Mastering System Center 2012 Operations Manager E-Book

Bob Cornelissen

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 997

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

An essential guide on the latest version of Microsoft's server management tool Microsoft's powerful Mastering System Center 2012 Operations Manager introduces many exciting new and enhanced feature sets that allow for large-scale management of mission-critical servers. This comprehensive guide provides invaluable coverage to help organizations monitor their environments across computers, network, and storage infrastructures while maintaining efficient and effective service levels across their applications. * Provides intermediate and advanced coverage of all aspects of Systems Center 2012 Operations Manager, including designing, planning, deploying, managing, maintaining, and scripting Operations Manager * Offers a hands-on approach by providing many real-world scenarios to show you how to use the tool in various contexts * Anchors conceptual explanations in practical application Mastering System Center 2012 Operations Manager clearly shows you how this powerful server management tool can best be used to serve your organization's needs.

Leseprobe

Contents

Introduction

Part 1: Implementation and Administration

Chapter 1: Overview of Operations Management

Understanding IT Service Management

Defining Operations Management

The Bottom Line

Chapter 2: Installing Operations Manager 2012

Planning the Operations Manager Environment

Operations Manager Building Blocks

Installing

Installation Example Network

Upgrading to System Center Operations Manager 2012

Active Directory Integration

Bottom Line

Chapter 3: Management Group Settings

Configuring Management Group Global Settings

Configuring Global Server Settings

Exploring Global Agent Settings

Understanding Individual Server Options

The Bottom Line

Chapter 4: Installing and Configuring Agents

Prerequisites

Installing the Agent from the Console

Installing Manually

Patching Manually Installed Agents

Adjusting Individual Agent Settings

Deploying the Agent to a Unix/Linux Computer

Deploying an Agent to an Untrusted Client

A Closer Look at the Agent Files and Queues

The Bottom Line

Chapter 5: Managing Management Packs

Understanding Monitoring Capabilities

Identifying Management Pack Requirements

Exploring Management Packs

The Bottom Line

Chapter 6: Understanding Management Packs

What Does Operations Manager Monitor?

What Is a Management Pack?

Implementing a Management Pack

Tuning a Management Pack

Advanced Authoring Topics

The Bottom Line

Chapter 7: Working with Consoles

The Consoles

Console Overview

Customizing the Console

Maintenance Mode

Notifications

The Bottom Line

Chapter 8: Network Monitoring

Exploring Operations Manager Network Monitoring

Understanding Network Device Discovery

Configuring Network Device Discovery

Managing Network Monitoring

Network Monitoring Dashboards

Troubleshooting Network Monitoring

Bottom Line

Chapter 9: Application Performance Monitoring

APM Overview

APM Architecture

Enabling Server-Side Monitoring

Enabling Client-Side Monitoring

Working with the Consoles

Security in APM

APM Dashboards

Introduction to Java-Based Application Monitoring

Troubleshooting APM

Bottom Line

Chapter 10: Working with Complex Configurations

Multiple Management Groups

Connected Management Groups

Working with Multihomed Agents

Working with Third-Party Management Solutions

The Bottom Line

Part 2: Maintenance and Troubleshooting

Chapter 11: Optimizing Your Environment

Optimizing Management Packs

Optimizing Rules

The Bottom Line

Chapter 12: Backup, Restore, and Disaster Recovery

Operations Manager Architecture

Common Backup and Restore Scenarios

Basics

Advanced

The Bottom Line

Chapter 13: Troubleshooting

System Center 2012 Operations Manager Troubleshooting Tools

Installation Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting Agents

Troubleshooting Management Packs

Performance Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting Security Issues

Troubleshooting Reports

Online Resources for Troubleshooting

The Bottom Line

Chapter 14: Scripting Operations Manager 2012

Introducing PowerShell

PowerShell and Operations Manager

Operations Manager Cmdlets

The Bottom Line

Appendix A

Chapter 1: Overview of Operations Management

Chapter 2: Installing Operations Manager 2012

Chapter 3: Management Group Settings

Chapter 4: Installing and Configuring Agents

Chapter 5: Managing Management Packs

Chapter 6: Understanding Management Packs

Chapter 7: Working with Consoles

Chapter 8: Network Monitoriing

Chapter 9: Application Performance Monitoring

Chapter 10: Working with Complex Configurations

Chapter 11: Optimizing Your Environment

Chapter 12: Backup, Restore, and Disaster Recovery

Chapter 13: Troubleshooting

Chapter 14: Scripting Operations Manager 2012

Index

Acquisitions Editor: Mariann Barsolo

Development Editor: Dick Margulis

Technical Editor: Steve Rachui

Production Editor: Christine O’Connor

Copy Editor: Elizabeth Welch

Editorial Manager: Pete Gaughan

Production Manager: Tim Tate

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher: Richard Swadley

Vice President and Publisher: Neil Edde

Book Designers: Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama and Judy Fung

