System Center Service Manager 2010 – Not able to create request from portal

One of my customers was facing this problem. They are not able to create request through portal. When they click next in below page, nothing is happening.

we checked that  portal ActiveX client is deployed, Also we tried those steps

1. Adding the portal site in Trusted Sites

2. Trying browsing the site by IP Address

3. Disabling the proxy server settings in IE

4. Active Scripting is enabled in IE settings for Trusted sites

but still the same problem..after while he shared the solution with me. He have implemented the below KB to resolve this issue.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954873/

Internet Wars just begun! Struggle against SOPA/PIPA is NOT over

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

"Please note: In less than 15 hours, the English Wikipedia will be blacked out globally to protest SOPA and PIPA."
The internet is one of the best tools the working class has to organize and fight for its interests. We must defend it.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

 

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate — that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.

This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made. Here’s how it’s been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally facilitated the community’s discussion. From the public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:

It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations.

In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That’s a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them.

But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not. As Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh wrote on one of our mailing lists recently,

We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it.

But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.

The decision to shut down the English Wikipedia wasn’t made by me; it was made by editors, through a consensus decision-making process. But I support it.

Like Kat and the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation Board, I have increasingly begun to think of Wikipedia’s public voice, and the goodwill people have for Wikipedia, as a resource that wants to be used for the benefit of the public. Readers trust Wikipedia because they know that despite its faults, Wikipedia’s heart is in the right place. It’s not aiming to monetize their eyeballs or make them believe some particular thing, or sell them a product. Wikipedia has no hidden agenda: it just wants to be helpful.

That’s less true of other sites. Most are commercially motivated: their purpose is to make money. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a desire to make the world a better place — many do! — but it does mean that their positions and actions need to be understood in the context of conflicting interests.

My hope is that when Wikipedia shuts down on January 18, people will understand that we’re doing it for our readers. We support everyone’s right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States — don’t advance the interests of the general public. You can read a very good list of reasons to oppose SOPA and PIPA here, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Why is this a global action, rather than US-only? And why now, if some American legislators appear to be in tactical retreat on SOPA?

The reality is that we don’t think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.

On January 18, we hope you’ll agree with us, and will do what you can to make your own voice heard.

Sue Gardner,
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Download Microsoft Private Cloud Evaluation Software

Source

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/hh505660.aspx

 

System Center 2012 Release Candidate plus optional Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 download

A Microsoft private cloud dramatically changes the way your business produces and consumes IT services by creating a layer of abstraction over your pooled IT resources. This allows your datacenter to offer true infrastructure service capability as well as optimally managed application services.

Microsoft private cloud solutions are built on System Center and Windows Server.

System Center 2012 Release Candidate empowers you with a common management toolset for your private and public cloud applications and services. System Center helps you confidently deliver IT as a Service for your business.

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (optional download) will give you improved powerful virtualization capabilities that can transform how you deliver IT services to your end users and enable you to lay the foundation of a private cloud infrastructure.

Please Note: Many Microsoft private cloud scenarios require Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. If you are using an older version, we highly recommend upgrading to experience the full Microsoft private cloud evaluation.
Need more information? See the product details page. Register to access technical product resources at the Microsoft Private Cloud Evaluation Resource Page.

The Microsoft private cloud evaluation includes:

System Center 2012 Release Candidate
Available in these languages: English

• System Center 2012 Unified Installer is a utility designed to perform new, clean installations of System Center 2012 for testing and evaluation purposes only. If you want to upgrade from an existing System Center installation or choose set up options such as high availability or multi-server component installs, please refer instead to the System Center 2012 component installation guides located on the Microsoft Private Cloud Evaluation Resource Page.
  User’s Guide >>
• System Center 2012 App Controller provides a common self-service experience across private and public clouds that can help you empower application owners to easily build, configure, deploy, and manage new services.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Configuration Manager provides comprehensive configuration management for the Microsoft platform that can help you empower users with the devices and applications they need to be productive while maintaining corporate compliance and control.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager provides unified data protection for Windows servers and clients that can help you deliver scalable, manageable, and cost-effective protection and restore scenarios from disk, tape, and off premise.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection, built on System Center Configuration Manager, provides industry-leading threat detection of malware and exploits as part of a unified infrastructure for managing client security and compliance that can help you simplify and improve endpoint protection.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Operations Manager provides deep application diagnostics and infrastructure monitoring that can help you ensure the predictable performance and availability of vital applications and offers a comprehensive view of your datacenter, private, and public clouds.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Orchestrator provides orchestration, integration, and automation of IT processes through the creation of runbooks that can help you to define and standardize best practices and improve operational efficiency.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Service Manager provides flexible self-service experiences and standardized datacenter processes that can help you integrate people, workflows, and knowledge across enterprise infrastructure and applications.
  System Requirements >>
• System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager provides virtual machine management and services deployment with support for multi-hypervisor environments that can help you deliver a flexible and cost effective private cloud environment.
  System Requirements >>

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (optional download)
Available in these languages: Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish

• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 is designed to help you increase control, availability, and flexibility of your datacenter and desktop infrastructure while helping reduce costs.
  System Requirements >>

Transforming IT with Microsoft Private Cloud

 

The definition, business value, and technology benefits of the “the cloud” have been hotly debated in recent months.  Most agree that cloud computing can accelerate innovation, reduce costs, and increase business agility in the market.  In 2012, cloud computing will transition from hype and discussion, to part of every enterprise’s reality, and IT is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation and help business reap the benefits of cloud computing. 

