Windows Server 2012 Technical Overview - Manageability and Automation Student Manual

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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:

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.

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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 a 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.

Click through demos are (or will be) located at “\\scdemostore01\demostore\Windows Server

2012\WS 2012 Demo Series\Click Thru Demos\Manageability and Automation

Demo environment build instructions are located here: \\scdemostore01\demostore\Windows

Server 2012\WS 2012 Demo Series\Demo Builds

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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

One-off tasks

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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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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.

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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

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More Intuitive





Broader Coverage




Greater Resiliency


Integrated workflow


Scheduled jobs






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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.

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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.

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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 Get-

Command *-Net*.

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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>.

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Download Required.

Note the script explorer is a pre-release currently at the time this deck was created and will be

updated.

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More Intuitive





Broader Coverage




Greater Resiliency


Integrated workflow


Scheduled jobs






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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

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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.

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Windows PowerShell 3.0 allows administrators to schedule jobs to be run at a later time or

according to a particular schedule.

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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.

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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.

NOTE TO PRESENTER:

One question often asked after this is “Why do I need System Center 2012 Orchestrator if I can

do it in PowerShell”

Answer:

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Look at it this way, PowerShell is for automating tasks and activities

SUPPORTING INFORMATION:

DriveTime Transcript for Reference:

DriveTime, April 2012 Sales Edition – PowerShell and Orchestrator

Orchestration in the Datacenter

Resources: The following resources are mentioned in this transcript.

Internet and intranet:

www.codeplex.com/

http://blogs.technet.com/b/charlesjoy/

http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/archive/2011/06/15/announcing-the-system-center-

orchestrator-beta.aspx

http://drivetime/

Microsoft e-mail:

sechrist

chjoy

Presenters: Sean Christensen and Charles Joy

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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http://www.codeplex.com/


http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/archive/2011/06/15/announcing-the-system-center-orchestrator-beta.aspx











http://drivetime/

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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http://www.codeplex.com/

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 whiteboarding 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-center-

orchestrator-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.

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&sections=5930

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http://orchestrator.codeplex.com/

http://orchestrator.codeplex.com/

http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

http://blogs.technet.com/search/searchresults.aspx?q=orchestrator&sections=5930

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More Intuitive





Broader Coverage




Greater Resiliency


Integrated workflow


Scheduled jobs






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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-8-

administrative-experience.aspx

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

See the following TechNet article for more details

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831453.aspx

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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-Windwos

Open Data Protocol to manage windows from non-Windows

Developers of managed services and devices

Greatly simplified management interface definition and implementation

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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.

PowerShell v3 with it’s 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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Windows Server 2012 Technical Overview - Manageability and Automation Student Manual

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Transcript of Windows Server 2012 Technical Overview - Manageability and Automation Student Manual