Self-Service Portal Deployment Scenarios for System Center 2012 - Service Manager RC

  • Article

Applies To: System Center 2012 - Service Manager Release Candidate

[This topic is pre-release documentation and is subject to change in future releases. Blank topics are included as placeholders.]

The Self-Service Portal in System Center 2012 – Service Manager is a Microsoft SharePoint website that is accompanied by a set of Microsoft Silverlight applications. The Self-Service Portal consists of two elements: a SharePoint website and a web content server. The SharePoint website is accompanied by a set of applications built with Silverlight. The SharePoint environment provides a foundation on which the portal can be customized. It also provides a set of building blocks for extending the features that users can access through a web browser. The web content server is a Web Application that forms the interface between the Silverlight application and the Service Manager management server. The web content server provides a path for data from the Service Manager management server to the Silverlight-based application that is running in the browser.

The computer that hosts the web content server requires the installation of Internet Information Services (IIS), Microsoft .NET Framework 4, and Microsoft Analysis Management Objects (AMOs). The computer that hosts the SharePoint Web Parts requires the installation of IIS, Microsoft SharePoint 2010, and SQL Server 2008 (or SQL Server 2008 R2). Client computers that connect to the Self-Service Portal require version 4 of the Silverlight plug-in. For complete requirements, see Software Requirements for System Center 2012 - Service Manager.

Important

This release of the Self-Service Portal is not compatible with—nor is upgrade possible from—the Self-Service Portal in System Center Service Manager 2010 or System Center Service Manager 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1). You must uninstall System Center Service Manager 2010 or System Center Service Manager 2010 SP1 Self-Service Portal before you deploy the Self-Service Portal in System Center 2012 – Service Manager.

The home page for the Self-Service Portal is on the SharePoint Web Parts server. We recommend that you use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for your Self-Service Portal installation. You must use the same http protocol (http or https) for both the web content server and for the SharePoint website.

During setup you select certificates based on the certificate Subject name. You might encounter a situation where you have more than one certificate with the same Subject name and you might not be able to determine exactly which certificate to select. In this situation, select any of the certificates. After the Self-Service Portal has been installed, you can specify the certificate that you want to use by using Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

Note

You must use trusted certificates with the Self-Service Portal. Failure to use trusted certificates will result in a blank page being displayed on the Self-Service Portal.

If you want to install the SharePoint website on port 80, you must first move the default website in IIS to a different port—for example, port 8080—and then install the SharePoint Web Parts on port 80.

During setup of the web content server, ASP.NET might be unavailable to other websites or web applications. This issue, if it occurs, lasts only a few seconds.

The steps for installing the Self-Service Portal are outlined in the following flowchart.

Self-Service Portal Installation Flowchart

In This Section