Marc Umeno: In advance of the Beta 2 release, folks from the team are starting to post demo videos on TechNet Edge.
There is one on
Managing Applications with Service Maps, and a few are starting to come out about the
Self-service User Portal.
More will follow soon…
The Data Protection Manager (DPM) team at Microsoft is happy to announce the arrival of Data Protection Manager 2010 Beta.
I am Anand Kamat, Group Product Manager for the DPM development team, and since shipping DPM 2007 SP1 in Jan 2009, we have been on an amazing journey to get this feature packed release out to all our customers. This release has been different than our usual model. We moved our development model to shorter milestones. Though it made our pace extremely hectic, it allowed us to validate and stabilize key features in batches (well before Beta). Our 50+ CTP customers have given us a thumbs up for the DPM 2010 Beta feature set; it is ready for the rest of the world to start working with; and our team is looking forward to hear from you. (
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Microsoft® System Center Essentials 2010 provides IT professionals in mid-sized organizations, a unified physical and virtual management experience. It enables you to better secure, update, monitor, and troubleshoot from a single console, so you can efficiently and proactively manage your IT environment.(
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The OpsMgr 2007 R2 Sizing Helper is an interactive document designed to assist you with planning & sizing deployments of Operations Manager 2007 R2. It helps you plan the correct amount of infrastructure needed for a new OpsMgr R2 deployment, removing the uncertainties in making IT hardware purchases and optimizes cost. A typical recommendation will include minimum hardware specification for each server role, topology diagram and storage requirement.(
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Microsoft has a comprehensive portfolio of technologies when it comes to Virtualization ranging from Presentation Virtualization with Remote Desktop Services to Server Virtualization using Hyper-V with many more in between.(
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The System Center Online team has been working hard in preparation for its next beta release of System Center Online Desktop Manager, expected in the fall of this year. This exclusive beta will only be available to a select number of customers. Our last beta was only offered to a small audience and resulted in a lot of great feedback from the customers who participated. This time we are widening the scope to include a few hundred customers. Here's what will be included in the upcoming release:(
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In some environments, network device drivers and/or infrastructure take longer to load than WinPE waits before running the task sequence. This can be due to congested DHCP scopes, link negotiation latency or slow loading network drivers. In these cases, it is necessary to delay the start of the task sequence until a valid IP address is obtained otherwise the task sequence will fail.(
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Michael Niehaus: Both MDT 2010 Lite Touch and ConfigMgr 2007 run the same task sequencer. This task sequencer can run any command that you want, just specify the command line to use. That’s the simple part – the harder part is figuring out what this command line should do. Often the command, a VBScript or PowerShell script, needs to get information from the task sequence itself, accessing variables in the task sequence environment. Remember, these task sequence variables aren’t environment variables – they are distinctly separate, so you can’t use the PowerShell “Env:” drive.(
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Support is now available for running Operations Manager 2007 SP1 and Operations Manager 2007 R2 on the following operating systems:
· Windows Server 2008 R2
· Windows 7
The official support statement is posted under
Knowledge Base article 974722. The supported configuration guides for R2 and SP1 will be updated shortly as well.
Jeff Wettlaufer: Hi everyone, we have had some feedback about running Windows 7 on Configuration Manager 2007, and we wanted to get something released on what version of ConfigMgr supports Windows 7 clients. Recently a posting went live about the support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in a ConfigMgr SP1 environment. I wanted to clarify what that support means as we have been communicating that the platform for these Operating Systems needs to be Service Pack 2, currently in Release Candidate status, and due for release at the end of October.(continue at source)
Operations Manager 2007 R2 now officially supports the agent on Windows Embedded Standard 2009. You can download the latest “System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Agent Prerequisites Macro for Windows Embedded Standard 2009 (x86) - (English)”, is now live on subscriber downloads. You can download it at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/downloads (continue at source)
Justin Incarnato writes: "Hello OM Community, Today we launched a new connect portal that will allow YOU to provide feedback to the OM team as well as participate in surveys that have been traditionally reserved for our TAP programs. All you need to do is be registered on connect and you'll be able to participate. Thanks, Justin"
Check it out here, https://connect.microsoft.com/opsmgr
Our friends from Activewin have just posted their extensive Windows 7 review. Want to know the ins- and outs of Windows 7? then this review is the one to read.
