System Requirements for Service Reporting

 

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 R2 Service Reporting, System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator

This topic lists only the system requirements for Service Reporting in System Center 2012 R2. Because Service Reporting is a component of System Center 2012 R2, you must also be aware of the requirements for System Center 2012 R2, which are located at System Requirements for System Center 2012 R2.

Hardware

Service Reporting Setup requires 100 gigabytes (GB) of free disk space. After installation, the majority of disk space that Service Reporting uses is reserved for the data warehouse databases. Initially, the size of the databases is small. After data is collected over time, the databases grows but usually does not exceed 60 GB. However, the maximum possible total size of the databases is 100 GB.

Note

The data warehouse online analytical processing (OLAP) instance in Service Reporting can use an extensive amount of RAM.

Software

The setup program verifies that the software is installed on the server where you install Service Reporting. If any prerequisites are missing, Setup cannot finish successfully.

Operating systems

Service Reporting supports the following server operating systems:

  • Windows Server® 2012 R2

    Service Reporting supports Enterprise and Standard editions, although we recommend the Enterprise edition. Regardless of the edition that you use, you can use a Server Core installation.

  • Windows Server 2012

    Service Reporting supports all editions, although we recommend the Enterprise edition. Regardless of the edition that you use, you can use a Server Core installation.

Running Service Reporting on Windows Azure virtual machines

Service Reporting runs on Windows Azure just as it does on physical computer systems. It is recommended on Windows Azure for the primary purpose of Service Reporting, which is the collection and reporting of usage and inventory data gathered from System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager and Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server endpoints.

Service Reporting was tested by Microsoft by installing and using it in a Windows Azure virtual machine. The testing concluded that Service Reporting was fully functional by it operating exactly the same as on physical hardware.

Stability and performance benchmarks inside a Windows Azure virtual machine were at a level where no special considerations were needed.

System Center 2012 R2 components and Windows Azure Pack requirements

Service Reporting can gather usage information from System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager and from Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server. However, other components and systems can interact with Operations Manager and from Windows Azure Pack.

Service Reporting requires information from Operations Manager that is available only when agents monitor System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM). For Service Reporting to gather and show VMM information from Windows Azure Pack, Service Reporting must have a connection to Operations Manager.

The following list summarizes the relationships that Service Reporting has with other components and Windows Azure Pack. It also prescribes the order in which you should install and configure System Center 2012 R2 components and Windows Azure Pack before you register data connections from either Operations Manager or Windows Azure Pack to Service Reporting.

  1. Virtual Machine Manager

    VMM is the primary source of usage data for hosted servers. In a test environment, you should install and configure VMM before other System Center components.

  2. Operations Manager

    Operations Manager agents monitor and collect data from computers in your server infrastructure. Of primary interest to Service Reporting is that Operations Manager uses agents to gather usage data for VMM fabric and store it in the operational database where Service Reporting can retrieve it. Therefore, you should install and configure Operations Manager and deploy agents after you install VMM. You can read more about using agents to collect VMM data at Operations Manager Agent Installation Methods. After you install VMM and Operations Manager, you can read more about how to connect them at How to Connect VMM with Operations Manager.

    Later, after you install Service Reporting, you create the connection to the Operations Manager operational database by using the information at How to Configure Service Reporting for Windows Azure Pack and System Center.

  3. Service Provider Foundation

    Service Provider Foundation is a component of System Center 2012 R2, and it provides an extensible OData web service that interacts with VMM. This enables service providers and hosting providers to design and implement multitenant self-service portals that integrate IT as a service (IaaS) capabilities that are available in System Center 2012 R2. You can read more about installing Service Provider Foundation at How to Install Service Provider Foundation 2012 R2.

    Note

    Service Provider Foundation Setup is a part of System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator.

  4. Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server

    You do not need Windows Azure Pack to view information about inventory reporting or virtual machine fabric from Operations Manager. However, to view usage data for virtual machines, you can use Windows Azure Pack as an optional, but important, source of usage data about hosted services that Service Reporting can report on. You can read more about installing and configuring Windows Azure Pack at Deploy Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server.

    Later, after you install Service Reporting, you create the connection to the Windows Azure Pack Management database by using the information at How to Configure Service Reporting for Windows Azure Pack and System Center.

After you install and configure all the System Center 2012 R2 components and Windows Azure Pack requirements, you have all the systems in place for Service Reporting installation.

SQL Server

Service Reporting supports the following versions of Microsoft SQL Server software.

Note

Service Reporting supports the Standard edition for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2008 R2, and that edition provides acceptable performance behavior. However, some of the advanced features of SQL Server are constrained in the Standard edition.

  • SQL Server 2012 Enterprise and Standard editions. Configuration requirements are as follows:

    • You must configure SQL Server services by using a domain account to ensure that SQL Server Analysis Services, SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER), and SQL Server Agent (MSSQLSERVER) start by using the domain account credentials. You cannot use Local System for SQL Server services with Service Reporting because a remote server that is running SQL Server cannot access the InstallationDrive:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012 R2\Service Reporting\SSISPackages folder share. The account must have read access to the Operations Manager database for retrieval of source data.

