System Center Guide

This lab is intended for IT Professionals who would like to deliver virtual desktop computers using Microsoft Hyper-V Server, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Citrix XenDesktop. Users will work through the steps to simulate deploying multiple virtual desktops, and will first capture a reference image using the Citrix Provisioning Server for Desktops.

Next, the user will verify that the computer can be booted from a diskless client computer. The user will create multiple virtual machines using the reference computer as a template.

Finally, the user will use the Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller and System Center Virtual Machine Manager to create a group of virtual desktops and deploy them to end devices. At the end of this lab, the user will have worked through all the steps required to implement Citrix XenDesktop using Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.

https://cmg.vlabcenter.com/default.aspx?moduleid=281742e3-2613-42da-bd58-2c3578f039b4

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.

Rest the rest of the article

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.

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!!

The Provance IT Asset Management Pack is a Process Management Pack that runs within the forthcoming Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2010 to provide Software and IT Asset Management. The supplemental capability provided by the Provance IT Asset Management Pack allows Microsoft System Center customers to take control of IT costs, improve IT Service Management efficiency and reduce security and compliance risks. It extends Microsoft System Center Service Manager with additional functionality to manage the financial, contractual and organizational information necessary to support Software Asset Management, License Compliance, IT Asset Life Cycle Management, and more cost-effective and efficient IT Service Management.

“The IT Asset Management capability that Provance delivers to Microsoft System Center customers further strengthens and extends our knowledge-driven IT management solutions and showcases the tremendous extensibility of System Center.” – Larry Orecklin, General Manager, System Center and Virtualization Marketing, Microsoft

The Provance IT Asset Management Pack will be available concurrent to the release of Microsoft System Center Service Manager in the first half of 2010. The Beta 1 release of the Provance IT Asset Management Pack is now available to qualified participants in the company’s beta testing and evaluation program. The program is open to Microsoft partners, customers and internal staff participating in the Microsoft System Center Service Manager Beta 2 program who have expertise in managing IT environments with Microsoft System Center solutions.

Register for beta updates or apply to participate in the beta program.

The System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Cumulative Update 2 has been released. It includes the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Agent Update (KB973583) and additional bug fixes. For full details, visit http://bit.ly/bf78O3.

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 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.