Security & Management : News

System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 RTM.

daniel — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:14:00 GMT

The System Center Operations Manager 2007 team is excited to announce 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 goals that this Service Pack addresses include:

Address critical customer initiated issues, including a roll-up of all hot-fixes.
Improve the ability to deploy and use Operations Manager 2007.
Enhance the supportability of Operations Manager 2007.

With over 3000 downloads of the SP1 Release Candidate (RC) to date, and with over 15,000 SP1 RC agents deployed into production by TAP customers, it’s clear that customer’s are eager to get their hands on this powerful update to Operations Manager 2007—Microsoft’s industry-leading and award-winning end-to-end service monitoring solution for enterprise environments!Congratulations to the Operations Manager 2007 team on getting Service Pack 1 out the door!

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.
… and much, much more!!

A comprehensive list on what’s included with Service Pack 1 can be found by visiting the What’s New in Ops Mgr 2007 SP1 and What’s Fixed in Ops Mgr 2007 SP1 resources.

The Final Build

Operations Manager 2007 SP1 is available for both x86-based and x64-based computers. The Service Pack is available as a standalone executable that you can use to upgrade an existing Operations Manager 2007 installation, and it has also be ‘slipstreamed’ into the Operations Manager 2007 installation media to enable a single installation. Note that the Release Candidate is fully upgradable to this final RTM version of SP1!

Final build number: 6278

Public Availability

Operations Manager 2007 SP1 is currently being pushed out to the web, and the following links are being replicated over the weekend (replication is expected to be completed by Mon Feb 25^th, or earlier).

Where can i go for further information?

A new dedicated SP1 page on TechNet will go live by Monday Feb 25^th, which will provide links to newly available resources, including What’s New, What’s Fixed, SP1 Training Videos, updated documentation, and more! Any additional information will be posted to the Operations Manager 2007 page of System Center Web.

Operations Manager 2007 Reports Authoring Guide

daniel — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:02:00 GMT

The OpsMgr 2007 Reports Authoring Guide just released.

You can download it in this blog post.

System Center Configuration Manager Beta Exam

daniel — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:42:00 GMT

Invitation

You are invited to take beta exam 70-401: TS: Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007, Configuring. If you pass the beta exam, the exam credit will be added to your transcript and you will not need to take the exam in its released form.

By participating in beta exams, you have the opportunity to provide the Microsoft Certification program with feedback about exam content, which is integral to development of exams in their released version. We depend on the contributions of experienced IT professionals and developers as we continually improve exam content and maintain the value of Microsoft certifications.

71-401: TS: Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007, Configuring counts as credit towards the following certification(s).

• Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): System Center Configuration Manager 2007, Configuration

Availability

Registration begins: November 21, 2007
Beta exam period runs: November 28, 2007– December 18, 2007
Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately. Beta exams have limited availability and are operated under a first-come-first-served basis. Once all beta slots are filled, no additional seats will be offered.
Testing is held at Prometric testing centers worldwide, although this exam may not be available in all countries (see Regional Restrictions). All testing centers will have the capability to offer this exam in its live version.
Regional Restrictions: India, Pakistan, China

Registration Information

You must register at least 24 hours prior to taking the exam.
Please use the following promotional code when registering for the exam: B401
Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately.

To register in North America, please call:

• Prometric: (800) 755-EXAM (800-755-3926)

Outside the U.S./Canada, please contact:

• Prometric: http://www.register.prometric.com/ClientInformation.asp

Test Information and Support

You are invited to take this beta exam at no charge.
You will be given four hours to complete the beta exam. Please plan accordingly.
Find exam preparation information: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-401.mspx

System Center Capacity Planner 2007

daniel — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:56:00 GMT

There are 2 news about System Center Capacity Planner 2007.

1. It will be available for everyone now and not just technet subscribers.

2. The sharepoint model is being release in a couple of days in beta.

System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008

daniel — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:33:00 GMT

The new product in System Center Family-Mobile Device Manager 2008.

What is Mobile Device Manager 2008?
Mobile Device Manager 2008 is a solution that gives organizations enhanced on-device security and over-the-air policy enforcement. It allows IT professionals to more easily manage phones within the organization, and gives mobile employees access to confidential information on corporate networks with firewalls.

