This blog article will highlight some of the new features in Live Maps v5:

• Automatic Network Topology Mapping
• ‘Show Affected Live Maps’ Alert Task
• Dynamic Maps
• Integration With Service Manager 2010

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We are pleased to announce the availability of Live Maps v5. This release contains improved integration with problem and incident management processes which unleashes even more usability scenarios and extends the reach of Live Maps to a greater audience.

Live Maps v5 also contains major time saving improvements by automating the creation and maintenance of maps. Live Maps v5 is the only platform that brings automatic network topology diagrams and dynamic datacenter maps to Microsoft System Center.

For more information:

Press releases:

• Live Maps v5 Announcement
• Live Maps v5 Integration with Service Manager 2010

 Blog post:

• New in Live Maps v5

The new version of Live Maps can be downloaded here. Customers and partners can request a v5 license key by sending an email to sales@savision.com. Free copy users can request an updated key here.

During the Microsoft Management Summit 2010 in Las Vegas Microsoft took a new approach with their hands-on lab infrastructure. Microsoft replaced the fat desktops running the lab VMs locally with thin clients and 42 central servers capable of running over 4000 VMs.

To deploy and manage this virtualized environment Microsoft used System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center Operations Manager and Savision Live Maps. Have a look at the interview with Barry Shilmover for more details.

More details on Live Maps...

In the previous articles have explained how to extend an existing server class with a ‘Location’ attribute by building a custom Management Pack and how to feed location information from an external source into OpsMgr using a connector. In this article I will explain how you can use Live Maps to dynamically visualize these server objects based on the location attribute.

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In the previous article I have explained how to extend an existing server class with a ‘Location’ attribute by building a custom Management Pack. In this article I will explain how to create a connector that reads information from a CSV file and updates the location information of a server in OpsMgr.

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We frequently get questions from customers that want to re-use computer location information that is stored in a CMDB or RFID tracking system with Live Maps. A very understandable question looking at the dynamic datacenter challenges enterprises face today.

Live Maps comes with many features that support dynamic views but it relies on information that is stored in OpsMgr. In this blog series I will explain how you can extend OpsMgr with location information from an external source and how to use that information with Live Maps.

The diagram below shows on overview how we are going to approach this challenge.

I will go through this process in three steps:

1. Create a management pack that adds a ‘location’ attribute to the Windows Server class
2. Write a connector that reads asset information from a CSV file and updates OpsMgr
3. Configure Live Maps to create dynamic location aware maps

In this first article I will describe explain how to create a Management Pack (MP) that extends an existing class with a ‘Location’ attribute.

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With every view that is build using Live Maps an OpsMgr group is created containing all the objects that are on the Live Maps view. You can use these groups for different purposes, for example target the group for security, reporting, service level tracking or for setting maintenance mode.

In this article it will give a few code examples to extract information about Live Maps groups using Powershell.

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The other day I got a question from a customer that wanted to know if it was possible to use Live Maps with the new OpsMgr R2 Service Level Tracking feature. The answer was simple, yes you can.

In this article I will give a step-by-step instruction how to configure Service Level Tracking on a Live Maps view and show the results using the Service Level Tracking report in OpsMgr and the Service Level Dashboard in SharePoint.

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Savision will be present at Teched Europe in Berlin, 9-13 november. We will be demostrating our System Center solution at booth E26. Make sure you pay us a visit and win a Sony eReader!

To learn more about Live Maps you can also visit the following breakout session where Savision will be co-presenting with Microsoft:

MGT02-DEMO : Extending Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 through Partner Solutions, Tue 11/10 | 12:20-13:00 | Helsinki - Hall 7-2a.

More info about Teched can be found here.

We are proud to announce the release of Live Maps 4.1 for Operations Manager R2. This update contains, besides some fixes and performance improvements, a number of new features that have been added based on customer feedback. Some of the new features are highlighted in this article, a complete overview can be found in the release notes.

The new release can be downloaded here. If you are upgrading from Live Maps v2 or v3 a new license key is needed. Free edition user can request an updated key here, customers can request a new key by sending an email to sales@savision.com.

Feature Highlight

Health Details

A feature has been added to the Live Maps drawing view that allows you to optionally display the health details of a nested map or object. The details show the number of child objects in a particular state and the total number of open alerts.

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The Queensland Department of Education and Training (DET) Strategic Information Technologies serves the quintessential distributed work force, consisting of some 1.300 individual schools, more than 50 district offices, as many as 16 technical colleges, and other education related sites. With an Active Directory implementation storing nearly 500.000 user accounts, 150.000 computer objects and 2.500 servers the DET IT department faces a real challenge to keep this environment under control.

Read this case study and learn how DET uses System Center Operations Manager 2007 with Savision Live Maps to gain visability and get in control.

“This not only give us visibility to alerts, it shows us all of the dependencies on the alert. It was impossible to get this critical information so quickly before Live Maps.” Nicholas Long, Manager, Enterprise Platform and Development, DET.

Last week our partner OpsLogix released their Intelligent Management Pack for BlackBerry.

The Intelligent Management Pack for BlackBerry checks the status of your BlackBerry Enterprise Server infrastructure as a whole, checking every individual component providing a comprehensive state and performance view for your BlackBerry Enterprise Server infrastructure. Furthermore, it not only alerts & reports on BlackBerry Enterprise Server issues, but also monitors the most critical component; the SRP connection to RIM.

Besides offering the first native solution for BlackBerry monitoring with Operations Manager Opslogix uses Live Maps technology from Savision to offer a graphical health overview of the BlackBerry infrastructure. Check out their website for more information.

Today we posted the recording of the System Center Operations Manager ISV Über Demo, ISV solutions for cross-platform monitoring, regulatory auditing and advanced visualizations.

There are over forty minutes of demos and everything is running on SCOM R2! This is a great session for Microsoft field, partners and SCOM users that shows real world examples of how to get the most out of your System Center investment leveraging native third party solutions like BridgeWays, Savision and Secure Vantage Technologies.

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The default refresh rate of the Live Maps web console is every 5 minutes. This default can be overridden by editing the web.config file in the installation directory of the web console (typically ”C:\Program Files\Savision\Live Maps v3\Web Console”). Follow the following instructions to change the refresh rate:

- Open the web.config file using a text editor (e.g. notepad.exe).
- Look for the "ViewAutoRefresh" setting.
- Change the value. The value represents the refresh rate in minutes. The minimum value is 1, maximum value is 999.
- Save the file.