The following article will cover a basic install of System Center Operations Manager 2012.   The concept is to perform a limited deployment of OpsMgr, only utilizing as few servers as possible, but enough to demonstrate the new roles and capabilities in OM2012 SP1.  For this reason, this document will cover a deployment on 3 servers. A dedicated SQL server, and two management servers will be deployed.  This will allow us to show the benefits of the RMS removal, and the management server pools concepts.  This is to be used as a template only, for a customer to implement as their own pilot or POC, or customized deployment guide. It is intended to be general in nature and will require the customer to modify it to suit their specific data and processes.
This also happens to be a very typical scenario for small environments for a production deployment.  This is not an architecture guide or intended to be a design guide in any way. This is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use is subject to the terms specified in the Terms of Use.

Definitions:
  • MS - Management Server
  • SRS - SQL reporting services
Server Names\Roles:
  • DB1               SQL Database Services, Reporting Services
  • SCOMMS1    Management Server, Web Console server
  • SCOMMS2    Management Server
Windows Server 2012 will be installed as the base OS for all platforms.  All servers will be a member of the AD domain.
SQL 2012 will be the base standard for all database and SQL reporting services.

High Level Deployment Process:

1.  In AD, create the following accounts and groups, according to your naming convention:
  • DOMAIN\OMAA                 OM Server action account
  • DOMAIN\OMDAS               OM Config and Data Access service account   
  • DOMAIN\SQLSVC               SQL service account
  • DOMAIN\OMAdmins          OM Administrators security group
2.  Add the “OMAA” account and the “OMDAS” account to the “OMAdmins” global group.
3.  Add the domain user accounts for yourself and your team to the “OMAdmins” group.
4.  Install Windows Server 2012 to all server role servers.
5.  Install Prerequisites and SQL 2012.
6.  Install the Management Server and Database Components
7.  Install the Reporting components.
8.  Deploy Agents
9.  Import Management packs
10.  Set up security (roles and run-as accounts)


Prerequisites:

1.  Install Windows Server 2012 to all Servers
2.  Join all servers to domain.
3.  Install the Report Viewer controls to all Management Servers. Install them from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=6442
4.  Install all available Windows Updates.
5.  Add the “OMAdmins” domain global group to the Local Administrators group on each server.
6.  Install IIS on any management server that will also host a web console:
Open PowerShell (as an administrator) and run the following:
Add-WindowsFeature NET-WCF-HTTP-Activation45,Web-Static-Content,Web-Default-Doc,Web-Dir-Browsing,Web-Http-Errors,Web-Http-Logging,Web-Request-Monitor,Web-Filtering,Web-Stat-Compression,Web-Mgmt-Console,Web-Metabase,Web-Asp-Net,Web-Windows-Auth –Restart
After installing these roles/features, you must register ASP.NET with IIS.  The simplest way is to open an elevated command prompt: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319>aspnet_regiis.exe -r 
7. Install SQL 2012 to the DB server role
  • Setup is fairly straightforward. This document will not go into details and best practices for SQL configuration. Consult your DBA team to ensure your SQL deployment is configured for best practices according to your corporate standards.
  • Run setup, choose Installation > New Installation…
  • When prompted for feature selection, install ALL of the following:
    • Database Engine Services
    • Full-Text and Semantic Extractions for Search
    • Reporting Services - Native
  • Optionally – consider adding the following to ease administration:
    • Management Tools – Basic and Complete (for running queries and configuring SQL services)
  • On the Instance configuration, choose a default instance, or a named instance. Default instances are fine for testing and labs. Production clustered instances of SQL will generally be a named instance. For the purposes of the POC, choose default instance to keep things simple.
  • On the Server configuration screen, set SQL Server Agent to Automatic.  You can accept the defaults for the service accounts, but I recommend using a Domain account for the service account.  Input the DOMAIN\sqlsvc account and password for Agent, Engine, and Reporting.
  • On the Collation Tab – you can use the default which is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS or choose another supported collation.
  • On the Account provisioning tab – add your personal domain user account or a group you already have set up for SQL admins. Alternatively, you can use the OMAdmins global group here. This will grant more rights than is required to all OMAdmin accounts, but is fine for testing purposes of the POC.
  • On the Data Directories tab – set your drive letters correctly for your SQL databases, logs, TempDB, and backup.
  • On the Reporting Services Configuration – choose to Install and Configure. This will install and configure SRS to be active on this server, and use the default DBengine present to house the reporting server databases. This is the simplest configuration. If you install Reporting Services on a stand-alone (no DBEngine) server, you will need to configure this manually.
  • Setup will complete.
    •                 
    Step by step deployment guide:

