As we all might know information is power and on SCOM 2007 that could not be more true. In order for the application to run in its full potential, all the alerts generated within must be credible and well organized / refined according to the company needs, so the IT Teams can be always in guard for upcoming alerts and take the respective action, making the SCOM console always clean and without unnecessary or unwanted alerts.

It is in this particular moment that the IT SCOM Administrators / Engineers enter in the “battlefield”.

All SCOM Alerts can be divided and categorized in three types such as :

    1 ) Critical ( Defined as Integer 2 )

    2 ) Warning ( Defined as integer 1 )

    3 ) Information ( Defined as integer 0 )

This is where, we need to specify according to company needs and IT Administrators what alert should do this and what alert should do that. In order for this to be achieved some time must be spent with the native Microsoft Management Packs and Third Party Managements packs and analyze all the alerts they can generate and therefore refine them.

To start the work, we should check which kind of monitors are active and override them according to the respective needs as I will demonstrate below :

  1 ) Firstly after the management pack and its monitors have been analysed with the IT Teams, we need to select one server on SCOM console which is being managed by a specific Management Pack and open its respective health explorer. LINK

  2 ) After following point number one. We are now inside the health explorer and have acess to all monitors active within that server. It is on this point we override the kind of monitor we wish for the specific object, and select the kind of Alert we want to apply for the specific monitor ( Alert, information or warning ). LINK

  3 ) As soon as it is reconfigured as we want it, save the override to the management pack. At this point we should not have any longer, unwanted “Critical” /  “Warning”  / “Information” alerts.  LINK

  4 ) Apply this steps to all the monitors you want to refine and reorganize.

This steps will not only offer more, reliable information displayed on SCOM as it will also provide a more clear and clean console, so the IT Teams can see what is happening in Real Time in the servers / applications in the management group. And as I said before information is power and this kind of information well sorted out will improve greatly in vast your IT structure and respective resolution in technical issues.

Any doubts or more information please do mail me.

Best Regards,

Paulo J. Mendes

Additionally  the model was updated with a Disaster Recovery Site, of which was already planned some weeks ago however I did not had the time to update on the blog.

The current model is as it follows below ( click over it to see full size ):

I am now upgrading the SCOM SP1 to R2 and starting a implementation of  Service Level Dashboard 2.0 to SCOM, in order to monitor SLA´s of the company and SLO´s defined by administration board. I will cover this two hot topics ( upgrading SP1 to R2 and Service Level Dashboard ) in the next weeks as soon as possible.

Meanwhile for those who do not know the product ( Service Level Dashboard 2.0 and its previous version ) i leave here some useful links below :

Service Level Dashboard : link

Service Level Dashboard 2.0 Download : link 

Best Regards,

Paulo J. Mendes

This package includes several accumulative hotfixes and updates for Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server, Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Router.  It is also designed to work with versions of x86 processors and x64 as it includes both versions available.

As before this Update will not require Update Rollup 1, Update Rollup 2 and Update Rollup 3 as they are not prerequisites for installing Update Rollup 4. Also the Update Rollup 4 client can be deployed before the server is upgraded to Update Rollup 4 and Update Rollup 4 can be uninstalled.

The Update Rollup 4 is available for download here : Microsoft Download Center: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0ddf8e83-5d9c-4fe7-9ae6-f2713a024071

For more information over this update i advice reading this official CRM blog team entry : link

Best Regards,

Paulo J. Mendes

After nearly one year of working with SCOM 2007 in design and implementation / configuration, i have decided to share my knowledge and perspective about the last SCOM design i have been working on.

In the scenario i am going to explain further, i have been asked to build a Large Enterprise SCOM implementation with redundancy for their IT Operations Team. For that purpose i have made the following infrastructure design below :

In this implementation design i have implemented the following arrangements :

1X : Root Management Server

1X : Management Server

1X : IIS Server with SCOM Web Services ( Web Console )

1X : SQL 2005 with SCOM Reporting Server with Reporting WebServices

2X : SQL 2005 Enterprise 64 bits Cluster with Failover – Passive / Active.

The infrastructure design provides the redundancy and requisites asked in the initial sketch. Also i have divided the access to SCOM Console, the physical console is only available to Administrators and for the IT Operations Team the access is made only through SCOM web console which will offer more mobile easy and comfort for the Team.