What does Mobile Device Manager 2008 do?
Helps protect sensitive information if the device is lost or stolen
Performs instant* remote device wipe to help reduce security risks
Provides security enhanced behind-the-firewall access to mobile users
Helps lower maintenance and troubleshooting costs and management complexity
Provides greater scalability with support for thousands of users on a server
Gives IT professionals a robust development platform, improved reliability, and better application access and control for Windows Mobile devices

Here are the Information about the product:

Website: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/mobile/default.mspx

Overview: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/mobile/evaluation/overview.mspx

MCTS: Operations Manager 71-400 Beta Exam

daniel — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 06:12:00 GMT

From the Certification Blog:

Please remember that participation in the beta process is completely voluntary and Microsoft makes no promises or guarantees regarding the beta exam process. You can expect to receive your score on the beta exam within 12 weeks of taking the exam, although in some instances, beta exams may take longer to score and your results may be delayed.

71-400: TS: Microsoft® System Center Operations Manager, Configuring counts as credit towards MCTS: System Center Operations Manager, Configuration.

Availability

Registration begins: October 4, 2007
Beta exam period runs: October 4, 2007– October 26, 2007
Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately. Beta exams have limited availability and are operated under a first-come-first-served basis. Once all beta slots are filled, no additional seats will be offered.
Testing is held at Prometric testing centers worldwide, although this exam may not be available in all countries (see Regional Restrictions). All testing centers will have the capability to offer this exam in its live version.
Regional Restrictions: India, China, and Pakistan

Registration Information

You must register at least 24 hours prior to taking the exam.
Please use the following promotional code when registering for the exam: TSCCM
Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately.
To register in North America, please call Prometric: (800) 755-EXAM (800-755-3926)
Outside the U.S./Canada, please contact: Prometric

Test Information and Support

You are invited to take this beta exam at no charge.
You will be given four hours to complete the beta exam. Please plan accordingly.
Find exam preparation information: Prep guide not available yet

Exam topics:

Configuring System Center Operations Manager 2007

Configure notification
Manage roles
Configure System Center Operations Manager options
Discover and deploy agents within a trusted Active Directory (AD) forest
Discover and deploy agents to non-AD systems

Deploy and configure Management Packs

Import a Management Pack
Configure overrides
Configure a self-tuning threshold
Migrate a Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Management Pack to System Center Operations Manager 2007
Configure diagnostics and recoveries for a rule or monitor

Build and deploy custom Management Packs

Configure security options
Configure discovery for Management Packs
Create monitors and rules
Create a distributed application
Create a synthetic transaction

Maintaining System Center Operations Manager

Maintain System Center Operations Manager infrastructure
Create views
Create tasks
Fail over from Root Management Server (RMS)
Back up and restore System Center Operations Manager
Managing and maintaining reports

Configuring client monitoring

Configure Audit Collection Service (ACS)
Configure Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM)
Configure Collective Client Monitoring (CCM)
Configure Business Critical Client Monitoring (BCCM)

System Center Virtual Machine Manager: Huge Announcements!

daniel — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 01:50:00 GMT

The News From the Windows Virtualization Team Blog:

Hi - this is Chris Stirrat and I run the team that built System Center Virtual Machine Manager (also known as SCVMM or “Carmine”). I very excited to share a couple of HUGE announcements with everyone around virtualization and SCVMM.

First - I am extremely proud to announce that after 2 short (OK - it didn't always seem short...) years of customer focused development, SCVMM has been officially released! It has been a long road and as many of our TAP and Beta customers can attest, we have come a long way. It is not easy bringing a competitive version 1 product to market, especially in a newer industry that is moving quickly.

Here are some of the interesting details of the release:

Throughout the release we have had over 32 TAP (Technology Adoption Partners) customers and 10 partners which have been testing, giving great feedback and creating solutions with the beta versions of SCVMM
Microsoft's own internal IT group has been managing 100% of their virtual environment (86 physical hosts running 1224 VMs) in production with SCVMM since Beta2 with no (that is zero) impact on their SLAs
To date we have over 20,678 public beta users of SCVMM
SCVMM is available in 9 different languages

In addition here are some quotes from our Beta and TAP customers:

· “VMM came through for us "Big Time", I would have been doing this for many hours, 5 min opposed to many hours, what more can I say! VMM was the only reason I got sleep last night!”

