Nexus SC: The System Center Team Blog

Today, System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 was awarded silver in the Storage Management category for this year's awards.

Criteria:

The winners were chosen by a select group of solution providers, and their picks reveal what the channel values most. Value. Support. Profit potential. The winner's list-- broken into five categories: Business Software, Security, Utility Software and Systems, Clients and Peripherals, Networking and Storage--serves as a roadmap for products that should be on every VAR’s roster.    .

eWeek's Methodology

To ensure that our awards are not only fair and just, but that they are compiled with the strictest of criteria and reflect real channel opinion, we chose a select list of VARs--from very large to SMBs and those selling a range of solutions and vendors--and contacted them to participate in an e-mail voting system. This controlled research allowed us to monitor and ensure the quality of our awards. 

Each participant was asked to rate the products from 0-10.  Products were scored, based on each voter's responses, from 0 to 10 as follows:

· 1 point: level of familiarity with product

· 3 points: profit potential of product

· 2-1/2 points: opportunity for aftermarket sales related to product

· 1-1/2 points: impact of product on the technology market as a whole

· 2 points: service/support level from vendor for product

We also weighted responses by level of familiarity with the product, so that votes counted more if they were from voters more familiar with the product.  

A special and sincere thanks to all of the Microsoft partners who voted for DPM. 

-- Jason Buffington / DPM product manager

Just got back from Vegas and find myself somehow in front of my computer monitor again in my office here in Redmond. Thought I'd just share some of my perspective on my five days in Las Vegas at MMS 2008, our singular yearly event with the broad community of IT pros invested in the infrastructure management space.

My official activities for the event were focused on community--what it is and how it can be improved. Terri Worley (my colleague in the CPE org) and I did a session with Rod Trent and Ron Crumbaker, attempting to frame a discussion of community resources available from Microsoft and from those like Rod, Pete Zerger, and others out in the community. Terri and I also put together a couple of focus groups on community, whose purpose was mainly to help us formulate our community strategy for the months ahead. Once she and I have had a chance to digest the feedback, I'll be sure to share w/ you some of our findings.

In addition, I was also busy making sure that our new Web site bearing our new solutions messaging got published in time to support all the major announcements on our data center and desktop strategies, including the earth-shaking news about System Center's emergent x-plat support.

Unofficially, I also took some steps into videography (go figure). The better part of my spare time on Monday and Tuesday were spent both shooting and editing video. Amazing the number and size of obstacles you can run into when you really need to get something done in a hurry and your technology fails you (or, as in my case, I'm not too ashamed to admit, your lack of expertise with the technology sets you up for time-eating, hair-pulling, frustration-inducing, software+hardware hell).

The main problem I faced had to do with the fact that the camera I was using recorded in an HD format that had to be converted to something more usable and appropriate for the Web. It also didn't help that I lacked the proper camcorder-to-PC cable, but that's another story. In any event you can see one of the results here, in a video I put together to help out Robb Mapp, our AR lead:

Needless to say, although the circumstances were far from ideal for learning from scratch how to use an HD camera and then edit the results, I now know what some of the pitfalls are and can be much more efficient with it next time around. Live and learn.

Beyond those experiences, I was of course kept busy with various social and professional activities--in particular meeting with folks from Microsoft and the community, aligning our thinking on things such as how we can begin to take steps to make MMS content much more useful to the community throughout the year, how we can do a better job supporting user groups, and how we can help build connections with and improve discoverability of community resources wherever they happen to be on the Web or off. I have plenty of fodder for thinking about what we're doing and how, and what we can do to improve our business of connecting with customers over the next year, and what we might want to do at next year's MMS.

(BTW, in the days ahead, once I get a decent computer on which to do the required editing, I'll do a quick video of some interviews with some Microsoft folks at the event, and give you a little virtual tour of the expo hall.)