    • Service Reporting supports SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn availability groups. For more information about SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn failover clustering, see SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn: Multisite Failover Cluster Instance.

    • Service Reporting SQL Server databases are supported in default and named instances.

    • Service Reporting requires the SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) role on the server or servers where you want to install the Service Reporting data warehouse databases. During Service Reporting installation, respective SSIS packages are created in the servers. These packages use functions that SSIS provides for processing in the data for the Service Reporting data warehouse.

    • Service Reporting requires the SQL Server Analysis Services role on the server or servers where you want to install the Service Reporting OLAP databases. During Service Reporting installation, a SQL Server instance is created that hosts the SQL Server role.

    • Service Reporting requires SQL Server 2012 Analysis Management Objects on the server where you are installing Service Reporting.

  • SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise and Standard editions. SQL Server 2008 R2 has the same configuration requirements as SQL Server 2012.

Account requirements for SQL Server services

Service Reporting uses the following accounts for SQL Server services. If you ever modify the accounts for the services, ensure that you preserve or restore permission to the objects.

  • SQL Server

    The service must log on as a domain account.

  • SQL Server Agent

    The service must log on as a domain account, and it must have read access to the System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager database. By default, this account is configured with full permission to the SSISPackages and WorkDir folders. If the account is modified, you must ensure that permissions to the folders are preserved.

  • SQL Server Analysis Services

    The service must log on as a domain account, and it must have access permission to the UsageDatawarehouseDB database of the Service Reporting data warehouse.

  • SQL Server Integration Services

    The service must log on as a domain account.

Data warehouse SSIS instance in Service Reporting

During Service Reporting installation, the instance of the Service Reporting data warehouse is created with the following configuration (shown with minimal hardware):

  • 8 GB of RAM

  • 2 CPUs

  • Databases:

    • UsageETLRepositoryDB. Initially configured with 10 GB of disk space without a file group.

    • UsageStagingDB. Initially configured with 100 GB of disk space without a file group.

    • UsageDWRepositoryDB. Initially configured with 1 GB of disk space with eight file groups. However, SQL Server Standard Edition does not include file groups.

Data warehouse OLAP instance in Service Reporting

During Service Reporting installation, the SQL Server Analysis Services instance of the Service Reporting data warehouse is created with the following configuration (shown with minimal hardware):

  • 16 GB of RAM

  • 2 CPUs

  • UsageAnalysisDB database, in a size that is determined by the data volume in the data warehouse

Note

This SQL Server instance can use an extensive amount of RAM.

SQL Server language support in Service Reporting

The information in the following table represents the approved collations and the locale identifiers that Microsoft tested for Service Reporting. In the list of collations in this table, “CI” indicates case-insensitive, and “AS” indicates accent-sensitive.

Language Windows collation
English, Dutch, German, Italian Latin1_General_100_CI_AS
Chinese Chinese_Simplified_Pinyin_100_CI_AS
Chinese Traditional Chinese_Traditional_Stroke_Count_100_CI_AS
Czech Czech_100_CI_AS
Danish Danish_Norwegian_CI_AS
Finnish Finnish_Swedish_100_CI_AS
French French_100_CI_AS
Greek Greek_100_CI_AS
Hungarian Hungarian_100_CI_AS
Japanese Japanese_XJIS_100_CI_AS
Korean Korean_100_CI_AS
Norwegian Norwegian_100_CI_AS
Polish Polish_100_CI_AS
Portuguese (Brazil) Latin1_General_CI_AS
Russian Cyrillic_General_100_CI_AS
Spanish Modern_Spanish_100_CI_AS
Swedish Finnish_Swedish_100_CI_AS
Turkish Turkish_100_CI_AS

Windows PowerShell support

You must install Windows PowerShell® Extensions for SQL Server 2012 on the server where you install Service Reporting. The extensions are dependent on SQL Server 2012 Shared Management Objects, which in turn is dependent on Microsoft System CLR Types for Microsoft SQL Server 2012. All of these are available in the SQL Server 2012 Feature Pack that is available in SQL Server 2012 Setup.

Windows PowerShell 3.0 is required. If you are running Windows Server 2008 R2, you can install Windows Management Framework 3.0 from the Microsoft Download Center.

.NET Framework 4.5

Service Reporting requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5. You can get the full installation of .NET Framework 4.5 (dotNetFx40_Full_setup.exe) from the Microsoft Download Center.

Excel 2010

Service Reporting requires Microsoft Excel 2010 or Excel 2013 for viewing usage and inventory reports. You can install Excel on any computer that has network connectivity to the Service Reporting data warehouse. Excel Viewer is not supported because it does not support viewing data cubes.

After you install Service Reporting, Excel workbooks that contain the Service Reporting reports are installed in the following folder:

InstallationDrive:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012 R2\Service Reporting\Reports

See Also

Service Reporting in System Center 2012 R2
Support for Service Reporting
Release Notes for System Center 2012 R2 - Service Reporting