IT Service Management with System Center Service Manager (OD10965C)

About this course

This five day course will provide students with the key knowledge required to deploy and configure System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager. Using hands-on labs, students will learn the following:

• Where Service Manager sits within the System Center 2012 R2 product.
• What business and technical needs Service Manager is designed to meet
• How Service Manager aligns itself to ITIL and MOF.
• How to architect and implement a System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager deployment.
• How to upgrade an existing Service Manager 2010 environment to System Center 2012.
• How to customize System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager to be in line with corporate standards.
• How to configure Incident and Problem Management.
• How to configure Activity, Change and Release Management.
• How to configure Service Requests.
• How to configure Service Level Management.
• How to customize the Self-Service Portal.
• How to configure Reporting and Analysis.
• How to troubleshoot Service Manager and perform disaster recovery.
• How to create customized Service Manager forms.

Course Outline

Module 1: Service Management Overview

Effective IT Service Management includes process-driven methodologies that cover a broad spectrum of IT functions. This can include change management, incident and problem management and release management. Although no organization typically adopts any single IT Service Management methodology most organizations, depending on their size and nature of business will adopt a combination of processes and functions from many different IT Service Management frameworks such as ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library or MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework.

Module 2: Installing System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager

Before installing System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager in any environment there are many factors that you need to consider. Firstly, you need to understand your current IT environment. This includes how many users and computers are in the environment, how many Incidents and Change Requests are raised on a weekly/monthly basis and how many Analysts will be using the Service Manager Console. This information is critical in planning a successful deployment of Service Manager as it will be used to determine the hardware required for the various Service Manager components. Service Manager relies on Microsoft SQL Server to stores it’s operational and data warehouse databases so careful consideration should also be given to the configuration of SQL Server when deploying Service Manager.

Lab : Installing System Center 2012 R2 Service ManagerLab : Upgrading to System Center 2012 Service Manager

Module 3: Key Concepts and Features

Before you start to configure Service Manager to meet your requirements it is important that you understand some of the key concepts and features found in the Service Manager Console. This includes Management Packs that are used to store Service Manager Items such as queues, views and groups. You should understand the concept of work items and configuration items including how they can be created and modified in Service Manager. In this module, you will learn many of the key features and concepts that will help you understand how to configure important functions in Service Manager.

Lab : Configuring Service Manager for StockTrader and DinnerNow

Module 4: Configuring Service Manager For Your Environment

In this module you will learn some of the key configuration tasks that should be performed in Service Manager in order to customize it for your environment.

Lab : Configuring Service Manager for Your Environment

Module 5: Integrating Service Manager with the Hybrid Cloud

Connectors in Service Manager provide a key function in populating the Service Manager CMDB. For example, the Operations Manager CI Connector imports discovered objects such as web sites and databases into Service Manger so that they can be added to work items such as Incidents and Change Requests.

Lab : Configuring Connectors in Service Manager

Module 6: Managing Incidents and Problems

Incident and Problem management are two key functions that form part of any Service Management solution. Not only should you understand how Incidents and Problems are configured and managed you also need to understand what constitutes an Incident or a Problem. In this module you will learn how to differentiate an issue that occurs in the IT environment between an Incident and a Problem.

Lab : Configuring Incident and Problem Management

Module 7: Managing Changes and Releases

When changes need to occur in the IT environment it is important that they are managed appropriately. The goal of Change Management as described by ITIL is to “ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes, in order to minimize the impact of change-related incidents upon service quality, and consequently to improve the day-to-day operations of the organization”.

Lab : Configuring Change and Release Management

Module 8: Configuring and Managing the Service Catalog

Service Request fulfillment is a key function in the Service Management framework. By providing Service Request fulfillment you can align your IT and business strategy and ensure that you deliver business value with IT services. Service Manager provides Service Request fulfillment by using best practice methodologies from both Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) 4.0 and Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) V3.

Lab : Configuring Service Requests

Module 9: Automating Business Processes with Orchestrator

When Service Manager and Orchestrator have been integrated the ability to automate business processes in Service Manager is made available. Orchestrator can be used to create, update and manage items in Service Manager and Service Manager can be used to initiate Orchestrator Runbooks. A typical example of automating a business process with Orchestrator would be using it to automatically create a Problem Record in Service Manager when a number of related Incidents have been created.

Lab : Automating IT Processes in Service Manager

Module 10: Configuring Service Level Management

As defined by ITIL the mission statement for Service Level Management is “Plan, coordinate, negotiate, report and manage the quality of IT services at acceptable cost”. To provide effective Service Level Management a number of key activities must be undertaken. In addition to this, an ongoing activity to improve IT services is maintained.

Lab : Configuring Service Level Management

Module 11: Using Reports and Analyzing Data in Service Manager

Reporting in any IT Service Management solution is a key function that provides a wealth of information. From analyzing Incident trends to reporting on Software Update compliance, data stored in the reporting data warehouse provides a historical view of how your business environment has performed. Service Manager provides a number of standard reports that become available once data from the Service Manager database has been extracted and prepared in the Service Manager Data Warehouse.

Lab : Configuring Reports and Analyzing Service Manager Data

Module 12: Advanced Troubleshooting and Disaster Recovery

Over time there may be the need to troubleshoot your Service Manager environment and perform disaster recovery tasks such as restoring the Service Manager databases or recovering from a failed Management Server. In these scenarios it is important that you understand what tools are available to troubleshoot Service Manager and what actions you should take to recover from a disaster.

Lab : Performing Disaster Recovery in Service Manager

Module 13: Creating Forms and Items in Service Manager Using the Service Manager Authoring Tool

In most cases the out-of-box forms included with Service Manager will be sufficient for your day-to-day IT Service Management requirements. However, in some cases you may want to create a custom form to collect information that is not possible with the existing forms. For example, you may have an in-house business application that you want to manage with Service Manager and you want to be able to represent the application’s components in a form when creating an Incident. In this scenario, you can use the Service Manager Authoring Tool to extend the default incident form and customize it with controls such as a label or text box.

Lab : Creating Customized Forms by Using the Authoring Tool

Audience profile

This course is intended for cloud and datacenter administrators who are new to System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager and are responsible for deploying, configuring and operating it in their cloud or datacenter. This course is also intended for Cloud and datacenter administrators who are already familiar with Service Manager and want to upgrade their skills to include the new features found in System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager.

Before attending this course, students must have:

• Working knowledge of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012.
• Working knowledge of SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2012.
• An understanding of the IT management processes that are included with ITIL and MOF.

Earning this Microsoft qualification will qualify you for:

• Analyst
• Service Manager
• IT Manager

In these roles, you could earn an average of £45,000 per year (source: itjobswatch, 2016, UK)