1.       Register for Connect, you will need a Microsoft Account

2.       Join the Windows Server System Center Public Connect

https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/SC_Public

3.       Vote up or down the existing reported issues at

kawilson@microsoft.com

One key Service Manager performance issue that the product group keeps hearing about surrounds connectors; mainly the System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) and Active Directory (AD) connectors, both of which are based on Linking Framework (LFX). Running these connectors currently might take weeks to complete the initial sync depending on the number of configuration items required to be synced.

In a typical Configuration Manager deployment, out of all data synced by the ConfigMgr 2012 connector, the most time is taken by the tables DeviceHasSoftwareItemInstalled and DeviceHasSoftwareUpdate. The DeviceHasSoftwareItemInstalled table contains the information on software installed on computers and the DeviceHasSoftwareUpdate table contains the updates installed on computers. The data in these tables can be in the range of 50 to 200 times the number of computers that ConfigMgr is monitoring. For example, for a deployment of 1500 computers, the DeviceHasSoftwareItemInstalled table might contain up to 80,000 entries and the DeviceHasSoftwareUpdate table may have up to around 150,000 entries. Due to the size, these two tables account for 80-90% of the sync time, depending on the size of deployment of course. 

Why does sync take so much time?

The main reason this takes so long is that data insertion is serialized. The way the LFX connector works is that it submits data in batches (typically 500-2000 entries) which are serialized. The data is inserted through the connector and needs to go in ECL for other workflows to act on the data. This puts a restriction of inserting data serially into the SQL DB so that a workflow can process information for one batch in one go.

In addition, the DeviceHasSoftwareItemInstalled table can take far more time to insert data per batch (as compared to DeviceHasSoftwareUpdate for the same amount of data) because with the DeviceHasSoftwareItemInstalled table there is an additional check to make sure that duplicate data is not entered, which might occur in cases where software is repaired or reinstalled on the system. This additional step needs to be done for all entries in a batch which leads to an additional toll on each sync batch.

We are happy to announce that have fixed these scenarios in the following way:

1. Data Insertion is serialized– We made the insertion operate in parallel for multiple batches in an LFX session. Please note that although in code we have made this insertion parallel, insertion in ECL (SQL DB) is still serialized.

2. DeviceHasSoftwareItemInstalled table– The SQL query was optimized to find duplicate software entries for all entries in a batch in a single query. Now this is running much faster and we have seen improvements of up to 5x for this specific table.

With these fixes in place we have observed overall improvements of up to 3x.  One point to be noted is that as deployments gets bigger, the improvements might initially diminish. The reason for this is the fact that the ECL table becomes very large when a connector is running, which in turn makes insertion per batch slower. Having said that, subsequent delta syncs will see higher improvements as ECL will be in a much cleaner state during subsequent runs.

As mentioned earlier, the LFX framework is shared by both the ConfigMgr connector and the AD connector, so with the first fix (data insertion in parallel) we have observed that the AD connector is taking around 35% less time as compared to the time observed with the UR5 payload.

This fix is targeted to be released in Update Rollup 6 (UR6), however if you wants to get your hands dirty with this fix before then, you can get it right now as part of the TAP 17 Drop. For more details on TAP and how to join, please see the following:

Become a Member of the System Center Service Manager Agile TAP!

System Center 2012 Service Manager SCSM 2012 R2

We know that our Service Manager 2012 SP1 customers would be waiting for this, so here it is!

Service Manager 2012 SP1 now officially supports Service Pack 2 for SQL Server 2012 with Update Rollup 6 installed. The SQL server 2012 SP1 is going out of support in the month of July this year, hence the Service Manager 2012 SP1 deployment owners can now upgrade their SQL servers to 2012 SP2 after installing UR6 from here.

We have done a fair amount of validation to make sure that everything continues to work as expected. That said, if there is anything which seems suspicious let us know via your comments below.

