Activating Office 365 subscription benefits from TechNet and using Office applications on an iPad

Infrastructure

Microsoft recently announced that TechNet subscribers would have a free benefit to use Office 365. The fulfillment of this was discussed at: http://windowsitpro.com/microsoft-office/another-promise-kept-office-365-free-technet-subscribers.   Unfortunately, quickly after that announcement Microsoft also announced the upcoming retirement of TechNet. Information on this decision is available at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/ms772427.aspx. There has been upset from the community over this decision.…

MDT Application Mapping in ConfigMgr 2012

Infrastructure

MDT 2012 Update 1 contains a nice little and very easy to use feature known as Package Mapping. This feature enables software to be automatically (re-)installed during a refresh scenario task sequence if it is installed in the current OS instance/installation. It does this by mapping the software listed in Add/Remove Programs on the existing…

SCSM Creating And Populating a GPO CI

Infrastructure

I was recently working with a customer who had a specific change control process around their Group Policy Objects (GPO). In order to fulfill their requirements, I created a GPO Configuration Item (CI) class in System Center 2012 Service Manager (SCSM). Then to make life easier, I created an Orchestrator Runbook to automatically populate the…

Operations Manager and SolarWinds: Monitoring SolarWinds with Operations Manager (#SCOM, #SolarWinds)

Infrastructure

This is the third of a three part blog series highlighting the integration available between System Center Operations Manager 2012 and SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor. This topic was initially mentioned around the timeframe of the Microsoft Management Summit this year – information is available at: http://myitforum.com/myitforumwp/2013/04/09/monitor-the-monitor-alert-on-operations-manager-health/. I’ve been working with the folks at SolarWinds…

Using the built-in network monitoring within Operations Manager 2012 to monitor network devices using ICMP only mode (#SCOM, #SYSCTR)

Infrastructure

  During a recent discussion on monitoring for devices which can be monitored with Operations Manager (but without installing an agent) one of my co-workers mentioned that we can use the new Operations Manager 2012 network monitoring for non-SNMP devices by using ICMP only mode. This approach lets you monitor devices which can only be…