulk?
Unfortunately this functionality couldn’t be incorporated in the UI due to schedule/cost
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constraints. For Windows Server 2012, admins can write a short PowerShell script that uses a
combination of UI and Install-WindowsFeature cmdlet to do a batch deployment. Let me know if
you need more details – I can also provide you the sample script. Your feedback is noted for the
future versions though.
Microsoft merged Roles and Features into a single wizard. But why there are still separate
wizards for adding and removing them?
This has been considered as an option but the complexity of merging the add and remove
wizards outweighs the potential gains. Feedback is noted for future considerations.
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Administrators can deploy roles and features to offline virtual hard disks from Server Manager. In
a single session in the Add Roles and Features Wizard, you can add your desired roles and
features to an offline virtual hard disk, allowing for faster and simpler repetition and consistency
of desired configurations.
As discussed earlier, deployment of both roles and features is combined into a single Add Roles
and Features Wizard. While the process of installing roles is familiar, and consistent with the Add
Roles Wizard in earlier Windows Server releases, there are changes. To support remote
deployment and installations on offline virtual hard disks, some roles have moved some initial
configuration (tasks formerly performed in the Add Roles Wizard during an installation) into
post-installation configuration wizards. For some offline virtual hard disk deployments,
installation tasks are scheduled to run the first time the machine is started.
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In Windows Server 2012 Server Manager is a multiserver management tool. Your servers appear
all at once, and you can organize these servers into groups representing, for example,
departments or locations or functions.
Multiserver experience
• Manage groups of servers collectively from within a single, integrated console
• Respond to business-critical problems with greater speed and agility
• Generate status views for multiple servers after polling servers for operational statistics
• Includes installed roles and features, events, service states, performance threshold alerts,
and Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) scan results
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See the following TechNet article for more details http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/hh831453.aspx
In Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, you connect to a server to get to
view the roles running on that individual server.
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Note that Windows Server 2012 does not abandon the old management model; it simply expands
upon it. Sometimes you need to manage a server and its roles. Sometimes you need to manage
a role and its servers. A modern server operating system needs to provide this management
flexibility.
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PowerShell v3.0 allow customers to extend automation tasks across their datacenters and
embed organizational best practices for server maintenance and administration into automation
activities that can be executed individually or as part of a System Center 2012 Orchestrator
RunBook
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In the Box text:
IT Pros
Windows PowerShell to manage Windows and non-Windows
Open Data Protocol to manage windows from non-Windows
Developers of managed services and devices
Greatly simplified management interface definition and implementation NOTE TO PRESENTER:
Please review the next two slides and associated build to ensure you’re across the story line
before presenting these slides.
CONTENT:
IT Pros can leverage PowerShell v3 to automate business policies established by IT and business
leadership
Historically, these policies, embedded in PowerShell scripts may not have been designed or built
to function collectively, resulting in additional time, cost and risk of integration.
This transferred across to the running of these scripts and required additional operational
procedures and checks to ensure that automation tasks ran successfully, were executed timely,
and completed the required activities.
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PowerShell v3 with its integration into the Windows Management Framework, allow scripts to be
created, combined and executed with greater resiliency and integration.
By leveraging the Windows Management Framework, scripts are built on a standardized
framework resulting in less time to combine, less cost and lower risk of the solution.
This translates across to a solution that is easier to run.
In addition, powershell v3’s enhanced script execution, job scheduling, disconnected session and
workflow capabilities reduces the overall operational requirements for IT organizations. In
addition because PowerShell now has over 2300 cmdlets, IT Pros can automate more and more
within their organizations enabling them to focus on how to give their businesses greater
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competitive advantage.
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