We are presenting two webcasts that include information on Essentials 2010. Join the webcasts to find out more about Essentials 2010, and have a chance to ask questions. Both webcasts will feature Essentials 2010 and Data Protection Manager 2010.

Integrated Virtual and Physical IT Management for Midsize Businesses (Level 100)

Wednesday December 9th 11AM PST (7pm UTC)

As more midsize businesses start realizing the cost benefits of consolidating server workloads using virtualization technologies, Microsoft is developing two new product releases to help midsize businesses more easily manage your virtual and physical IT resources in an integrated way. In this webcast, we show you how Microsoft System Center Essentials 2010 and Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager can help you easily consolidate server workloads, increase critical server availability, and reduce the risk of critical data loss.

Managing Windows Clients in a Midsize Business (Level 200)

Monday December 14th 11AM PST (7pm UTC)

In this webcast, we look at two upcoming Microsoft system management products, System Center Essentials 2010 and System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, that are designed with small to medium-sized businesses in mind. Discover how Essentials 2010 provides monitoring and management for client computers running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 operating systems, including patching and installation of new software without carrying DVDs to every workstation. Learn how DPM 2010 can now protect client systems running Windows while users are on the network or working from home or in a hotel.

On Demand Webcast

If you didn’t get a chance to attend in person, you can now watch the following webcast on demand:

What's New with System Center Essentials 2010? (Level 300)

Attend this webcast for a first look at the beta version of System Center Essentials 2010, and discover how System Center Essentials 2010 is easy to deploy and maintain, while simplifying complex management tasks and providing expert diagnostic information for faster problem diagnosis and resolution.

More information on Webcast levels.

Edited on Jan 4, 2010 to have first two webcast links point to on demand versions.

This table indicates the current support for the indicated operating systems by System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 components.

System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 supports managing computers running either the Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems. However, the following steps are required to enable management:

1. Upgrade the System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 Server  to WSUS 3.0 SP2. For instructions on how to download WSUS 3.0 SP2 and the improvements in WSUS 3.0 SP2, please see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972455.

2.  For Windows 7, download  the Windows Client 2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7 Operating System management packs for Operations Manager 2007 and import it into System Center Essentials 2007 SP1.

3. For Windows Server 2008 R2, download the Windows Server Operating System management packs for Operations Manager 2007 and import it into System Center Essentials 2007 SP1.

Known Issues:

For known issues refer to KB article KB974722

I saw this question from a customer on a forum I read quite often:

I've been meaning to check out the System Center Essentials package for a while now, I finally found time to setup a VM get it installed recently.

After I installed it, I applied all available updates via Microsoft Update (I update the server and my laptop with the newest round of updates). I can launch the console from the VM fine. However when I try to open the console from my Windows 7 machine I get the following error:
The underlying connection was closed: an unexpected error occurred on send.

Well, that’s pretty generic, and you won’t likely come up with an answer to the problem on any search engine. If you take a look at the error details though, you might see something like this at the top:

Application: System Center Essentials
Application Version: 6.0.1885.0
Severity: Error
Message: Error connecting to Update server 'XXXXXX'
System.Net.WebException: The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send. ---> System.IO.IOException: Authentication failed because the remote party has closed the transport stream.
at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReadFrame(Byte[] buffer, Int32 readBytes, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReceiveBlob(Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
at System.Net.Security.SslState.ForceAuthentication(Boolean receiveFirst, Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
at System.Net.Security.SslState.ProcessAuthentication(LazyAsyncResult lazyResult)

So what’s going on here is that there’s an SSL certificate issue. Essentially, what happened in this case was the SCE server in a VM was in its own private domain, and the user was trying to connect to it from a machine outside that domain. WSUS needs to connect via SSL, but couldn’t find a usable certificate and failed.

Given that, there is a Technet article

How to Install a Remote System Center Essentials Console

Which describes how to create and set up certificates for use. So the user ran the Feature Configuration Wizard in on the Server’s SCE Console, followed the directions to use the newly created certificate on his Remote console, and voila!

Recently, the folks at TechNet Edge sat down with David Mills and Edwin Yuen for a brief discussion of Microsoft’s IT management and virtualization solution for midsize businesses.

With the release of public betas for System Center Essentials 2010 and Data Protection Manager 2010, customers will have the capability to easily manage, backup and restore their physical and virtual servers in an integrated way. 

After discussing the benefits of using Hyper-V, SCE 2010 and DPM 2010, Edwin gives us a quick demo of SCE 2010’s integrated virtual and physical management capabilities.

For more information and to download public betas, go to:

SCE 2010: www.microsoft.com/SCE

DPM 2010: www.microsoft.com/DPM