Archive for: ‘June 2013’

Service Manager 2012 SP1 secondary Management Server issue

June 16, 2013 Posted by Anders Asp

I guess most of you already seen this post on the official blog (if not, you should read it now!):
http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2013/04/22/service-manager-2012-sp1-secondary-management-server-cannot-set-availability-on-a-health-service-that-doesn-t-exist.aspx

And the official workaround for this issue is described like this:

“The recommended workaround to address this issue yourself is to install System Center Service Manager 2012 RTM and then upgrade to SP1. If for any reason you are unable to do this, please reach out to support so that they can provide assistance.”

While this is a valid workaround, it doesn’t work in all cases. For instance, you are not able to install SCSM 2012 RTM on a Windows Server 2012 or SQL Server 2012… So if you would need to do so, you would need to contact Microsoft Support.

Now to the reason of this blogpost, I just wanted to inform you that I was forced to do so the other day and the good news about this is that there is a fix available (it’s actually a fixed installation .msi package) and that Microsoft won’t charge you for this support case as this is “seen as a problem in the software”.

System Center SQL licensing clarification

June 16, 2013 Posted by Anders Asp

There has been a lot of questions regarding licensing for SQL and System Center 2012. As long as you only use System Center Products on a SQL Server then the SQL Server license is included in System Center.

But what about running the Self Service Portal which is a Sharepoint site using the same SQL Server? I asked Microsoft about this and after some time I got the answers below from the licensing group.

Q: If the customers is using the SQL Standard license that is included with SC to run the SharePoint 2010 server that is hosting the SCSM self-service portal, SCOM web parts, etc and the SharePoint server is being used exclusively for SC, does the customer need to pay extra for the SQL license since it is being used to run SharePoint?

A: if the instance of SQL Server is being exclusively used to support SC, then they don’t need an extra license.

Q: If the SharePoint server is not being used exclusively for SC content, does the SQL Server need to be licensed?

A:  Yes.