For Opalis / Orchestrator content, see the Orchestrator blog at https://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator.

For Operations Manager cross-platform content, see the Operations Manager blog at https://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam.

Creating Icon Graphics

To create icons, you start with a set of bitmap (.BMP) files representing the icons you want. Each icon needed for the IP and activities needs to be supplied in two sizes: 16x16 and 32x32. You can use your favorite graphics editor (I use Photoshop Elements) to create the icons, just follow these guidelines:

• The transparency color for Orchestrator icons is black (0,0,0). If your icons contain black that is not intended to be transparent, you should change those areas to near-black (15,15,15). Visually, these will still appear to be black but will not be rendered as transparent. This is a key difference between Orchestrator and other products that typically use magenta as their transparency color. Don’t ask me why it was set to black… it just is :)
  
• You should not use a colored background (white or otherwise). Colored backgrounds may reproduce well with one certain desktop color, but may not reproduce well on other backgrounds. Your icon needs to be “portable” across different aspects of the product, so transparent backgrounds are better.
  
• Do not use text in an icon, since your IP may be used in many different locales, and putting words in graphics prevents localization.
  
• Try to utilize the same “verb” and “noun” graphics that other activities use for the same type of actions. Consistency across activities is a key customer benefit and helps them understand what your activities do just by looking at them.
  
• If your activities represent a theme, or perform actions with a specific product, it’s ok to have a “theme” for your icons. That may be a consistent “noun” icon that represents the product, or it might be a product logo (make sure you have rights to use it and it displays well at 32x32 and 16x16), or it might be a colored base icon (see the new generic activity icons in the Integration Toolkit for examples).
  
• Be sure to check out how your icons look once they’ve been implemented to check for any fuzziness (which can happen around shading and transparency edges), and fine tune them as needed.

Creating the Resource Assembly

The assembly used for icons is a C++ Win32 assembly. To create the assembly, you create a new Win32 project using Visual Studio, using the following process:

1. In Visual Studio, click on File > New > Project. This opens the New Project dialog.
   
2. Select the Visual C++ > Win32 template category in the left pane. Select Win32 Project as the project type in the center pane, and set the .NET Framework version to .NET Framework 4.
   
   
   
3. Provide a project name and path and click OK. The Win32 Application Wizard launches.
   
4. Click Next on the first page of the Wizard.
   
   
   
5. On the Application Settings page, select DLL under Application Type, then click Finish. The C++ project is created.
   
   
   
6. Using Windows Explorer, add a folder named Resources under the project directory and copy into that folder all of the BMP files you want to use as icons.
   
7. In Visual Studio, within Solution Explorer, right-click on the Resource Files folder of the project and select Add > Resource.
   
   
   
8. Select Bitmap and then click the Import button.
   
   
   
9. Browse to the Resources folder you created in step 6, select all of the BMP files and click Open. The bitmap files are added to the Resource Files folder in the project.
   
10. Right-click on the <project name>.rc file located in the Resource Files folder and select View code. The .rc file opens.
    
    
    
11. Modify the identifiers of all the bitmaps so that they end in “_16” or “_32” corresponding to the bitmap sizes. The content should appear similar to the section shown below.
    
    
    NOTE: You must rename the identifiers this way or the icons will not be found and displayed by Orchestrator.
    
12. Save your changes to the project and build it. The .DLL file created can now be used as a replacement resource file for your Integration Pack. Just specify your new assembly and you’ll have access to the custom icons.
    
    

Using this process, you can create unique, custom icons for your Integration Packs and make them look more professional and stand out from other activities. As part of the Orchestrator release. I will post a set of “icon building blocks” that you can use to create custom icons using standard “verb” icons with base graphics and just add your own “noun” graphics. Look for that out on the Orchestrator CodePlex site (https://orchestrator.codeplex.com)

Enjoy!

As we have previously indicated, there are some changes in the Standard Activities (what were referred to as Foundation Activities in the Opalis product) with the Orchestrator release. 

This raises the question for customers who are migrating from Opalis to Orchestrator for a way to identify which Opalis workflows contain objects that are deprecated runbook activities in Orchestrator. 

