Server and Tools Business News Bytes blog : System Center

System Center Service Manager Beta 2 Now Available

mdingle — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:07:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft announced the release of System Center Service Manager Beta 2, with over 300 customers participating in the product’s Rapid Deployment Program. In their early evaluations, these customers have seen how through the power of Service Manager’s integrated platform they can easily adapt and automate IT Service Management best practices.

Other Service Manager benefits:

· Service Manager will provide built-in processes based on industry best practices for incident and problem resolution, and change control. Through its configuration management database and process integration, Service Manager will automatically connect knowledge, workflow and information from System Center Operations Manager, System Center Configuration Manager and Active Directory.

· Service Manager will reduce support costs and improve responsiveness to end users through the self-service portal for provisioning and self-help, and through easy-to-use templates and rule-driven notifications to effectively and quickly guide IT professionals.

· Service Manager will optimize resources to align to an organization’s business goals and adapt to the ever-changing business requirements. Using SQL reporting services, Service Manager will support informed and cost-effective decision making. Through Service Manager’s integration with Desired Configuration Management (DCM) a core feature of System Center Configuration Manager 2007, customers will be able to support end-to-end configuration compliance.

For more information on this beta release, please visit the System Center Service Manager website: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/service-manager.aspx

System Center Configuration Manager R3 will be available to customers in Q2 2010

mdingle — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:12:00 GMT

Microsoft announced today that System Center Configuration Manager R3 will be available to customers in Q2 2010. They are currently taking nominations for TAP customers.

For more information on what capabilities will be included in the R3 version check out the System Center blog.

Microsoft and Partners Optimize Midsize Business IT With Virtualization and Systems Management

grantkd — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:08:00 GMT

Today at VMworld Microsoft announced a new solution for mid-market organizations that are looking to efficiently deploy and manage technology with limited IT resources.

Microsoft and its OEM partners Fujitsu and Lenovo will offer customers a new software license, Microsoft System Center Essentials Management Suite, that includes Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. The suite includes a technology upgrade program in the OEM channel, which ensures that customers who purchase the suite will have rights to Microsoft System Center Essentials 2010 when it is released next year.

This service package will allow customers to reduce server sprawl and associated energy demands, as well as streamline the management of virtual and non-virtual IT assets.

For more information about this announcement, please visit Microsoft PressPass or read more on the Virtualization team blog. Follow Microsoft product and solution experts at VMworld 2009 via Twitter at www.twitter.com/virtualization or #MS_Virt.

Businesses Save Thousands Moving to Microsoft Virtualization

grantkd — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:18:00 GMT

Today Microsoft announced that business customers are saving on average $170,000 (U.S.) when they switch to Microsoft virtualization software from VMware software.

Customers are turning to Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center management tools to reduce energy consumption, hardware costs, recurring licensing costs, and improve their overall management of virtual and non-virtual applications, servers and computers.

“The light switch has gone on for customers, and they realize they no longer have to pay a virtualization tax with VMware that creates an isolated, virtual island within their IT departments,” said David Greschler, director of virtualization and management marketing, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft Corp.

For more information about this announcement, please visit Microsoft PressPass or the Virtualization team blog. You can also follow this and other Microsoft virtualization news on Twitter.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 reaches RTM milestone

grantkd — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:39:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft announced the release to manufacturing (RTM) of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (SCVMM08 R2), with general availability through volume licensing starting on Oct. 1.

One key additional feature of SCVMM08 R2 is the ability to manage VMs running on VMware vSphere 4.0. Overall, early adopter customers like Lionbridge Technologies, Continental Airlines, Indiana University Auxiliary IT, MaximumASP and Sporton have been really pleased with their experience running SCVMM 2008 R2 and find it especially complimentary when deployed alongside Windows Hyper-V 2.0.

For more information about today’s news, please check out RakeshM’s VM Management blog .

Frugal Fridays Podcast: Microsoft Technical PM, Kenon Owens

mdingle — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:52:00 GMT

Checkout this week's installment of the Frugal Friday's Tech Show podcast with Jason Perlow and Ken Hess featuring Kenon Owens, Technical Product Manager on the Integrated Virtualization Team at Microsoft. Click here and learn about System Center Virtual Machine Manager R2 now.

Brad Anderson promoted to Corporate Vice President of Management and Services Division

grantkd — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:12:00 GMT

Today Microsoft announced that Brad Anderson has been promoted to Corporate Vice President, Management and Services Division (MSD). Brad took over the helm of MSD about two years ago – and has led the division on a path of continual growth since then. Brad’s leadership skills, business knowledge and passion for technology are well-known and respected throughout Microsoft.

