As anyone who has worked on a service desk can tell you, there are certain types of problems that users report to the service desk, or which occur in the infrastructure which are easily remediated by performing a specific set of actions. For example, a service might fail, just needing a manual restart. Using the capabilities of the System Center suite, it’s possible to detect these commonly occurring problems and automatically perform the steps required to remediate them without requiring direct manual intervention by members of the IT team.
Incidents
Service Manager incidents, which you might call trouble tickets or service desk jobs in non-Service Manager environments, describe an issue with some aspect of the server, client, network, or software infrastructure that requires resolution. In the context of the 70-246 exam, a Service Manager incident would describe an issue with some aspect of the private cloud deployment that requires resolution by the IT team.
You can create an incident manually using the Service Manager console by performing the following steps:
1. In the Configuration Items workspace of the Service Manager console, select the Computer or User for which you want to manually create the incident.
2. In the Tasks pane, click Create Related Incident.
3. In the Tasks pane of the Incident, click Apply Template. Depending on the issue, you can select one of the default templates shown in Figure 1. The default templates are as follows:
· Default Incident Template
· Generic Incident Request
· Hardware Issue Incident Template
· High Priority Incident Template
· Networking Issue Incident Template
· Printing Issue Incident Template
· Software Issue Incident Template
FIGURE 1 Incident templates
4. Click OK and the New Incident dialog box opens. The selection of the template causes certain fields of the incident to be automatically populated. For example, choosing the Networking Issue Incident Template causes the Classification category of the incident to be set to Networking Problems as shown in Figure 2.
FIGURE 2 Networking incident
5. After selecting an incident template, you should provide the following additional information and then click OK:
· Affected User This is the user who reported the incident.
· Title Allows you to provide a name for the incident.
· Description A description of the incident.
· Other information as necessary based on the incident itself. Some information will automatically be included with the template.
6. On the Activities tab of the New Incident dialog box, you can add activities such as Manual Activities or Runbook Automation Activities that are related to the incident.
7. On the Related Items tab, you can add Work Items, Configuration Items, Knowledge Articles, and Attached Files.
8. On the Resolution tab, you provide information about how the incident was resolved, how much time it took, and specify a resolution category.
9. The Service Level tab allows you to view service level information.
10. The History tab allows you to view the history of the incident.
You can also automate the Service Manager email messages sent by users indirectly by having the users submit a form through the Service Manager Self-Service Portal, or by configuring the Operations Manager Alert connector to automatically generate incidents based on Operations Manager alerts.
Automatic incident creation
The Operations Manager alert connector for Service Manager allows you to automatically create Service Manager incidents based on Operations Manager alerts. An Operations Manager alert is created in Operations Manager when an object that Operations Manager monitors experiences a change that is deemed worthy of attention, such as a hardware or software failure occurring on a monitored server. There are two types of Operations Manager connectors for Service Manager: the alert connector, and the configuration item (CI) connector. The CI connector imports objects that Operations Manager has discovered into the Service Manager database. Alert connectors bring alert information into Service Manager.
To create the alert connector, perform the following steps:
1. In the Administration workspace of the Server Manager console, click Connectors.
2. On the Tasks pane, click Create Connector, and then click Operations Manager Alert Connector.
3. On the General page of the Operations Manager Alert Connector Wizard, provide a name for the alert connector.
4. On the Server Details page, shown in Figure 3, specify the name of the Operations Manager server and a Run As account that has permission to connect to Operations Manager. Ensure that you use the Test Connection button to verify that the account works and has appropriate permissions.
FIGURE 3 Alert connector configuration
5. On the Alert Routing Rules page, click Add to add an alert routing rule. An alert routing rule allows you to specify which Service Manager incident template will be used to create an incident based on an Operations Manager alert.
6. In the Add Alert Routing Rule dialog box, shown in Figure 4, provide the following information:
· Rule Name The name of the alert routing rule.
· Template The Service Manager incident template that will be used when creating the Service Manager incident.
· Criteria Type Here you can select the conditions that trigger the alert routing rule. You can choose between the alert being generated by a specific Operations Manager management pack, being generated by a specific computer or security group, a custom field, or an Operations Manager monitoring class.
· Select Alert Severity And Priority Allows you to specify the alert priorities and severities that will trigger the alert routing rule.
FIGURE 4 Alert routing rule
7. As Figure 5 shows, alerts that don’t match any of your configured rules will automatically be created as incidents using the Operations Manager Incident Template.
FIGURE 5 Routing rules
8. On the Schedule page, select the frequency at which Service Manager will query the Operations Manager server for alerts. You can also configure the connector so that alerts within Operations Manager will be closed when the incident that relates to the alert is resolved or closed in Service Manager. You can also configure Service Manager to automatically mark incidents as Resolved if the incident that triggered the alert in Operations Manager is closed. Figure 6 shows these settings.
FIGURE 6 Schedule settings
9. On the Summary page, review the connector setup, and then create the connector.
Once the connector is created, you can modify the alert routing rules by editing the properties of the connector as shown in Figure 7.
FIGURE 7 Connector properties
Integrating Orchestrator with Operations Manager and Service Manager
You can configure Orchestrator to integrate with Operations Manager by configuring a connection to the Operations Manager server from the Orchestrator Management server. When you do this, you can monitor and collect information from Operations Manager alerts, which you can use when building Orchestrator runbooks. To integrate Orchestrator with Operations Manager, first install the Operations Manager integration pack. You can download this integration pack from Microsoft’s website. You’ll also need to install the Operations Manager console on the server that hosts the Runbook Designer and verify that you can use it to make a connection to the Operations Manager server.
