Today, Microsoft announced its acquisition of AVIcode, Inc.  Read the official blog here.

We hope that the rest of the Operations Manager community is as excited as we are about the enhanced capabilities that the AVIcode technologies bring to Systems Monitoring, including not only .Net application monitoring, as well as rich performance metrics:

In addition, technologies from today’s acquisition can help both IT Pros and Developers in true root cause analysis of distributed applications:

You’ll be hearing more and more about how the AVIcode technologies will bring new systems monitoring capabilities to System Center users, but for now, check out the System Center blog for news on the acquisition and a video from our VP, Brad Anderson, on what this means for Microsoft customers.

Was excited to see one of the first reviews from my book – from Paul Schnackenburg, who many of you will know from various his System Center and Microsoft coverage in publications including ZDnet.AU, RedmondMag and 4Sysops.com.  He also writes his own blog called Tell IT as IT is.  Paul was kind enough to read the book and here is what he said:

I’ve just finished reading Data Protection for Virtual Data Centers by Jason Buffington, it was a very good read. This is a rather unique book in that it’s not a book about Data Protection Manager although you’ll learn a lot about what DPM can do for data protection. It’s also not a book about Systems Center Configuration Manager or Systems Center Operations Manager even though you’ll gain an overview of what those products can do.

What this book does is take a holistic approach to understanding data protection as it applies to small, medium and large organizations. Starting with an overview of what data protection is and the different technologies used to achieve it; the book then steps you through how to use business metrics and financial calculations to understand which option is most suitable. You’ll then learn how to achieve High Availability in modern versions of SQL Server, Exchange Server, File Services in Windows Server, Failover Clustering and Hyper-V Virtualization etc. It rounds of with Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.

All in all this is a well written book, by an expert in the field who’s been doing data protection for many years, covering modern approaches to data protection in today’s IT world. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to understand the many layers and facets of data protection!

Paul – thanks for reading the book (and writing about it) !

Everyone else -- As always, thanks for reading. 

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That’s how TechNet describes it … and it really is a cool series.

The way I describe it …

My buddy and world-renowned IT Pro evangelist Matt Hester caught up to me at TechEd and said “Hey, congrats on DPM 2010 launching and your book getting published.  Let’s catch up so you can tell me about it.”   Matt didn’t mention the four-person camera and lights crew that would be hovering around while we talked.   We talked about the new DPM 2010 capabilities of Windows Client protection, as well as some of the licensing changes in DPM 2010.

Here is the result (thanks Matt):

As always, thanks for reading (and watching)…