[Update] The Update Rollup 6 for Service Manager 2012 R2 is now available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=46834

----------------

Hi everyone! We are back with another round of updates for your Service Manager 2012 R2 deployment. Service Manager team is committed to the continuous growth of the product, and with this release we are hitting the milestone of UR6 for Service Manager 2012 R2.

This update is scheduled to be available on the Download Center on 28th of April, and is containing features and improvements spanning a wide array of areas including the support for new SQL server, connector performance, MPSync and many more.

With this update rollup, we are officially announcing the support of Microsoft SQL Server 2014 for our Service Manager 2012 R2 customers. This has been a common ask from our customers in recent past and we are now obeying it with this quarter's release.

One feedback which we have been getting continuously from SM community is regarding the slow performance of Service Manager. We would like to assure you all, that our efforts in this direction have taken precedence  and we are steadily working to offer a neat and nimble experience for all Service Manager users. In this update, we have addressed performance issues with our two most widely used connectors, viz. AD connector & SCCM connector. Update Rollup 6 contains several optimizations which will significantly reduce the data sync time for both of these connectors. Reduction in time means that now you can sync your data more often and will also help in reducing load on workflow server. You can read more about these enhancements from here.

** In our internal testing, we have observed ~ 50% improvements for SCCM connector & ~35% improvement for AD connector sync time.

Furthermore with UR6, we are now also providing a functionality to configure AD connector sync schedules. This will help the IT admins in better planning of load on workflow server by scheduling AD connector sync cycles outside of work hours, which eventually can help in improving performance during heavy use hours. Admins can adjust the schedules via Console UI as well as with PowerShell cmdlets. You can read more about this from following links-

• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh519597.aspx
• https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh316217(v=sc.20).aspx

This update rollup also mends two broken scenarios in AD connector which toll the performance of workflow servers. AD connector is expected  to sync only that data, which has got changed since the last run, but with the current behavior, the AD connector performs complete sync again after any DC failover. This problem has got addressed in this rollup and going forward, the AD connector will have a delta sync in case of DC failover also. The second broken behavior which we have fixed is that, the Group expansion workflow of an AD connector runs even if the corresponding connector is disabled. This issue has also got fixed in UR6 and now should prevent unnecessary cycles of resource intensive group expansion workflows.

On the similar lines of performance lags, deleting  SCCM connector was notorious for freezing the console until all the associated configuration items are removed. UR6 is going to fill this gap, and going further the console will not hang in this situation, and the UI will remain in usable state while the deletion of connector is busy in cleaning it's footprint.

In addition to the performance issues, the other area which has grabbed our attention is MPSync job of SM Data warehouse. We have got many customer complaints describing frequent failures & hung state of MPSync  job. Improving stability of MPSync is among our top priorities, and with this update, we are fixing a common scenario for MPSync failures. Management Pack upgrade is not supported for all type of changes, hence many a times the admin has to re-import the new version of MP after removing the existing one, and admins often face MPSync issues after this. This update is carrying the fixes for preventing MPSync issues in this common scenario.

The story of UR6 doesn’t end here, there is a lot more coming with it. All the major improvements mentioned above are accompanying a long list of bug fixes to make life easier. Following are bugs which have got fixed in this update -

