Microsoft’s “Solution” to SCSM Console Performance – Buy a GPU!

If you’ve ever used System Center Service Manager, you know there are many challenges with the product. One of those being the performance and responsiveness of the Console.

A few days ago, November 24th specifically, Microsoft wrote a post entitled “Improving SM console responsiveness with GPU”. They have since taken it down, presumably due to the overwhelming negative response to the article itself! Thankfully, we have the Internet, and once something is online, it stays there.

Here is a link to the cached version of the article: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2015/11/24/improving-sm-console-responsiveness-with-gpu.aspx

In summary, the article relates that you can “increase” the responsiveness of the SCSM Console a whole 2.5 seconds, IF you have a GPU that can render through ‘Tier 2’ of the DirectX pipeline. To quote the article: “To speed up console UI rendering we needed to use Tier 2 rendering. For this we installed the console on a machine that had a GPU (NVIDIA Quadro 600 in our case) and immediately noticed an improvement in the console responsiveness.”

In case the cached copy of the article disappears, here’s a screenshot of it.

SCSM Article Screenshot

Some of the comments in response are interesting as well.

Understandably, “some” systems may have a GPU at the level mentioned, but not all. And especially if you factor in having/using the SCSM console on the SCSM server(s) themselves, it is very unreasonable to expect, let alone recommend, the installation of a GPU into a server!

It is really sad that this is a “recommendation”. Service Manager is great as a CMDB, especially since it can correlate data from SCCM and SCOM that when you are troubleshooting a system issue, you can effectively see all the patches applied, reboots, and other various technology alerts. It’s just too bad that it wasn’t built from the ground up, instead of just a new interface on top of SCOM code!

We’ll see what the future brings by way of ITSM and Service Manager.

SCSM Dashboard – Expit EnSight – Part 3: System Requirements and Installation

As was requested by one of my blog followers/subscribers, the following is a series evaluating the SCSM Dashboard “Ensight” by Expit.

In our previous post, I walked you through the rather cumbersome process involved to download the product. In this post, we will cover the System Requirements and the Installation based on the information provided in the User Guide.

System Requirements

According to the User Guide (which is a separate download and not included in the ZIP package with the product), the following prerequisites are required.

• One of the following operating systems: Microsoft Windows 7; Microsoft Windows 8; Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Release 2; Microsoft Windows Server 2012; or Microsoft Windows Server 2012, Release 2
• Microsoft .NET Framework Version 4.5 or Higher

That seems to be a little light on the pre-reqs, as there is no mention of anything else like IIS, SQL, and so forth, which other SCSM Dashboard products that I have evaluated and written about have required (see “SCSM Articles” in my Archives By Category page).

Now onto the Installation.

Installation

According to the User Guide: “The expit EnSight application is available in two editions: Community Edition and Professional Edition. When you download the software to your personal computer or laptop, the application defaults to Community Edition. To activate the features of the Professional Edition, you must provide information to Expit during an activation process. Double-click on the executable file to run the installation wizard. The wizard ensures that you do not have any previous versions of EnSight installed and that you have the correct pre-requisites installed. If those conditions are acceptable, the wizard installs the EnSight application.”

 Start by running the Expit EnSight 2.25.exe.

On the Welcome screen, click Next.

On the License Agreement screen, accept the terms, and then click Next.

On the Customer Information screen, provide your information, then click Next.

On the Destination Folder screen, either accept the default location or provide a new one, then click Next.

On the Ready To Install The Program screen, click Install.

Once the installation is completed, click Finish. This will automatically launch EnSight.

Logging Into EnSight

When the program first launches, you will be presented with a login screen like follows. According to the User Guide, “Enter the server name, your username, password, and domain name. The Account you use must have data view rights on your Service Manager environment.” This isn’t specifically clear, but the Server you need to supply is the Service Manager Management Server (not the Data Warehouse or any of the Database servers, etc).

Eventually, once  the connection is established, you will be presented with the main screen. In my lab example, since I didn’t have any Work Items in Service Manager, there’s not much to show.

There is a lot of option for customization, etc. However, based on the initial look and feel, this product feels like it could use a major update in the looks and feel department. If there was more polish in the interface, to make it more “modernized”, I think it may be received better. But there you have it, another supplement to Service Manager that may or may not be of value to you.

As always, if this post helped you in any way, and you would like to show your appreciation, please rate it, comment on it, and share it via any other social medium. Also, feel free to contact me (via the About Me page)  with requests for future articles.

SCSM Dashboard – Expit EnSight – Part 2: Downloading

As was requested by one of my blog followers/subscribers, the following is a series evaluating the SCSM Dashboard “Ensight” by Expit.

In our previous post, we were introduced to the SCSM Dashboard called Expit EnSight.

How To Download

First, navigate to to the main EnSight page, located here: http://expit.com/expit-ensight/m/60.

Click on the ‘Download‘ button.

This will bring you to yet another page, that shows the System Requirements for the product, with yet another ‘Download‘ button to click.

 

After clicking this second ‘Download’ button, you will be prompted to supply your Name, Email Address, and Company Name.

However, if you attempt to enter a personal email address (i.e. @gmail.com, @outlook.com, etc.) you will NOT be allowed to download the product! You will be informed that a “Corporate” email address is required. This is extremely annoying, especially since this occurs when you are trying to download the FREE COMMUNITY EDITION! I am told by the company, that they are working to change this functionality, however that was back at the beginning of July (so it’s been over a month with no changes).

Once you have provided information that the form deems as acceptable, will you then be presented with the following message: “Thank you. An email with the download link will be sent to you. If you have anti-spam software, make sure our message can get through. Don’t think we’ve forgotten about you!”

Within a little time, you will receive an email (at the address you provided), that will look something like this.

When you click on the link provided in the email, you will be brought to a webpage, with yes, another ‘Download‘ button. Finally, when you click this ‘Download’ button, the product will be downloaded to your local system. As of the time of this writing, the latest version of Expit EnSight is 2.25.

Personally, I think between forcing you to provide a Corporate email (for a free Community Edition of the product no less), along with the many ‘Download’ buttons you have to click, and the long and drawn-out process you have to follow just to download the installation file (which by the way doesn’t come with any installation/configuration guides within the ZIP file); makes the first impressions of this product less than positive. After all, normally I wouldn’t have to write an article page dedicated to “downloading” the product, but since this product’s process is needlessly obscure, I wanted to ensure that my followers/subscribers had some guidance around this process (and maybe motivate the company to change/improve the process).

In case anyone reading this article has difficulty finding the installation/configuration guide, it can be found on the right-hand side of the main Expit EnSight page (as depicted below). Here is a direct link to the Expit EnSight User Guide.

In the next article, we will walk through the basic installation.

As always, if this post helped you in any way, and you would like to show your appreciation, please rate it, comment on it, and share it via any other social medium. Also, feel free to contact me (via the About Me page)  with requests for future articles.