I was going through all the cool stuff the OpsMgr product team has been releasing lately and found a couple R2 related items that I thought I’d mention here.  You may have already heard about these but in the past week or so they posted the download for the R2 Release Candidate as well as some info on two new report models that are included:

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 (Release Candidate) Ready for Download

Operations Manager 2007 R2 introduces key new and enhanced functionality, including:

Enhanced application performance and availability across heterogeneous platforms

• Delivers monitoring across Windows, Linux and Unix servers-all through a single console
  Extends end to end monitoring of distributed applications to any workload running on Windows, Unix and Linux platforms
  Maximize availability of virtual workloads with integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008

Improved management of applications in the data center

• Delivers on the scale requirements of URL monitoring of your business
  Meet agreed service levels with enhanced reporting showing application performance and availability
  More efficient problem identification and action to resolve issues

Increased speed of access to information and functionality to drive management

• Faster load times for views and results
  Improved and simplified management pack authoring experience

For those who are evaluating the Beta release, this Release Candidate offers a number of enhancements over the Operations Manager R2 Beta, including:

-New Power Management MP template (Monitored system must be Windows Server 2008 R2 or Win7)
-Updated branding across all User Interfaces
-Improved trace configuration tools on the CD to help support issues escalated to Customer Support (where applicable)
-Improved Run As Account Distribution Configuration
-Ability to run inline tasks for non-Microsoft servers
-Support for upgrade from Beta deployments to the Release Candidate
-New and updated documentation, including the Usage Guide, Design Guide, Deployment Guide, Upgrade Guide, Security Guide and Operations Guide

To read more and to download the RC visit http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2009/03/26/system-center-operations-manager-2007-r2-release-candidate-ready-for-download.aspx.

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Report Models in Operations Manager 2007 R2 RC

In Operations Manager 2007 R2 RC we have added two report models (Performance and Event) that can be used with the report builder functionality of SQL Reporting Services to create ad-hoc performance and events reports.

To continue reading and to download the instructions on how to deploy and start using these models visit http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2009/04/03/report-models-in-operations-manager-2007-r2-rc.aspx.

Enjoy!

J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer