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Microsoft System Center Essentials


Microsoft System Center Essentials (SCE) 2007 SP1 is a management product suite designed for the medium sized business.

System Center Essentials 2007 provides a unified management solution that enables IT professionals in midsize organizations to proactively manage their IT environment with increased efficiency.

  • Unified Experience
    Essentials 2007 provides a unified solution to help optimize the experience of performing a broad set of tasks across your entire IT environment. You also get a single console from which you can view and manage your servers, clients, hardware, software, and IT services.

  • Proactive Management
    Essentials 2007 accelerates troubleshooting and problem resolution. It’s a self-managing solution that notifies you as soon as a problem occurs, then helps you proactively diagnose and fix it, accelerating problem resolution. Essentials 2007 also automates system updates and data collection for your IT environment, so it’s more secure and up-to-date.

  • Increased Efficiency
    Essentials 2007 simplifies complex management tasks like packaging and deploying software, adding Web site monitoring, and creating and configuring group policy. Essentials 2007 wizards also help you quickly and easily configure security settings, deploy updates, and discover assets.

System Center Essential 2007 is limited to managing 30 servers and 500 clients, these can be physical and/or virtual. Microsoft also say that while there are no actual limitations on how many SNMP capable network devices you can manage, performance paramaters may limit you to approx. 75 devices.

To manage additional devices you can purchase further Management Licence (ML) packs (up to the 30 servers/500 clients limit) but “all purchases of additional ML license packs must be made through the same channel on which the Essentials Server was purchased; additional ML License Packs purchased through Volume License will not work on Retail and OEM Essentials Server installations”.

If you grow beyond the limit of 30 servers and 500 clients, you can migrate to the full versions of System Center Operations Manager and System Center Config Manager. More info can be found here.

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Windows 7 at WinHec Conference


This week saw another Microsoft conference, this time WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference) and, as at the PDC, Windows 7 has featured heavily. So too has Windows Server 2008 R2 and it appears Windows 7 and Win Svr 2008 R2 are going to be released on the same day, according to Mary Jo Foley.

New features will include:

  • Direct Access support, eliminating the need for VPN connections for secure communications
  • Branch-office caching (hosted server caching)
  • Version 2.0 PowerShell and Hyper-V releases
  • Support for .Net and PowerShell in the Server Core role
  • Live migration support within Hyper-V
  • Terminal Services gets repositioned and renamed as Remote Desktop Services

    • The inclusion of Hyper-V R2 with it’s Live Migration feature is a huge thing, really putting Microsoft’s Virtualization offering on a par with it’s biggest rival, VMWare.

    Windows Server 2008 R2 is going to bring a whole host of great features into the business world, to make businesses more efficient, cost effective and streamlined. Once that is coupled with Windows 7, I think Microsoft will again have really changed the game…so many things for so many people are going to be so much better!

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    Windows 7 Application Compatibility


    Windows 7 Application Compatibility is a hot topic and will only get hotter as the next MS Operating System gets ever closer. Will there be the same issues as with Pre-SP1 Vista?

    Microsoft have stated that the vast majority of apps that currently work on Vista will work with Windows 7 too, however it won’t (and couldn’t be expected to be) 100%. It an effort to head off any potential problems at the pass Microsoft have released the “Windows Application Quality Cookbook” which contains a list of the aspects most likely to cause problems for developers.

    These are:

  • Internet Explorer 8—User Agent String
  • Internet Explorer 8—Data Execution Protection/NX
  • Removal of Windows Mail
  • Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ)—Removal of Windows 2000 Client Support Service
  • Compatibility — Operating System Versioning
  • Server Core — WoW64 Is Now an Optional Feature
  • User Interface—Enhanced Taskbar
  • Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ)—Improved Queue Handling
  • Windows Server — Terminal Services
  • User Interface — High DPI Awareness
  • Removal of WPDUSB.SYS Driver for Windows Portable Devices
  • Server — Hyper-V
  • Server — 64-Bit Only
  • File Library Replaces Document Folder
  • New Binaries—Refactoring
  • Compatibility—Application Manifest
  • Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ)—SHA-2 Is the Default Encryption Algorithm
  • User Interface—User Access Control Dialog Updates

    • I got this from Mary Jo Foley over at All About Microsoft.

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    PDC 2008 Wrap Up


    I think we can all agree that the PDC 2008 was pretty special. Azure, Windows 7, Office Web, Azure Services, Live Mesh..the list goes on. The sheer amount of information given out at these conferences often means that we miss bits that are interesting and/or pertinent to our jobs & lives (this was certainly the case when I was at the WPC in Houston!).

    Fear not, as Mike Swanson over at MSDN Blogs has put together a wonderful collection of all the Keynotes and sessions, and where possible he’s included the Powerpoints and sample code!

    Some of the sessions I’m glad to see are below. The main links go to the video on Channel9, the Powerpoint link will download the .pptx presentation.

