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MMS 2007 Keynote, Day 1
Today, at the opening keynote on the Microsoft Management Summit 2007, Bob Muglia announced some interesting things. One of the things he noted was that in 2007 their DSI, Dynamic Systems Initiative, will really start to deliver. Microsoft sees prominent positions for Windows Vista, Forefront, System Center, Windows Server "Longhorn" and Office to deliver on DSI. Bob also said that the successor to SQL 2005 will come in the beginning of 2008. Five industry trends will be important; Industry Standards, Virtualization, Regulatory Compliance, Diverse IT Architectures and Convergence of Systems & Security & Storage management. Microsoft sees Virtualization as "core" to their business deliveries. Bob talked about Infrastructure Optimization (IO) where you can see that DSI will enable business to progress from the different phases; from Basic to Dynamic.
Microsoft is investing heavily into virtualization; from OS virtualization (Virtual PC, Virtual Server 2005 and codename "Veridian" on Longhorn Server) to Application Layer virtualization (Softgrid) to Presentation Layer virtualization (Terminal Services) and managing all those layers using System Center. Bob hinted that the future could behold that desktops will be delivered using OS virtualization. I am not sure about this to be the final naming, but Bob talked about codename "Veridian", the hypervisor technology to Longhorn Server as Windows Server Virtualization (WSV).
Jeff Woolsey did a demo on Virtualization with System Center on Windows Server "Longhorn". He was using the Windows Server "core" version of Longhorn with WSV to have minimal overhead and get effective hypervisor virtualization. Jeff noted the x64 support (VM and physical) and mixed support for "legacy" x86 virtual machines. He demo'd running virtual machines running windows and linux. Jeff talked that it would support 8-core cpu's, which large competitors do not support at the moment.
Virtual Machine Manager (VM)), part of System Center, was shown to manage virtualization throughout the enterprise. VMM will support physical-to-virtual (P2V) migration, virtual-to-virtual (V2V) migration and live migration of VM's to other boxes, while running. A great part of the demo was the integration between Operations Manager (OM) 2007 and VMM. Alerting can be done on the VM environment, for instance on VM's that need more cpu, memory or disk power. Very cool was that Veridian / WSV will support live adding of those resources! Below the hoods these are powershell scripts. Microsoft believes that within several years that EVERY component in the IT infrastructure will be virtualized.
Bob talked about Systems Modeling Language (SML) as a driver for capturing knowledge and successor to Systems Definition Model (SDM). SML is supported by large industry players and is key to System Center for knowledge transfer. Some examples of where SML is used; Operations Manager 2007 Management Packs, Powershell Commandlets, Group Policy and best practices. A major announcement was that Microsoft is partnering with Cisco and EMC to design the next generation of (core) SML models to describe networking and storage components on an IT infrastructure.
During the slide about Knowledge-Driven Management Bob talked about System Center Service Manager as the enabler for those ITIL-based operations. This seems to be the final naming for what is currently called codename "Service Desk". It was also on the slide about all members of the System Center Family.
As expected, Bob announced the RTM of Operations Manager 2007 and will be available next week. Barry Shilmover demo'd the Line of Business capabilities. He had some new management packs or connectors, because it clearly showed components about Exchange Servers, SAP, EMC components and F5 networking. Key things like Diagram View, inline tasks and Problem Path was shown. Partners like Jalasoft and Engyro were noted to provide heterogeneous management.
EMC was invited to stage to talk about network-aware monitoring in conjunction with Operations Manager 2007, technically based on and working together with EMC S.M.A.R.T.S. Bob Muglia actually said a key thing; they were really bringing more integration in the network-aware monitoring area in the next version of Operations Manager; the EMC S.M.A.R.T.S. connector will be built in!
There are a lot of bloggers present at the summit. For some more scoops, have a look at Stefan Stranger's and Steven Bink's weblog.