In proud co-operation with:
Dear Configuration Manager Open Beta Participants,
We are pleased to announce that the Release Candidate (RC) build of Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is now available for download on Microsoft Connect. Please proceed to the following link for more information:
https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=8163&SiteID=16
If you haven’t heard already, the Microsoft Management Summit 2008 has sold out. Over 4000 IT professionals will come together at the end of the month to take part in Microsoft’s annual conference dedicated to enterprise management technologies.
For those of us that helped form and supported the first conference held back in 1998 this is an amazing accomplishment, as it’s the first time in the conference’s long and sorted history that it has been completely sold out. While I hate to think of those that will be denied access, it’s a great statement about Microsoft’s commitment to this area and the customer’s adoption of Microsoft management technologies.
I’m proud to have been an early part of what has become such a successful event for Microsoft and the community-at-large.
P.S. Sadly, I won’t be attending this year as I’m returning to the States on the same day as the Summit kicks off. But, rest assured, I’ll be returning with a vengeance next year!
Feature-complete version of Windows Server 2008 virtualisation technology made broadly available to customers and partners.
As many of you will recall, I wrote a controversial post about VMware’s future in the virtualisation market. And, after quite a few discussions with Microsoft folks, fellow partner organisations and the end user community at the Dublin Wave Launch event this week, I have to question if Virtual Machine Manager v2 (codename: vNext) could be the last nail in the coffin for VMware’s dominance in the virtualisation market.
You see, I’ve been privileged to work with the product group over the past couple of weeks to get bits and pieces of the forthcoming solution to present during my three sessions on Managing Virtualisation at the Wave Launch. In a nutshell, here’s what you’re look at in the next version of Virtual Machine Manager:
Now, that’s only part of the story. When you combine other award-winning System Center technologies like Operations Manager 2007, Configuration Manager 2007 and Data Protection Manager 2007, what you have is a complete suite of life-cycle management solutions that can carry a system from cradle to grave. That, my friends, is something you will not find from any competitive virtualisation solution.
If you want to go the route of virtualising your environment, please give a moment’s pause to consider whether you are buying a "point solution" that does only one thing or whether you want to buy into a full lifecycle management solution for not only the physical host, but also for the virtual machines running on those host and the applications running within those virtualised instances.
As Tom Bittman, VP & Analyst with Gartner, stated:
Virtualisation without good management is more dangerous than not using virtualisation in the first place.
Ask yourself the questions:
Once you’ve deployed a virtual server into production…
These are just a few of the things that a complete solution like the family of System Center products will offer you.
If you don’t have good answers to those questions, then please don’t buy a point solution just to say you’re virtualising servers. Buy a solution that fits your lifecycle management strategy. And, today… that solution is Microsoft System Center: Your systems {managed}.
OpsMgr Community,
If you are receiving alerts “Performance Module could not find a performance counter” in the Operations Manager Console, please perform thefollowing steps to disable the rule via override.
Note: When you run the Operations Console on a computer that is not a Management Server, the Connect To Server dialog box displays. In the Server name text box, type the name of the Operations Manager 2007 Management Server to which you want the Operations Console to connect.
1. Navigate to the Authoring Space in the Console.
2. Select “Rules” under “Management Pack Objects”.
3. Type “Performance Data Source Module” in the “Look for:” box and click “Find Now”. Be sure a Scope is not set or filtering the “Health Service” Target.
4. Find the rule, “Performance Data Source Module could not find a performance counter” under “Type: Health Service (2)”, right-click, select “Overrides”, “Disable the Rule”, “For all objects of type: Health Service”.
5. When prompted, “Are you sure you want to disable this rule for Health Service?” click “Yes”.
Microsoft is working on the long-term solution to address this problem.
Thanks, Justin Incarnato
The following is an early look at the architecture of Virtual Machine Manager v2, codename v.Next. While still approaching its Q2CY08 beta release, my personal viewing of the alpha product demos are indeed impressive!