    1.  Install the Management Server role on SCOMMS1. You can also refer to: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh301922.aspx
    • Log on using your personal domain user account that is a member of the OMAdmins group.
    • Run Setup.exe
    • Click Install
    • Select the following, and then click Next:
      • Management Server
      • Operations Console
      • Web Console
    • Accept or change the default install path and click Next.
    • You might see an error from the Prerequisites here. If so – read each error and try to resolve it. Common errors:
      • Report Viewer controls are not installed. Install them from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=6442
      • ISAPI/ASP.NET errors. Simply run the following command to resolve, from an elevated command prompt: “C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319>aspnet_regiis.exe –r” After you run this – you might have to cancel and restart setup for the installed to recognize this.
    • On the Proceed with Setup screen – click Next.
    • On the specify an installation screen – choose to create the first management server in a new management group.  Give your management group a name. Don’t use any special or Unicode characters, just simple text. Click Next.
    • Accept the license.  Next.
    • On the Configure the Operational Database screen, enter in the name of your SQL database server name and instance. In my case this is “DB1”. Leave the port at default unless you are using a special custom fixed port.  If necessary, change the database locations for the DB and log files. Leave the default size of 1000 MB for now. Click Next.
    • On the Configure the Data Warehouse Database screen, enter in the name of your SQL database server name and instance. In my case this is “DB1”. Leave the port at default unless you are using a special custom fixed port.  If necessary, change the database locations for the DB and log files. Leave the default size of 1000 MB for now. Click Next.  
    • On the Web Console screen, choose the default web site, and leave SSL unchecked. If you have already set up SSL for your default website with a certificate, you can choose SSL.  Click Next.
    • On the Web Console authentication screen, choose Mixed authentication and click Next.
    • On the accounts screen, choose Domain Account for ALL services, and enter in the unique DOMAIN\OMAA, DOMAIN\OMDAS, accounts we created previously. It is a best practice to use separate accounts for distinct roles in OpsMgr, although you can also just use the DOMAIN\OMDAS account for all SQL Database access roles to simplify your installation (Data Access, Reader, and Writer accounts). Click Next.
    • Choose Yes or No to send Customer Experience and Error reports.
    • On the Microsoft Update screen – choose to use updates or not.  Next.
    • Click Install.
    • Close when complete.
    • The Management Server will be very busy (CPU) for several minutes after the installation completes. Before continuing it is best to give the Management Server time to complete all post install processes, complete discoveries, configuration, etc. 10 minutes is typically sufficient.
    2.  Install the second Management Server on SCOMMS2. You can also refer to: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh284673.aspx
    • Log on using your domain user account that is a member of the OMAdmins group.
    • Run Setup.exe
    • Click Install
    • Select the following, and then click Next:
      • Management Server
      • Operations Console
    • Accept or change the default install path and click Next.
    • Resolve any issues with prerequisites, and click Next.
    • Choose “Add a management server to an existing management group” and click Next.
    • Accept the license terms and click Next.
    • Input the servername\instance hosting the Ops DB. Select the correct database from the drop down and click Next.
    • On the accounts screen, choose Domain Account for ALL services, and enter in the unique DOMAIN\OMAA, DOMAIN\OMDAS accounts we created previously.  Click Next.
    • Choose Yes or No to send Customer Experience and Error reports. Next.
    • Turn Microsoft Updates on or off for SCOM, Next.
    • Click Install.
    • Close when complete.
    3.  Install OM12 Reporting on the SQL server. You can also refer to: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh298611.aspx
    • Log on using your domain user account that is a member of the OMAdmins group, and has System Administrator (SA) rights over the SQL instances.
    • Run Setup.exe. Click Install.
    • Select the following, and then click Next:
      • Reporting Server
    • Accept or change the default install path and click Next.
    • Resolve any issues with prerequisites, and click Next.
    • Accept the license and click Next.
    • Type in the name of a management server, and click Next.
    • Choose the correct local SQL reporting instance and click Next.
    • Enter in the DOMAIN\OMDAS account when prompted. It is a best practice to use separate accounts for distinct roles in OpsMgr, although you can also just use theDOMAIN\OMDAS account for all SQL Database access roles to simplify your installation. Click Next.
    • Choose Yes or No to send ODR information to Microsoft. This is very important to assist Microsoft in getting good information to help improve the product.
    • Click Install.
    • Close when complete.
    4.  Deploy an agent to the SQL DB server.
    5.  Import management packs. Also refer to: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh212691.aspx
    • Using the console – you can import MP’s using the catalog, or directly importing from disk.  Note – some MP’s should only be imported from disk.
    • Import the Base OS and SQL MP’s at a minimum.
    6.  Create a dashboard view:
    7.  Manually grow your Database sizes and configure SQL
    • When we installed each database, we used the default of 1GB (1000MB). This is not a good setting for steady state as our databases will need to grow larger than that very soon.  We need to pre-grow these to allow for enough free space for maintenance operations, and to keep from having lots of auto-growth activities which impact performance during normal operations.
    • A good rule of thumb for most deployments of OpsMgr is to set the OpsDB to 30GB for the data file and 15GB for the transaction log file. This can be smaller for POC’s but generally you never want to have an OpsDB set less than 10GB/5GB.  Setting the transaction log to 50% of the DB size for the OpsDB is a good rule of thumb.
    • For the Warehouse – you will need to plan for the space you expect to need using the sizing tools available and pre-size this from time to time so that lots of autogrowths do not occur.   http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29270
    8.  Continue with optional activities from the Quick Start guide on TechNet:
    9.  Enable Agent Proxy
    10.  Configure Notifications:
    11.  Deploy Unix and Linux Agents
    12.  Configure Network Monitoring
    13.  Connect with VMM 2012:
    14.  Configure your OpsMgr environment to accept manually installed agents.
    • The default is to block manually installed agents.  I recommend setting this to “Review new manual agent installations”
    15.  Configure your management group to support APM monitoring.
    16.  Deploy Audit Collection Services
    17.  Configure SQL MP RunAs Security: