Alirghty, so if you are not familiar with SoftGrid then you need to check it out! - [t's one of my favourite infrastructure technologies - *grin*]... Formerly Softricity (an MS acquistion) it is how Microsoft do application virtualization. taking a step back there's lots of different types of virtualization most people think of virtualization as simply server/OS virtualization (think: Virtual Server 2005 R2 or VMWare[-grrr]), desktop virtualization(think: Virtual PC 2007) presentation layer virtualization (think: Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services and/or Citrix) and finally application presentation layer virtualization: Softgrid!
SoftGrid is basically the abilty to stream applications or just parts of them on demand.. these applications run in a sandbox or bubble (-don't like the word 'bubble' - but it will do for now if you get the point) where nothing gets added to the registry on the local machines & nothing is installed under program files... nice things about this is that normally conflicting apps can happily co-exist on a machine - for example apps - using multiple JDK versions(remember no entries in the reg. etc) you can hot patch apps (simply patch the application on the streaming server - next time user launches the app from their machine the deltas (not the full app!) are streamed down) re-provising applicaitions is simple - simply re-stream down - none of the messy uninstall/reinstall, virtual apps can be cached on the client for offline use for up to 60 days...and I could go on & and on & on....
Anyways, the short & long of it being there is a very nice solution accelerator on its way which will let you package the virtualized apps as MSIs(cooool!). So you can distribute the apps to online/offline users any which way to your hearts content (for example on a cd! - previously this used to be streaming on demand or pre-provisioned with SMS using the SMS<->SoftGrid connector)
For an overview of the utlity see diagram below (will be a SA for SoftGrid 4.1/4.2 & native to 4.5) - expect this in Q4 CY2007 -:-)
Often asked question: When is System Center Essentials the right fit?
Answer:
To help you decide which solution is best for your needs you need to follow guidance below:
Business Considerations
Essentials 2007 is likely to be the best IT management solution for a majority of midsize businesses, so long as they are within the scale limits of 30 Windows Servers and 500 Windows Clients. However, determining the right IT management solution for your company may be determined by the maturity and complexity of your IT environment and business needs.
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If your company is a publicly owned company, then you can be held to certain IT standards like Sarbanes Oxley compliance, so you might require features offered by Operations Manager 2007 like Audit Collection Services and Data warehousing. |
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If your business employs 1-5 IT administrators who perform a broad range of tasks, then Essentials 2007 may be the best solution for you. If your company employs IT specialists (your IT administrators have distinct and separate IT roles like database administrator, or desktop administrator), you probably need the role-based security provided by Operations Manager 2007. |
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If you frequently need to add new Client machines to your IT environment, you may need full operating system deployment and desktop desired configuration features delivered by Configuration Manager 2007. |
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If your company has more than 3-5 branch offices and/or the branches are large scale and complex in IT configuration, you should consider using Operations Manager 2007 and Configuration Manager 2007. |
Detailed comparison with System Center Operations Manager 2007
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Monitoring |
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Essentials 2007 |
Essentials 2007 difference |
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Monitoring of Windows Servers, Clients, Hardware, Software & Services |
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Essentials ships with a Network device management pack |
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Management Packs with Expert Knowledge |
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Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) |
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Add Monitoring Wizard |
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Reporting |
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Essentials data storage limited to 40 days. No report authoring. |
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Branch office monitoring |
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Essentials 2007 is a single server solution; no tiered connection of servers. |
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Role-based security |
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Local or domain admin only for Essentials 2007 server. |
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Connector Framework |
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Audit Collection Services |
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Web Console |
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Detailed comparison with System Center Configuration Manager 2007
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Configuration |
ConfigMgr 2007 |
Essentials 2007 |
Essentials 2007 difference |
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Patch Mgmt (Microsoft & Third party) |
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Software Distribution |
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Essentials offers basic .MSI and .EXE deployment with optional command line parameters. No advanced packaging capability. |
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Hardware and Software Inventory |
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Essentials collects 60+ fixed software and hardware attributes. Configuration Manager 2007 inventory is extensible. |
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Branch office updates and software dist. |
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Essentials is a single server solution using BITS 2.0 (bandwidth aware). No site replication servers. |
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Operating System Deployment |
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Desired Configuration management |
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Wake on LAN |
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Network Address Protection (NAP) integration |
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From a licensing perspective there isn’t currently an upgrade path from Essentials to the full System Center suite.
Upgrading from an infrastructure perspective is also not much of a better story: what is supported for the moment is re-importing of old management packs to Operations Manager 2007.
The impact of this to you is that if your infrastructure is likely to grow beyond the 30 server/500 PC limit in the near future then it would make sense to consider moving immedaitely the enterprise suite. However if you are confident that this will not be the case then Essentials is a fantastic product which really fits the fast majority of mid-market customer scenarios -:-)
Ok, so this little more than just posting a bunch of links but I guess it makes sense since I get asked for this content a lot:-)
The main System Center site is here: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/
Ahhhh & I almost forgot my own personal favourite (bypass all links above and just simply go straight to this site;-)!: MyITForum (<-it rocks -J)
Michelle
Upcoming MTUG event on SQL ’08 - SQL Server Katmai & Spacial Databases It is a level 100 event so may not go into anywhere near the kind of depth you want but if you’ve not yet looked at ’08 (which rocks -J) then it might be a start
sign up here:
http://www.sql.mtug.ie/
Hi & welcome!
I'm the Infrastructure Partner Technical Specialist here for Microsoft in Dublin and I look forward to sharing my ramblings with you on all things related to infrastructure - particularly System Center, Longhorn /W2K8, SoftGrid and and all things I consider to be "TechSexy".
For regular updates subscribe your Vista Feed Headlines Gadget to my RSS feed as I will be regularly adding content over the coming weeks,
Michelle:)
