Server and Tools Business News Bytes blog : System Center Operations Manager

Trial Version of Operations Manager 2007 R2 Now Available

grantkd — Fri, 22 May 2009 19:20:00 GMT

The trial version of Operations Manager 2007 R2 RTM (build 7221) is now available via the Microsoft Download Center. General Availability of the product will be 1st July 2009, at which point new and existing customers will be able to obtain the bits from their respective customer download centers, such as MVLS.

In addition to the updated product documentation, our overview whitepaper, and what's new datasheet, newly released collateral includes a number of new datasheets that include:

For more information and videos, please visit the System Center team blog:

http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2009/05/22/om2007r2-rtm.aspx

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Release Candidate (RC) Released

mdingle — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:20:00 GMT

The System Center Operations Manager team today announced the availability of the Release Candidate (RC) of Operations Manager 2007 R2, which is ready for download through Microsoft Connect. Operations Manager 2007 R2 delivers key improvements including non-Microsoft system and workload monitoring, service level tracking, scalability and performance enhancements, and more. More information can be found on the System Center team blog.

TechEd EMEA- IT Adds Even More Business Value in Tough Economic Times

grantkd — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Today at TechEd EMEA Microsoft made several announcements to help customers evolve their IT infrastructure for the next generation of Dynamic IT environments:

System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 beta. Microsoft's new platform includes cross-platform monitoring for Windows, Unix and Linux servers and improved service level monitoring. For more information on this release please visit http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/

Microsoft Security Intelligence Report volume 5. The report uses data from hundreds of millions of computer worldwide to offer an in-depth, global view of security and privacy threats for the first half of 2008. The full report is available for download at www.microsoft.com/sir

TechNet Online Social Bookmarking. Social bookmarking enables IT professionals to save their web favorites online, see what other technical professionals are bookmarking, subscribe to new "social feeds," and network with other members of the Microsoft technical community. More information can be found online at: http://www.technetbookmarks.com/.

"Dublin." The codename for the enhanced Windows Server application, which will offer greater scalability, easier management and close integration with Internet Information Services (IIS) to provide a standard host for applications that use Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) or Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

Microsoft Application Virtualization Support for x64: Today Microsoft announced that Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (App-V) will support 64-bit applications and platforms in H1 2010.64-bit support will be included for both App-V client and server infrastructure components and fully compatible with Microsoft's 64-bit operating systems.For more information, please visit http://blogs.technet.com/mdop/

Windows Server 2008 R2. New features of Windows Server 2008 R2 include: Live Migration, Branch Cache, DirectAccess and Remote Desktop Services (RDS), the new name for Terminal Services, reflects an expanded role allowing both session and virtual machine-based centralized computing.

Today, the Microsoft Solution Accelerators Team announced the RTM release of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 3.2 that includes new features such as Microsoft Online Services Needs Assessment and Survey. MAP is a scalable and agent-less assessment platform designed to make it easier to adopt the latest Microsoft technologies. In this version, MAP has expanded its assessment capabilities to include SQL Server 2008, Forefront/NAP, and Microsoft Online Services migration, as well as providing a Power Savings assessment to help customer “go green." For more information, please visit the MAP team blog.

Integrated Identity and Security Solutions. Enterprise customers continually say that they need integrated identity management, access and security solutions - not separate point products. In response, Microsoft is investing heavily in the development and delivery of these integrated solutions to help customers better protect their organizations, increase productivity and reduce costs. In June 2008 Microsoft combined the identity and security engineering and business teams to accelerate this strategy.

Microsoft's approach in this area is unique and based on a wide range of connected products and technologies: The secure Windows platform with built-in identity infrastructure and policy-based access, as well as security, identity and systems management solutions like Forefront, Identity Lifecycle Manager and System Center.

Today at TechEd IT Pro in Europe, Microsoft announced two product milestones in support of this strategy.

o The Release Candidate of Identity Lifecycle Manager "2" is available now at www.microsoft.com/ilm2. Due for release in the first half of 2009, ILM "2" provides self-service for employees, enhanced administration and automation for IT professionals, and extensibility for developers.

o Available soon, Intelligent Application Gateway Service Pack 2 takes advantage of virtualization technology to give mobile workers easy and secure access to applications from a broad range of devices and locations.

o Additional information about these products can be found on the Forefront Team blog at http://blogs.technet.com/forefront and a video about ILM "2,"on TechNet Edge can be found here: http://edge.technet.com/Media/ILM-v2-policies-demo-and-interview/

.For more on these announcements and to view the full press release, please visit the TechEd Global Pressroom.

In this video, Brad Anderson, General Manager, Microsoft Management and Services Division, gives an overview of the announcements made in his keynote today.

Microsoft’s investment in Cross-Platform and Interoperability

grantkd — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:26:00 GMT

Today at MMS 2008 in Las Vegas, Microsoft and its Senior Vice President of the Server and Tools Business, Bob Muglia outlined the next phase in the company’s strategy to enable dynamic IT organizations. (Watch the Day 1 keynote webcast). As part of this strategy, Muglia announced technology innovations that are designed to expand Microsoft’s virtualization capabilities and introduced its use of open source technologies and industry standards to broaden its ability to deliver automated management of heterogeneous IT environments.

Muglia’s keynote address this morning also detailed the availability of two public beta products: System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (formerly referred to as code name “Virtual Machine Manager vNext”).

For the most current information about Microsoft’s activities at MMS, including event news, progress reports and videos from Microsoft and other industry experts, please check out http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/mgmtsummit/events.mspx.

More information on these announcements and the event can be found here:

MMS 2008 event site - https://www1.mms-2008.com/public/home.aspx

Nexus SC: System Center Team Blog - http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2008/04/29/operations-manager-2007-goes-cross-platform.aspx

Live updates from the event - http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/pages/live-from-las-vegas.aspx

Windows Virtualization Team Blog - http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2008/04/29/system-center-virtual-machine-manager-2008-beta-has-arrived.aspx

RTM: System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Brittany M. — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Microsoft announced this week that that System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 has Released-to-Manufacturing (RTM), and is now available for download. This release of SP1 marks an important milestone for the System Center Operations Manager 2007, making the product easier to support, easier to use, and easier to deploy.

The SP1 Release Candidate (RC) has received over 3000 downloads to date, and over 15,000 SP1 RC TAP customers.

What’s included in Service Pack 1?

Operations Manager 2007 SP1 addresses critical customer-initiated issues, including improved deployment, performance, reporting, and enhanced support.

Highlighting some of the key new features and enhancements:

New capability to export Operations Manager 2007 diagrams to Microsoft Visio VDX file format.
New ability to publish reports to multiple locations, such as Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Web sites.
Improved performance and reliability across the product, such as when working with alerts, overrides, and searches.
Enhanced “advanced search” by improved the ability to search across monitors and rules by their overrides.
Simplifying the creation of new management packs by allowing users to copy views from existing management packs to an unsealed management pack.
New ability view performance data through the Operations Manager Web console, and setup filters for desired performance counters to ease searching and navigation.
New discoveries and views added to the Audit Collection Services (ACS), along with new monitors and alerts to track the health of ACS collectors.
Enhanced backup and recovery with the introduction of an easier-to-use Secure Storage Backup Wizard.

For more information on System Center Operation Manager SP1 visit, http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2008/02/23/system-center-operations-manager-2007-service-pack-1-sp1-now-available.aspx

To download the SP 1 visit: