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/

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

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 >>

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 for Everyone

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

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.

• 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

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.

Get the download

To download the Beta version of this Solution Accelerator, click here.

Tell us what you think

The Beta review period runs through October 7, 2011.

Download the beta guide and provide us with your feedback, especially in the areas of its usefulness, usability, and impact. Send an email with your input toMOF@microsoft.com by Friday, October 7. We need to receive your input during this period for your feedback to be included in the final release ofService Management for the Private Cloud.

Your input helps to make the guides we publish as helpful and useful as possible. We look forward to hearing from you!

To submit feedback through email, please use the following procedure:

1. Use the Comment feature in Microsoft Word to insert your feedback in the form of comments. Please only submit your feedback in the documents using this feature in Word.

2. If your feedback concerns something other than the content of the document, please include your feedback directly in your email message.

3. Email the document with your feedback to MOF@microsoft.com.

Kinds of feedback

We would especially appreciate feedback in the following areas:

• Usefulness
  Is the technical depth of this white paper sufficient for the topics covered? What portions of the white paper are the most useful to your organization?
• Usability
  Is the structure or flow of this white paper effective? Is the information presented in a clear and logical manner? Can you easily find key content?
• Impact
  Do you anticipate that this white paper will save you time and accelerate deployment of Microsoft management products in your organization? Has this white paper had a positive influence on your opinion of the Microsoft technologies it addresses? Do you think this white paper helped you apply service management principles to make your private cloud more successful?

Benefits for participation

• You get an early look at this high-demand content.
• You will be listed as a contributor if you provide feedback we integrate into the final version of the guide.

Availability

The final release is expected to be available from the Microsoft Download Center in November 2011. You will receive an email notification when it’s available for download.

Learn More

Visit the MOF home page on TechNet: www.microsoft.com/MOF

For the latest Solution Accelerators, visit the home page: www.microsoft.com/SolutionAccelerators

Thank you for your interest in the development of the Service Management for the Private Cloud white paper. We look forward to receiving your feedback!

Sincerely,

Solution Accelerators Infrastructure Planning and Design Team

Microsoft Corporation

Follow Solution Accelerators on Twitter to get the latest tips and updates: @MSSolutionAccel

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/virtual-machine-manager-2012.aspx

System Center 2012 cloud and datacenter management solutions empower you with a common management tool set for your private and public cloud applications and services. System Center helps you confidently deliver IT as a Service for your business. Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Release Candidate (RC) is key to delivering the promise of the System Center 2012 release wave. Virtual Machine Manager 2012 enables you to:

Deliver flexible and cost effective Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). You can pool and dynamically allocate virtualized datacenter resources (compute, network, and storage) enabling self-service infrastructure experience for your business, with flexible role based delegation and access control.

Apply cloud principles to provisioning and servicing your datacenter applications with techniques like service modeling, service configuration and image based management. You can also state-separate your applications and services from the underlying infrastructure using server application virtualization. This results in a “service centric” approach to management where you manage the application or service lifecycle and not just datacenter infrastructure or virtual machines.

Optimize your existing investments by managing multi-hypervisor environments, including Hyper-V, Xen and VMware.

Dynamic optimization of your datacenter resources based on workload demands, while ensuring reliable service delivery with features like high availability.

Best-of-breed virtualization-management for Microsoft workloads like Exchange and Sharepoint.

Benefits

Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Release Candidate is a core component of the System Center 2012 release wave and offers you the following benefits:

Build your Private Cloud today; provision flexible, agile and cost effective IaaS while maintaining your quality of service (QoS) commitments to the business.

Manage heterogeneous virtual environments using a single tool, thus optimizing your existing datacenter investments.

Optimize your existing applications for private cloud deployment without requiring you to rewrite them from scratch.

Dramatically simplify application provisioning and servicing thus saving operational effort and expense.

Unlock application mobility between your cloud environments as appropriate to your business needs.