The following SQL query can be run on against either the Opalis 6.3 database or the Orchestrator database.  It will identify the Opalis 6.3 workflows that make use of objects no longer available in Orchestrator.  The query will return both the Opalis 6.3 workflow name as well as the name of the object in the workflow.  Any workflow identified by this query will need to be updated after it has been imported into Orchestrator to remove the reference to the deprecated object.

Select 
 policies.[Name] as [Policy Name], 
 objects.[Name] as [Object Name] 
From 
 [Objects] objects join 
 [Policies] policies 
 on objects.[ParentID]=policies.[UniqueID] 
Where 
 objects.objecttype = '2081B459-88D2-464A-9F3D-27D2B7A64C5E' or 
 objects.objecttype = '6F0FA888-1969-4010-95BC-C0468FA6E8A0' or 
 objects.objecttype = '8740DB49-5EE2-4398-9AD1-21315B8D2536' or 
 objects.objecttype = '19253CC6-2A14-432A-B4D8-5C3F778B69B0' or 
 objects.objecttype = '9AB62470-8541-44BD-BC2A-5C3409C56CAA' or 
 objects.objecttype = '292941F8-6BA7-4EC2-9BC0-3B5F96AB9790' or 
 objects.objecttype = '98AF4CBD-E30E-4890-9D26-404FE24727D7' or 
 objects.objecttype = '2409285A-9F7E-4E04-BFB9-A617C2E5FA61' or 
 objects.objecttype = 'B40FDFBD-6E5F-44F0-9AA6-6469B0A35710' or 
 objects.objecttype = '9DAF8E78-25EB-425F-A5EF-338C2940B409' or 
 objects.objecttype = 'B5381CDD-8498-4603-884D-1800699462AC' or 
 objects.objecttype = 'FCA29108-14F3-429A-ADD4-BE24EA5E4A3E' or 
 objects.objecttype = '7FB85E1D-D3C5-41DA-ACF4-E1A8396A9DA7' or 
 objects.objecttype = '3CCE9C71-51F0-4595-927F-61D84F2F1B5D' or 
 objects.objecttype = '96769C11-11F5-4645-B213-9EC7A3F244DB' or 
 objects.objecttype = '6FED5A55-A652-455B-88E2-9992E7C97E9A' or 
 objects.objecttype = '9C1DF967-5A50-4C4E-9906-C331208A3801' or 
 objects.objecttype = 'B40FDFBD-6E5F-44F0-9AA6-6469B0A35710' or 
 objects.objecttype = '829A951B-AAE9-4FBF-A6FD-92FA697EEA91' or 
 objects.objecttype = '1728D617-ACA9-4C96-ADD1-0E0B61104A9E' or 
 objects.objecttype = 'F3D1E70B-D389-49AD-A002-D332604BE87A' or 
 objects.objecttype = '2D907D60-9C25-4A1C-B950-A31EB9C9DB5F' or 
 objects.objecttype = '6A083024-C7B3-474F-A53F-075CD2F2AC0F' or 
 objects.objecttype = '4E6481A1-6233-4C82-879F-D0A0EDCF2802' or 
 objects.objecttype = 'BC49578F-171B-4776-86E2-664A5377B178' 

The migration guide on the Orchestrator TechNet Library is currently being updated with this information.

We hope this helps you migration testing and planning!

Adam

Adam Hall Senior Technical Product Manager

Send me an e-mail    Follow me on Twitter    Connect with me on LinkedIn

We have posted 2 new Orchestrator downloads in the Download Center for the System Center 2007/2008/2010 releases and the Quick Integration Kit (QIK).

These 2 downloads can be obtained by clicking the following links:

• For the System Center 2007/2008/2010 Integration Packs click here
• For the Quick Integration Kit click here

Enjoy!