Proofreader: Josh Chase, Word One New York

Indexer: Robert Swanson

Project Coordinator, Cover: Katherine Crocker

Cover Designer: Ryan Sneed

Cover Image: © Thomas Northcut / Digital Vision/ Getty Images

Copyright © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-12899-2

ISBN: 978-1-118-22489-2 (ebk.)

ISBN: 978-1-118-23842-4 (ebk.)

ISBN: 978-1-118-26302-0 (ebk.)

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Steve Rachui, Premier Field Engineer for Microsoft, for his extensive assistance as technical reviewer. (Steve blogs at blogs.msdn.com/steverac.) We want to thank Pavel Dzemyantsau, Chief IT Engineer at EPAM Systems, for his input and numerous contributions to several chapters. We also want to thank Arie de Haan, Owner and Lead Consultant at Pandinus, for his contributions to several chapters and valuable input.

Thanks also to developmental editor Dick Margulis, who wrestled our widely varying original drafts into publishable form. We thank the production team at Wiley: production editor Christine O’Connor, copyeditor Liz Welch, and proofreader Josh Chase.

We also appreciate the input of our customers and our fellow Operations Manager consultants and trainers. Thank you!

—The authors

I want to thank my family and especially my wife Amporn and my mother Lenie for their support while I was spending long hours of writing during the past few months. I know this meant there was less time and attention for personal life, but now is the time to make up for it.

Thank you to Peter Daalmans, Pete Gaughan, and Agatha Kim for getting me involved with writing this book and of course for their continuing inspiration.

Thanks to BICTT for supplying the test environment we used for screenshots, testing, and playing with the possibilities of this great product we are writing about.

It was very inspiring to work with the other authors, contributors, and editors throughout the process. It was also great fun to work with Ivan Hadzhiyski, who I pulled into the author’s group for this book and joined forces with for some pieces of the book and for setting up the test environments together. I think we have all learned a lot about the writing process and have gained even more respect for all the book writers out there. Also a big thanks to Dick Margulis for his quick comments and good advice.

Also a warm thank-you to the very active System Center community, consisting of all the product group members, fellow MVPs, bloggers, forum posters, and more.

—Bob Cornelissen

Special thanks first to my beautiful wife Laura for her patience and support throughout the long hours I’ve spent writing my chapters for this book. It’s not easy trying to keep an active three-year-old boy entertained on your own and I appreciate all the effort involved. She’s now also an unofficial System Center expert due to my constant requests for her nontechnical opinion! Thanks of course to my son Matthew for making sure that I’m awake every morning at 6 a.m.—weekends included—some of my best writing happened during those early morning hours! His energy is infectious and definitely helped inspire me when I needed it.

Thanks to Paul Keely and Pete Gaughan for asking me to come onboard with this book and for giving me the opportunity to work with some fantastic technical minds throughout the process.

Thanks also to my colleagues at Ergo who’ve given me the opportunity to work solely on System Center over the past few years and have always been very accommodating any time I needed time off at short notice to get some of the chapters over the line.

Finally, a big thanks to the System Center community and all the blog writers, forum posters, presenters, and general contributors around the world who have given up their own time to make what initially might seem like impossible problems turn into simple solutions.

—Kevin Greene

I want to thank my family for their understanding and patience. Many weekends and personal moments were lost during the writing of my chapters, but that is how things happen sometimes.

Thanks to the Wiley team and especially to Pete Gaughan for their feedback and continuous support in the whole process of making this book happen.

Special thanks to all the authors, contributors, and editors for their great job. Their optimism and determination were really inspirational. Special thanks to my friend Bob Cornelissen for involving me in this process and providing the lab environment for tests and screenshots.

I would like also to express my gratitude to the whole System Center community—MVPs, bloggers, and team members. One of the reasons System Center is so successful is the passion of all these contributors across the world.

