As part of the release of Opalis 6.3, I popped around the engineering teams and did a quick interview with the Program Managers. In this interview, I talk to Jim who is the Program Manager for the SM and DPM IP’s and also the release manager for Opalis 6.3. Enjoy!    Adam Hall     Sr. Technical Product Manager, Opalis          

As part of the release of Opalis 6.3, I popped around the engineering teams and did a quick interview with the Program Managers. In this interview, I talk to Gp who is the Program Manager for the VMM IP and also the Server 2008 platform update. Enjoy!    Adam Hall     Sr. Technical Product Manager, Opalis          

I am very excited to announce that we have released the next version of Opalis to manufacturing (RTM) and will be available for download very shortly! Opalis 6.3 brings a wealth of integration capability to the System Center suite, including 4 new Integration Packs and support for the latest Windows Server platforms. Included in Opalis 6.3 are: New Integration Packs for Configuration Manager, Data Protection Manager, Service Manager and Virtual Machine Manager An updated Integration Pack for Operations...

I was trying out the Query Database object to see how I could get some information from Configuration Manager's database, and I decided to use the ODBC connection type, since it seemed like something that would be more usable from an enterprise perspective than putting credentials in the object itself. I went through the typical System DSN creation process using the ODBC Administrator, then added the name of the new DSN to my Query Database object. Next I opened the workflow in the testing console...

I don't know how I manage to find myself doing things that are "out of the ordinary" so often. Maybe it's just in my nature to want to tweak things so that they're "just right" or provide the exact user experience I'm looking for, rather than settling for less elegant ways of doing them. Maybe it's just my unique combination of A.D.D. and perfectionism that fuels this behavior, but in most cases, it leads me to finding new ways to do things or simply leads me to do things that aren't documented well...

(Cross-Posted for Adam Hall from the System Center Blog) This is a live demo by Travis Wright (Service Manager) and Jim Pitts (Opalis) recorded in Berlin at TechEd EMEA. Travis and Jim’s session was very well received, so we grabbed them and made them do it again straight after! In this demo, Travis creates custom items in Service Manager, and then Jim connects to them using Opalis 6.3 and the new Service Manager Integration Pack. This video has everything, including troubleshooting when there is...

Having started on the Cross Platform & Interop team before Opalis was a part of it, I think about cross platform integration a lot. Working with Opalis these days, I think about how we can handle cross platform situations in the data center, which includes working with UNIX and Linux. Opalis includes and Integration Pack for UNIX, which includes the following activities: Add Line Delete Line Rename File Copy File Insert Line Replace Text Create Folder Monitor File Restart System Delete File Monitor...