Adam

Adam Hall Senior Technical Product Manager

Send me an e-mail    Follow me on Twitter    Connect with me on LinkedIn

System Center Orchestrator 2012 Beta is not supported on a domain controller:  Currently Installing System Center Orchestrator 2012 on a domain controller is not supported. This is known issue for Beta  release and it is because of different ProductType for domain controller, which Orchestrator Installer does not check for. This is already release noted, please see https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh204684.aspx

Running Orchestrator 2012 on domain controller is not recommended for running in production environment, however you can use the below workaround to use in lab environments

Workaround:

Change the ProductType to ServerNT before install and then change it back to LanmanNT after the install

1. Go into Regedit
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ProductOptions\ProductType
3. Under ProductType take a look at what the Data value is and write that value down.  If it is LanmanNT change it to ServerNT.
4. Save and close.
5. Run the install
6. Once it finishes go back into Regedit and change this value back to its original setting so you do not run into any other issues with other software that may be looking for the LanmanNT.

Details:

As part of the OS requirement check, Orchestrator Install  is checking for “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ProductOptions\ProductType” to determine if the OS is Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 (for designer), basically checking if it is WINNT or ServerNT product type.

If the OS is a domain controller, the  pre-requisite check fails because it’s neither WINNT nor ServerNT.

ProductType for different Windows SKUs

1. WINNT – Windows 7

2. ServerNT – Windows 2008

3. LanmanNT – Windows 2008 with Domain Controller role enabled

We have published the new IPs for IBM Netcool and VMware vSphere which are available for immediate download by clicking the links.

Further details about the two IPs are below:

System Center Orchestrator 2012 Integration Pack for VMware vSphere

This version of the integration pack for VMware for vSphere contains new activities, new features, and enhancements. You can read the release notes here.

New Activities

New Features

This integration pack includes the following new features:

• The Get Hosts activity now returns, in the published data, the state of the Host in the cluster, such as running or maintenance mode.
• The Clone VM activity now does not show the datastore or hosts in object's subscription list which aren’t available. Previously all datastores / hosts were returned, now only the available ones are returned.
• New timeout field added to the options menu for all VMware vSphere activities. If no value is given, this will default to 100 seconds.
• Support added for ESX 4.1 and as a result adding support for Windows 7 Guest Operating Systems as well as other operating systems, as below:
• The 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 7
• The 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 R2
• The 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista

Issues Fixed

The following issues have been fixed in this integration pack:

• DNS Settings now configured on Clone VM activity correctly as supplied. This is a comma-separated list of DNS servers.
• You can use a custom port to connect to Virtual Center. The port value is blank by default, with blank value representing to use the default port.

System Center Orchestrator 2012 Integration Pack for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus

This version of the integration pack for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus contains new features and enhancements.  You can read the release notes here.

New Features

This integration pack supports the following new features:

• Activities support connection to IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus v7.3
• All activities can connect to the Netcool Object Server using an SSL Connection.
• All features now use the same logging framework. There is no longer a requirement for Java specific logging information.
• All activities now publish UTC fields in two formats; the original long timestamp (1269986359), and the OIS standard format (M/d/yyyy h:m:s tt).

Issues Fixed

The following issues are fixed in this integration pack:

• Previously, activities would fail if a string contained a combination of a single quote and a question mark.
• The Monitor Alert activity no longer allows published data in Monitor Alert fields. Monitor Alert fields accept only variables.

We will have further announcements to make about new IPs over the coming weeks!

Adam

Adam Hall Senior Technical Product Manager

Send me an e-mail    Follow me on Twitter    Connect with me on LinkedIn

I wanted to ensure that everyone understood the powerful activities that come Out of the Box with Orchestrator, and all the incredible runbooks you can build without a single Integration Pack!

These activities are called the Standard Activities and are fully documented in the Orchestrator TechNet Library.  Below is a compilation of all the activities that are provided by the Orchestrator Beta.  As you can see, there are a LOT of them, 73 in fact!

Straight from the install, you can create runbooks with these activities, and very effective and powerful runbooks.

So the next question is, what benefits do the Integration Packs bring?  They allow you to compile a set of ready built activities, sometimes encapsulating a number of tasks into a single activity, they allow you to pre-configure activities, define connection string requirements and authentication mechanisms, and in some cases they are required just to hide the complexity of the tasks.  They bring elements of change and version control, and they definitely simplify and speed up the process!  But they are, in most cases, not required. We are updating a number of the Integration Packs for Orchestrator, and are committed to keeping these up to date.  We are also enabling and encouraging the Partner ecosystem and our Vendor community to build more, and then of course there is a growing technical community out there who are creating and publishing their own Integration Packs using the Quick Integration Kit (QIK).

