It’s been an amazing week at MMS! Every year, our team has the pleasure of being a major contributor to the success of MMS, driving the session tracks, the marketplace booths, ensuring that the content delivered is of a high quality and of course building...

So we’re only a couple of days from heading down to MMS to set up all the hardware for the keynotes (and believe me, this year we have more hardware backstage than ever before ) and ensure that MMS 2012 is an outstanding success. I wanted to provide an...

Hi everyone Well, MMS is nearly upon us again for 2012!  We have been working hard behind the scenes to get the event ready. This year we have aligned the content into 5 tracks for Windows Server and System Center: (track owners respectively) Application...

Hi everyone We have previously looked at how we enable application self-service , a standardized approach to deploying applications , and how we monitor applications across private and public clouds . And today we are going to explore the various application...

As posted yesterday on the Server Cloud blog, we have released the Release Candidate of Operations Manager 2012. This is a significant milestone release, and in this article we will explore how Operations Manager 2012 Release Candidate delivers application...

Hey everyone, the Operations Manager 2012 Release Candidate announcement has gone live! Head on over to the Server Cloud blog to read the announcement and get the download! http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2011/11/10/system-center-operations...

Hi everyone A key feature in Virtual Machine Manager for delivering consistent applications in Service templates is Server App-V. The team have posted two new videos over on their blog showing the sequencing of an application as an example. The video...

By default when you load the App Controller page, you are prompted to enter a username in the format domain\username and enter your password. However you can enable App Controller to use your logged on credentials to automatically sign in.  This...

Hi everyone So last Thursday we posted the App Controller Beta ( article and download ), and we have now posted a video demo of App Controller, with a walk through the key capabilities that App Controller provides. You can watch the video over on TechNet...

A question that has come up a few times in the last few days is whether App Controller works in browsers other than Internet Explorer 8 and 9. The answer is yes, with some caveats and requirements.  You can view the App Controller supported system...

Our team will be running the next generation of Community Evaluation Programs (CEP) starting next month.  We’ve previously run the CEPs based on individual System Center products, and now we are going to run a program as a team for the Private Cloud...

As announced over on the Server Cloud blog, System Center App Controller 2012 Beta is now available! App Controller is a new member of the System Center family, and provides a number of capabilities that enable Application Self Service across both Private...

Hi everyone Well, it is now out in the open what we have been working on! Over on the Server Cloud blog, you can read the announcement we made this morning, making the System Center self-service releases available – App Controller Beta, Service...

I know I've been a bit quiet lately on the blog front. That's because we've been working hard on new content for System Center 2012 and getting ready for ... next week. A.

Hi everyone The Operations Manager 2012 Beta is now available! There are a lot of significant new capabilities, including Network Monitoring and of course my particular area of interest, Application Performance Management. Below you will see the...

I have had the pleasure of being at WPC this week.  We rocked in on Sunday morning to set up the hardware for the Day 2 keynotes today, and I am very happy (relieved?) to say that the demos went perfectly and our Demo Gods rocked them. In summary...

In the coming months, I am going to be taking a focus on how System Center provides the capability to create, deploy and performance monitor applications in cloud based architectures. I'll be writing posts on things like, how do you build an application...

Today we made the Beta of System Center Orchestrator 2012 available.  This was a huge effort by the team and this afternoon we celebrated! This post is dedicated to the Orchestrator Engineering team.  They put this together and made it happen...

I spend a lot of time thinking about the role that “Automation” plays in various scenarios.  What does this look like in todays Datacenter, what does it look like as we move to Private Cloud Architectures, and what role will it play in situations...

Just a very quick note to say that this site is not dead, it’s just neglected I will be posting a lot of content here after MMS.  I have been working on a lot of new content that we tested for the first time last week at our internal event, TechReady...

While we were in Berlin, Kenon and I had a chat with Adam Carter from Technet Edge.  We talk through where System Center is at today, and how you can get going with the private cloud today!   We hope you find this interesting and useful.

I finished reading Nicholas Carr’s The Big Switch last night.  If you are in the Technology field, you should read it.  He nails what is underway at the moment with the way we are using computers.  In his book, Carr uses the analogy of...

The Opalis operator console by default is set to refresh every 10 seconds and timeout after 20 minutes. If this does not meet your desired behavior, you can change these settings in the file “settings.properties”.  You change these settings at your...

One of the most common questions I get is to help people understand the difference between Opalis and Service Manager.  There is a misconception that they do the same thing.  They don’t. Whilst there are some things that you could do in both...

Seeing some of the suggestions for workflows reminded me that we already have some of these, or at least the foundation for them. Make sure you take a look at the existing Workflow Authoring Examples and Samples that are posted and published on the Opalis...