- dave //

When you combine the last day of a conference with that same day being the 'morning after'   that event's main party, it could easily be cause for miss out on some great sessions.  Those who did attend the Tools and Best Practices for Management Pack (MP) Authoring session on Friday morning at MMS 2008 were treated to a great demonstration by David Aiken who introduced the newly released Team System Management Model Designer (TSMMD).

TSMDD is a Power Tool for Visual Studio that allows architects to build heath models for .NET applications.  Through TSMDD, users can generate code to implement a health model through events and performance counters, use the tool to automatically validate the model, and then generate a fully operational MP - and all without having to see XML!! 

Once your MP is created you can then choose to import it directly into your Operations Manager 2007 deployment, or develop it further.  Some of the other features provided include:

• A familiar graphical user interface.
• Wizard-driven guidance to define the structure of a health model and the required instrumentation.
• Discovery of existing instrumentation in an application.
• Support for dependencies between components in an application.
• Instrumentation modeling, ensuring that end users of the MP see instrumentation appropriate to the needs of the application.
• And much more!

To learn more about this new Power Tool you can read about it on MSDN, download the Power Tool, as well as see it in action in David's upcoming web seminar scheduled for 10am PT on May 15th.

Another great authoring tool now available is the new System Center Operations Manager Authoring Console, which you can immediately download in either the 32-bit or 64-bit edition.  This powerful tool delivers true offline authoring capabilities, without the need to actually interact with any XML, allowing you to:

• Create new MPs from scratch, or import existing MPs from your management groups.
• Quickly develop service models (by creating classes, identifying relationships between those classes, and referencing MP objects in other MPs) and health models (including discoveries, monitors, rules and tasks).
• Define views and console tasks, as well as create your own language packs.
• Develop work flows for rules, tasks and monitor types with data source, condition detect, probe or write action module types.
• Use monitor types to define a set of monitoring states, and the workflow for each state.
• Use the Best Practice Analysis capability to verify your MP's integrity.
• Export MPs to your management groups from within the tool. 

By now I'm sure you are asking which one you should use.  As mentioned, TSMDD is ideally suited for quickly building health models for .NET applications - and I mean really quickly.  The Authoring Console provides a lot more 'whistles and bells' for MP development, allowing you to customize and optimize existing MPs, or create a fully functional MP in a much shorter timeframe than writing pure XML.  Ultimately I say give both a try and see which works for you.  They're available for free download through the links indicated above - and you may find you end up using both!

As you try these out, also keep an eye out on TechNet where we'll be posting more information, including webcasts, on how to use our new authoring solutions to optimal effect.

Happy authoring!

Sacha Dawes
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

Today at the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) in Las Vegas, Brad Anderson, General Manager in the Management and Services Division at Microsoft, kicked off the day with the keynote "Managing the Dynamic Desktop." He introduced the concept of the dynamic desktop. A desktop environment that  understands the flexible work and lifestyles of your now mobile workforce – one that provides a consistent experience for the user independent of device and location.

This requires a management model that places the user at the center and not the computing device. The device is critically important in a dynamic desktop – but the device is transient - where the user is always consistent. Mobility is now a lifestyle and work style requirement.

Brad stated that half of the world’s population or 3.5 billion people now carry phones.  People expect that the mobile lifestyles they are living in their personal lives to be available in their work environment.  Brad used himself as an example.  In the morning, he gets up and works on a laptop in the kitchen.  As he drives into work he checks and answers e-mail on a Smartphone.  When in the office, he works on his desktop – and throughout the day he moves between meetings on a laptop.  In the evenings, like most of us,  after the kids have gone to bed he works in the home office from his personal desktop.

During the course of a single day he traverses multiple client computing scenarios - one size doesn’t fit all his computing needs. The ways that you would deliver a rich client experience with access to applications and data from a device that is non-managed and non- company owned is far different than the methodologies used to deliver the client experience to your traditional desktop.  But this should not mean a separate management and deployment infrastructure.

