Nexus SC: The System Center Team Blog

Chatting with Brad, Part 4

2009-11-04T05:57:17Z

Hey everyone, we continue in this posting talking with Brad Anderson - CVP of System Center. In this part 4 of 4, we talk with Brad about the capabilities of System Center to manage workload products like Exchange. We hope to see you at TechEd Berlin next week!

Jeff Wettlaufer
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

Technet Webcast Rescheduled today….

2009-11-04T00:03:07Z

Hi everyone, today we were scheduled to run a webcast on TechNet entitled “Technical Overview: System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 and R3 “. Due to a collection of unforeseen circumstances this ‘cast had to be rescheduled. We regret the late notice, and hope this has not caused any inconvenience to anyone who had signed up for the presentation.

We do plan to run this webcast very soon. There are 2 upcoming opportunities for you to see this content delivered. The first is at TechEd Berlin, the week of Nov 9th-11. This content will be covered in several sessions there. In addition, we have rescheduled the Webcast on Technet with the below date and time information.

MGT200 Microsoft System Center Roadmap and Strategy, Tue 11/10 | 9:00-10:15 | Paris 2 - Hall 7-1c
MGT301 What's New in Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager: SP1, R2, and R3, Tue 11/10 | 13:30-14:45 | Berlin 2 - Hall 7-3a
MGT306 Microsoft System Center and the Green Client, Wed 11/11 | 15:45-17:00 | Europa 1 - Hall 7-3b

TechNet Webcast: Technical Overview: System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 and R3 (Level 200) (link)
Date: 11/24/2009
Time: 10:00 AM-11:00 AM U.S. Pacific Time

If you were registered for the webcast today, you have automatically been re-registered for the new session on Nov 24th. You should have an email from the TechNet team.

We hope to see you at one of these events soon!
Kind regards

Jeff Wettlaufer
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

Why Social Media Are Important to the Business

2009-10-30T20:27:45Z

Nifty YouTube video circulating around that does a fine job of presenting data on social media—how it’s changing the culture of communications and so necessarily the way companies need to shift the way they market their products and services. It also explains in global terms why I’m doing what I’m doing, sitting here on the System Center and Virtualization marketing team, tinkering w/ social media programs and initiatives, trying to find the right mix for our business and audience.

If you haven’t connected yet to our Facebook and Twitter pages and feeds, I invite you all to do so—we’re just getting started with all this, and need your help to turn it into something other than the basic broadcast engine it currently is.

Enjoy!

- dave //

Chatting with Brad continued…….

2009-10-29T18:16:32Z

Hi guys, we continue in our 4 part series with Brad our Corporate VP today as we talk about the world of Windows Server. We thought on the day Server releases, we could share our conversation.

Here is Part 3 in our 4 part series……. enjoy!

Jeff Wettlaufer
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 R2 now available

2009-10-29T05:48:00Z

Hey everyone, we are really pleased to announce the new release of the OpsMgr ‘07 MP to support monitoring Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 in a 64-bit environment with Operations Manager 2007 R2 or Operations Manager 2007 SP1 (with hotfix KB971541) . This enables the Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 Management Pack to work with either the 32-bit or the 64-bit Operations Manager 2007 agent.

This management pack includes:

Detection and monitoring of all Configuration Manager servers and dependent services
alert driven state
site hierarchy diagram
Performance and backlog monitoring /configuration
Performance and availability reports

More information and download can be found here.

Happy Monitoring!

Jeff Wettlaufer
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

Talking about Power Management on Campus

2009-10-27T18:40:43Z

Hey everyone, recently I had the pleasure of sitting with Mark Aggar, who is an Environmental Technologist here at Microsoft. We had a great chat about Environmental IT, and how Microsoft is delivering solutions to you that are based in sustainable engineering. Mark shared with us how his team is working with different Microsoft product groups to provide influence at the engineering level to deliver more environmentally friendly software.

