About the Book
System Center Service Manager 2010 offers enterprises a complete, integrated platform for adopting and automating service management best practices, such as those found in ITIL and Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF). Now, there’s a comprehensive, independent reference and technical guide to this powerful product.
A team of expert authors offers step-by-step coverage of related topics in every feature area, organized to help IT professionals quickly plan, design, implement, and use Service Manager 2010. After introducing the product and its relationship with the rest of Microsoft’s System Center suite, the authors present authoritative coverage of Service Manager’s capabilities for incident and problem resolution, change control, configuration management, and compliance. Readers will also find expert guidance for integrating Service Manager with related Microsoft technologies.
This book is an indispensable resource for every IT professional planning, installing, deploying, and/or administering Service Manager, including ITIL, MOF, and other IT consultants; system administrators; and developers creating customized solutions.
• Understand Service Manager’s architecture and components
• Discover how Service Manager supports ITIL and MOF processes
• Accurately scope and specify your implementation to reflect organizational needs
• Plan to provide redundancy, ensure scalability, and support virtualization
• Design, deploy, and maintain Service Manager with security in mind
• Use Service Manager’s consoles and portals to provide the right resources to each user
• Create complete service maps with Service Manager’s business services
• Fully automate incident management and ticketing
• Implement best processes for identifying and addressing root causes of problems
• Systematically manage the life cycle of changes
• Use Service Manager to strengthen governance, risk management, and compliance
• Customize Service Manager’s data layer, workflows, and presentation layer
• Use management packs to simplify service desk customization
• Make the most of Service Manager’s reporting and dashboards
Table of Contents:
Foreword xiv
Introduction 1
PART I: SERVICE MANAGER OVERVIEW AND CONCEPTS
Chapter 1 Service Management Basics 5
Ten Reasons to Use Service Manager 6
The Problem with Today’s Systems 7
Service Management Defined 13
Evolution of the CMDB 14
Strategies for Service Management 15
Overview of Microsoft System Center 30
The Value Proposition of Service Manager 2010 35
Summary 36
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Chapter 2 Service Manager 2010 Overview 37
The History of Service Manager 38
Introducing Service Manager 2010 39
Technology and Terminology 40
Tools and Utilities 47
Overview of SP 1 52
Summary 53
Chapter 3 MOF, ITIL, and Service Manager 55
Introduction to MOF and ITIL 56
Incident Management 67
Problem Management 72
Change Management 77
Configuration Management 83
Summary 87
Chapter 4 Looking Inside Service Manager 89
Architectural Overview 90
Management Group Defined 92
Server Components 93
Windows Services 99
Connectors 101
Modeling and Management Pack Schema 102
Workflow 106
Service Manager Console 108
PowerShell 110
Communications 118
Summary 120
PART II: PLANNING AND INSTALLATION
Chapter 5 Designing Service Manager 123
Envisioning Service Manager 124
Planning Service Manager 131
Summary 158
Chapter 6 Planning Complex Configurations 159
Planning for High Availability 159
Service Manager and Virtualization 169
Performance and Capacity Planning 173
SQL Server Complex Planning 180
Summary 184
Chapter 7 Installing Service Manager 185
Planning Your Installation 185
Installation Prerequisites 186
Order of Installation 188
Single Service Manager Server Deployment 192
Multiple Service Manager Server Deployments 192
Installing Service Manager from the Command Prompt 222
Removing a Service Manager Installation 223
Troubleshooting Tips 224
Post-Deployment Steps 225
Summary 234
PART III: SERVICE MANAGER OPERATIONS
Chapter 8 Using Service Manager 237
The Service Manager Console 238
Managing Service Manager with the Service Manager Console 241
About the Service Manager PowerShell Console 271
Using the Self-Service Portal 271
About the Analyst Portal 275
About the Authoring Tool 276
Summary 276
Chapter 9 Business Services 277
Introducing Service Manager Business Services 278
Using Operations Manager with Business Services 282
Creating a Business Service 287
Non-Operations Manager Components 295
Updating a Business Service 298
Mapping Operations Manager Incidents to a Business Service Automatically 301
Summary 304
Chapter 10 Incident Management 305
Understanding the Incident Process 305
Incident Management in Service Manager 307
Incident Management Process Activities 311
Configuring Incident Management 319
Incident Management Automation 342
Summary 354
Chapter 11 Problem Management 355
Understanding the Problem Process 356
Problem Management in Service Manager 358
Problem Management Process Activities 361
Configuring Problem Management 371
Problem Management Automation 379
Summary 379
Chapter 12 Change Management 381
Understanding the Change Management Process 382
Change Management in Service Manager 384
Change Management Process Activities 388
Configuring Change Management 402
Change Management Automation 411
Summary 424
Chapter 13 IT Management: Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance 425
Understanding Governance, Risk, and the Compliance Process 425
