System Center Guide

Microsoft has announced the Release Candidate for #DPM2010 is now available. Read Jason Buffingtons blog for details or just go get it!

I just heard from Jason Buffington, the System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) Sr. Technical Product Manager at Microsoft, that the release candidate for DPM 2010 is “baked” and should be available for download in the next couple of days. Who knows, maybe we’ll see a couple new products RTM at MMS this year.

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.

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

The Microsoft Management Summit 2010 sessions have been posted to the website. While the list is always subject to change, there are currently 144 sessions online and registration is open! So, what you are waiting for?! Check out the full details at http://www.mms-2010.com/public/sessions.aspx.

From Lumagate.com:
Microsoft has now released Audit Collection Service for UNIX and Linux. With Cross Platform ACS you can collect and audit events from UNIX and Linux server, store it in the ACS database and use the audit report that comes whit the package.

Feature Summary

Collection of Audit events from UNIX/Linux server, including:

o AIX 5.3/6.1

o HP-UX 11iv2/11iv3

o Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4/5

o SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9/10/11

o Solaris 8/9/10

Built in Audit Repots including:

o Access violations – unsuccessful logon attempts

o Account creation/deletion/password change

o Administrator activity – su, sudo

o Forensic – all events for a computer/event ID

o User logons

Here is the video capture of the demonstration that Kenon Owens did at TechEd EMEA demonstrating how you can use System Center Service Manager, Operations Manager, and Virtual Machine Manager together to manage a line of business application.

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.

The Active Directory team has just released an updated version of the Operations Management Pack for Active Directory (version 6.0.7050.0).  This latest update includes:

• Support for Windows Server 2008 R2.
• Additional support for:
  • Active Directory Web Services (ADWS) for Windows Server 2008 R2;
  • Active Directory Management Gateway Service for Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, and Windows Server 2008.
• Updates to existing functionality around:
  • Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 migration;
  • Monitoring of operations master roles (also known as flexible single master operations (FSMO) roles);
  • Enhanced performance monitors, and log size and database size monitors.
• A revamped deployment and usage guide.

Users of Operations Manager 2007 R2 can download this directly from the online MP service via the integrated MP download wizard.  Alternatively the MP can be downloaded from here or via the Operations Manager MP Catalog.

Microsoft insiders state that they’ve just signed off on the RTM, with general web availability targeted for Oct. 22.