—Ivan Hadzhiyski

About the Authors

Bob Cornelissen is a Managing Consultant for BICTT in the Netherlands. He specializes in Operations Manager and other System Center products.

Starting out as a fisheries biologist with a passion for fish, fishing, aquaria, and aquatic ecology, Bob got a chance to visit several parts of the world to investigate the aquatic life and obtain an MSc in zootechnics. After he worked in Thailand, it became a second home to him, and he visits at least once a year. Working on university websites and e-learning got him into the IT business over 12 years ago. Once he started as a system admin for several customers, he moved into Microsoft Server products and specialized in Windows Server, Active Directory, Exchange, and ISA. After a few years, Microsoft Operations Manager came into view, and a number of projects with 2000 and 2005 versions followed.

In 2007 Bob started the company BICTT to help big and small customers with their IT needs. Since the early beta versions of Operations Manager 2007, Bob has been very involved with the product and specializes in its design, implementation, management, and customization. During the last few years, Bob has become more active in the System Center community on forums, blogs, and the Community Evaluation Programs. Bob has been awarded the MCC 2011 award and System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP status since 2012. Find out more on his blog at www.bictt.com/blogs or through LinkedIn.

Bob lives in Netherlands with his wife Amporn, and he fishes for most of the year and in Thailand during the holidays.

Kevin Greene is a Subject Matter Expert for System Center Operations Manager at Ergo in Ireland and has been working in IT since 1999. In the past, he has held such roles as IT Administrator, IT Engineer, Technical Team Lead, and Senior Consultant. He has been on the Microsoft certification track since the days of Windows NT 4 and holds several qualifications, including MCSE, MCITP, MCP, and MCTS. Kevin is an active participant in the System Center community and his contributions have been recognized as a past winner of the Microsoft Private Cloud Community Evaluation Program (CEP) contest. He blogs at http://kevingreeneitblog.blogspot.com and can be found hanging around Twitter as @kgreeneit. Kevin is also a presenter at System Center launch and community events and is a co-founder of the Irish System Center User Group (scug.ie).

Kevin lives in Sallins, Co. Kildare, Ireland with his wife Laura and son Matthew. When he’s not working on the laptop or thinking about System Center, he spends his free time with the family and supporting Manchester United. He also holds a second-degree black belt in freestyle kickboxing, and although he’s not as involved in the sport as he used to be, he’s still an avid follower of the martial arts.

Ivan Hadzhiyski is a freelance consultant and trainer specializing in the System Center family of products, with a focus on Operations Manager and System Center Configuration Manager. From the early days of his career, his interest has been tools for monitoring and automation in Windows environments—initially only Visual Basic Scripting, but shortly after that MOM 2005, SMS 2003, and the first wave of System Center. Ivan is a regular speaker at various events in Bulgaria and co-founder of the Core IO User Group in Bulgaria.

Paul Keely has been in IT for over 14 years, is an Operations Manager MVP, and works for Infront Consulting, a specialist System Center practice where he designs and builds high-end monitoring solutions on a global scale. He started out focusing on Exchange and Active Directory, and started to monitor Exchange and AD with MOM. Paul began to focus on Operations Manager and System Center when he worked for Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS). In MCS he got a deep technical insight to the product and worked solely on Operations Manager for over two years. Paul now uses Operations Manager as the central monitoring tool to align private cloud deployments for large corporations.

Sam Allen is a Premier Field Engineer with Microsoft and has been specializing in Operations Manager for the last six years. He started his journey in IT nearly 15 years ago while working at a money management firm in Dallas, Texas. Shortly after that, he worked as a network administrator at a radiopharmaceutical company, and then went on as an independent consultant for a few years. In 2005 he joined Microsoft’s Directory Services team, later moving to the Manageability team, where he supported both Configuration Manager and Operations Manager. Since 2007 he has been specializing in Operations Manager and has recently transitioned to dedicated support for enterprises across the United States. Sam lives in North Texas with his wife and eight children, four of whom are in college.

Telmo Sampaio is the Main Geek at MCTrainer.NET, specializing in System Center, SharePoint, SQL Server, and .NET.

Telmo wrote his first application in 1984, with the intent of demonstrating physics concepts to his fellow classmates. His passion for technology and teaching made him a self-taught developer from an early age.

In 1989 he moved to Wellesley, Massachusetts when his father was transferred to work in Boston for a year. He kept developing applications to demonstrate science and math concepts and decided to remain in the United States after his family left. In 1991 he moved back to Brazil and studied Systems Analysis at PUC/RJ.

