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Deploying your lab with System Center 2012 R2

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With the recent availability of the R2 preview of Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012, I’ve decided to rebuild my little demo / lab environment. Here are the most useful links that I had to use.

  1. Getting the evaluation versions : System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2 preview can be downloaded at this location : https://technet.microsoft.com/evalcenter/dn205295.aspx 

    Please note that VMM 2012 R2 requires the presence of the Windows ADK which can be downloaded at this location : https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=309908 

  2. System requirements: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn281935.aspx 

    Note: The self service portal relies on SharePoint 2010 therefore you must install the SSP components on Windows Server 2008 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2

  3. All System Center products rely on SQL server to store their data. You can find the compatibility matrix of System Center components and SQL on this page : https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn281933.aspx

    To build my lab, I’ve used the SQL 2012 SP1 version that you can freely download from here : https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/hh225126.aspx 

Now you are ready to proceed with the installation. I’m not going to walk through all the installation steps.

When you install SQL, pay attention to the Collation settings. If you are going to be in a pure English configuration the default settings are ok but if you are going to manage a multi-lingual environment, please read the following article : https://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2012/05/24/clarification-on-sql-server-collation-requirements-for-system-center-2012.aspx 

Finally here is the configuration of my lab. All the systems are running in a virtual environment except the host :

System Name Roles / Applications Memory configuration OS Version
DC01 Domain Controller DNS Dynamic 512 Mb – 2 Gb Windows Server 2012 R2 x64
VMM Virtual Machine Manager Operations Manager SQL: Database Dynamic 2Gb – 8Gb Windows Server 2012 R2 x64 SQL 2012 SP1
SCSM System Center Service Manager System Center Orchestrator SharePoint 2010 SP1 Enterprise SQL: Database, Analysis Services and Reporting Services Dynamic 2Gb – 8.5Gb Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 x64
SCSMDW System Center Service Manager Data Warehouse SQL: Database, Analysis Services and Reporting Services Dynamic 512Mb – 8Gb Windows Server 2012 R2 x64
HOST Hyper-V 32 Gb Windows Server 2012 R2 x64

In my next post I’m going to explain the System Center configuration that I’ve implemented in order to be able to test almost all the components of this R2 release.