I learned a TON talking with Mark. Here is the 2 part video of our conversation, and we hope to continue to share with you more discussions with the team.

For those of you attending TechEd Berlin, there is an entire Green IT track, and System Center will be there. We have 1 entire session dedicated to the Green Client. Hope to see you. Following us on Twitter? check out the hash tags #scteam and #sysctr to follow us!

Jeff Wettlaufer
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

Monitoring Windows 7 with Operations Manager

2009-10-27T01:48:00Z

We are really pleased to announce the release of the Windows Client OS Management Pack to support Windows 7. You can download this from here.

The wave of Windows 7 client support keeps rolling this week, with an update to the Client MP for Operations Manager. This is a significant update to the Client MP that previously supported up to Vista.

The Windows Client Monitoring Management Pack is built to detect, diagnose, and resolve hardware and software problems pertaining to Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7 client operating systems. Information and analysis on the issues that the system detected are collected by the MPs through an agent on the client machine, and sent to OpsMgr where this data is converted into health state and /or alerts and processed for business critical and aggregate reports.

The new Client MP provides the following key features:

Key Processor Performance Indicators
Logical and Physical disk performance and free space
Memory utilization
Network health
Health monitoring of key Windows Operating System services
Comprehensive performance collections
Availability and event reports

More information can be found here.

Kind regards

Jeff Wettlaufer
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

Chatting with Brad…….

2009-10-23T19:43:03Z

Hey everyone, its been a great week for Windows and System Center. Earlier in the week I had a chance to sit with Brad Anderson, Corporate VP here in the System Center team and talk about the latest points of interest that cross his desk. The camera rolled, and we ended up chatting for over 20 minutes. We have split the videos into a 4 part series, here are the first 2. We hope you enjoy, Part 3 and 4 coming early next week……

Jeff Wettlaufer
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

Data Protection Manager 2010 and Exchange Server 2010

2009-10-23T10:05:00Z

A few weeks ago, while I was in Redmond, I had the chance to sit down with Leslie Kitz (also in the System Center team) to talk about how DPM 2010 adds to what Exchange 2010 does for data protection and availability.

After talking about how DPM 2010 stacks up and supports Exchange Server 2010, we jumped over for a quick demo.

Check it out !!

-- Jason / DPM Product Manager

Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 2 Released

2009-10-22T22:59:40Z

Today has been a huge day here in Redmond. The campus us buzzing, as today is the day Windows 7 is available to the world. It is also the day that SP2 for ConfigMgr hits our websites, for you to manage Windows 7, Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2.

The entire Service Pack download is here.
You can also download a 180 day eval full version here.

Service Pack 2 is a platform support release for System Center. For all of the above mentioned OS’s, we can now manage them, and for the server side, the Windows Server 2008 SP2 and 2008 R2 can now host site roles.

While this is incredible for the client story, to deploy Windows 7 better, faster and cheaper than anyone in the world – there are some other areas that SP2 for the server that will change how people think about management.

BranchCache in Windows 7/ Windows Server 2008 R2 can help increase network efficiency for users across corporate networks. SP2 for ConfigMgr adds support for BranchCache, and where clients download packages – the fabric of peer client cache will significantly benefit performance levels. Delivery speeds will get even faster, infrastructure traffic will drop significantly, and clients will simply get stuff quicker. Think about your packages, whether they are 256Kb updates, or 4Gb OS images, the ability to have clients helping clients is a very good thing.

DirectAccess DirectAccess is a new feature in Windows 7/ Windows Server® 2008 R2 that gives users the experience of being seamlessly connected to their corporate network any time they have Internet access. This new way of working, Always On, Always Connected, also means to an Administrator, Always Managed. While this is a significant capability for the end user – I am one myself, and it is amazing, the Administrator can take comfort in the fact that in a DA enabled environment, they are going to get stuff to people whether they are remote or in the office.