When Microsoft extended their Microsoft Certified Professional program to Brazil, Telmo was one of the first in the country to become certified. In 1994 he started teaching Microsoft classes. Soon he was managing the largest training center in Latin America. To date, he has been certified in over 20 different Microsoft products, passing over 80 exams.

After moving back to the United States in 2003, Telmo became a contributor to several Microsoft certification exams, an author for official courseware, and a speaker at events such as TechEd, PASS, and MMS.

Telmo lives in Miami, Florida, with his wife Joanne and spends his weekends with his three boys: Marco, Rafael, and Enzo—that is, when he is not traveling the world holding training programs.

About the Contributors

Arie de Haan (Groningen, Netherlands) is the owner of Pandinus. He has been in IT for more than 20 years, starting as a developer but soon moving into the area of system management of the largest DEC VMS cluster. During the Windows NT 4 period he moved over to the Windows platform and discovered MOM 2000. He became the number 10 MOM MVP for four years starting in 2006. Nowadays Arie is involved in large Operations Manager implementations, including architecture, implementation, and development, mostly in enterprise environments.

Arie lives in the north of the Netherlands with his three sons, and during his free time he rides his motorbike, reads, does martial arts, loves to visit the theater, and of course spends time with his kids. Learn more at:

www.linkedin.com/in/ariedehaan

Pavel Dzemyantsau (Minsk, Belarus) has been working in IT for half his life. For the last 11 years he has been working at EPAM Systems. He started his career as a C++ developer and drifted to enterprise administration in a heterogeneous world: Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory, Tomcat, and JBoss. Pavel has a deep knowledge of troubleshooting skills in different platforms: from Visual Basic Scripting, Bash, and PowerShell to raw machine code. He started to work with Operations Manager from MOM 2005 and later became a team leader for the monitoring direction with dedicated projects. He has grown his team into a group specializing in complex delivery, from analyzing requirements to building proof-of-concept models and suggesting suitable monitoring designs. Such projects required a deep knowledge in various areas from Pavel’s team. In that period he grew his own skills and the team’s skills to advanced levels of scripting knowledge in T-SQL/SSRS, C#, PowerShell, and XML. Pavel earned MCSE and Operations Manager certification. For the last three years, Pavel has been leading the enterprise monitoring team at EPAM Systems as Project Coordinator. His hobbies are debugging things and decomposing them into parts.

Introduction

Welcome to this book on System Center 2012 Operations Manager. During the past 10 years and after multiple iterations of the product, Operations Manager has grown to be one of the main monitoring products for medium to large enterprises. The Operations Manager 2007 version, for instance, brought us from server-based monitoring to application-based monitoring, whereas the 2007 R2 version brought us cross-platform monitoring toward the Unix/Linux machines in our datacenter. Operations Manager 2012 is now bringing us expanded network monitoring, a much better dashboarding experience, application performance monitoring (which used to be known as a separate product called AVIcode), and an important infrastructural change by removing the root management server and using resource pools, just to name a few improvements. We are excited about this version of the product and keen to tell you more about it. This book will give you an overview of Operations Manager with deep dives into important pieces. The chapters contain real-world examples from the field, which also might give you ideas on how to use Operations Manager in different ways.

Who Should Read This Book?

The answer to this question: everyone. Well, maybe anyone who wants to monitor their network using Operations Manager 2012. Included between the covers of this book is a comprehensive look at deploying, managing, troubleshooting, and working with Operations Manager and the new command set for PowerShell.

As complex as products are becoming, no one can be an expert on all of them. If you are like most administrators, you have time to learn only enough about a product so that you can manage it effectively. However, there is probably a lot more that you could be doing with any one product. This book is meant to get you up to speed quickly and then help you through some of the more arcane topics.

Not every administrator will have the same type of infrastructure to work with. What works well in a large corporation does not always work for small companies. What works well for small companies may not scale well for large organizations. Microsoft has attempted to address the differences among companies and deliver a product that can be implemented quickly for a small company, yet will still scale well for large organizations. No matter which scenario fits you, you will want to learn how this product will work for you.

But most of all, any administrator who wants to try to get to the “proactive” side of managing their infrastructure should consider looking through these pages to see how they can start monitoring their systems effectively. Being on the other side—the “reactive” management side—means that you are constantly having to respond to emergencies and continually “putting out fires.” If you are a reactive administrator, you probably already understand how hard it is to try to make your infrastructure more efficient when you don’t have enough time to work on anything else but emergencies.

