System Center Guide

ST. PAUL, MN–(Marketwire – March 3, 2010) – Shavlik Technologies, LLC, the market leader in simplifying and automating critical IT operations, today announced the Shavlik SCUPdates™ catalog which delivers update information from multiple vendors — like Adobe or Apple — to Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). More and more organizations today are leveraging the power of SCCM to assess, deploy and update Windows systems. By using the Shavlik SCUPdates catalog, SCCM users now have a single workflow for deploying updates for both Microsoft and non-Microsoft applications.

Read the full press release

Microsoft has made available for download Windows-7-friendly versions of two of its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) tools as part of its campaign to get more businesses to move to Windows 7, and soon, Office 2010.

Released on February 22 is the final version of Application Virtualization (App-V) 4.6, as well as the near-final Release Candidate of the Service Pack 1 build of Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V). These two tools ultimately will be part of MDOP 2010, the first of two MDOP releases that Microsoft officials are expecting to roll out in calendar 2010. (Today, MED-V 1.0 SP1 is being released simultaneously with MDOP 2010, as it is not yet in final form.)

MDOP is a bundle of various deployment tools that Microsoft sells to Software Assurance customers only. At the end of last year, when it added a previously-unscheduled MDOP 2009 R2 release to its line-up, Microsoft announced its intention to release MDOP 2010 in the first calendar quarter of this year.

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In Randy George’s “Rolling Out Windows 7″ article for InformationWeek, SCCM is compared to LANDesk, KASE, Snap Deploy and others. Yet, the accolades for SCCM kept “rolling” on in…

Read the article here.

Here are the 5 key upgrade tips for an enterprise considering Windows 7:

1. Make application compatibility the first priority.
2. Use System Center Configuration Manager for image creation and deployment.
3. Start with basic group policy settings but then update.
4. Work with ISVs early and often.
5. Align Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 deployment timing.

Read the full article on the System Center team blog.

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 has just released the Reporting Dashboard beta for SCCM. This dashboard lets customers utilize a browser based graphically rich reporting experience that showcases the robust reporting capabilities of the world’s leading system management product. The dashboard will help you stay informed of application and operating system deployments, security updates, system health status and more; whether on the plasma screen in your operations center, or your administrative desktop.

Find out more from the System Center team blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2010/02/02/system-center-configuration-manager-reporting-dashboard-beta-released.aspx

SccmAutoDoc is a command-line utility that documents a System Center Configuration Manager 2007 site in a human-readable format. Much effort has been put in making the document resemble closely to what you see in the Configuration Manager admin console. SccmAutodoc in other words documents your Site Configuration.

More information is available here.

Web Help Desk releases seamless out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft SCCM and SMS, providing IT professionals with up-to-date hardware and software asset details within the web-based help desk software. No table mapping configuration or SQL scripts required. In classic Web Help Desk style, simply choose your synchronization schedule, point to the SCCM/SMS deployment and select which SCCM/SMS data to be made visible, then carry on with your now enhanced service management operations.

Click here to learn more.

Today Microsoft officially released the System Center Configuration Manager Extensions for SCAP, the result of certification testing for ConfigMgr as an SCAP-validated tool with FDCC scanning capability.  This free add on to ConfigMgr will consume the SCAP data streams, assess a target system for compliance, and report the results back in SCAP format.

The System Center Configuration Manager Extensions for SCAP allow organizations to use Configuration Manager 2007 to scan computers for compliance with the Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) mandate issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). These extensions enable Configuration Manager to consume Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) data streams, assess systems for compliance, and generate report results in SCAP format.

If you or someone you know works in a US government agency – you are aware that those organizations are required to have an SCAP validated tool for ensuring adherence to the Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC).

Read more and download the tool from the System Center Team Blog (here).