Client Policy improvements – In Service Pack 2 we have done some very cool things to get faster processing of policy. First, Policy pre SP2 had a 2 minute delay after being delivered to the client, and was queued locally. That 2 minutes is now removed. Second, in the scenario of software distribution, pre SP2 there was a 10 minute delay post user logon to start user policy processing. This is gone. So, user gets advertisement, user logs in, user gets launch. Right away. This is significant. You guys have been asking us to get to ‘real time’ and we are delivering.

There are some other areas we have also improved. Adding App-V x64 support (v4.6) as well as some 64bit architecture support (future blog coming) are some. As well, to configure Asset Intelligence Online Sync pre SP2 you needed to have a cert. This has been removed. Multi select driver delete support from the catalog, as well as some Task Sequence UI improvements for packages are also there now.

This is a great Service Pack to deliver on the same day as Windows 7 General Availability. We hope you see in this SP that we are listening to you guys. Keeping up with the Windows platform roadmap, and driving innovation that you ask for at the highest quality bar possible.

Here are some links, check back here for more info and demos on SP2, and we hope to see you in Berlin.

•What’s new SP2 TechNet Documentation Library- link
•Configuration Manager download
•ConfigMgr Product Homepage – link
•Configuration Manager Product Team Blog – link
•Windows MDOP – link
•Windows Server 2008 R2 Branch Cache overview – link
•Branch Cache ConfigMgr Deployment Guidance – link

Jeff Wettlaufer
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

Upcoming Webcasts on Virtualization Best Practices

2009-10-22T21:17:40Z

We’ve got some great technical webcasts coming up in the next few weeks on virtualizing Microsoft server applications, in particular for SQL Server, Exchange, and SharePoint. You may wonder what this is doing on the System Center team blog, and I can tell you that it has everything to do with the inseparability of management and virtualization, especially given the need in today’s IT environments and datacenters to manage both physical and virtual servers.

So, take 60 minutes out of your day, belly up to a computer workstation or laptop somewhere, and drink in the virt elixir (these webcasts will be archived for later viewing after the initial presentation).

Webcast	Presenters	Description
Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for SQL Server Thursday, October 29, 2009 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)	Suzanne Morgan and Lindsey Allen	Virtualizing business critical applications will deliver significant customer benefits including cost savings, enhanced business continuity and an agile and efficient management solution. This session will focus on virtualizing SQL Server using Microsoft solutions, the benefits over key competitors such as VMware, and guidance for virtualizing SQL server for Production and Test/Dev scenarios focusing on consolidation, scale, load balancing, dynamic provisioning and high availability. We will go into technical details with best practices. Customer evidence and results from lab deployment tests will also be discussed.
Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for Exchange Wednesday, November 04, 2009 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)	Arno Mihm and Rob Simpson	Virtualizing business critical applications will deliver significant customer benefits including cost savings, enhanced business continuity and an agile and efficient management solution. This session will focus on virtualizing Exchange using Microsoft solutions, the benefits over key competitors such as VMware, and guidance for virtualizing Exchange for various Production scenarios. We will go into technical details with best practices. Customer evidence and results from lab deployment tests will also be discussed.
Microsoft Virtualization Best Practices for SharePoint (Date/Time TBA)	TBA	Virtualizing business critical applications will deliver significant customer benefits including cost savings, enhanced business continuity and an agile and efficient management solution. This session will focus on virtualizing SharePoint using Microsoft solutions, the benefits over key competitors such as VMware, and guidance for virtualizing SharePoint for Production and Test/Dev scenarios focusing on scale, load balancing, dynamic provisioning and high availability. We will go into technical details with best practices. Customer evidence and results from lab deployment tests will also be discussed.

- dave //

Management Pack (MP) Authoring Resource Kit Available for Download

2009-10-22T01:28:15Z

More great news from the Operations Manager product group – the release of the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Authoring Resource Kit.

This new resource kit aids authors in the creation, modification and assessment of operations management packs (MPs). Using the following eight tools contained within the Authoring Resource Kit, authors will see benefits through reduced development time and improved quality of their MPs.