Positioned as a heterogeneous virtual machine management solution, v.Next will support Virtual Server 2005, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX servers (with Xen server support in a future release).
Click the image above for a larger view.
As one with an entrepreneurial spirit, I often find myself defending the Microsoft market leader position and the tactics that they often must employ to maintain that position. Frankly, as a business owner, I’d prefer if the government took about ten paces back and gave a little more freedom for the pioneers of industry to reap the benefits of their labour.
Far too often with the US DOJ and the UE commissions, it seems that we allow industry icons to rise to that status level only to slap them in the face and say "STOP IT, IT’S NOT FAIR FOR THE OTHER FOLKS!"
Here’s a simple saying for those "other folks"… listen closely:
MAN UP, OR SHUT UP!
If you want to bitch about Microsoft’s dominance and unfair tactics, make a better product that makes those issues moot. What’s that? You already have a better product? THEN LEARN HOW TO MARKET IT BETTER! If there is nothing else that the industry can learn from Microsoft, it is how to market a solution. And don’t - for a minute - tell me that you can’t compete when Microsoft makes it free, or part of the OS, for %^&*-sake that is the whole premise of the open source movement!
To the members of the EU commission, all you’ve done today is weaken an already suffering IT market. I hope you’re happy with yourselves. By the way, did you produce you findings on a Microsoft or Linux platform; Microsoft Word or Open Office? What the hell, it doesn’t really matter these days. Open Office folks can open MS Office documents and vice-a-versa. The sad thing is that the EU penalised Microsoft today for things done 4 years ago - forget about advancements in cooperation in recent years.
Enough ranting on my behalf. Sorry… this announcement just makes me sick.
Since Microsoft recently announced their newfound commitment to interoperability standards to satisfy the EU commission, many have speculated whether this was another delay tactic by the Redmond, WA software giant.
However, tonight I was amazed to find the following text while attempting to download a file from the Microsoft website:
System Requirements
- Supported Operating Systems: Apple Mac OS X; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows XP
Anything in particular jump out you in that text? If not, forget it… this post isn’t for you. But those "in the know" will recognize that this is a significant departure from the normally non-Apple centric type applications. Could we be a few steps closer to open, cross-platform standards?
Through the concerted efforts of like-minded Microsoft Partner organizations, MicrosoftPartnerForums.com has officially launched this week! Here’s a copy of the welcome message on the site’s homepage. I think it explains it all:
Welcome to Microsoft Partner Forums! We’re glad you’re here. This site has been brought together by the combined efforts of Microsoft Partners like yourself that are interested in bettering their partner organizations and, as a result, improving the quality of solutions we provide to our customers.
The best place to start - as you can imagine - is in the forums. Please take a few minutes to review the 40+ forums available on a range of topics including achieving competencies, business development, press releases, job openings and even a place sound off your frustrations (with Microsoft that is). These forums will allow you to engage others partners with ideas and concepts, talk about what works and what doesn’t, and build a peer network of other like-minded Microsoft Partner professionals.
When you’re ready to being posting content, please create your account and profile. This will allow you full access to the forums and permit you to post new threads.
Lastly, consider subscribing to our RSS feed. This is the easiest way to stay up to date with new content posted to the forums.
We hope you’ll enjoy the site. And, again, thanks for stopping by - we hope to see more of you in the future.
Microsoft Partner Forums
Site Administration Team
I’m happy to be a part of MicrosoftPartnerForums.com and truly believe that it will fulfil a long-standing void in the Microsoft Partner community.
Wow… this could be the day that changes the computer world forever. Microsoft Corp. today announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors.
In short, 30,000 pages of protocol details exposed, commitment not to sue developers who expand upon those, new APIs for the Office products to other formats and to permit users to set those formats as defaults and lastly, launching the Open Source Interoperability Initiative - "to promote and enable more interoperability between commercial and community-based open source technologies and Microsoft products".
Does that mean I can quit feeling guilty about running this blog off Linux and open source software?
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