This October Microsoft will release Windows 7 world-wide, the successor to Windows Vista and Windows XP (again), a major upgrade that promises to further improve the user experience on different PC form factors such as the popular Netbook. For the past couple of weeks the ActiveWin.com Team spent some time testing the Windows 7 (RTM) Release to Manufacturing build, which is the final build that will be available in stores and new PC’s around the world (that goes for Intel Macs too).
Visit the Activewin.com Windows 7 Review
J.C. Hornbeck: We published a new KB article last week that describes an update rollup package that enables Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to support clients that are running Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7:
KB974236 - Update rollup for System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 to add support for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 clients
Jason Sandys: Announcing my latest venture into coding and improving the experience of Operating System Deployment: OSD++.
OSD++ is a better way to get input from the user and populate task sequences variables. It retrieves values from the registry, queries WMI, and/or prompts the user for input via an input box or a drop-down box. All values retrieved are stored in internal OSD++ variables that can be used as replacement variables in further data retrieval. They can also be written out to the registry or used to set task sequence variables.
OSD++ variables can also be persisted in a file that can be loaded by OSD++. This is useful during refresh scenarios to display the interface to the user before the task sequence begins, save their responses to the variable file, and then using another run of OSD++, output the saved responses to task sequence variables.
Get it here: http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jsandys/pages/osdplusplus.aspx
Summary: as part of our deployment of Windows 7 to Microsoft IT's users we developed some tools to enhance the experience. In case you have similar needs, we're pleased to be able to share them with you.
These are especially exciting times on the team that I work on: our implementation of OSD is being used extensively in the migration of Microsoft’s internal computers to Windows 7 RTM (the ‘gold’ version). Historically Microsoft users have relied on RIS, WDS, DVDs, or file shares to get the new operating systems. For our technical users that was ‘good enough’ but of course they were missing out on the data migration and other features of OSD.
In preparing to use OSD we not only ensured our infrastructure was ready for this new workload but we also created some tools to enhance the experience:
1. OSD Tools
* These provide administrator-configured preflight checks and input wizards that are user-friendly. They take ConfigMgr OSD, which is primarily designed for administrator-driven OS deployments, and make it more user-driven
2. Driver Synch Tool
* The Driver Synch tool is built to simplify adding drivers to your WSUS-based SUP servers, since your ConfigMgr clients can’t pull drivers directly from WU/MU. This tool allows drivers listed in a spreadsheet to be populated into WSUS, or based on Configuration Manager device hardware data. This is especially important for Windows 7 since Windows 7 expects to check WU/MU for the latest and greatest drivers.
We’re pleased to share these tools with you. We’re doing that via the Microsoft Connect site. The overall project is called “Modena” and you can get details on how to subscribe at: http://blogs.technet.com/osd/archive/2009/07/29/joining-modena-beta-tools-program.aspx
Steve Rachui: This is part 2 of my a series of posts describing monitors. The first post discussed unit monitors and can be found here. This post discusses aggregate monitors. As mentioned in the first post, unit monitors can be thought of as the workhorse of monitoring. Unit monitors are just that – a unit of monitoring. A self contained engine to monitor a specific item and reflect the result in terms of health state, alerting and diagnostic/recovery. Aggregates act as a collector and consolidator of information and ultimately reflect the collective result of unit monitors. For any defined class in OpsMgr there are 5 defined aggregate monitors – Entity Health, Availability, Configuration, Performance and Security. This is shown below for the Windows Computer object.(continue at source)
Steve Rachui: There are two key ways of delivering monitoring in opsMgr 2007 – rules and monitors. At first glance, rules appear to deliver much the same monitoring as monitors.
There are some similarities for sure but rules and monitors are actually very different things. There are two major things to understand about rules compared to monitors. Rules have zero impact on measuring the health of the object being monitored. In addition, rules can collect data and monitors don’t. An example is instructive. If you have a need to both collect performance data and also have the measurement of the same performance data impact the total health of the monitored object, you need both a rule and a monitor. Why? Again, monitors don’t collect anything – they just evaluate the data live and reflect back what is found in terms of health state changes. Rules collect data but have no impact on health state. So, in this example scenario, you need both.(continue at source)
Historically, management packs have been comprised of a single XML file (either in XML format in a .xml file or in a binary representation in a signed .mp file). With the new version of the common System Center management pack infrastructure that ships in Service Manager, the definition of a management pack is being extended to include associated “resources” such as images, form assemblies, workflow assemblies, reports, T-SQL scripts, and more. The aggregation of the XML (or even multiple XMLs) plus its associated resources is called a “management pack bundle”.(continue at source)
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 is the newest version of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, a Solution Accelerator for operating system and application deployment. MDT 2010 supports deployment of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in addition to deployment of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP.