The Contents at a Glance

There are two parts to this book. Part 1 covers implementation and administration. Part 2 covers maintenance and troubleshooting. As you read through each section, you will find that the material flows from one subject to another, building as you go. By the time you finish Part 1, you should have a good understanding of what goes into deploying and managing your management group. Throughout Part 2, you will learn some of the tips and tricks to keep your management group running smoothly.

Part 1: Implementation and Administration

Chapter 1: Overview of Operations Management This chapter explains what operations management is and how Microsoft has implemented it with Operations Manager 2012. The topics covered include Microsoft Operations Framework, Information Technology Infrastructure Library, and the role played by Operations Manager 2012.

Chapter 2: Installing Operations Manager 2012 This chapter identifies the prerequisites and examines the installation options in detail.

Chapter 3: Management Group Settings The settings that control the management servers within the management group are discussed in this chapter. You will see how to manage the global settings applied to all management servers, and then how to override the settings on a server-by-server basis.

Chapter 4: Installing and Configuring Agents Each of the monitored systems needs to have an agent installed in order for the monitored system to send detailed information to the management server and to be monitored and managed. The options for installing and configuring the client are discussed in this chapter.

Chapter 5: Managing Management Packs Management packs define what is monitored on each of the managed systems. They also contain the rules for creating reports and tasks within the Operations Console. This chapter covers importing management packs and working with all of the objects contained within them.

Chapter 6: Understanding Management Packs Management packs are dynamic in nature. After you create a management pack, it will need to be fine-tuned and additional object modifications will need to be made. In this chapter you will be introduced to life cycle management for your management packs.

Chapter 7: Working with Consoles After the management group has been created and the management packs and agents deployed, you will need to start monitoring. The Operations Console is the primary tool for working with all of the objects for the management group. Here you will find out how to work with the Operations console effectively.

Chapter 8: Network Monitoring Operations Manager 2012 has implemented improvements in network monitoring. This chapter explains how to discover, manage, monitor, and report on network devices.

Chapter 9: Application Performance Monitoring Deep monitoring of applications has always been a problem in the past. This chapter discusses how to use Application Performance Monitoring features in Operations Manager to get to the bottom of certain application-related problems.

Chapter 10: Working with Complex Configurations You may find yourself having to work with multiple management groups or allow your management group to interface with other management products. This chapter explains how connections can be made and how you can create a hierarchy of management groups.

Part 2: Maintenance and Troubleshooting

Chapter 11: Optimizing Your Environment Not everyone can use the management packs right out of the box. You will need to test them in your organization to see how they work. This chapter will cover some of the options that you have to make your management group work more efficiently.

Chapter 12: Backup, Restore, and Disaster Recovery You do not want to start over from scratch, and you definitely don’t want to lose all of the data that you have collected. This chapter covers your options for making sure that you have your management group protected in case a disaster strikes.

Chapter 13: Troubleshooting Even though we would like to think that everything works perfectly all of the time, we know that is not the case. Some troubleshooting tips are detailed in this chapter.

Chapter 14: Scripting Operations Manager 2012 PowerShell is a very powerful tool that will help you manage your management group. This chapter is a primer on PowerShell as it is used in Operations Manager 2012.

The Mastering Series

The Mastering series from Sybex provides outstanding instruction for readers with intermediate and advanced skills, in the form of top-notch training and development for those already working in their field and clear, serious education for those aspiring to become pros. Every Mastering book includes:

Real-World Scenarios, ranging from case studies to interviews, that show how the tool, technique, or knowledge presented is applied in actual practice

Skill-based instruction, with chapters organized around real tasks rather than abstract concepts or subjects

Self-review test questions, so you can be certain you’re equipped to do the job right

Final Comments

Make sure you take the time to become familiar with Operations Manager 2012. The more comfortable you are with it, the more you will be able to do with it. At the very end of some chapters, you’ll find Master It self-tests: small labs that help reinforce the topics in the chapters. Instructions have been included that allow you to create a virtual environment. Building a virtual test environment can come in handy when you are trying to work through a new topic or troubleshoot a problem.

Most of all, have fun as you are going through the topics contained in this book. Once you find out how much power Operations Manager has in store for you, you will be amazed at some of the things you can do. Just looking at the surface, being able to monitor servers and services, may be impressive enough, but the additional features can be equally impressive, such as monitoring the health of an application from the time a user submits a request until the response is returned from your servers, reporting on the availability of servers and services, and creating scripts that will automatically alter the way the service functions when a problem arises.