Delivering the User Focused Desktop
Edwin Yuen demonstrated a consistent and seamless user experience across three desktop delivery models. He showed the rapid deployment to a laptop of a virtualized application – where he accessed a PowerPoint file.  He then accessed that same file via terminal services. Finally he showed the file accessed through a hosted virtual desktop (VDI) – all deployed and managed through System Center, Windows and the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) for Software Assurance.

Product Announcements
During his keynote, Brad also announced System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)would be available in May and System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 release candidate would be available in July. SP1 provides deeper management of the hardware layer through integration with Intel’s vPro technologies.  Brad also discussed a new asset intelligence service-based connection for Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 that dynamically updates users’ catalog knowledge based on changing asset conditions.

The Configuration Manager 2007 R2 release natively integrates Microsoft Application Virtualization distribution and streaming technology into the Configuration Manager infrastructure. R2 also provides SQL Reporting Services and deeper integration with Forefront security services.

He also announced details on the product roadmaps for specific tools within the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack – all available in the third quarter of this year. Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Release Candidate 1 is scheduled for June 2008 and will be available to customers on Microsoft Connect.

Microsoft’s Rich Desktop Virtualization Technologies
Virtualization is a key enabler for the dynamic desktop.  Brad asserted that Microsoft has the broadest and richest set of virtualization capabilities for the desktop – bar none.  Microsoft has invested in significant investments in virtualization on the desktop with the System Center infrastructure. We just acquired a company named Callista which improves the thin-client and virtualized desktop user experience in high demand graphic environment.  MDOP, which contains Microsoft’s application virtualization is the fastest selling v1 product in the history of Microsoft volume licensing.  And Brad discussed our announced intention to acquire a company named Kidaro, which provides a seamless windows experience on Virtual PC.  He announced that we expect the Kidaro acquisition to close in May.

This Kidaro technology will be delivered through MDOP - and integrated with System Center in ways that are similar to what we have done with Application Virtualization. This is key differentiation for our customers. We are building an integrated solution across presentation, application and hardware virtualization – all managed through System Center.  System Center manages the desktop – from the physical to the virtual options and from the hardware through the user and data settings.

Attached Knowledge Services
Finally, Brad asked Neal Myerson up to preview Attached Knowledge Services, a future service offering provided on top of the System Center family of products with the goal improving IT Service health by providing the right knowledge to effectively operate an IT infrastructure. Through this opt-in service, we can analyze data from our customer’s ConfigMgr and OpsMgr servers to help them through our services and interaction with the System Center community better manage their IT infrastructure.

Brad wrapped up by saying we aren’t done delivering on the promise of a user-centered computing model. That we have shown today some of the available technologies to better manage the dynamic desktop, but that the next steps offer a system that intelligently adapts to deliver an optimized experience to the user. 

The video should be posted here shortly.

Thanks for reading!

Kelly Wagman
Senior Product Manager
System Center Marketing

On Tuesday at the Microsoft Management Summit we presented a breakout session on the new Microsoft Operations Framework 4.0.  It was really exciting to finally be able to show MOF 4.0 off, since we’ve been working on it for the last year.  And today Brad Anderson formally announced the release MOF 4.0 in his MMS keynote.  For those of you who haven’t heard of MOF before, it’s a service life cycle model aimed at helping organizations implement best practices for delivering efficient and effective IT services.   An “organization” could be anything from a 20-person company to a huge multi-national.

So what’s new?  First, where the old MOF talked mainly about operations, the new MOF 4.0 describes the entire IT life cycle, including business planning, project organization can use a common language and a consistent framework for planning and coordinating their activities.

The second improvement is to the design of the content.  If you’re looking for a way to overhaul your organizations service management practices, then MOF 4.0 provides that comprehensive view that will help you choose where to start.  However, if you’re just looking for a best practice around one particular area then MOF 4.0 can help as well, with short (25-page) “service management functions” that can give you ideas on improving a particular function in 20 minutes.