I will cover how to create groups and privileges further in another post.

Best Regards,

Paulo J. Mendes

1X Application and Plataform Role Server named ZEUS

1X CRM Email Router on Exchange Server named ATHENA

1X SQL Server ( Reporting Services ) named REPOR

1X Testing SQL 2005 Enterprise Server – named ZOUN

1X Production SQL 2005 Enterprise Server ( Cluster ) – named ZELDA

The objective is to move the current CRM SQL deployment and databases from the test environment (ZOUN) to the production environment (ZELDA).

1 ) As a first step we are going to login into the Testing SQL 2005 Enterprise Server and perform the following Tasks :

             1.1 ) Firstly we will need to perform a backup of the CRM databases : “Organization”_MSCRM (in where “organization” is the name of your CRM organization name) and MSCRM_Config database.

To perform this tasks open SQL Server Management Studio, expand databases and select each of the databases, and right click over them, point to tasks and click on backup. On the backup window verify if the database name is correct, and select a FULL backup and choose a destination backup point (Strongly recommend a tape device or a different server such as a backup repository server if you dont have a network tape device) and press ok. This will make the needed backups. Examples of screenshots below for this process.

       Screenshot 1 : LINK  ::::: Screenshot 2 : LINK

·         1.2 ) As soon as the backup is done. Logoff from the SQL Test Server 2005.

2 ) As a second step we will be needing to create and restore those backup databases on the new SQL Server 2005 Enterprise – Production.

·         2.1 ) To Perform this action open SQL server management studio, go to databases and right click over it and click on option “restore database”. On this restore window Select on the Source for restore the option “From device” click on the path button and select the tape directory or backup server path from where you have saved the previous backups on point 1.1. This process will restore the backup databases and create them on the new SQL Production Server. Examples of screenshots below for this process.

Screenshot 3 : LINK ::::: Screenshot 4 : LINK

·         2.2 ) As soon as the restore of the databases is done. Logoff from the SQL Production Server 2005.

3 ) Thirdly we will need to configure the CRM redeployment on the CRM Dynamics Application and Plataform Role Server. In order to perform this reconfiguration we will have to do 2 step as follows:

·         3.1 ) Firstly we will need to go to the server registry entries by typing on the run menu Regedit and go to the following Registry section “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftMSCRM” and make the following changes in this entries :

configdb :

TEMPLATE : Data Source=”SERVERNAME”;Initial Catalog=MSCRM_CONFIG;Integrated Security=SSPI

OLD ENTRY : Data Source=ZOUN;Initial Catalog=MSCRM_CONFIG;Integrated Security=SSPI

NEW ENTRY : Data Source=ZELDA;Initial Catalog=MSCRM_CONFIG;Integrated Security=SSPI

 Screenshot 5 : LINK

Database :

TEMPLATE: Provider=SQLOLEDB;Data Source=”SERVERNAME”;Initial Catalog=”organazation”_MSCRM;Integrated Security=SSPI;Pooling=false

OLD ENTRY : Provider=SQLOLEDB;Data Source=ZOUN;Initial Catalog=CORP_MSCRM;Integrated Security=SSPI;Pooling=false

NEW ENTRY : Provider=SQLOLEDB;Data Source=ZELDA;Initial Catalog=CORP_MSCRM;Integrated Security=SSPI;Pooling=false

Screenshot 6 : LINK

Metabase :

TEMPLATE :  Template : Provider=SQLOLEDB;Data Source=”SERVERNAME”;Initial Catalog=”organazation”_MSCRM;Integrated Security=SSPI;Pooling=false

OLD ENTRY : Provider=SQLOLEDB;Data Source=ZOUN;Initial Catalog=CORP_MSCRM;Integrated Security=SSPI;Pooling=false

NEW ENTRY : Provider=SQLOLEDB;Data Source=ZELDA;Initial Catalog=CORP_MSCRM;Integrated Security=SSPI;Pooling=false