MOF 4.0 and the GRC Process 428
Service Manager 2010 SP 1 and the GRC Process 429
Installing the IT GRC Process MP 432
Configuring the IT GRC Process MP 436
Using the IT GRC Process MP 443
Summary 446
PART IV: ADMINISTERING SERVICE MANAGER
Chapter 14 Notification 451
Notification Overview 451
Notification Setup 452
Workflows with Notification 465
Notification for Review Activities 470
Summary 473
Chapter 15 Service Manager Security 475
Role-Based Security 476
Data Warehouse and Reporting Security 504
Advanced User Role Scenarios 506
Run As Accounts 508
Security Best Practices 513
Summary 515
PART V: BEYOND SERVICE MANAGER
Chapter 16 Planning Your Customization 519
What You Can Customize 520
Management Packs 523
Data Modeling 525
Presenting Data 532
Workflows 541
Scoping 544
General Considerations 548
Summarizing Required Knowledge 548
Summary 550
Chapter 17 Management Packs 551
Purpose of Management Packs 551
Sealed and Unsealed MPs 553
Differences Between Management Pack Schema Version 1.0 and 1.1 555
Management Pack Schema 557
MP Bundles 563
MP Deployment 563
Summary 565
Chapter 18 Customizing Service Manager 567
Customizing the Console 567
Creating Data Models 580
Creating Workflows 596
Customizing Forms 604
Sealing Using the Service Manager Authoring Tool 611
Web Portals 612
Summary 612
Chapter 19 Advanced Customization Scenarios 613
Custom Data Models 613
Customizing Column Display Names 620
Custom Views 624
Console Tasks Using PowerShell 628
Automating an IT Process 631
Creating Console Forms Using Visual Studio 637
Other Scenarios 641
Summary 642
Chapter 20 Reports, Dashboards, and Data Analysis 643
Reporting 643
Dashboards 654
Business Intelligence 656
Customizing the Data Warehouse and Reporting 661
Summary 663
PART VI: APPENDIXES
Appendix A Reference URLs 667
Appendix B Available Online 679
Index 681
About the Author :
Kerrie Meyler, MVP, is the lead author of numerous System Center books in the Unleashed series, including System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed (2008), System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Unleashed (2009), System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Unleashed (2010), and System Center Opalis Integration Server 6.3 Unleashed (2011). She is an independent consultant and trainer with more than 15 years of Information Technology experience. Kerrie was responsible for evangelizing SMS while a Sr. Technology Specialist at Microsoft, and has presented on System Center technologies at TechEd and MMS.
Alexandre Verkinderen, MVP, is a Principal Consultant and trainer at Infront Consulting Group, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Alexandre is an industry expert in the systems management area, and actively consults to large organizations helping them architect, implement, configure, and customize System Center technologies by integrating them into their business processes. Alexandre founded the System Center Users Group Belgium and was a contributing author for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Unleashed (Sams, 2010). Alexandre was an early tester in the Service Manager 2010 TAP.
Anders Bengtsson is a Microsoft senior premier field engineer, focusing on System Center. He was involved in the Service Manager TAP with one of the largest Service Manager TAP customers. Anders has written a number of System Center training courses, including the Service Manager and Operations Manager advanced courses for Microsoft Learning. Before joining Microsoft, Anders was a Microsoft MVP from 2007-2010 for his work in the System Center community, including more than 10,000 posts in news groups and forums. Anders has presented and worked at numerous Microsoft conferences and events, including Microsoft Techdays and Microsoft TechEd EMEA.
Patrik Sundqvist is a senior consultant working as a solution architect, focusing on developing automated solutions for IT processes on the System Center platform. Since the early beta of Service Manager, Patrik has worked with the Service Manager product team to develop community solutions for Service Manager. Over the past eight years, Patrik has developed custom System Center solutions for some of Europe’s largest companies. Patrik was also one of the authors of the level 400 Service Manager course for Microsoft Learning. He often speaks at Microsoft events and is a member of the Microsoft Extended Expert Team.
David Pultorak, ITIL Expert (V3), ITIL Manager (V2), MCSE, MCP, MCT, and CTT, is founder and principal consultant of Acceleres, specializing in Microsoft® System Center Service Manager and Orchestrator implementation and training, and Pultorak & Associates, specializing in IT Service Management implementation and training. David is a recognized leader in the field of IT Service Management with more than 24 years of IT experience. He has contributed to ITIL® (V2), MOF, and COBIT. His most recent books are Microsoft Operations Framework 4.0 (Van Haren 2008), System Center Service Manager Unleashed (SAMS 2011), and the ITIL® V3 Foundation Exam Study Guide (Van Haren 2012). His articles have appeared in periodicals from Data Center Magazine to Directors Monthly, and his work has been featured on nearly every leading industry portal including BetterManagement, Data Center Management, Support World, and ITSMwatch. Mr. Pultorak is a regular and passionate speaker at national and international IT events including AFCOM, AITP, CMG, HP Software Forum, HP World, HDI, itSMF, PMI, SHARE, and SIM.