· “We hadn’t used System Center software before, but we found it fairly easy to move from Linux to Virtual Server and adopt Virtual Machine Manager because VMM is so well designed and easy to administer.”

· “Virtual Machine Manager handles so many tedious, yet critical, VM infrastructure tasks. It makes VM management so easy, we’re ecstatic.”

· “System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides us with many important benefits. Its centralized management and sophisticated provisioning capabilities make it so much easier for us to manage and enhance our virtual infrastructure.”

I want to thank all the TAP and Beta customers for all the great feedback – it has been a great partnership for us. The release is now publicly available at www.microsoft.com/scvmm, with general availability in October.

Second – we are announcing the pricing/licensing for SCVMM.

We learned from our customers that managing virtualization encompasses many things – provisioning, monitoring, optimizing, reporting, patching and backup/restore. As we looked at the Microsoft assets across these areas, we created integration with some of the existing tools to help cover all the key scenarios for virtualization. We have tight integration with Operations Manager to provide health monitoring, performance monitoring, eventing/alerts, and ultimately the combination of SCVMM and Operations Manager provides a powerful solution to continually optimize your virtualization environment. In addition, with Operations Manager we can see a full picture of how an application running in a VM. We monitor the application and combine that data with the VM and physical host data. For patching the VMs and images, we have integration with Configuration Manager that allows you to patch VMs including the ones not currently running. For backup/restore, we have integration with Data Protection Manager that allows you to backup at the physical host level (which includes all the VMs running on that host).

In order to make it easy for customers to manage their virtual environments and cover the key scenarios – we are announcing a new license to cover that situation. We are announcing the System Center Management Suite Enterprise license which gives you everything you need to manage you virtual environment at a very reasonable price of $860 per physical host.

You get:

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 license
Enterprise server management licenses for System Center Configuration Manager 2007, System Center Operations Manager 2007 and System Center Data Protection Manager 2007.

One key thing to note – the license is on the physical host and includes unlimited VMs running on that host. Also – one question I get pretty often is whether or not SCVMM requires the other tools in order to run. The answer is no – SCVMM is stand-alone and does not require the other System Center tools in order to run. Having said that – there are many scenarios that are better and “light-up” when SCVMM is used in conjunction with the other System Center tools.

Third – we are announcing System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Workgroup edition, which will be available in January 2008. This edition is aimed at mid-market customers and allows them to manage up to five physical host servers and an unlimited number of virtual machines. The only restriction in the software is the number of physical hosts you can manage (5) but everything else is full functionality. The System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Workgroup edition will be priced at $499 and will be available in January.

The fourth announcement centers on where we are taking SCVMM moving forward. We are on a long roadmap with SCVMM and continue to get great feedback from customers about where to go. Our next release is planned to coincide with the release of Windows Server Virtualization (codename Viridian) so that we can expose all the great features it provides. In addition to Viridian support – we are also adding some key customer driven features. We have heard loud and clear from customers and partners that we need to manage other virtualization environments in addition to Windows virtualization. They want a single management solution that manages all the different hypervisor technologies. So – in our next set of releases will be adding support for non-Windows virtualization environments – specifically VMWare and Xen. We listened to you!!! And when I say we will manage these environments I mean really manage them – covering all the key scenarios they offer. From a single console and a single command-line you will be able manage Virtual Server, Viridian, VMWare and Xen.

We are finalizing the project plans and will announce specific details closer to our Beta release – but we are very excited to get working on the next release. The team is focused, hardworking and dedicated to providing a great solution. We have fully recovered from our release celebration and are heads down cranking away.

For more information on Virtual Machine Manger and other Microsoft virtualization products please visit these sites www.microsoft.com/scvmm and http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization.

RTM'ed

daniel — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 07:57:00 GMT

Configuration Manager 2007 and Virtual Machine Manager 2007

JUST RTM'ed...

Let's Celebrate~

Some Personal Topics

daniel — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:55:00 GMT

Currently, I'm very busy to work on the OpsMgr 2007 RDP and Service Manager Beta1 TAP Projects with Microsoft,

So, i can't update my blog...

