System Center 2012 SP1 – Orchestrator: Installation

If you have being following the previous posts in this series, you will now have

In this post we will show you how to install System Center 2012 SP1 – Orchestrator (SCO) in just a few easy steps. Before you can proceed with the installation, you will need at least one physical or virtual system ready to which to install Orchestrator. I will walk you through installing your first server. If you choose to deploy additional servers the process will be almost identical, but I will narrate each step of the wizard, so you are aware of the pages you need to pay closer attention to on subsequent servers.

If you’d like to understand more about the product before installation, please refer to my What Is Microsoft System Center? article for more information.

Great! Assuming you have your homework completed, let get started.

How to Install System Center 2012 SP1 – Orchestrator

The installation experience begins by launching the SetupOrchestrator.exe utility from the installation media. You may have this media in the form of a physical DVD, or downloaded from one of Microsoft’s server’s and extracted to a folder or share ready for installation. After a few moments, the launcher will present you with a splash screen, and we are ready to being.

    • Click the Install link, after which you will be presented with the Product Registration screen; if you have a product key, enter it here, otherwise you may leave it blank to run in 180-Day evaluation mode (remember that you can always provide the product key later).
    • Next up is the License agreement. Give this the once-over and decipher the legal jargon, but make sure you agree to this stuff, otherwise the wizard will refuse to proceed.
    • On the Select Features screen, you get to choose which of the components of Orchestrator you wish to install. By default all the options are selected, which is quite appropriate if this is your first installation and you wish to evaluate the product. Otherwise, if this is a production deployment, you might have decided to install different components to different servers for scale and availability. I am going to install all of the components, but as a quick reminder your choices are:
      • The Management Server
      • Runbook Server
      • Orchestrator Web Console and Web Service
      • Runbook Designer.
  • The wizard will then check that all the software prerequisites are in place. If it detects a missing component (for example IIS) it will offer you its assistance as it attempts to resolve the dependencies on your behalf. Note, that if a missing dependency cannot be automatically resolved, you will be presented with an error and need to manually address before proceeding.

System Center Orchestrator 2012 SP1: Installation

  • The Service Account is the next to be supplied; this account by default has two purposes: The first and primary purpose is to host the Runbook services on the server, the account just needs to be a member of the domain, and a user on the server. The second purpose of the account, which can be easily overridden, is to act as the account utilized by any activity (more on these in a subsequent post) to connect to remote resources, in this context the account would need to have remote access to the target machines.
  • The Database Configuration screen is then presented. Here you need to provide the name of your server hosting the SQL installation. This can be a local standard installation or a remote instance. You are offered the choice of utilizing Windows or SQL accounts for connection, which can be validated by clicking on the Test Database Connection option before proceeding.System Center 2012 - Orchestrator: Configuration
  • Once the connection to the database server has being established, you now need to complete the Configure Database page. If this is your first Orchestrator server in your environment you will be selecting the option New Database. Alternatively, if you are adding an additional server for scale and availability, then select the option Existing Database and choose the database you created from the drop-down list.
  • You are almost done! The next page of the wizard Configure Orchestrator users group wants you to specify a “local” or “domain” group. The members of the specified group will be authorised as administrators of orchestrator, granting the privilege of managing and defining Runbooks. By default, if you do not chose to create and define a domain group the wizard will create a local group on the server on which you are installing. If you are planning to use a scalable solution, then you really should be using domain groups.
  • The wizard then asks you to configure the ports for the Web Services. By default, TCP Port 81 will be assigned to the ODATA Web Services interface, and TCP Port 82 will be allocated for the Silverlight Web Console. You can change these ports as you like, but the ports must not be in use on the server already, the installer will warn you if this situation is detected.
  • On the proceeding pages you will be prompted to set the location for deploying the application to on your server, whether you want to enable Microsoft update services, and if you are willing to participate in the MS Feedback programs, before the wizard finally presents a summary of the choices you have made.

    System Center 2012 - Orchestrator: Install features

  • Once the installer is complete, it will offer to launch Windows Update, and the Runbook Designer. I generally only permit the installer to launch the Windows Update agent, so that any new roll-up for Orchestrator can be deployed. Roll Up fixes are generally published on average once per quarter.
  • After Windows Update is complete, and any new roll-ups have being applied, you can reboot your server.

System Center Orchestrator 2012 SP1: Next Steps

In the next post we will investigate System Center Orchestrator 2012 and deploying integration packs to our Runbook Servers and Runbook Designers, so that we can take advantage of the extensible nature of the Orchestration environment.

In the meantime, you can launch the Runbook Designer to get acquainted to its Visio-style user experience. Also check out the cool Silverlight Console, which should be listening on the HTTP port you specified during installation (for example, you would simply launch your browser and connect to the address http://<Orchestrator Server Address>:82/).