For those that are unfamiliar, MAP is a tool from the solution accelerator team which provides inventory, assessment, and reporting that will help you assess your current IT infrastructure status and determine the right Microsoft technologies for your IT needs. environment. It can be a very valuable tool as it is agentless, and has the ability discover machines on your network that might be unknown, or not fully covered by your existing asset management solutions.
Resources:
Product page: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd537566
Download: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?&id=7826
Requirements to install:
Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Ultimate
Installation:
Run the “Microsoft_Assessment_and_Planning_Toolkit_Setup.exe” program. To get started, click Next.
The first step is a pre-req checker. If any are not met you must correct these before continuing.
Accept the license agreement and click Next.
Accept or change the installation path, and click Next.
Select a choice for the Customer Experience Improvement Program, and click Next.
Click Install. When completed, click Finish to open the MAP toolkit.
Running MAP and collecting inventory for Windows Computers:
When the MAP toolkit opens for the first time – we must create a database to store our collected inventory. Give the DB a name, such as “MapData” and click OK to create the local DB.
In the left pane – click “Environment” and then select “Collect Inventory Data”.
Choose “Windows Computers” and click Next.
Choose to leverage Active Directory to discover from. Additionally you can leverage alternative methods to discover machines not found in AD. Click Next.
We must provide domain credentials that have rights to be able to query active directory. Input the data and click Next.
On the AD options, you can select the default to scan the entire domain, or if all servers are in known OU’s, you can select specific AD containers to search in. Click Next.
On the credentials page, we need to input a credential that has local administrator on all machines in the domain. This is required as MAP will connect to each machine and inventory details from WMI. For this purpose a domain administrator account works best, or a domain account that is a member of the local administrators group of each server in the domain. Click “Create” and input the credentials. You can input multiple credentials here and all will be attempted if one fails, however, this could extend the time required to run the inventory. When complete, click Next.
On the Credentials Order screen, you can change the order of multiple credentials if entered. Click Next. Click Finish.
Inventory will start immediately. Querying the data from AD will occur rather quickly. However, connecting to each server on the network via WMI will take considerable time., even days, depending on how large the environment. Allow this to complete, such as below:
Once this is complete – you will see the amount of success/failure between what was queried from AD, and what was actually reachable via WMI.
Once you are happy with the results of the inventory, you can run a “Generate Inventory Results Report” to create the spreadsheet output in your My Documents\MAP directory
Requirements to gather data:
MAP uses WMI to gather the inventory data. You need to ensure that the server/workstation that is running the MAP collection has access to all servers via any hardware firewalls, and if the servers are running Windows Firewall that exceptions allow the MAP workstation to contact all servers on those ports. Detailed information is available at: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/8657.map-prepare-the-environment-wmi.aspx
Gathering data from VMware:
This is covered at: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/12160.map-prepare-the-environment-vmware.aspx
In the inventory collection check the box for VMware:
Choose to manually provide a list of vCenter server names.
Provide credentials that have access to the vCenter servers:
Provide a list of server names that run vCenter :
Configure the properties of your vCenter servers:
Additional resources:
MAP Survival guide: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1640.microsoft-assessment-and-planning-toolkit.aspx
MAP Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/mapblog/