Although i can learn and get so many information and knowledge from Microsoft. However, I'm still worrying about my career.

There are 2 Companies looking for me to join their companies for their Asia and Hong Kong Team (Storage Vendor and Australia ICT). But, the postition is the Post-Sale Solutions Architect and Specialist.

I want to focus on the Pre-Sale more than Post-Sale.

Their packages are very attractive.If i need $$, i should go for these companies. However, I really want to work on pre-sale and System Center focused job. (I'm the Solutions Consultant for System Center in this moment)

And now, I'm considering to move to other country and work on System Center focused job. It should be a great experience for my career development.

But i have no idea, any opportunies for me to have this kind of job in other country.

If you have any suggestion or head count. Please let me know ..haha

System Center Remote Operations Manager (ROM) 2007

daniel — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:42:00 GMT

"System Center Remote Operations Manager (ROM) 2007. ROM, scheduled to RTM later this month, is a new product from the Microsoft System Center family that enables solution providers to more effectively and proactively monitor, control, update, and manage their mid-market customers? distributed infrastructures from a secure remote console.

Specifically, Remote Operations Manager with System Center Essentials at the customer end-point:

Creates a business advantage for IT service providers by enabling them to customize monitoring policies, configure and patch customer IT environments without interrupting users or network service, and providing access to expert knowledge for managing Windows platforms, applications and workloads.

Provides increased security and reliability by establishing a single aggregate view of customer health status and quickly resolve issues when an alert is raised.

Enables the customer to transition from reactive in-house troubleshooting to proactive outsourced management; takes the burden of constant monitoring and availability off of internal IT staff, freeing them to focus on innovation and development.

Additional ROM advisory services also will be available to Certified and Registered partners. These services will provide best practice recommendations, 1:1 consultative workshops, consultative discussions with partner technical consultants, deployment and architectural design guidance and remote access to Microsoft labs

More information here:

Remote Web Workplace

Exclusive: Services Provider Management Pack

System Center Service Manager Beta 1 Released!

daniel — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 04:48:00 GMT

We are extremely excited to announce Beta 1 of System Center Service Manager is now available for download on Connect. We hope you will promptly download, test and provide feedback on this Beta. Beta 1 provides a wide range of functionality for you to test and evaluate:
· Distributed install
· Administration wizards for easy solution configuration
· AD connection wizard
· SMS 2003 SP3 connection wizard
· Asset inventory including the first phase of asset reconciliation in the CMDB
· Incident management including queues, customizable drop-down values, asset linking, and notification workflows
· Change management including queues, customizable drop-down values, asset and incident linking, multiple review stages, activity management and notification workflows
· A self-service portal which includes knowledge search, service request submission, and software provisioning integrated with SMS 2003 SP3
· Knowledge Management including authoring, viewing, comment and rating all integrated with Word 2007 and SharePoint 2007
· Data Warehousing and Reporting including 6 sample reports for incident, change and asset data

Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 Evaluation Edition

daniel — Wed, 02 May 2007 15:10:00 GMT

Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 is a proactive and unified management solution that enables IT professionals in midsize organizations to more efficiently secure, update, monitor and troubleshoot their IT environments.
Essentials 2007 provides:
• Proactive monitoring, troubleshooting and asset tracking to keep your IT environment secure and up-to-date
• A unified solution with a single console for managing your servers, clients, hardware, software, and IT services
• Efficient execution of complex management tasks like troubleshooting end user issues, monitoring, and server and client software deployment

Download

Systems Management Server 2003 R2 with Service Pack 3

daniel — Wed, 02 May 2007 00:22:00 GMT

Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 R2 with Service Pack 3 (SP3) brings organizations full lifecycle support for Microsoft’s latest platform including software distribution, update services and inventory are available to the Vista client.

Adding optional capabilities to enhance the software and hardware inventory functionalities provided in SMS 2003, SP3 provides information to help organizations to make better business decisions about their IT assets. Through a new library of over 400,000 software titles, SMS 2003 SP3 provides an option to augment existing SMS inventory capabilities with deeper asset intelligence. SMS SP3 provides rich reporting about installed applications and hardware enabling better license reporting, software consolidation and upgrade planning.

