The Service Manager 2010 RTM Evaluation bits are available for download now. You can get them here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3bacb364-9829-41d0-8faa-b0ed366f73aa&displaylang=en
A couple of things to note about the Evaluation bits:
1) The evaluation is for 180 days. Sorry, we unfortunately didnt provide an easy way for you to see when the bits will expire, so please take a note of the installation date.
2) The evaluation is not upgradeable to a full version of the product. It is intended only for evaluation purposes.
3) The evaluation is English only for now. The localized versions of Service Manager will be available in June according to current schedule.
We will also have hosted labs on TechNet that you can access via a browser. You can also use those for evaluation purposes if you dont have the time or the hardware available for your own eval installation of Service Manager. You can save your sessions when you are using the hosted labs so it makes it really easy to come back to. More information on that later this week.
System requirements for it are very complex... How to evaluate the product with the least possible amount of hardware at serverside? Do I really need 4-6 physical machines for that? Is there a way to somehow put it all on one or two physical machines? With at least one of them running Hyper-V R2?
Hi there. We will have some hosted test drives available by the end of the week. All you need is a browser. Here are the links to those:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9727041
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9727040
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9727039
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9727038
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9727037
If you do want to evaluate on your on hardware though we have a blog post that desecribes the minimal configuration:
http://blogs.technet.com/servicemanager/archive/2009/05/30/evaluating-service-manager-using-one-computer.aspx
Getting a 'There was an error retrieving the Virtual Lab details. (Error Code: DB)' error on all of those links Travis.
These are live now. Sorry for the delay.
http://blogs.technet.com/servicemanager/archive/2010/04/30/service-manager-2010-hosted-test-drive-hands-on-labs-now-available-on-technet.aspx