System Center 2012 Unified Installer – Step by Step – Part 2

In my first post about the System Center 2012 Unified Installer I wrote about the prerequisites you need, to do a System Center 2012 deployment with the Unified Installer. In the second part I will write how you have to prepare the Installer and the Target servers.

• System Center 2012 Unified Installer – Step by Step – Part 1
• System Center 2012 Unified Installer – Step by Step – Part 2
• System Center 2012 Unified Installer – Step by Step – Part 3

It’s still important: Neither the System Center Unified Installer nor this guide is made to deploy the System Center Suite in production. It is only for lab or demo environments.

In my case I created two OUs to deploy my small lab. One for the Installer Computer and one for all the System Center servers. And I created some GPOs to save some time.

Preparing the Installer Computer for System Center 2012 – Unified Installer

1. First I installed a Server with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 as the installer Computer and installed all the patches which came with Windows Updates.
2. Now you have to do some configuration of WinRM. You can do this via Group Policy or CMD commands.
   Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / System / Credential Delegation / Allow Delegating Fresh Credentials (Enabled with the value: “WSMAN/*” and Concatenate OS defaults with input above selected)
   Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / System / Credential Delegation / Allow Delegating Fresh Credentials with NTLM-only Server Authentication (Enabled with the value: “WSMAN/*” and Concatenate OS defaults with input above selected)
   Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Remote Management (WRM) / WinRm Client / Allow CredSSP authentication (Enabled)
   Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Remote Management (WRM) / WinRm Client / Trusted Hosts (Enabled with a * in the TrustedHostsList option)
   
3. You could also run the following comands

   winrm set winrm/config/client/auth @{CredSSP="True"}
   winrm set winrm/config/client @{TrustedHosts="*"}
   winrm qc

4. Now you you have to open some Firewall ports, you can do this also via Group Policy or in the local Windows Firewall settings.
   Create a new Inbound role for the following ports:
   TCP 81
   TCP 1433
   UDP 1434
   ICMP v4
   Because it is a demo or lab Environment you could also disable the Firewall

On the User’s Guide for System Center 2012 – Unified Installer you can get more Information how you can prepare the Installer Computer.

Preparing a Target Servers for System Center 2012 Components

1. First I installed a Server with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 as the installer Computer and installed all the patches which came with Windows Updates.
2. Like for the Installer Computer we also have to create some GPOs for the Target Servers.
   Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Remote Management (WinRM) / WinRM Service / Allow automatic configuration of listeners (Enabled and the for the values of IPv4 filter and IPv6 filter type *)
   Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Remote Management (WinRM) / WinRM Service / Allow CredSSP authentication (Enabled)
   Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Remote Shell / Allow Remote Shell Access (Enabled)
   Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Remote Shell / Specify maximum amount of memory in MB per Shell (Enabled and set MaxMemoryPerShellMB to 2048)
   You could also run the following commands on the target servers.

   winrm qc -q
   winrm set winrm/config/service/auth @{CredSSP="True"}
   winrm set winrm/config/winrs @{AllowRemoteShellAccess="True"}
   winrm set winrm/config/winrs @{MaxMemoryPerShellMB="2048"}

Create Installer User and Service Users

I also created a Service Users for every System Center product, you could also just use the same user account for all products.

• svc-sc2012-scvmm
• svc-sc2012-scac
• svc-sc2012-sco
• svc-sc2012-scom
• svc-sc2012-sccm
• svc-sc2012-scsm
• svc-sc2012-scdpm

And I created a Installer User which has local Administrator rights on every machine. You also have to login to your Installer Computer and run the System Center Unified Installer with this account.

• sc2012-installer

This was the last preperation post, in the next post the “Fun” Begins and we can fire up the System Center 2012 – Unified Installer