What’s New in MDT 2010
Improvements to the newest version of MDT allow you to:
* Access deployment shares from anywhere on the network and replicate files and settings across organizational boundaries or sites.
* Organize and manage drivers, operating systems, applications, packages, and task sequences with an improved UI.
* Automate UI functionality using the Windows PowerShell command line interface.
Download: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010
Today, the System Center team is excited to share with you our plan to release System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R3. This new release of the ConfigMgr is packed with some extremely cool features, which over the coming months we plan to share with you in different ways.
Recent shifts in the world economy have brought new focus on IT departments, and also to technology investment. Organizations are being pressured to do more with less, while at the same time manage an increasing range of working scenarios, mobility requirements, and business demands. Through all of this, they need to maintain security levels, answer compliance challenges and address the growing Green IT landscape. (continue at source)
Meer dan Beheer is het evenement rondom Windows infrastructuren, Virtualisatie en beheer met System Center. In samenwerking met Microsoft en andere sponsoren organiseert INOVATIV een dag vol met interessante sessies over Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V en System Center.
In deze sessies wordt niet alleen informatie gegeven over deze producten en oplossingen, maar wordt ook hands-on gedemonstreerd. Op donderdag 17 september aanstaande bent u van harte welkom in het Microsoft Innovation Center in Barneveld voor de keynote en breakout sessies
Ga voor meer informatie naar: http://www.meerdanbeheer.nl
Support for AMT provisioning through SCCM was introduced in SCCM SP1. Being able to manage systems through AMT is extremely useful and there is a good amount of documentation already about using SCCM and AMT. Working through this technology I thought it would be helpful to have flowcharts that document how provisioning works both with SCCM natively supported AMT systems (AMT firmware version 3.2.1 forward) vs. legacy provisioning (firmware less than 3.2.1). There are two provisioning options – in band and out of band. The flowchart goes into depth on each and includes sample logs and step by step processing during the provisioning process. (continue at source)
The System Center Configuration Manager team would like to announce that the following has been released and available for download:
Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 2 Release Candidate
This is the official Release Candidate build for Configuration Manager 2007 SP2.
New features:
- Refer to the SP2 Overview article posted on the primary Configuration Manager MSConnect site for all the new features and new supported configurations
- Hotfixes included in SP2 article can be found on the primary Configuration Manager MSConnect page.
- Deployment guides for BranchCache and the new AMT features are available in the download section.
- The new OpsMgr07 R2 ConfigMgr07 Management Pack can also be downloaded, this supports 64bit OpsMgr client agents.
- Please review the Release Notes before performing any installation and upgrade.
Feedback and Support:
- All registered Sp2 Open Beta users can submit bugs, design change requests (DCR’s), and other feedback. See the help link on the ConfigMgr MSConnect homepage for more instructions.
- Newsgroups are a great way to post questions and receive general support question answers.
If you experience any issues with the download or the MSConnect site please contact, sccmtap@microsoft.com
Regards,
The Configuration Manager Customer Team
PKI Certificates serve to protect web sites by enabling SSL, secure cross-server communication and see many other uses.
The PKI Certificate Verification MP discovers PKI Certificates and Certificate Revocation Lists inside computers' local certificate stores. It helps preventing service interruptions caused by invalid certificates by alerting when:
- a certificate’s lifetime is about to expire
- a certificate’s lifetime has ended
- a certificate has become invalid because of a different reason
- a CRL has not been updated in a timely manner
The MP conatins a full set of inventory reports to help you audit certificates. The included guide contains detailed instructions on how to configure the MP.(continue at source)
| 29 Sep '09 - 20:20 | kenneth van surksum | 
no comments | news source ~ System Center Operations Manager Team Blog 
