Demystifying System Center – Management Server, Server Management or Client Management?

With the introduction of System Center there are now new ways for customers to license the three primary technologies with different 'SKU' types.

In the pre-System Center world SMS was really designed to manage clients, and MOM was designed to monitor servers. In the System Center era Configuration Manager can now 'manage' both servers and clients. Similarly Operations Manager now monitors clients in addition to servers. Overall this means that both Configuration Manager and Operations Manager both monitor and manage servers and clients.

This means there are 3 different types of software:

• Management Servers – These are the large back end servers that hold all the policies and enterprise data. SQL Server is one of the pre-requisites for Operations Manager and Configuration Manager and can be purchased as part of the back end server.
  • No SQL – for customers who already have invested in SQL Server infrastructure and want to utilise that (for example look for Ops Mgr Server 2007 Sngl MVL on the Microsoft price list)
  • With SQL – low cost option to purchase SQL Server. This edition of SQL however is restricted and can only be used with the Management Server it was purchased with (again by example look for Ops Mgr Server 2007 Sngl MVL w/SQL on the Microsoft price list)
• Server Management Licenses – These are the pieces of software that go on the servers that you want to manage. They come in two flavours depending on what the workload of the end server is and are available for Configuration Manager, Operations Manager and Data Protection Manager. These are often referred to as MLs for short.
  • Standard Server Management License – for basic Windows workload
  • Enterprise Server Management License – for more complex application based workloads.
• Client Management Licenses – These are similar to the Server Management Licenses but only come in one flavour and are designed for Client end points, not servers.

A few extra notes to be aware of:

The Enterprise Server Management Licenses are inclusive – if you have an Enterprise ML you don't need to buy a Standard ML to gain basic functionality. However if you have a Standard ML you can step up to an Enterprise ML should the server workload change.

There can be terminology confusion where we refer to 'clients'. Clients are normally the typical desktop/laptop clients. In addition we sometimes refer to the servers that are now managed as 'clients' of the management system, even though they are server!

I will post soon about the differences between Standard MLs and Enterprise MLs, and also what is included in the new Suites.

Sandeep Modhvadia