Management Pack Best Practices Analyzer (MPBPA), which scans management packs for best practice compliance and provides automated resolution for numerous issues.
Management Pack Spell Checker (MP Spell Checker), helping eliminate errors in display strings.
Management Pack Visio Generator (MP Visio Generator), facilitating the generation of a class inheritance and class relationship diagram using Microsoft Office Visio.
Management Pack Diff (MP Diff), which presents differences between two management packs.
Management Pack Cookdown Analyzer (MP Cookdown Analyzer), which identifies workflows which may break cookdown, and provides suggestions on how to fix performance issues.
All References Add-in, helping to find all management pack elements that reference the specific element chosen.
Workflow Analyzer, provides the ability to statically analyze all types of workflows.
Workflow Simulator, providing the ability to test certain types of workflows such as discoveries, rules, and monitors without a Management Server and Management Group.

The Operations Manager 2007 R2 Authoring Resource Kit is available for immediate download from the Microsoft Download Center.

Sacha

MDOP 2009 R2 for Windows 7 is now available

2009-10-21T22:35:48Z

Just in time for Windows 7, today we are announcing the availability of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2009 R2! If you are an MDOP customer, you can download MDOP 2009 R2 through the Microsoft Volume Licensing Site (MVLS). For others who wish to evaluate MDOP products, the MDOP software is available at MSDN and TechNet (in accordance with your MSDN or TechNet agreements, except for AIS).

Read all about this release on the Official MDOP Blog…..

See you at TechEd Berlin……

Jeff Wettlaufer
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

Assuring the security of OCS with Forefront and System Center

2009-10-17T00:54:23Z

The Forefront team have just released an operations management pack (MP) for their Forefront Security for Office Communications Server (OCS) solution.

With this MP (version 10.2.0320.0), organizations using Forefront Security for OCS can be alerted through Operations Manager 2007 to critical events that may affect the security of their OCS environment, such as:

Health and update activity of antimalware engine health;
IM Scan Job availability;
Health of required Forefront Security for OCS services.

Find more information and download the MP here, and browse the System Center Catalog for other MPs that can help extend your monitoring framework with System Center.

Sacha

Update for Operations Manager 2007 R2 extends support to SUSE 11 and Solaris Zones

2009-10-14T19:53:26Z

Just released, this update for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 adds support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (both 32-bit and 64-bit) and Solaris Zones (Whole and Sparse Zones).

This update demonstrates Microsoft’s continued investment in delivering end-to-end heterogeneous monitoring for the datacenter, and contains the latest versions of the Operations Manager 2007 R2 UNIX/Linux agents for the following UNIX and Linux systems:

AIX 5.3 (Power), 6.1 (Power)
HP-UX 11iv2 (IA64/PA-RISC), 11iv3 (IA64/PA-RISC)
Red Hat Enterprise Server 4 (x86/x64), 5 (x86/x64)
Solaris 8 (SPARC), 9 (SPARC), 10 (SPARC/x86)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (x86), 10 (x86/x64), 11 (x86/x64)

Download the corresponding MSI for your type of Operations Manager 2007 R2 installation (32-bit or 64-bit) here.

Sacha

Nexus SC: The System Center Team Blog

Chatting with Brad, Part 4

Technet Webcast Rescheduled today….

Why Social Media Are Important to the Business

Chatting with Brad continued…….

Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 R2 now available

Talking about Power Management on Campus

Monitoring Windows 7 with Operations Manager

Chatting with Brad…….

Data Protection Manager 2010 and Exchange Server 2010

Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 2 Released

Upcoming Webcasts on Virtualization Best Practices

Webcast

Presenters

Description

Management Pack (MP) Authoring Resource Kit Available for Download

MDOP 2009 R2 for Windows 7 is now available

Assuring the security of OCS with Forefront and System Center

Update for Operations Manager 2007 R2 extends support to SUSE 11 and Solaris Zones