Download

Partner Solution for Remote IT Managed Services Beta

daniel — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 02:39:00 GMT

Microsoft is building a new managed services solution to enable partners to create a services-based business by delivering remote IT managed services to small and midsized organizations. Supported by System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Operations Manager 2007) and System Center Essentials 2007 (SCE 2007) technology, this combined solution creates a powerful platform with which you can provide remote software update management, monitoring and troubleshooting of customer environments over a secure internet connection. In addition, you will be able to create customized reports to show your customers the value of the services you provide.

System Center Capacity Planner 2007 Beta

daniel — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 02:35:00 GMT

System Center Capacity Planner 2007 helps you size and plan deployments of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and System Center Operations Manager 2007. SCCP 2007 uses transaction models of the applications and includes their respective best practices.

System Center Service Desk Beta

daniel — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 02:28:00 GMT

System Center code name “Service Desk” links IT to the business by enabling IT organizations to respond to changing business needs while delivering reliable and cost-effective IT services. “Service Desk” is an extensible platform that delivers out-of-box workflows to automate IT operations around incident and problem resolution, IT change control, and asset lifecycle management. Leveraging a model-based CMDB, “Service Desk” complements Configuration Manager and Operations Manager by serving as the central hub through which all IT assets and processes are tracked, playing a critical role in driving the value of IT services to the business.

My 12th Microsoft KB Article

daniel — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 06:34:00 GMT

HOWTO: Assign SMS Advanced Client to the Isolated Secondary Site

The Step by Step Information to configure the SMS Advanced Client to report to SMS Secondary Site without connect to SMS Primary Site.

In some cases, the network connection between SMS Primary Site Management Point and the new installed SMS Advanced Clients that located in SMS Secondary Site maybe isolated. The SMS Advanced Clients unable to contact to the SMS Primary Site Management Point and get the site code and policies directly.

SMS Advanced Clients cannot assign to the SMS Secondary Site. They must located in the SMS Primary Site and assign to the SMS Primary Site first. But it is not suitable for the Desktop computers that located in the isolated Secondary Site.

For the solution, Please visit

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555853

News of System Center Reporting Manager

daniel — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 01:23:00 GMT

There are no new version of System Center Reporting Manager. And it is removed from System Center website already.

The features of Reporting Manager will be integrated to System Center Service Desk.

Systems Management Server 2003 Service Pack 3 Open Beta

daniel — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 15:36:00 GMT

In addition to providing the latest fixes for Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, Service Pack 3 (SP3) adds capabilities to enhance the software and hardware inventory functionalities provided in SMS 2003. Enabled through a new library of over 400,000 software titles, SMS SP3 provides rich reporting about installed applications and hardware to help organizations make better business decisions about their IT assets. New capabilities enable:

•	License Reporting: New reports enable comparison of Microsoft applications installed with licenses purchased as well as how those titles were obtained (for example: volume licensing, retail, or OEM) for better optimization of software use across the organization and fewer unutilized applications.
•	Software Consolidation: View applications by category to better see how many different applications with similar functions and versions are deployed in the organization and make consolidations. The result is accelerated application standardization, a more streamlined support structure, and the ability to maximize volume discounts from software vendors.
•	Upgrade Planning: Identify core and non-core applications in order to understand what applications require migration to the new environment. Software consolidation aids upgrade planning by reducing the number of applications that need compatibility testing. Identify hardware assets that need upgrading based on comparisons to published operating system hardware requirements. The result is more efficient planning and streamlined execution for upgrading users to Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Full Windows Vista Support

Deploy Windows Vista with the SMS 2003 Operating System Deployment Feature Pack update. Manage it post-deployment with SMS 2003 via SMS SP3 as you would Windows XP or another operating system. With SMS SP3, administrators can:

•	Deploy Windows Vista updates
•	Deploy applications to Windows Vista client computers
•	Perform software and hardware inventory for Windows Vista client computers

More Information

Business Desktop Deployment Solution Accelerator 2007 Released!

daniel — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 02:08:00 GMT

Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007 is THE best practice set of comprehensive guidance and tools to optimally deploy desktops running Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows XP, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, or Microsoft Office 2003. It helps IT professionals realize a quick return on investment while also setting new standards for reliability, performance, security, and ease of use.

Download