Once you’ve performed that step, you configure a connection from the Orchestrator Management server to the Operations Manager Management Group by performing the following steps:
1. In the Runbook Designer’s Options menu, click SC 2012 Operations Manager.
2. On the Connections tab of the SC 2012 Operations Manager dialog box, click Add.
3. In the Connection dialog box, shown in Figure 8, type the name of the connection, the IP address or FQDN of the Operations Manager server, and then provide the credentials of an account that has access to the Operations Manager server.
FIGURE 8 Connection configuration
4. On the SC 2012 Operations Manager dialog box, shown in Figure 9, click Finish.
FIGURE 9 Operations Manager connections
Once you have configured the connection, you’ll be able to use the activities that are included in the Operations Manager integration pack when building Orchestrator runbooks. These activities are shown in Figure 10 , and have the following functionality:
· Create Alert This activity allows you to create an alert in Operations Manager.
· Get Alert This activity allows you to extract data from an Operations Manager alert. Use this activity as the basis of creating runbooks that create incidents in Service Manager by extracting relevant information from alerts and using that information when creating incidents.
· Get Monitor Use this activity to collect monitoring data. You can take the data extracted from this activity and use it to populate incidents in Service Manager.
· Monitor Alert Use this activity to watch for specific new or updated Operations Manager alerts. You might use this when configuring a runbook to have additional steps taken when specific alerts are raised in Operations Manager during runbook initiation.
· Monitor State Use this activity to monitor and run when an object managed by Operations Manager has its state changed to Warning or Critical. You might use this when configuring a runbook to have additional steps taken when the state of specific Operations Manager monitored objects changes during runbook initiation.
· Start Maintenance Mode This activity allows you to put an Operations Manager managed object into maintenance mode. Maintenance mode is a special state that suppresses alerting. For example, you would put a server into maintenance mode when applying software updates so that Operations Manager alerts aren’t generated by the software update process.
· Stop Maintenance Mode This activity allows you to take an Operations Manager managed object out of maintenance mode, so that Operations Manager alerts are no longer suppressed.
· Update Alert Use this activity to update an Operations Manager alert with data. For example, you could update an Operations Manager alert with information provided in a Service Manager incident.
FIGURE 10 Operations Manager activities
You configure integration between Orchestrator and Service Manager by performing the following steps:
1. Ensure that the Service Manager integration pack is installed on the management server.
2. Click SC 2012 Service Manager in the Options menu of the Orchestrator Runbook Designer console.
3. On the Connections tab of the SC 2012 Service Manager dialog box, click Add.
4. In the Connection dialog box, shown in Figure 11, provide the following information. Ensure that you click Test Connection to verify that the connection to the Service Manager server functions correctly.
· Name Name of the connection to the Service Manager server
· Server FQDN of the Service Manager server
· Credentials Credentials of an account that has permission to access the Service Manager server
FIGURE 11 Connection properties
5. On the SC 2012 Service Manager dialog box, shown in Figure 12, click Finish.
FIGURE 12 Service Manager connection
Once the connection between the Orchestrator and Service Manager server is established, you can use the integration pack activities, shown in Figure 13, to build workflows.
FIGURE 13 Service Manager integration pack activities
These activities allow you to do the following:
· Create Change With Template Use this activity to create a change record using an existing change template. When you use this activity, mandatory fields in the service manager change record need to be configured using Orchestrator when you use this activity.
· Create Object Use this activity to create a Service Manager object based on a defined class. For example, you could use this activity to create a Service Manager incident, change, or problem record.
· Create Incident With Template Use this activity to create a Service Manager incident based on an existing template. When you use this activity, mandatory fields in the Service Manager incident record need to be configured using Orchestrator.
· Create Related Object Use this activity to create new Service Manager objects that have relationships to existing Service Manager objects.
· Create Relationship Use this activity to create relationships between Service Manager elements. For example, you could use it to create a relationship between an incident and a computer or user. You can also use it to relate multiple incidents with a Service Manager problem record.
· Delete Relationship Use this activity to remove a relationship between Service Manager elements.
· Get Activity Use this activity to instruct Orchestrator runbook to collect activity records based on specific criteria.
· Get Object Use this activity to search for a Service Manager activity, incident, or change records based on specific criteria.
· Get Relationship Use this activity to have Orchestrator generate a list of objects from separate classes that are related by specific criteria.
· Monitor Object User this activity to configure Orchestrator to find new and updated records based on specific criteria.
· Update Activity Use this activity to update Service Manager activity records.
· Upload Attachment Use this activity to upload a file to an existing Service Manager object. For example, you might use this activity to upload a log file so that it can be stored with the incident generated automatically by an Operations Manager alert.
· Update Object Use this activity to modify the values of a Service Manager object’s properties.
Automatic incident remediation
Automatic incident remediation involves applying a specific solution to a known problem. You can configure Orchestrator runbooks triggered by specific Operations Manager alerts. Using some of the Orchestrator activities detailed earlier in this chapter, you can take the data contained in the alert and use it to populate a new Service Manager incident. The Orchestrator runbook can then perform the tasks necessary to automatically remediate the incident. For example, the Orchestrator runbook could run an activity that restarts the service that caused the original Operations Manager alert. Once the Operations Manager alert has been dealt with, the Orchestrator runbook could then update the Service Manager incident, closing both the incident and the Operations Manager alert once the issue that caused the alert has been resolved.