• If a user uses extended screen to open forms, the SM console continues trying open the form window in the extended display, even when it no longer exists.
• Additions are sometimes missed when the CMDB is hosted on SQL Always On and is successfully failed over to another node. This problem forces the admin to restart the SDK service to get back the data.
• Console crashes if a large amount of data/ or an image is pasted in Release Request’s documentation tab.
• Service Request and Problem management forms do not save the data changes that are made after Refreshing the form.
• Groups & Users cannot be added to user role from a domain which has two way selective authenticated trust with the SM Management Server’s Domain.
• AD Connector sync generates a lot of warnings event with event ID 3305.
• AD connector sync fetches same Tombstone objects multiple times, and slows down the sync if the deployment has large number of deleted objects. This behaviour has been optimized, and going forward the sync time should reduce in this scenario.
• When the number of user CIs is large, the Global Operators Group takes long time to return and spikes the memory and CPU in the SDK process.
• EMG and TypeSpace Cache calls are slow and make the CPU spike when there are a large number of Enumerations in the ManagementGroup.
• An exception is raised while clicking on an entity of a service in Service Component tab.
• Creating a Request offering with Cireson SMA Connector results in an exception, after Installing update rollup 4 or 5.
• After installing Update Rollup 5, If your Data Warehouse server does not use Month-Date-Year time format, then an event “The conversion of a nvarchar data type to a datetime data type resulted in an out-of-range value” is logged in your Service Manager Data Warehouse, and the Extract job no longer runs (KB3045893).

This mammoth update rollup will soon be available for download, and meanwhile feel free to use the comment section to share your feedback and suggestions. We are looking forward to hear your thoughts about this update.

Just a quick note to let you know that Update Rollup 6 for System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager is now available. The KB article below describes all of the issues that are fixed in SCSM 2012 R2 UR6 and contains complete installation instructions as well.

Note that the System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager Update Rollups are cumulative, therefore this Update Rollup contains new payloads for the following updates together with the content that is included with the following System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager update rollups: 

• Update Rollup 5
• Update Rollup 4
• Update Rollup 3
• Update Rollup 2

For complete details regarding UR6, please see the following:

KB3039363 - Update Rollup 6 for System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3039363/)

J.C. Hornbeck| Solution Asset PM | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
Orchestrator Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Microsoft Intune: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoftintune/
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
RMS blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/rms/
App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv

Forefront Endpoint Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
Forefront Identity Manager blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/
Application Proxy blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/applicationproxyblog/
The Surface Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/surface/

The Service Manager setup allows the admin to install SQL Always on with default or with single instance name only and doesn’t provide flexibility to have multiple instance names. This limitation is with the fresh installation of Service Manager, but all SQL Always on scenarios  work without any issue with migration of Database (including SQL Always On + FCI).

Please follow these steps to migrate SMDB to SQL Always On

1. Prepare the SQL Always  on setup separately, you can also consider SQL Always On + FCI
2. Create an AGL (Availability Group Listener), provide the appropriate port number and avoid the default port 1433. For example AGL name = SMListener and AGL Port = 5122
3. Open the inbound port for SQL Server Instance and AGL on each SQL Server machine
4. You can refer this article with following  exceptions: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn464295.aspx

5. 1. In Step 5#  Configure the Service Manager database  -> “To Configure Service Manager tables”

      Use the <AGL Name,AGL Port number> instead of the computer name hosting the Service Manager database, for example SMListener,5122

   2. In Step 6# Use the <AGL Name,AGL Port number> to update the both DWStagingAndConfig database tables.

   3. In Step 7# “Configure the registry on all the management servers”

      Change the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\System Center\2010\Common\Database give DatabaseServerName as <AGL Name,AGL Port number>

The net result here is that, we are changing the computer name hosting the Service Manager database to<AGL Name,AGL Port number> for SQL Always on support.

Cased Dimensions, if offering a free solution for Service Manager, which enables you to send emails from Incidents, Service Requests, Change Requests, Release Requests and Problems.

Great to see our partners develop and share such solutions.

In Cased Dimensions own words

Service Desk Analysts can send emails relating to any work item without having to leave SCSM. Analysts get an interface similar to Outlook from within SCSM. This ensures communications, work, tracking, Service Levels and process is all centralized within the Service Desk.