Finally, we designed MOF 4.0 from the start as a living framework, one that will continue to evolve with contributions from the community.  To make that happen, we also launched the MOF 4.0 online community.  We’re really hoping to get a lot of people reading MOF and then going to the community to discuss what they’ve seen.  And by the end of the summer we’ll enable a feature that will allow you to contribute your own best practices as well as rate the contributions of others.

So stop by http://www.microsoft.com/mof and take a look!

Thanks - Jeff Newfeld, Principal Product Unit Manager

We’re just half a day into MMS 2008 and it’s already been a big day for our customers and the System Center team. This is the largest MMS in history and the huge crowds have so far been thoroughly rewarded for making the trip to Las Vegas and haven’t even had to bet cash to get it. (That is only gambling reference I’m going to make, I swear!)

In his keynote this morning Bob Muglia (SVP of the Server and Tools Business here at Microsoft) laid out a vision for the future of the data center and announced some major new capabilities that will help customers to drive toward that vision. A lot of news and announcements in 75 minutes, so I’ll stick to the highlights here.

Cross Platform Management: The biggest cheer of the day so far was raised for the announcement of the beta of Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions. Built with industry standards and proven open source technologies, including WS-Management and OpenPegasus, these will allow customers to use Operations Manager to monitor HP-UX, Sun Solaris, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating systems. This is further supported by partners delivering Management Packs to monitor workloads on these operating systems ,with Quest delivering an Oracle pack for Unix and Xandros delivering packs for MySQL and Apache for Linux and Solaris. Novell also announced its commitment to build a number of Management Packs for Linux and Unix environments.

Bob also announced new Connectors to integrate Operations Manager with HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console.

All very cool and very focused on the reality of managing a modern data center.

Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Beta: Another great crowd response was for the announcement of next version of Virtual Machine Manager. This also delivers on a need to manage across the complete datac enter environment, whether physical or virtual, across whichever virtual environments you are using. VMM 2008 will not only support the integrated Windows Server 2008 Hypervisor, Hyper-V, and Virtual Server 2005 R2, but will also allow customers to manage their VMware ESX Server environment - all from one tool.  Being able to manage VMware servers directly within the VMM console and take advantage of the features of both products really supports our vision of managing all your physical and virtual assets from a single pain of glass.

The other focus for VMM 2008, is the introduction of the Physical and Resource Optimization (PRO) capabilities. This is all about bringing together the knowledge available within the Operations Manager Management Packs and the flexibility of VMM to respond to changes in your environment. An issue with a server (driven by knowledge provided from Management Packs by our hardware and application partners) can be seen directly within VMM through a PRO tip will give guidance on what action needs to be taken to ensure the continued optimal performance of a virtual machine. Even cooler is that fact that these actions can be completely automated if a customer wishes.

All of this is being done with not only the support of our partners but also through using industry standards.(DMTF just announced final ratification of the WS_Managmenet standard) and open source technology. Also of note Microsoft is joining the OpenPegasus Steering committee.

Bob best summarized all the entire session by saying “this isn’t your grandfather’s Microsoft!” It’s a new and exciting approach to providing the best management experience for customers across the complete heterogeneous datacenter environment.

Onto the rest of the show.

If you haven't heard about it already, you surely soon will!  At this morning's keynote at MMS 2008 in Las Vegas, Bob Muglia (assisted by Barry Shilmover) announced the introduction of the Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions Beta (Ops Mgr Cross Plat). 

What does mean?  Well, with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions Beta organizations can see how they will be able to extend the best-of-breed monitoring capabilities of Operations Manager 2007 to the HP-UX, Sun Solaris™, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server environments.

