I created a Runbook sample today that would run every 5 minutes, execute program (IISLogsEXE 4.0) and write status to the event log. This three step Runbook won’t break any records in complexity, but is functional. I have many tasks that are “low hanging fruit”. These simple Runbooks will save time and administration. It’s been fun over the last couple of years to deep dive into learning System Center Configuration Manager (previously worked with SMS 2003). Orchestrator is another one of those tools that MS has in their enterprise tool chest. As much as MS stumbles in the consumer market with one seemly fumble after another, in the enterprise space enhancing tools like Orchestrator is awesome.
My brief blog is to get me back sharing information on what I learned this go around. In my testing the “Tester” was useful in proving my Runbook worked. It amazes me today there is a lot of information available when picking up a technology. This speeds the process of learning the basics in a technology. Compared to IIS, ASP.NET communities I’ve been in for the last 10+ years, something like Orchestrator has humble beginnings with a rising community with a lot of help and more importantly, examples! Here is what I found and wanted to pass along to those newbies picking up Orchestrator.
Run by Ryan Andorfer (he is guru with Orchestrator, definitely read anything by Ryan and a he is a good guy too, met him at MMS 2012)
http://scorch.codeplex.com/
Developer resource to retrieve data from C# or Powershell
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921685.aspx
General reference to various Activities with SCOrch
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh403800
Another good resource by Charles Joy (these have good examples I refer to for howto’s)
http://orchestrator.codeplex.com/releases/view/86195
My motto for now is thing simple and functional. Solve everyday problems and the more complex will quickly happen using SCOrch.
Steve Schofield
Microsoft MVP – IIS
Pondering Thought 