Screenshot 7 : LINK

·         3.2 ) Secondly we will need to run the CRM Dynamics 4.0 Deployment Manager on the server. Go to start menu, All Programs, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and click Deployment Manager. Go to organizations and click on yours, right click and Disable it. Right Click again and Edit Organization. Change the SQL server name to the new SQL Server name and click next and the redeployment shall start. Please do bear in mind that you will need the CRM Dynamics Service Account to be sysadmin on the SQL Server or it will give error on requisites checking. Examples of screenshots below for this process:

Screenshots :  8 - LINK :: 9 – LINK :: 10 – LINK :: 11 – LINK :: 12 – LINK ::

4 ) After the redeployment of the server is done. Restart the Application and Plataform Server. After it reboots the CRM will be fully running with the new SQL Server and operational. This conclude our Redeployment of DYNAMICS CRM 4.0 – SQL SERVER AND CRM DATABASES MIGRATION

Any doubts of questions feel free to send them to me, I will help as soon as possible.

Best Regards,

Paulo J. Mendes

With the Release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 several editions of the product were offered such as :

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Workgroup : This edition is limited to five, or fewer, users. It can be installed on Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition, any of the supported Windows Server 2003 editions, or Windows Server 2008

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Professional : This edition has no user limit and is limited to a single organization, but Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Professional can be installed on more than one computer in the same deployment.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise : There is no user limit for this edition. Additional features include support for multiple organizations, multiple server instances, and role-based service installation. Role-based services let you increase performance by installing component services on different computers.

This three versions gave us, new insights and new ways of implementing CRM Dynamics 4.0. On this post i am going to cover a example of implementing the enterprise edition.

As described above the Enterprise edition of CRM Dynamics 4.0 offered us server roles, this roles are :

• Application Server Role. This server role provides the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Web user interface and services.
• Platform Server Role. This lets you deploy the asynchronous services, such as the Workflow and Bulk E-mail services, to a separate computer.  

With these we can now offer to a big corporation, flexibility and scalability on our CRM Dynamics 4.0 Infrustructure design. Below follows a example of a implementation example of those roles which i made following those rules :

As we can see on the picture (fullsize image) i have applied :

·         Two Servers with : CRM Dynamics 4.0 Application Role – These ones with Network Load Balancer (NLB) to improve performance and to maintain service operational in a case of maintenance or a server crash.

·         One Server with : CRM Dynamics 4.0 Plataform Role – with the asynchronous services such as the Workflow and Bulk E-mail services. On this model all Workflow services will be handled on the CRM Platform Server improving performance. This feature also releases processor and memory from the Application Servers making either the Application or Plataform Servers more usable on their own resources.

·         Two Servers with SQL Server 2005 Enterprise – This ones acting as failover Cluster, hosting the CRM Databases. This improving the uptime of the service and performance also.

·         One Server with SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services – To run the Dynamics Reports.

·         One Server with CRM E-mail Router – Connecting to Exchange Server 2007.

To sum up this kind of design is a perfect match for a Enterprise Corporation, who wishes a CRM solution offering them, quick response time with excellent performance and also service uptime with redundancy ( NLB and failover clusters ), making CRM Dynamics 4.0 a perfect solution and choice in the CRM world.

I will cover the process of the installation and implementation of a CRM Dynamics Professional Edition in a next post.

Best Regards,

Paulo J. Mendes

Microsoft has made available for download Update Rollup 3 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 on Thursday March 12, 2009.

This package includes several accumulative hotfixes and updates for Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server, Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Router.  It is also designed to work with versions of x86 processors and x64 as it includes both versions available.

As requisites this new Update Rollup 3 will not see a “need basis” for the previous Update Rollup 1 and 2 , since this latest package includes all the fixes that were brought on its predecessors ( Update Rollup 1 & 2 ).

In addition Microsoft also explained how to avoid a required reboot when installing a patch for the CRM Outlook Client as it follows below :

“Before starting the update process, go to Options from the CRM menu. On the “General” tab, uncheck the bottom checkbox that says “Always run the…Host process” and then click “Ok” button. When manually checking for updates, go ahead and close Outlook by choosing Exit from Outlook’s File menu. This will close Outlook along with the CRM add-in and the Hoster process. Now check for updates by selecting All Programs from the Start menu. Then select Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and choose Update. Restart Outlook after the patch is installed.”

Adicional information over this package can be found here . I strongly recommend the upgrade since it solves a lot of issues.

Best Regards,

Paulo J. Mendes