Changing parameters in a runbook after it was synced in SCSM may change its state to “Invalid”. To fix this you need to go in SCSM and delete the synced runbook and run the Orchestrator connector again. If your SCSM machine is slow ( like mine :) ) you need to wait a little until the “Delete” action appears in the console, on the first instance you get only “Refresh”
More on this topic: Runbook States in Service Manager
> V.
This small runbook is a demonstration on how to use counters and variables and some basic smart link conditions. It also emphasizes one important difference between Opalis and SC Orchestrator (spoiler: cycles are not allowed! More about this on this cool post: http://www.sc-orchestrator.eu/index.php/scoblog/49-cycles-in-pipleline-mode)
The scenario for this runbook: You want to create a VM but you want the name to be auto-generated following some basic naming convention and you want to make sure that is unique. You also might have users manually creating VMs using the same naming conventions so you need to check this carefully. The runbook will look like this:
This might not be a very common scenario, but let’s say you don’t / can’t use Client Push or GPO Deployment. Here is an Orchestrator runbook that automates the “Manual install” option of the SCCM Agent.
While playing around with a SCSM MP, I needed to somehow dynamically get the SQL server hostname that holds the SCSM database.
I found it on the registry on the SCSM server in the HLKM hive under:
Software\Microsoft\System Center\2010\Common\Database
key: DatabaseServerName
> $Hello = "System"
> $World = "Center"
> Write-host ('$Hello',"$Hello","$World",'$World') -Separator " "
Hi, and welcome to my System Center blog! My name is Valentin, I am a System Center consultant based in Zurich, Switzerland. Since I am a big fan of automating redundant/boring tasks, I chose to focus on Orchestrator and System Center Service Manager, products that bring the whole System Center suite together and unleash its full potential.
I created this blog to share some of my experience and ideas in accomplishing automation and also to write down some self-reminders. :)
An automation blog 