Some of the key benefits include:

• Improves service levels across Microsoft, Unix and Linux platforms.
• Enables administrators to more easily manage cross-platform environments.
• Accelerates incident resolution through expert knowledge issues and causes.
• Enables detailed heterogeneous performance analysis and reporting.
• Automates routine administration for non-Microsoft platforms

To help introduce you to this exciting new solution, we've created new resources and communities where you can learn more:

• Download the Cross Platform Extensions data sheet.
• "Read all about it" in our new white paper.
• Download the Cross Platform Extensions Beta (see below).
• Visit the Cross Platform Extensions Team Blog (see the first posting here!)
• Join the new Cross Platform Extensions Beta newsgroup (available through the System Center TAP/Beta program under Microsoft Connect).

[We also launched the new Operations Manager 2007 Interop Connectors Beta, enabling Operations Manager 2007 to share information with both IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console and HP OpenView for Windows and UNIX.  More information on this later this week!]

You can download the Cross Platform Extensions Beta through Microsoft Connect.  To help you navigate to the right spot, follow these directions:

1. Go to Microsoft Connect, and log in.
2. Click on Connection Directory at the top menu.
3. Scroll down the list of categories to System Center TAP/Beta.
4. Within this category you will see the Program, "Operations Manager Public Beta (Cross Platform and Interop)".  Click Apply Now.
5. Complete the survey, and then you're in and can download the Ops Mgr Cross Plat Beta!

We'll be posting more information and details to the Operations Manager 2007 TechCenter soon, so watch that space (as well as this blog) for more information in the very near future!

Sacha Dawes
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

Quick note to everyone to say we've got quite a line-up coming next week for the Management Summit in Las Vegas (April 28-May 2). We'll have announcements galore, videos, blog posts, new content, and a brand-spankin'-new product marketing site to unveil.

So, next week look to this blog and the System Center site (which goes live Tuesday morning) for the big splash.

- dave //

Extend Network Access Protection Using Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager

Learn how Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager can extend the capabilities of the Network Access Protection (NAP) feature in Windows Server 2008.  Jeff Wettlaufer, System Center technical product manager, interviews Jeff Sigman, senior program manager for NAP, in this episode of TechNet Radio.  Listere here: WMA  MP3 hi  MP3 lo

Listen in as Dave Morehouse, System Center product marketing manager,  interviews Jeff Wettlaufer, System Center technical product manager. 

Learn more about how the System Center Family of products can integrate into typical data center-centric tasks such as: planning, consolidation, deployment automation, updating and patch management, health and performance monitoring, data backup and protection, regulatory compliance, as well as more about the role of virtualization.   (Listen to WMA, MP3 hi, MP3 lo)

Check back for more articles and blog posts about System Center products.

Dave Marshall, a self-professed 'virualization freak' writes about how VMware predicts the death of the OS. Well, sort of. over at the InfoWorld's Virtualization report.  He had a chance to speak with Zane Adam, Sr. Director of Virtualization at Microsoft about the benefits of Hyper-V as a componentn of Windows Server 2008.

Citing how the advent of Hyper-V is changing the virtual arena in Microsoft Reaches for the Virtual Sky  Keith Ward, editor of Virtualization Review Magazine, discusses how the System Center Virtual Machine Manager is playing a role in virtual infrastructure management.

Check out the new look and feel for some of the System Center product pages on TechNet.

The System Center Configuration Manager and Operations Manager Tech Centers sport new page designs that group content into related areas making it easier to find what you're looking for.  All related System Center products will be updated to the new format over the next few months so we hope you find the new design useful.  There are additionial updates coming down the road that will increase the functionality of these pages even further, so bookmark these pages and check back soon.

Thanks, The System Center Team.

Hi everyone, my name is Jeff Wettlaufer and I am the Sr. Technical product Manager for System Center Configuration Manager.  This week at RSA System Center will be present like never before.  With the recent releases of System Center Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, Data Protection Manager and Virtual Machine Manager, the business of Management at Microsoft has taken Security to a new level. 

Through integration to the Windows Client and Server platform as well as Forefront, System Center has achieved new and improved security capabilities across a wide range of scenarios.  Datacenter, mobile workforce, branch office as well as both physical and virtual environments.