Join us for a virtual event designed to help you explore your cloud options. It’s your chance to interact with Microsoft experts and with IT leaders like yourself, who have been putting cloud technology to work in their own organizations. You’ll be among the first to hear the latest private cloud news from Microsoft.

Transforming IT with Microsoft Private Cloud
Approx. Start Time

Private cloud discussion with Microsoft executives: Insights and news

• Satya Nadella, President, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft
• Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President, Management and Security Division, Microsoft

Register Now for the virtual event
Tuesday, January 17th
8:30 AM PST | 16:30 UTC
Hear from other senior IT professionals about how cloud computing can help you gain maximum competitive advantage with minimal risk.
Learn about Microsoft cloud offerings, including private, public, and hybrid cloud models.
Experience Microsoft private cloud solutions through the Microsoft Technology Center.

Check The Event Link

http://www.microsoft.com/business/events/en-us/PrivateCloudExec/#fbid=ZALPym445Ne

Happy New Year – 2012

I found out yesterday that I have been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award for Microsoft Virtualization (Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager) for another year. This is the 2nd year in  row for me. I am very honored to get this award again and would like to thank everyone that reads my blog – this would not be possible without you!

Happy New Year 2012 for Everyone

Congratulations 2012 Microsoft MVP!

Dear Mohamed Emam,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2012 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in System Center Virtual Machine Manager technical communities during the past year.
Also in this email:

• About your MVP Award Gift
• How to claim your award benefits
• Your MVP Identification Number
• MVP Award Program Code of Conduct

The Microsoft MVP Award provides us the unique opportunity to celebrate and honor your significant contributions and say "Thank you for your technical leadership."

Nestor Portillo
Director
Community & Online Support

Microsoft Virtual Academy: System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

The MVA has just released a  new course for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

This course focuses on how using System Center Virtual Machine Manger 2012 can help your business build, deploy, and maintain a private cloud. After completing these three modules you will have learnt about the Virtual Machine Manger 2012 product, and the features it utilizes to build and support the virtualized and physical resources that are part of your private cloud infrastructure. The course will also expose you to cloud computing at the business level, from the perspective of Virtual Machine Manger 2012, and show how to extend that knowledge to the technical level. The last module will show you how to manage applications within your private cloud using Virtual Machine Manger 2012 to deploy, update, and manage them. At the end, we will have illustrated how using Virtual Machine Manger 2012 as part of your private cloud infrastructure will benefit both your organization and the IT Pro.

 

Overview of Virtual Machine Manager 2012

This module explains how enterprise datacenters are evolving, and the evolution toward highly virtualized infrastructures. We explain how VMM 2012 enables you to evolve your infrastructure to the cloud by giving you a set of management tools to allow you to manage the environment, both the underlying physical infrastructure and the virtualized infrastructure. We will show you how VMM 2012 fits with Microsoft’s cloud and datacenter management vision, to deliver common management experiences across private and public clouds. Illustrating how to deliver IT as a Service on your terms with flexible, management across your hybrid environments.

Using VMM 2012 to Configure a Private Cloud

Through this course, you will see how using VMM 2012 to provision your private cloud infrastructure and applications can deliver a flexible and cost-effective infrastructure. This course will teach you the basics of deployment and upgrading your virtual environment, the fundamentals of fabric management, and private cloud usage scenarios. By taking this course and learning the fundamentals of building and delegating clouds, you will be able to better provision and optimize your application services and virtualization management practices.

Modelling and Maintaining Virtualized Services in VMM 2012

In this module you will learn the benefits of modeling and maintaining virtualized services in VMM 2012. After completing the course, you will understand the benefits of services in VMM 2012. We will show you this by providing a detailed overview of the services lifecycle, and how using the new Service Designer in the product can help you to create, and customize deployments. This will enable you to better deploy services to the private cloud, and ensure repeatable and predictable updating of a service. Overall, this will increase the capabilities and benefits to your organization and to the IT Professional.

Linux IS v3.2 is out

At a high level, here’s a list of the changes since v3.1:

• Synthetic Mouse Support: The virtualized mouse device is no longer bound to the VMConnect window, and can now be used with a RDP session.
• Merged Device Drivers: We now present a single device driver for both IDE and SCSI devices (hv_storvsc).
• Windows 8 Fix: The synthetic network device (hv_netvsc) can now be used with a Windows 8 host, eliminating the hang on boot that was previously seen.
• SCVMM Fix: This release fixes the issue as described in KB2586286.
• Improved Setup Experience: Users now only need to run install.sh (as root) to automatically detect the correct architecture and install the appropriate drivers.

In addition, I would like to mention a number of requirements and limitations on the use of this package of integration:

• The driver applied to guest virtual machines running Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.1 (architecture x 86 and x 64) and CentOS 6.0 (architecture x 86 and x 64). For earlier version should be used components integration version 2.1
• In fact, it’s modified drivers in the Linux kernel 3.2, but can work with the Linux kernel 2.6.32, shipped with Red Hat and CentOS

VMM tricks: PRO alerts sent twice

So This one comes from Microsoft TechNet forums http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/virtualmachinemgrproscintegration/thread/dcf580e1-1366-4eed-967b-57b1062eba51/

 

Here you are the situation

You have PRO integration configured between SCOM 2007 R2 and VMM 2008 R2 SP1

PRO alert is being generated twice actually. There are 2 alerts in OM with the exact same time they were raised, the only difference is the alert ID.

Solution:

a) Administration->Settings->DB grooming in OM console.

b) Run Set-VMMServer -OpsMgrServer "" (empty string) from VMM powershell, this will reset OM-VMM integration.