The benefits of using SCSM Enterprise Mail

• Enable consistent and easy communications from Incident, Service Request, Change, Problem and Release
  Management from an Outlook like interface
• Enhances relationship between service desk and other core business functions
• Adoption is easy as email client is similar to Outlook Analysts can set a title for email
• Analysts can add attachments to emails
  Templates make the email message to employees consistent and friendly
• Associate related recipient or related Items to a work item
• See emails for each ticket by user in Cased Dimensions Self-Service Portal
• SCSM Enterprise Mail supports many languages when communicating to users
• Automatically set Status of Work Item to “Pending User Input” when Communication is sent.
• Automatically move Work Item to “Active” status when a user replies
• Speed up Analysts in requesting information whilst Improving ITSM

See more at: http://www.caseddimensions.com/download-scsm-enterprise-email/

Make sure to stop by the Cased Dimensions booth (521) at Ignite for additional information.

SCSM 2012 R2

SCSM 2012 R2

Microsoft is kicking off planning efforts for the next generation Linux investment areas. We are looking to have open conversations in the next few weeks with Linux administrators who specialize in any of following: OS patching, Automation, Containers in traditional and dev-ops environments.

These conversations may be as short as 30 minutes and could include an invitation to join us at an event onsite in Redmond. 

Let us know if you would like to engage with us by sharing your contact information here.   

Looking forward to hearing from all of you.

·        https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/feedbackdetail/view/1350890/self-service-portal-feature-suggestion-ad-user-picker-as-a-form-field-in-request-offerings

·        https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/feedbackdetail/view/1350894/self-service-portal-feature-suggestion-dynamic-forms-in-request-offerings

·        https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/feedbackdetail/view/1350899/self-service-portal-feature-suggestion-rating-help-articles

·        https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/feedbackdetail/view/1350909/self-service-portal-feature-suggestion-escalate-the-raised-request

·        https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/feedbackdetail/view/1350905/self-service-portal-feature-suggestion-sharing-help-articles

·        https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/feedbackdetail/view/1350917/self-service-portal-feature-suggestion-bookmarking-favorite-request-offerings-and-knowledge-articles-for-easy-navigation

The participation in our Customer facing monthly #LyncUp calls continues to grow, thank you.  Many of you were at Ignite and want to learn more about the Service Manager futures and how to give feedback to the Product Group on the direction of Service Manager.  On the third Tuesday of every month we host a public call where the Product Group and internal Service Manager experts will share their knowledge with the community.

You can get the Monthly Calendar invite here: http://1drv.ms/1pI7tBy.  All the calls are recorded and also stored in this location.  Please make sure you download the Lync Attendee or Lync client before joining this call for your listening and collaborating pleasure

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lync/gg236589.aspx

@mkathleenwilson

Feedback is always welcome please feel free to email me

Issue of two people/process editing the same object at the same time and later person/process not able to update object is a known issue in Service Manager. This gives very bad experience to a user who is trying to submit changes through Console. When this issue occurs, the only option  the user has is to close the form and reopen it to get  the latest values. The user loses all input values they provided before submitting and have to input all values again in the reopened form.  For more details on issue refer this link  - http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2010/09/24/faq-what-happens-when-two-people-edit-the-same-object-at-the-same-time.aspx . Concurrency is currently the #1 request in Service Center Public Feedback (https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/Feedback/Details/1062768). SM Team understands the pain our customers are  going through and to alleviate this pain, the fix for the issue is now on its way in UR7. This blog talks about how this fix works.

Issue

SM currently supports Optimistic Concurrency based on “Last Modified Date” in the following manner -

• When a Work Item (WI) is read or created (saved first time) on Console, the “Last Modified Date” is fetched for the WI from CMDB.
• When a user tries to update WI through Console, same LastModifiedDate is passed along with changes to SDK.
• SDK while updating in CMDB checks whether the LastModifiedDate matches to the one in CMDB for that WI -
  • If it matches, save is successful.
  • If it’s not matching, SDK throws back DiscoveryDataModificationCollisionException and user sees the below exception message on Console –

This exception is  a common scenario for users while creating new Work Item (WI). It is also experienced during  Change Request (CR)/Service Request (SR),  when a user creates a new CR/SR through form on Console and saves it by pressing ‘Apply’ button. When they make some more update to WI in the same form and submit (press OK/Apply button) again, they get this exception message. Primary reason of  this exception is workflows (WF), which change status of these Work items in background. Like here in case of new CR/SR, this happens as WF runs within some 30 secs of creating new CR/SR to change its status from ‘New’ to ‘Inprogress’ in background and when user tries to submit more changes after this status change, they get the above error.