For example, this week at RSA, System Center will be showcasing our ability to integrate with Windows Server 2008 Network Access Protection.  Today’s increasingly mobile workforce and the need for interconnection between partners and customers present an entirely new set of challenges for IT departments. In addition to ensuring that the desktop computers on the network are up-to-date and meet the company’s requirements for system health, network perimeters must also protect networks from roaming devices that may be vulnerable to security exploits.

Network Access Protection is designed to protect the network by validating the System Health when the Client attempts to connect. This set of technologies allows an IT administrator to restrict non compliant devices from accessing network resources.  Through Windows Server 2008 NAP, policy in the form of a relationship between the Network Policy Server and a NAP configured Windows client can verify elements visible with the Windows Security Center.  Firewall, Automatic Updates, Anti Virus etc.  System Center brings an incredibly powerful addition to this health verification, in the form of Windows Updates. 

Configuration Manager brings out of the box support for NAP policy validation for the presence of Windows, 3rd party or Line of Business updates, not only guaranteeing that the client accessing the network is configured for corporate security settings, but that the client also has a current update configuration of all the approved patches.  And, just like Windows NAP, these policies from System Center can enforce network restrictions both on network access scenarios, as well as online in the production network, ensuring even when systems are inside the corporate boundaries, system health validation can be occurring at regular intervals.

Microsoft is a Diamond sponsor of the RSA Conference this year, and System Center has been involved all week in the Microsoft pavilion of the show floor (right between Windows Server 2008 NAP and Forefront pods), where a constant stream of Security professionals have been engaging with Product team.

For more information, check out our System Center site,  as well as our datasheet on the System Center NAP integration.  Also, here is a link to our Technet information on the NAP integration. 

Here is also a cool video of the NAP integration in action, hosted by our friends on Technet Edge.

NAP clickthrough

Kind Regards

Jeff Wettlaufer
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center
Microsoft Corporation

A new DPM 2007 case study recently published on a great success story from AutoNation.

With 25,000 employees and $19 Billion US in revenue, AutoNation had a lot of data.  One quote from Ed Olson,
Lead Windows Infrastructure Engineer, AutoNation:

"We were trying to shoehorn 12 to 15 terabytes of data onto 15 tape drives each night, and it just wasn’t working."

The case study talks about protecting Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint data, along with disaster recovery capabilities - and ends with this conclusion:

Saving money was not an original impetus for moving to a new backup scheme, because the company had to make a change to accommodate rising data volumes. However, System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 cost one-third of what competitive products cost, and annual backup-related maintenance chores are today one-third of what they were.

AutoNation also expects to save $30,000 annually in offsite tape-storage fees once it sets up System Center Data Protection Manager to copy files to the company’s disaster-recovery site in Chicago. “The fact that Data Protection Manager has a built-in disaster recovery capability makes it an unbelievable value, considering that its closest competitor costs three times as much without this feature,” Olson says.

Click here to read the case study of AutoNation with DPM 2007.

-- jason buffington / DPM

With MMS just around the corner I’m starting to turn my thoughts to the breakout session we’ll be running there to talk about System Center Service Manager. (Obviously I’m also thinking about five days in Las Vegas – not sure if that is going to be a good thing or a bad thing but I know it’s going to exhausting). The next 12 months are going to very important for Service Manager and our customers, as we switch to our new infrastructure and ramp up to a release a new beta at the end of the year.

This year’s MMS gives us the opportunity to discuss what we’re doing with the product and to introduce some of the key leaders in the development of the product – something we’ll be doing more of on this blog in future. It also provides a forum to discuss how System Center as a whole fits with IT Service Management and how specifically Service Manager will be able to help. I’m mostly looking forward to hearing how our customers are progressing with implementing ITIL based processes using our existing technology - something that we are hearing very mixed signals about as organizations comes to terms with the reality of their plans.

Hope to see you in Vegas

Paul