    A lap around the Azure Services Platform (Powerpoint)

    Microsoft Office Communications Server & Exchange: Platform Futures (Powerpoint)

    Office Communications Server R2: Enabling Unified Communications (Powerpoint)

    Microsoft Silverlight 2 for Mobile: Developing for Mobile Devices (Powerpoint)

    The whole, wonderful list can be found here. There are countless sessions on SQL, Azure, .NET, Windows 7 and more!

    I really want to give a big thank you to Mike for doing this..there are sooo many sessions on there I didn’t know about that are really interesting and useful!

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    Rick Astley-Never Gonna Give You Up Literal Video


    Rick Astley’s classic “Never Gonna Give You Up” is now a literal video-brilliant!

    It was great to see Rick voted “Best Act Ever” at last night’s MTV EMA awards here in the UK! Finally some proper recognition 🙂

    I’m a big fan of Rick and Literal Videos so this is a great combo. I don’t think it’s overall as good as the others but it’s still pretty great!

    A shout out to OxyWeb for finding this.

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    Microsoft after PDC 2008


    Where is Microsoft after this year’s PDC Conference?

    I think Microsoft is in a very strong position-at the head of many points of the market, and hot on the heels of the leaders in others..Cloud computing, Web applications, Desktop OS, Collaboration and more..

    Windows Azure & Windows 7 have had a massive amount of buzz around them, and it nearly all seems to be good! I’ve got a few colleagues in the “Anti-Vista” camp but even they are cautiously optimistic about what Win7 will bring us…I am ridiculously excited and everyone else is looking forward to it 🙂

    Azure instantly puts MS in the top 3 players in the Cloud space, and I don’t think it will be long before the No.1 spot is theirs.

    Office Web Apps shows that Microsoft ARE taking the web seriously and as an answer to Google, it’s a pretty good one! This will bring online apps to a whole new section of users..I don’t use Google Apps for many reasons..but I’ll definitely use Office Web…

    Live Mesh was another big part of PDC 2008 and this could seriously make peoples lives easier, faster and more fulfilling…if it’s executed correctly. Mesh isn’t a huge concern for me personally (at the moment) but could be important for so many others.

    All in all I think the most important thing that PDC 2008 has done is breathe new life into Microsoft, it’s partner eco-system and the end users, who let’s face it are the ones that REALLY matter! People once again believe in Microsoft, are excited by Microsoft and dare I say it, people LIKE Microsoft!!! 🙂

    As Steve Clayton says, this really is Microsoft 3.0.

    So hats off to Bill, Steve(s), Ray and the 1000’s of others who have helped with this and long may it continue!

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    Free Windows Mobile 7 phones..


    Free Windows Mobile 7 phones look set to be available from Carphone Warehouse (CW), when you buy a copy of Windows 7 for the PC.

    As CW open their electronic stores in conjunction with Best Buy next year, it looks like this will be a big promo for them.

    This could be a really successful offer as it rewards those who are loyal to Microsoft and also entices those who might be sitting on the fence as to one or both of the upcoming Operating Systems.

    More info can be found over at the Register.

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    Windows 7 Aero Shake


    Windows 7 Aero Shake is a new User Interface (UI) feature that looks pretty cool. It allows you to “shake” the app window that you want to focus on and that will minimize the other windows.

    Long Zheng has got a video over at his blog here.

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    Windows Mobile 6.5


    Windows Mobile 6.5 is the next version on the road map, as accidentally revealed by a Motorola Exec!

    WIth Windows Mobile 7 looking likely for a late 2010 release, we can expect WinMo 6.5 to be with us in the 2nd half of 2009. There’s currently no word as to which features will be in 6.5 and which won’t appear until V7.

    I’m excited to see what new features are contained in this as 6/6.1 had some great new stuff. Hopefully this will be an upgrade from 6.1 so I can get it on my HTC Diamond!

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    Hyper-V 2.0


    Hyper-V 2.0 features are already being discussed. Microsoft’s already great Virtualization product is going to get even better!

    The next version of Microsoft’s Hyper-V is going to include:

    ·         Live Migration (utilising a new Clustered Shared Volumes technology)

    ·         32 Logical Proc Support

    ·         Hot Add/Remove Storage

    ·         Second Level Address Translation – Leveraging new Virtualisation technology built into next generation of Intel/AMD chips

    ·         Dynamic Memory

    ·         Boot from VHD

    ·         Networking Improvements

    ·         Virtualised I/O

    As I get more info, I’ll let you know..I saw the above over at VirtualBoy.

    For me, the Live Migration will be a great addition as that’s one of the main differences between Hyper-V and ESX and I think it gives some people the impression that Hyper-V must be lacking elsewhere too (which isn’t the case). The addition of LIve Migration will certainly help increase the adoption rate of Hyper-V..

    It looks like we’re quite close to the beta’s being available..

    Cheers

    Rich

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