Merge Concurrent Changes

This exception is observed in Console by end user but  the actual exception is raised in SDK, while updating the records in CMDB.  In order to fix this issue at root level, we have added merge support in SDK rather than in Console. Another benefit of this approach is that for all apps which directly use SDK to update any entity i.e. console,  powershell, WFs and third party applications, fix works seamlessly.  We have added the logic for retrying rather than failing bluntly. Post UR7, SDK update submission logic is to first submit changes in normal way, but when exception is raised it merge s changes with current values and retries submission to CMDB. Merge will work only in case when changed properties fall under either of these buckets -

1. Current values in CMDB matches original values that form read, irrespective of changed values that user is submitting.
2. Changed value matches with Current Value in CMDB, irrespective of original value form read.

Here is an example of when SDK will do insertion after merge (which would have failed with current SM Optimistic Concurrency Model) –

Although this merge algorithm will work in most of the reported cases (including CR/SR where Workflows in background changes status), it will fail when two users/processes try to modify same property concurrently. Here is one example where changes are not disjoint sets and due to this we won’t allow insertion

Change in User Experience

Changes in console have also been added such that form is auto refreshed to reflect latest changes of non-conflicting fields (presumably done by other WFs or users) . A notification is provided to the user as well, informing of the changes that resulted after the submit thus ensuring the user always has the latest updates in the form. For these console features, patch(UR7) needs to be installed on machines where Console is installed -

1. Auto-Refresh of form after Save – This will get latest value from CMDB into form.

2. In case if merge is not possible due to same property is changed by some other user/process (like in second table above), user will be informed on conflicting properties  in exception message with latest value from CMDB as shown in following snapshot.

This will allow user to decide to not to continue with doing changes (like cases where status changed) or change conflicting properties to current value from CMDB and resubmit form without reloading form (and loosing other values user has inputted)

3. In case if any properties have changed in background, warning will be shown to user about some property got reloaded after save–

This improvement will help us in fixing most common end user scenarios –updating a working item which was modified by Workflow(s) in background and two users have modified different properties. This fix is targeted to be released in Update Rollup 7 (UR7). However if you want to get your hands dirty with this fix before then, you can get it right now as part of the TAP Drop. For more details on TAP and how to join, please see the following: Become a Member of the System Center Service Manager Agile TAP!

Hi everyone! With nearing the end of July, it's now time to upgrade your Service Manager 2012 R2 with another rollup of important enhancements and bug fixes. The next iteration of Update Rollup (UR7) will become available for download on Microsoft Download Center on 28th of July. This update contains a wide array of features & improvements including write collision avoidance, fixes for major MPSync issues, support for having employee-manager relationship even when both are fetched from different AD connectors, support for delta AD sync during DC failover, and many more.

Lets start the in-depth overview with the star of this update rollup which will save our users from annoyance of frequently running into following exception - 

This error dialog box is no less than a nightmare for SM helpdesk analysts because it makes them lose all the changes which they have made if some other analyst or workflow has updated the item in parallel. We have got a lot of customer complaints regarding the everyday usability issues caused by this, and in fact fixing this limitation is currently the highest voted request on our connect portal. We have heard you, and with this update release Service manager will allow analysts to save their changes if other workflow or analyst has updated the same item simultaneously with disjoint changes. In case of conflicting changes, the error will provide details of conflicting fields to provide a choice to the analyst for incorporating disjoint updates and save the rest of changes without refreshing the form. You can read in-depth details about this new feature from this recently published blog post.

