The Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Packs includes the following features: Local and Remote Monitoring of an Agent’s Health Operations Manager agents monitor themselves for events and performance indicators that signal an issue with the agent...

Please read the MP Guide before deploying!  Specifically Synthetic Transactions, and QoE require special configuration steps. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=e7185068-6424-4e67-bf61-7bf1c53efb4a&displaylang=en

external source: www.compete.com Compete.com recently published stats on e-mail market share, based on U.S. Internet users’ engagement with web-based email clients.

The System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0 (SSP) is a fully supported, partner extensible solution that enables customers to dynamically pool, allocate, and manage their compute, network and storage resources to deliver a private...

Simplify planning for upgrade or migration to the latest Microsoft products and technologies with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 5.5 Beta. This multifaceted tool is now even better—with assessment for easier migration to Windows Azure...

  WS 2008 (9/14/2010) Reduction (vs. 2008 Full) ESX 3.5 / 4.0 (12/30/2009) WS 2008 R2 (9/14/2010) Total Patches (no reboot/months) 115 (9/31) 39% 239 / 43 42 (6/12) Without AD/DNS/Print /Media/Telnet/IIS 57 (10/31) 50% na 21 (6/12) Necessary 60 ...

The KB is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2264080

The Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track program can offer invaluable help by delivering pre-validated reference architectures. T Te Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track solutions are being offered by 6 hardware partners. Hit the Fast Track site and you can browse solution briefs...

During TechEd Europe in Berlin Configuration Manager v.Next has moved to its official product name, System Center Configuration Manager 2012

The Exchange 2010 SP1 Visio stencil is available for download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=901d471c-8bd9-47ad-b6db-452309f12ebe

The table below illustrate the network settings for each of the five NICs on the cluster nodes (Yes, No, Optional). This shows the configuration based on Microsoft recommended Best Practices. Setting Management Heartbeat...

Need to maintain your current computers while migrating to Windows 7? Microsoft P2V Migration for Software Assurance automates delivery of Windows 7 by providing a safety net of virtual machines while backing up and converting legacy applications. P2V...

external Source: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=1934 1: Email Email is the lifeblood of many organizations, and as a result, many companies are not willing to let go of it. That is understandable. But hosted email providers have moved beyond...