We will be updating the QIK for the Orchestrator Release Candidate, but that’s a topic for another post .

Happy Automating!

Adam

Adam Hall Senior Technical Product Manager

Send me an e-mail     Follow me on Twitter     Connect with me on LinkedIn

We will be creating and posting a lot for documentation and information as we build to the Release Candidate, so please keep asking questions and providing us feedback!

And of course the best way to evaluate Orchestrator is to join the Evaluation Program.  

Download the System Center Orchestrator 2012 Beta: https://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26503 

Check out the Orchestrator TechNet library: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh237242.aspx

System Requirements: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh201965.aspx

Release Notes: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh204684.aspx 

Getting prepared for Install: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh201967.aspx 

Installing Orchestrator: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh201966.aspx

Standard Activities: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh225055.aspx

Deploying Integration Packs: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh228174.aspx

Using the Orchestration Console: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh204692.aspx

New Terminology: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh204677.aspx

Ask questions in the Orchestrator Forums: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/systemcenterorchestrator

Give us Feedback: https://connect.microsoft.com/Opalis/Feedback 

Get started quickly by watching Charles Joys 8-minute videos: https://blogs.technet.com/b/charlesjoy/

Now, go grab the download and start giving Orchestrator a good workout!

Adam

Adam Hall Senior Technical Product Manager

Send me an e-mail    Follow me on Twitter    Connect with me on LinkedIn

First of all, I created a function to do the actual connection to the web service and querying it. Thanks to another smart person for coming up with this part (see my previous post where I talked about this). This function is called Query-RestService, This is a generic function that allows me to call virtually any REST-based web service. On top of that, I have another function called Query-SCOService. The Query-SCOService function simply formats the URI properly for the SCO web service (which you could do yourself with the Query-RestService function). If I call this function and don’t provide a query, I get the same thing I’d get if I typed the default web service URL into a browser:

The really good stuff comes with the ConvertTo-SCOObject function. This function takes the XML output from the web service query and converts it into custom PSObjects that look like this:

I can create one object or an array of these objects easily, just by doing the following:

(1)   Create an object containing the XML output from the web service query in Atom put feed format:

$xmlfeed = Query-Rest -scoserver "sco12-rh1" -credentials $cred -query "Jobs?$filter=RunbookId%20eq%20guid'9296a3c2-29b1-4000-a155-e8e3adc855e9'"

(2)   Pass this xml into the ConvertTo-SCOObject function

ConvertTo-SCOObject -XmlFeed $xmlfeed

The resulting output is one or more objects that can then be used for further querying. For example, if I want to get a list of all Instances of a job that do not have a status of “completed” and show only their IDs, I could do this:

Query-SCOService -scoserver "sco12-rh1” -credentials $cred -query (ConvertTo-SCOObject -XmlFeed $xmlfeed | ? {$_.Status -ne "Completed"}).Instances | Select ID

Do you see how I am utilizing the properties as extensions to the base URI? Cool, huh?

I whipped this whole thing up in a couple of hours. I encourage you to play around with it and try new things. When we ship Orchestrator 2012, we’ll have an official, shipping PowerShell interface that’s built on top of the web service, and it will definitely be much better than this simple script, but between now and then this is something to get you thinking about how useful PowerShell and the new web service are together.

Get the PowerShell script for all of this here

Enjoy!

From his post …

Being excited by the elegance of .NET based Integration Pack architecture and simplicity of writing such an IP, today my colleague decided to write his own “Hello World”. It didn’t take too long to get a DLL, and the next step is to package it to an OIP file. Then he found that QIK Wizard threw the following exception:

Obviously the error message wasn’t helpful because it didn’t say what the exception really was, and how to resolve it. In this case, windbg is our friend. With SOS extension, windbg can tell us exactly what is happening and where the problem is.

You can read the post here on how to resolve the issue …

Adam

Adam Hall Senior Technical Product Manager

Send me an e-mail    Follow me on Twitter    Connect with me on LinkedIn