Furthermore with UR7, we are making some significant enhancements with AD connector, which is one of the most widely used SM components among the customers-

• AD connector is expected  to sync only that data, which has got changed since the last run, but with the current behavior, the AD connector performs a complete sync again after any DC failover and hence puts an unnecessary load on the workflow server causing the performance to degrade. This problem has got addressed in this rollup and going forward, the AD connector will have a delta sync in case of DC failover also. 

• With UR7 installed, the service manager will automatically establish employee-manager relationship even if both the users are imported from different AD connectors.

• If a User changes from having a manager in AD to NOT having a manager, the relationship is not updated in the CMDB. With UR7, SM will sync these changes too.

In addition to these, the other area where SM customers frequently end up in trouble is with Datawarehouse when MPSync job gets hung. After updating an MP or while re-registering the DW, the admins sometimes notice that data in reports is no longer fresh.  They check Console Datawarehouse\Jobs and see that everything is running but somehow updated data is not getting in DW. These kind of issues are very common with DW users and typically happen when the MPSync job gets hung. The most common reason for getting into the hung state is when the deployment of MPs fails because of the system trying to re-create an already existing primary/foreign key in a table. UR7 is addressing this major problem and will help in stabilizing your DW deployments significantly along with other DW fixes shipped in previous update rollups.

Things don’t end here, this rollup also mends following bugs in Service Manager which will further reduce your pains with the product -

• Actual Start date and Actual end date do not get populated for most of the activities. After this update installed, these fields should get populated for all type of activities in Service Manager.

• SM Console crashes when trying to open an E-Mail with ":" in its name that was attached to an Incident via Exchange Connector (like in case of prefixes “RE:” and “FW:” added by outlook).

 • The SLA information which appear in SM Console does not reflect updated status in Data Warehouse if there are multiple status changes between two successive runs of transform job.

• The request offering wizard throws a cryptic "XML parsing error" and prevents the user from continuing with the request offering creation. This causes a problem if management packs are modified in Visual Studio (or any program that "pretty-prints" XML).

• ‘Get-SCDWInfraLocations’ cmdlet (shipped in UR5) is enhanced to support automation and all PowerShell standards –

1. Now it is renamed to “Get-SCDWInfraLocation” – It was done to make it follow powershell naming convention standards.
2. Originally it expected  “DWServer” parameter  but now it was removed.  Now it accepts the same parameters as other DW Cmdlets and  parameter “ComputerName” can be used to pass DW Server name. and the parameter “Credential” is used for passing Credentials to log on to the DW Server. These parameters are same across most of the DW Cmdlets.
3. Now it returns an object to Powershell pipeline instead of just text output. It enables this Cmdlet to be automation friendly which means this Cmdlet can be used in scripting.
4. Default format of the output is Table format and can be customized.
5. Detailed Help documentation is added to the Cmdlet.

All these significant updates will soon be available for download, but meanwhile feel free to use the comment section to share your feedback and suggestions. We are looking forward to hearing your thoughts about these enhancements.

We are happy to announce that Update Rollup 7 (UR7) for Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager is now available for download. Please see the following Knowledge Base article for details about the fixes and installation instructions for SCSM 2012 R2:

3063263 Update Rollup 7 for System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager

Please note that Microsoft recommends that all of the System Center 2012 R2 subcomponents be upgraded to the same Update Rollup version. You can upgrade different System Center subcomponents in any desired sequence. Be aware that using subcomponents that are at different Update Rollup versions could lead to compatibility issues and is not a Microsoft supported scenario. For all the latest information regarding Update Rollup 7 for System Center 2012 R2 please see the following:

3069110Description of Update Rollup 7 for System Center 2012 R2

J.C. Hornbeck| Solution Asset PM | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

System Center All Up: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/ 
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/ 
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/ 
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/ 
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager 
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

The Forefront Endpoint Protection blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

Background:

From SCSM 2012 R2 UR6 onwards, SM officially supports SQL Server 2014.