To read more about this announcement please visit the System Center team blog at: http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2009/07/28/brad-anderson-promoted-to-corporate-vice-president-of-management-and-services-division.aspx

Core Infrastructure at WPC 2009

grantkd — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 07:26:00 GMT

Today begins Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, and there’s a lot of buzz around what partners can look forward to in the coming year.

Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of Infrastructure Server Marketing, will be giving updates on some of the upcoming innovations and partner opportunities coming out of Core Infrastructure onsite as part of his keynotes July 13 and 14.

As part of sharing the news, Bob has also guest-authored a blog entry on the Windows Server team blog that gives more detail on some of the exciting highlights.

To keep on top of other Core Infrastructure news announcements throughout the event, please visit the following blogs:

o Windows Server team blog

o Virtualization team blog

o Forefront

o System Center

o Small Business Server

o Essential Business Server

o Windows Home Server

o MAP Toolkit

You can also follow Core Infrastructure via the STB News Bytes Twitter feed, or learn more at the WPC 2009 virtual pressroom and the Infrastructure PressPass site.

Spotlight on Cost

mdingle — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:09:00 GMT

Microsoft re-launched their Spotlight on Cost site which touts a free downloadable whitepaper titled, Server Infrastructure Optimization: Best Practices to Reduce IT Operational Costs. The whitepaper shows that businesses can often realize immediate savings just by operating their existing datacenters more efficiently.

Here are a few of the cost savings tips, showcased on the site:

1. Adopt core infrastructure best practices for mission-critical server workloads. In the email and collaboration workloads, organizations that adopted core infrastructure best practices reported IT labor costs of more than $10,000 per server per year less than those that did not. Companies are increasingly aware of these benefits and are rapidly adopting these best practices for their mission-critical messaging and collaboration workloads.

2. Think Outside the Box. Just because a particular server workload isn’t top of mind, doesn’t mean that it can’t be managed more efficiently. The print server workload is one where significant savings can be made by best practice adoption. However, participants in our survey tended to focus less here and best practice adoption was surprisingly lower than in other workloads.

3. Utilize virtualization. Virtualization has been seen to deliver physical cost savings around power, cooling and facilities. However, the Spotlight on Cost study shows there is an operational cost benefit to virtualizing servers, i.e. more servers per administrator.

For two more cost savings tips, check out the STB News Bytes Twitter account. http://twitter.com/STBNewsBytes

For more information about Microsoft’s Spotlight on Cost initiative check out the System Center Team Blog.

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.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 R2 beta now available

grantkd — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:24:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft announced the first beta release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (SCVMM R2). With feedback from our customers, Microsoft has made a number of new feature enhancements in R2 that support using a Windows platform including:

o Support for Live Migration: With Windows 2008 R2 adding support for Live migration, it’s now added as a new migration option in VMM R2

o Multiple VMs per LUN: VMM R2 allows multiple VMs to be placed on the same LUN if CSV is enabled on the cluster.

o SAN related enhancements: SAN migration in and out of clusters & allows Multiple LUNs per single iSCSI target

o Network related enhancements including:

§ Network Optimization

§ Some workloads such as Network load balancers need to be able to spoof MACs: There’s a new setting that allows admin to enable/Disable MAC spoofing on a per VM basis

§ Ability to reuse port groups defined in VMWare VirtualCenter

SCVMM 2008 R2 is available for MSDN and TechNet subscribers today via the TechNetand MSDN download site. You can read more about the beta release of SCVMM 2008 R2 on the Systems Center blogor checkout details on the VMM 2008 R2 beta in a post by Rakesh Malhotra .

Please go download the beta of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 today from the Microsoft Connect site and let Microsoft know what you think.

Microsoft Partners With Cisco on New Unified Computing System

mdingle — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:01:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft Corp. announced its support of Cisco’s Unified Computing System entrance into the server datacenter market as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM). Through this agreement, Cisco will pre-package, resell and support Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology and Microsoft SQL Server 2008. In addition, Microsoft is working closely with Cisco to integrate System Center into this new solution.

Over the past five years Microsoft has built a strong alliance with Cisco, and Unified Computing System is a natural point of evolution for the relationship. These two companies that provide best-of-breed solutions are uniting network, compute and virtualization resources into one system. More information can be found on the Windows Server team blog and on PressPass.