So you can start testing and I would recommend to take a look at VMM 2012 Survival Guide

Microsoft TechNet Library content:

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012  (on the Web)

Download the official VMM 2012 Beta content  (may not be as current as the “live” Web version in TechNet)

Videos

System Center VMM 2012 Overview 

Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals  This is a link to the whole series. For sections specifically related to VMM 2012, see:

Virtualization Jump Start (07): System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 

Virtualization Jump Start (08): Private Cloud Solutions, Architecture & VMM Self-Service Portal 2.0 

90 Seconds to the Cloud: Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta with Kenon Owens 

MMS 2011 Day 1 Keynote 

Creating a Stand-Alone Virtual Machine with a Blank VHD in VMM 2012 

Best of MMS Belgium 2011 video series  (Includes “Virtual Machine Manager 2012: Technical Overview”, “Managing Your Fabric With System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012″)

Blogs

System Center Virtual Machine Manager blog  (from the Microsoft product team)

Microsoft Server Application Virtualization Blog (from the Microsoft product team) 

SCVMM 2012 content on Hyper-V.nu blog 

SCVMM 2012 content on Virtualization and some coffee blog 

Other

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012: VMM Gets Major Upgrade   (TechNet Magazine)

Troubleshooting

Post your question to the VMM forums

Troubleshooting OS Deployment of Hyper-V Through VMM 2012    (Blog post)

He is running 3 Hyper-V hosts with Windows 2008 R2 SP1 running multiple applications. One of the hosts keep failing and He can not Live migrate any VM to the other hosts until restart.

We went through all well known workarounds for such cases like

1- if you have AV please disable

2- Also check http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc773533%28WS.10%29.aspx

3- Please if you have teaming..Break it and check again

4- Please check http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981618

5- Make sure that you enable the "file and printer sharing" as well as the "client for MS networks" on the heartbeat networks cards on all nodes.  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2008795

So we have to start reading more in the cluster logs. You can generate the cluster logs as per

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clustering/archive/2008/09/24/8962934.aspx

We got some interesting data and errors in the logs just like:

In Win2008 the Physical Disk resource type private property that stores the disk signature change from "Signature" and it is now "DiskSignature" in Win2008.  The lack of the DiskSignature property not being populated was resulting in the resource failing to come online

ERROR_CLUSTER_GROUP_MOVING(5908)’ because of ”Virtual Machine Configuration R-Web2003′ is owned by node 2, not 1.’

mm.. So it looks like something from the Hardware level. Searching HP blades errors come with more useful information

http://cb-net.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=84:hp-bl460-asr-hpqilo2-issues&catid=3:windows-server-2003&Itemid=3

he HP Integrated Management Log shows ‘ASR Detected by System ROM‘ along with the following events in the System event log on an affected machine:

Event Type:    Warning
Event Source:    hpqilo2
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    57
Failed GET SENSOR READING, sensor 16
Event Type:    Warning
Event Source:    hpqilo2
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    57
NetFN 0×4, command 0x2D timed out

The solution for this was to perform the following:

• Install the latest ILO Firmware Update v. 1.81
• Install the HP iLO Management Channel Interface Driver v. 1.15.0.0
• Install the HP ProLiant iLO2 Management Controller Driver v. 1.12.0.0

All of these drivers can be downloaded form the following location, selecting your operating system:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?prodNameId=3288156?=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=3709945&prodSeriesId=1842750&taskId=135

You can download the paper from:

Running SQL Server with Hyper-V Dynamic Memory – Best Practices and Considerations

Or

http://sqlcat.com/whitepapers/archive/2011/08/01/running-sql-server-with-hyper-v-dynamic-memory-best-practices-and-considerations.aspx