Issue:

The issue arises when customer wants to deploy an additional Secondary Service Manager after the migration to SQL2014.

Workaround:

The UI installation will give you error saying that “SQL Server XXX is not running SQL Server 2008R2 or SQL Server2012. Please update a newest version and retry”.

In order to get around this problem use the command line to install the secondary management server

===============================================================================================================================================

:\temp\amd64>setup /Silent /Install:Server /AcceptEula /UseExistingDatabase:<servername>\<instancename>:<dbname> /AdminRoleGroup:<adminrolegroup> /ManagementGroupName:<managementgroupname> /ServiceRunUnderAccount:<serviceaccount>/<password> /WorkflowAccount: :<serviceaccount>/<password> /EnableErrorReporting:<No/Yes> /CustomerExperienceImprovementProgram:<No/Yes> /ProductKey:*****

===============================================================================================================================================

 This works only if an in-place upgrade of SQL2012 to SQL2014 was done and fails for the fresh installation of SQL2014

 Even though command line bypasses the checks which are made though UI, it also checks for the SQL2012 Namespace in the SQL server machine. If the namespace “Root\Microsoft\SqlServer\ComputerManagement11” is not present in SQL server machine then the command line installation fails. One can check in the setup log if the following messages is seen

“Connection attempt to SQL Server 2012 management scope <servername> unsuccessful”

One can quickly check whether the namespace is present or not in sql server machine by invoking the following power shell command

========================================================================

“Get-WmiObject  -Namespace "Root\Microsoft\SqlServer\ComputerManagement11" –List”

=========================================================================

If the command fails to return any object then installation will fail even using the command line.

In order to get over this issue you can install a dummy instance of SQL2012 on the sql server machine and then install the SM using the command line as given above.

Once the installation is succeeded you can remove the dummy instance of SQL 2012.

Disable ECL Logs for Connectors - What is the feature all about?

1.       The sync time of the connector reduce quite a bit. We saw a 65% increase in performance in SCCM connector and 55% increase in performance for AD connector.

2.       The size of the ECL table and the history tables do not increase e.g. in our test scenarios AD connector brought in 2.2 million rows and SCCM connector brought in 11.6 million rows in ECL and history table alone. With the feature enabled no rows are added into these tables.

What are the disadvantages of this feature?

1.       DCM incidents creation would not work when this feature is enabled

2.       Some customers may have defined workflows that keep an eye on the data being brought by the connectors. If you have defined workflows which need to be triggered when the data is brought in by connectors then enabling this feature will not trigger those workflows. Since the workflows look into the ECL table for entries and this feature doesn’t log entries in ECL table, these workflows would not work. It is advised that in such cases this feature should not be switched on.

3.       Since this feature does not write entries in the ECL and history table, the history of the creation and/or the changes to the data items (brought in by the connectors) in SM, are not recorded. That is to say, you would no longer be able to tell when a user or a computer object was imported into SM database and/or when changes to these objects were imported into SM database.

In some cases the changes to data like users and computers need be recorded in database for auditing purposes. In these cases an alternative is to get the history of changes from the source i.e. get the history of changes made to the user from AD or get the history of changes made to the computer from SCCM.

A few points to note here

a.       Switching on this feature does not turn off logging history data about work items like incident, change requests etc. They will continue to work as is.

b.      Any explicit change made by the user to the data brought in by the connectors like a user or a computer, would still be recorded in the ECL and history tables despite switching on this feature.

c.       The history of using the data brought in by connector is also recorded despite switching on the feature e.g. if a computer (brought in by SCCM connector) is added to an incident or a user is assigned as affected user, these changes are still recorded in the system.

I don’t want this feature, what should I do?

Would you use it?