How to Contact the Authors

We welcome feedback from you about this book or about books you’d like to see from us in the future. You can reach us by writing to [email protected]. For more information about the authors and additional information concerning the book’s content, please visit our website at www.masteringscom.com.

Sybex strives to keep you supplied with the latest tools and information you need for your work. Please check their website at www.sybex.com/go/mastsc2012opsmgr, where we’ll post additional content and updates that supplement this book if the need arises.

Part 1

Implementation and Administration

Chapter 1: Overview of Operations Management

Chapter 2: Installing Operations Manager 2012

Chapter 3: Management Group Settings

Chapter 4: Installing and Configuring Agents

Chapter 5: Managing Management Packs

Chapter 6: Understanding Management Packs

Chapter 7: Working with Consoles

Chapter 8: Network Monitoring

Chapter 9: Application Performance Monitoring

Chapter 10: Working with Complex Configurations

Part I of this book explains how to install, configure, and manage Microsoft System Center 2012 Operations Manager.

Chapter 1 is an overview of operations management, where it integrates within the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), and how they complement the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). These are the backbone of Operations Manager. Once we have introduced you to those concepts, we will discuss the concept of cloud computing and explain the IT as a Service (ITaaS) model. Operations Manager delivers the ITaaS model and empowers businesses to create service maps based on their IT service catalog. In the chapters that follow, we move into installing the management servers and creating the management group. After the management group is created, you will learn how to configure and manage your Operations Manager deployment. All of this will be presented to you in an orderly fashion so you can follow along and build your environment to meet your needs.

Chapter 1

Overview of Operations Management

Before we delve into the System Center 2012 Operations Manager product, we must explain what operations management is, what it defines, and why you need it. As an IT manager, you are not responsible for all key business activities within the company. When those activities are being processed on your servers, however, you become a critical piece of the puzzle in overall IT systems management. You may control the database servers, but they house information that is critical to the day-to-day operation of the billing department, for example. Suddenly, you start to see how everything ties together. A missing or damaged link in the chain or an unplanned removal of the chain may cause much more damage than you originally thought.

This is just one of the many reasons Microsoft created the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF), based on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). The idea behind MOF and ITIL is to create a complete team structure with the ultimate goal of service excellence. Numerous groups fall under the IT department tag, but we often see many of them acting as separate departments rather than as one cohesive unit. Desktop support, application developers, server support, storage administrators, and so forth are all members of IT, but they are not always as tight as they should be.

Operations Manager is much more than just a centralized console view of the events and processes in your network. It was built with ITIL and MOF in mind, and so we would like to start the book with a background of both these IT service management standards.

In this chapter, you will learn to:

Understand IT service management

Explore the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF)

Explore the Dynamic Systems Initiative

Define cloud computing

Understand the IT as a Service (ITaaS) model

Define the Microsoft System Center 2012 products

Define operations management

Understanding IT Service Management

ITIL and MOF were introduced as a way to deliver consistent IT service management (ITSM). Some of the key objectives of ITSM are:

To align IT services with current and future needs of the business and its customers

To improve the quality of IT services delivered

To reduce the long-term cost of service provisioning

Think of ITSM as a conduit between the business and the technology that helps run the business. Without a proper conduit in place, one cannot function properly without the other. ITSM is process focused as opposed to vendor specific and technology centered.

Exploring ITIL

In the early 1980s, computing technology evolved from a centralized IT organization model to distributed computing and geographically spanned resources. With this distributed computing model came greater flexibility, but a downside to this was also a deterioration and inconsistency in process application for technology delivery and support. The UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC) identified the need to use consistent practices for all aspects of a service life cycle to deliver organizational effectiveness and efficiency as well as predictable service levels. As a result, ITIL was born. ITIL is now the most widely adopted framework in the world for ITSM.

ITIL version 1 was published between 1989 and 1995. The original ITIL volumes, consisting of 31 books total, provided a cohesive set of best practices for ITSM. These books were created by industry leaders of the time, and their best practices gave direction and guidance for providing high-quality IT facilities and services to support IT.

In 2000 and 2001, the initial version was revised to become ITIL v2. This second version consolidated the original 31 publications into 7 more closely connected and consistent books within an overall framework.