Need some nice Visio templates for documenting your System Center Service Manager deployment? You’re in luck! Here’s a set provided to you courtesy of the SCSM team.
http://blogs.technet.com/servicemanager/attachment/3303593.ashx
Looks like my prediction caught the attention of the System Center Service Manager (SCSM) Team… the following was posted to the team’s blog overnight. Notice the closing comments….
Hard to believe that the Microsoft Management Summit 2010 is only two months away now! Service Manager is going to have a MUCH larger presence this year with:
- 4 sessions by SCSM product team Senior Program Managers
- 1 session by MVP Maarten Goet
- 1 session by Microsoft Consulting Services consultants
- 3 sessions on Opalis including integration with Service Manager
- 1 session by Service Manager customer – MPSD – the operations team that runs Microsoft.com, TechNet, MSDN, etc. that has been using Service Manager in production for a few months to manage 4,000+ servers
- 2 sessions just on compliance and risk management using Service Manager including one from a partner – Secure Vantage
- 1 session by our partner Intel showcasing how customers can leverage Intel vPro capabilities directly from within SCSM
- 1 session dedicated to showcasing just some of the many partner solutions that are coming to market on top of SCSM at RTM
- 2 panels covering broad topics but also including SCSM
- 5 instructor led hands on labs (that will also be available as self-paced hands on labs)
That is a LOT of content. You could practically spend the whole week at MMS doing nothing but learning about Service Manager (and eating and sleeping occasionally of course
).
You can see the entire session schedule filtered down to just SCSM content by going here:
http://www.mms-2010.com/public/sessions.aspx
Reminder: there is a reduced registration price of $1,725 if you register before March 24. It goes up to $1,970 after that so hurry and register.
We hope you all can make it!
There are even apparently people speculating and taking bets that Service Manager might announce RTM at MMS. Now, that would be exciting!!
Looking at Desktop Virtualization including VDI? Thinking about migrating to Windows 7? Want savings, but unsure of the tradeoffs? Have more questions than answers on the topic? Join this moderated televised discussion for an hour full of virtualization insights.
Save the date: http://www.desktopvirtualizationhour.com/
The IBM Deployment Pack for Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (SCCM) is used to configure IBM hardware components prior to deploying Windows using Microsoft SCCM. This kit extends Configuration Manager 2007 by providing a convenient integrated user interface that will be familiar to SCCM administrators. The Deployment Pack completes the end-to-end deployment scenario in environments where IBM-specific configuration steps are required including RAID, IMM, RSA2, BMC, and BIOS/UEFI.
More information, including a Users Guide, and download available from http://bit.ly/aR8oXD.
Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner (SCCP) 2007 is a pre-deployment capacity planning and post-deployment change analysis solution for Microsoft server products, including Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007.
However, is it really all that useful? Most admins and architects that I’ve spoken with about this product feel that it’s based mostly on over-engineered capacity planning models that favor Microsoft licensing and not necessarily on providing “real world” value.
But, what if it were extensible to the 3rd party ISVs?
I was recently talking with Martin Sajkowski, Vice President of Worldwide Sales for Secure Vantage Technologies, regarding some of their new product announcements for the upcoming Microsoft Management Summit, when the topic of capacity planning came up. While they’ve produced an Excel spreadsheet for calculating approximate data storage needs, it was lacking some critical decision point factors and was in need of updating for the forthcoming product releases. When I laughing said “too bad Microsoft hasn’t made the capacity planning models for System Center Capacity Planner available to the ISVs yet” it was as if a light bulb had gone off. “What a great idea!” he replied.
Yes, it is a great idea – though I’m sure it’s not an original one. Surely someone at Microsoft must have thought this would be great idea as well. Perhaps even some of you reading this are now thinking about all the core infrastructure solutions you have to design and implement that are not from Microsoft and how nice it would be to have planning models for those apps.
Would having a common framework for planning capacity and “what if scenarios” that supported Microsoft and 3rd party apps make System Center Capacity Planner more useful? If you could obtain capacity models from Dell, IBM, EMC, Veritas, etc. would you actually install SCCP? If you could estimate the outcome of production changes before actually making them, would you do things differently?
Sound off people! I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one.
Having been a part of the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) since its inception as the SMS Users Conference in 1999, I feel somewhat qualified to speak to it’s history and trends. This annual event has allowed Microsoft and the partner ISV community to showcase their wares to thousands of attendees. In fact, many partners admit that a significant portion of their annual revenues come from the weeks and months following MMS.
Now those of you that know me well, can attest that I’m not a betting man. In fact, in all the years that MMS has been hosted in Las Vegas I’ve gambled no more than a total of $100. However, if I were a betting man, I would wager that this year Microsoft will Release-to-Manufacturing (RTM) the highly anticipated System Center Service Manager product. This would fall in line with how they announced the System Center brand and the subsequent release of Operations Manager 2007.
Some of you will recall that Microsoft attempted to release this product into beta as “Service Desk” back in 2007. However, the community was so disappointed with the Microsoft’s efforts on the product that they decided to pull it back and start completely over from scratch. Now, nearly 3 years later, with the product re-written and re-named it is quickly approaching its anticipated release schedule (1st Half, 2010) and is being welcomed much more favorably than the previous attempt. That is partly due to the true ITIL model that it follows, its asset management capabilities and integration points between the other System Center solutions.
So, will Microsoft finally get this product out the door at MMS 2010? Time will tell, but if you’re going to wager on it, I’d go all in if I were you.
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}.
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