Microsoft System Center Service Manager - Part 3: Initial configuration

Network Administration - In Part 3 of this series, I will show you how to use and configure Service Manager.

At the end of Part 2 of this series, we have installed Service Manager and ready to run. Here we will launch the software and discover how it works and learn how to use its features. To launch Service Manager, from the computer where Service Manager Console is installed, go to Start> All Programs> Microsoft System Center> Service Manager 2010> Service Manager Console .

The first time you run Service Manager on the new system, you will see the dialog box shown in Figure 1 below. You need to specify the name of the Service Manager server and click the Connect button to continue. When performing the above operation, the system will be initialized, this initialization process will take some time to complete.

Figure 1: Connecting to the Service Manager system

When the installation is complete, you will see the Service Manager console as shown in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2: Service Manager console

As you can see, there are several steps to take to be able to use the Service Manager system. However, the first step is to register the Service Manager system with the Data Warehouse component. This is a step that allows reporting in the Service Manager environment.

Register with the Data Warehouse

The registration process done through the wizard is initiated by clicking the Register with Service Manager Data Warehouse link . The registration screen of the wizard is shown in Figure 3. This is the screen that outlines the purpose of the wizard. Click Next to continue.

Figure 3: Launch Data Warehouse Registration Wizard

The next screen requires you to specify the name of the Data warehouse management server. Type in the server name and make sure the connection works, click the Test Connection button.

Figure 4: Select the name of the Data warehouse server

Tips:

If the connection fails, verify that the Windows firewall on the Data warehouse server is configured to allow communication with your Service Manager Management server. In Figure 5, we provide a communication diagram to help you configure the Windows firewall for each Service Manager component. For example, if you intend to import information from Active Directory, you need to allow incoming traffic from the Service Manager system on port 389.

Figure 5: Service Manager communication diagram

After you have verified the communication with the Data Warehouse server, switch to configuring the certificates used to access the data warehouse server. In Figure 6, you will see that we have selected the default account DW_EXAMPLE SecureReference . Note that the account you choose needs to be a member of the local administrative group on the Data Warehouse server.

Figure 6: Provide certificates for use on the Data Warehouse

Before clicking the Create button to begin the process, review the options to make sure they will work in your installation.

Figure 7: Review your options

After registration is complete, you will receive a message indicating that the data warehouse registration is complete. Click the Close button to finish.

Figure 8: Successful registration of Data Warehouse

The time to complete the full deployment process took quite a long time. You will then receive a message as shown in Figure 9. This message can be ignored because it is merely informational.

Figure 9: Notice of being able to view the reports after deploying the management package

However, the process is still not complete, you will see some options in the navigation area. Especially as shown in Figure 10, there are Data Warehouse and Reporting items on the menu. Select the Data Warehouse option and click Data Warehouse Jobs to get a list of jobs associated with the Service warehouse Data Manager component. This figure also shows a list of some Service Manager default jobs.

Figure 10: New navigation options available

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Configure the jobs of the Data Warehouse

By default, not all schedules for jobs are enabled, but you can fix that.

To activate the necessary tasks for the Data Warehouse component, you need to start PowerShell as an administrator. After you have completed PowerShell, execute the commands in the table below.

Order

Command description

Add-PSSnapIn SMCmdletSnapIn

This command will add a snap-in to PowerShell to enable Service Manager commands.

Enable-SCDWJobSchedule -JobName Extract_DW_Example

Allow work scheduling to manage synchronization of Data Warehouse. Replace "DW_Example" with the name of your Data Warehouse management team.

Enable-SCDWJobSchedule -JobName Extract_HQ

Allows scheduling management of extracting data from Service Manager database. Replace "HQ" with the name of your Service Manager management group.

Enable-SCDWJobSchedule -JobName Transform.Common

Allow the use of raw data, reformat or merge to convert into the final format used for reporting.

Enable-SCDWJobSchedule -JobName Load.Common

This command allows querying data from the data warehouse.

 

 

Keep in mind, once you have activated a task and the job is running, you can observe some details by double-clicking on the job name in the Service Manager console. For example, if I double-click Extract_DW_Example as shown in Figure 11, we will see a window appear as shown in Figure 11. This window informs you exactly which module has been completed. At this time, do not care much about modules. You just need to understand that you can see their status.

Figure 11: Job status

Connect to Active Directory

When the data warehouse is connected to the Service Manager system, let's turn our focus to connecting to Active Directory. Service Manager's Active Directory connector allows you to import users, groups or printers and computers from Active Directory as configuration items in the Service Manager database. You can import items from the entire domain or from a organizational unit (OU).

Create a connector by clicking the Import user accounts with the Active Directory connector option in the Administration Overview screen as shown in Figure 2. This will launch Active Directory Connector, the detailed screen is shown in Figure 12 below. .

Figure 12: Starting the Active Directory connector wizard

You need to provide a name for the new Active Directory connector. If you like, you can also provide descriptive information, but this is optional. Figure 13 gives you the interface to provide this information.

Figure 13: Provide a name for the connector

The next step of the wizard (Figure 14) is one of the two most important parts of the wizard. In this step, you need to decide the scope for the Active Directory connector; Is it possible to allow the connector to have an open interface for the current Active Directory domain ( Use the domain: example.com ) or want to select another domain or limit the scope of the connector for a certain OU ( Let me choose the domain or OU .

In the Run As account box, provide the certificates that are used for user accounts that have 'read' permission for Active Directory. We have used Operational System Account. This is the account you specified at the time of Service Manager installation. In our case, the Operational System Account is associated with example.comsm. When you click the Next button to continue, the Credentials dialog box will appear and ask for the password for the account.

Figure 14: Specify the connector scope

When deciding on the scope, move on to the object section. This is the second important part in this wizard. You can import everything by selecting All computers, printers, users and users groups, or you can import specific items by selecting Select individual computers, printers, users and users groups . If you select individual objects, click the Add button, select the object type and then select the object. In Figure 16, we selected individual computers for Service Manager.

Figure 15: Determine the object to be used

Figure 16: Select the object

Microsoft wizards are always useful when it comes to helping avoid errors, they provide you with a summary screen, which will outline all the decisions you have made in the process. Click the Create button to create the new Active Directory connector.

Figure 17: Confirm your selections

If you see the results shown in Figure 18, then the process of creating your new connector has been successful. To verify that the connector actually exists in the Service Manager environment, go to Administration> Connectors . Figure 19 shows the new ADtoSM connector we just created. If the synchronization has not started, select the connector and click the Synchronize Now button. To see the status of the synchronization process, click the arrow> to the left of the word Tasks. Figure 20 shows the specific information.

Figure 18: Connector created

Figure 19: New connector has been created

Figure 20: Connector synchronization status

At the end of the synchronization process, you can see that some objects have been imported from Active Directory - such as a list of computer objects - by going to the Configuration Items navigation area and selecting Configuration Items> Computers> All Windows Computers . In Figure 21, you will see that three computer objects have been imported from Active Directory. There are Service Manager systems (plus domain controllers) in our example domain. In Figure 22, we selected the Users option under Configuration Items to show you the user has been imported.

Figure 21: Three computer objects are imported

Figure 22: List of users imported in Service Manager

Conclude

In this third part, we have finished installing the Service Manager system, the Service Manager and data warehouse components work well together. In Part 4, I will show you the configuration steps required to use the Service Manager system, including setup options related to issues, events, actions, and requirements. change and data usage.