Hi everyone, as you must of observed with payload of recent URs and with discussions in last month's LyncUp call,  improving performance of Service Manager is one of the key areas which we are focusing on. For this effort, your inputs will help us in targeting right areas which affect you the most. Hence, we request you to up vote on some scenarios which we have opened on connect related to performance gaps in Service Manager. Please up vote on the issues which trouble you often-

• Perf Issue: Groups and Queues take a long time to update

Group and Queues can sometimes take very long to update and might create confusions like analysts not getting owned items, SLA breaches because of late queue assignment, etc.

Up vote here - https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/feedback/details/1751125/perf-issue-groups-and-queues-take-a-long-time-to-update

•  Perf Issue: Connector Sync degrades the performance of console forms

Connector syncing during work hours can create performance issues for help desk analysts because with the connector sync running in background, the work item creation/update take a lot longer compared to when the connector is not running. In some cases, creating/updating work items can take up to 5X the time.

It was also noticed that the performance of the connector is affected in this scenario. The connector sync time increases considerably to complete syncing especially if the work item create/ update load is high.

Up vote here - https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/feedback/details/1751074/perf-issue-connector-sync-degrades-the-performance-of-console-forms

In addition to these, we also often get feedbacks about connectors taking too long to complete their sync. Some deployments face issues even after scheduling connector syncs during off-working hours because slow syncs can stretch to the portions of critical work hours. The slow syncs can also be a concern for deployments who are 24x7 active without any off hours. We have made some major optimizations for this problem in Update Rollup 6, but do let us know if slow syncs of connectors are still troubling your deployments and if you would need more optimizations in this area. Please use the comment section and let us know if you are still unhappy with performance of connectors and list down the connectors which you find to be slow and also the details of your problems.

Hi everyone. We need your help to have more understanding of your workloads to have better planning of future product enhancements. As a part of this exercise, we are sharing a script with you to collect some important information. This script will not collect any Personally identifiable information (PII) and will generate a readable CSV file containing just the counts of different objects in your database. This process will take only a few minutes and you can easily review generated output file (and delete any portion, if needed) and can verify it before sharing results with us.

How to collect & share the data?

1. Download the package from here and extract (or copy the extracted files) it on your SM CMDB server (SM's SQL server).

 Before extracting, you might will need to Unblock the package from Properties -> General -> Security.

What all Information will be collected?

This script will not collect any Personally identifiable information (PII) and will just collect the following data-

• Information of installed URs (KB, Version, Date when applied)
• Count of Management servers
• Count of Work Items as per their status
• Average Age of work items as per status
• Inflow rate - Count of work items created in last 7 days (for each day) along with source
• Count of runbook activities and runbooks
• Count of type DCM & SCOM Incidents
• Work Item Retention Setting values (In minutes)
• Count of Announcements as per their status
• Count of Knowledge Articles as per their status
• Count of Request Offering as per their status
• Count of Service Offering as per their status
• Count of Notification Subscriptions with Status
• Count of different Config Items
• Count of Workflows with status
• Count of Queues
• Count of Groups
• Count of Catalog Groups
• Count of SLA objects
• General stats
  • BME table row Count
  • TME table row Count
  • Relationship table row Count
  • ECL table row Count
  • RecursiveMembership table row Count
  • JobStatus table row Count
  • WindowsWorkflowTaskJobStatus table row Count
  • Rules Count table row Count
• Count of top 50 instance type that contributes the most to the ECL table
• Count of top 50 relationship type contributes the most to the ECL table

We really appreciate your help for the growth of the product. Please feel free to reach us at veharshv@microsoft.com for any queries or concerns.

Hi everyone. This is just a small post to make an announcement. As many of you were waiting to upgrade your SQL servers, the Service Manager 2012 R2 with Update Rollup 7 installed, now officially supports Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2014.

We have done a fair amount of validation to make sure that everything continues to work as expected. That said, if there is anything which seems suspicious let us know via your comments below.

Hi everyone. This is just a small post to make an announcement. Update Rollup 8 for Service Manager 2012 R2 will contain the new HTML based Self Service Portal and will get released on November 10th, 2015.