Summary: Memory is a critical resource to Microsoft SQL Server workloads, especially in a virtualized environment where resources are shared and contention for shared resources can lead to negative impact on the workload. Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 introduced Hyper-V Dynamic Memory, which enables virtual machines to make more efficient use of physical memory resources. Hyper-V Dynamic Memory treats memory as a shared resource that can be reallocated automatically among running virtual machines. There are unique considerations that apply to virtual machines that run SQL Server workloads in such environments. This document provides insight into considerations and best practices for running SQL Server 2008 R2 in Hyper-V Dynamic Memory configurations on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

I am not SQL Expert but I will try to provide any hints or comments on this Whitepaper

Enjoy it

Download VMMSSP

System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0 SP1 is a partner-extensible toolkit that enables customers to dynamically pool, allocate, and manage their datacenter resources, to offer infrastructure as a service for their organization. The self-service portal is a free Solution Accelerator, and is fully supported by Microsoft. In addition to providing users the ability to import virtual machines created outside the self-service portal, this new version is now localized in Japanese, simplified Chinese, and traditional Chinese.

Please send any questions or comments to the VMMSSP team at sspfeedback@microsoft.com. We will respond within two business days.

Please download VMMSSP here, and visit www.microsoft.com\SSP for more information, including a free Datasheet and FAQ. You can also follow System Center and Solution Accelerators on Twitter to keep up-to-date on new releases and features.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/scvmmssp2/thread/4331b0fb-512a-4998-86ad-52dcb0ac711e/

If I create the VM from VMM 2008 R2 it "fails" on "Install VM Components" because there is no OS yet. But I can then start VM from VMM and boots from ISO just fine.

From SSP it fails with:

Parameters cannot be specified for the guest operating system because the selected template was created as a non-customizable template (-NoCustomization parameter). (Error ID: 730) Please retry the operation without specifying guest operating system parameters.

Have tried with/without a synthetic network adapter and have also tried a custom action without the -Owner $SubmittedBy -ComputerName $vmName -FullName $submittedBy from the New-VM entries in the createvm task.

Santos from MS give one shoot solution

The Action xml segment which does not have " -Owner $SubmittedBy -ComputerName $vmName -FullName $submittedBy" needs to be associated with Service role in which virtual machines are being created and then select that service role during create virtual machine wizard. This should resolve your issue.  You can also refer to "Associating an Action XML Segment with a Service Role" in VMM08R2_VMMSSPExtensibilityGuide.

System Center Orchestrator System Requirements

Hardware

The following minimum hardware configuration is required for Orchestrator:

• 1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM or above (2 GB recommended)
• 200 megabyte (MB) of available hard disk space
• Dual-core CPU or better

Operating system

The following table lists the supported operating systems for Orchestrator.

Management server, Runbook server, Orchestrator web service –> Windows Server 2008 R2

Runbook Designer, Runbook Tester –> Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2

Software

The following software is required to install Orchestrator:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
• .NET Framework 4 (if you are installing the Orchestration console or web service)
• Microsoft Silverlight 4 (for the Orchestration console only)

How to Prepare your Computer for System Center Orchestrator

before you install System Center Orchestrator 2012, perform the following steps to prepare your computer:

• Ensure your computer meets the minimum system requirements.
• Add the user you are going to use as the Orchestrator service account to the local Administrators group on your computer.
• Enable the “Log on as a service” policy for the user.

To add a user to the Administrators group

1. Log on to the computer where you are going to install Orchestrator as a user with administrative credentials.

2. Open Server Manager. On the taskbar, click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Manage.

3. In the navigation pane, expand Configuration, expand Local Users and Groups, and then click Groups.

4. In the Groups list, right-click Administrators, and then click Properties.

5. Click Add.

6. Enter the user account that you want to use as the Orchestrator service account, click OK, and then OK again.

To enable the “Log on as a service” policy

1. Log on to the computer where you are going to install Orchestrator as a user with administrative credentials.

2. On the taskbar, click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Local Security Policy.

3. Expand Local Policies, and then click User Rights Assignment.

4. Right-click Log on as a service, and then click Properties.

5. Click Add User or Group.

6. Enter the user account that you are going to use as the service account, click OK and then OK again.

How to Install System Center Orchestrator

Use the following steps to install the beta version of System Center Orchestrator 2012.

To install Orchestrator

Double-click the SetupSCO.exe program to start the Setup wizard for System Center Orchestrator 2012.

On the Welcome page of the Setup wizard, click Install Orchestrator.

Provide a name and company information for the product registration. Review and accept the Microsoft Software License Terms, and then click Next.

Select the features that you want to install. For this version, ensure that all features are selected, and then click Next.

To view a description of each feature and the requirements for the feature, expand each section.

Your computer is now checked for required hardware and software. If you meet all the requirements, you are taken directly to step 9. If not, proceed with the following steps.

Review any items that did not pass the prerequisite check. For some requirements, such as Microsoft .NET Framework 4, you can use the link provided in the Setup wizard to install the missing requirement. Others, such as Windows PowerShell or the Internet Information Services (IIS) role, can be installed or configured by Setup.

After you address any missing prerequisites, click Verify Prerequisites Again.

Click Next to continue.

1. Enter the user name and password for the Orchestrator service account. This account is used to run runbooks and access remote resources. For more information about this account and how it is used, see How to Prepare your Computer for System Center Orchestrator.

   Click Next.

Enter the name of the server and the name of the instance of SQL Server that you want to use for Orchestrator. You can also specify whether to use Windows Authentication or SQL Server Authentication, and whether to create a new database or use an existing database. Click Next.

Enter the name of the local or Active Directory user group that will be used to manage Orchestrator. For more information about this user group and how it is used, see Understanding the System Center Orchestrator Management Group.

If you want to enable the user account or group to access the Runbook Designer remotely, select that option.

Click Next.

Enter the port numbers that you want to use for the Orchestration console and the web service. By default these are 81 and 82, respectively. Click Next.

Enter the installation location for Orchestrator. The default location is C:\Program Files(x86)\Microsoft System Center\Orchestrator 2012. Click Next.

Review the installation summary. If you have to make any changes, click Previous. To proceed with the installation, click Install.

If the installation finishes successfully, you can select to start the Runbook Designer automatically, and then click Close.

If installation does not finish successfully, review the features that did not install. View the log files for each feature to identify any issues. Resolve the issues, and then run the Setup wizard again.

Orchestrator provides orchestration, integration, and automation of IT processes through the creation of runbooks, enabling you to define and standardize best practices and improve operational efficiency.

Microsoft provides CEP program https://connect.microsoft.com/site1211

CEP Program provides IT professionals a structured approach to evaluating System Center Orchestrator 2012 product before their final release. Members of this program are able to evaluate early versions of products with guidance from the product team and by sharing of experiences and best practices among a community of peers.

After you have applied and been accepted to a program, you will be invited to a product specific site on Connect. It is important to note that although a program may have started in the past,  applicants will continue to be accepted and simply asked to catch up on the materials that have been previously published.

I will start some blogging about how to install and configure new System center Orchestrator… The fun just began

This happens for VMs running on Hyper-V Windows 2008 R2 SP1..this host used to be managed by VMM 2008 R2 SP1..then I removed the agent and installed VMM 2012 Agent.

VMM server is running on VM..When I right click on the VM and select properties it crash..but when I press properties from the top Pan I freeze…

I submit this error on Connect website and Richard Rundle from Microsoft was kind enough to give me help in that

Resolution

This is a known issue with the Beta. You can run the following script on the VMM Server to prevent the crash:

Get-SCVirtualMachine | where {$_.HostType -eq "VMHost"} | Get-SCVirtualNetworkAdapter | where {$_.logicalnetwork -eq $null} | Set-SCVirtualNetworkAdapter –NoLogicalNetwork

Now everything is working fine