Manage Complexity and Achieve Agility with Microsoft System Center

What a mouthful. This is an overview session for the whole of the System Center suite.


Brad Anderson is the General Manager for Microsoft Management (both infrastructure, like Group Policy, and products--the System Center family).

In the enterprise, 70% use SMS, 50% use MOM. "Industry Megatrends" (again):
1. Compliance & Governance
2. Expanding Datacenter
3. Software & Services
4. Extreme Mobility
Not sure that there is a 1-to-1 mapping between these mega-trends and Bob Kelly's.

Microsoft deployed 100 000 servers in Data Centers in the last year. Power and cooling are huge cost--how does virtualization make things easier. 70% of IT budgets are spent on maintaining existing infrastructure.

Infrastructure Optimization Model (Check out through the System Center web site):
Basic - IT is a cost center - $1320/pc
Standardized - IT is an efficient cost center - $ 580/pc
Rationalized - IT is a business enabler - $ 230/pc
Dynamic - IT is a strategic asset

It is going to be worth doing a cost/benefit analysis using these figures to look at the cost of managing the machines we manage.

When application/service is being developed, use DSI on how it is deployed , configured and modelled.

Upgrade to Vista costing $30 per PC using System Center Configuration Manager.

Data Protection Manager--demo. Under the covers, this is VSS with a reasonably usable UI on top. When looking at an exchange server, you pick, not the drive, but the exchange store. With SQL, pick the specific databases; with file servers, pick the drives. In each case, you have a scenario specific to choose.

Systems Center Operations Manager--move from monitoring devices, to monitoring services. SCOM 2007 SP1 RC1 is fully supported. RTM in early February.

To fully manage desktops:
- Vista Enterprise
- Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack
- Forefront Client Security
- System Center

SCCM 2007 allows management (and hence software updates) over the internet.

Announcing System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 (same platform as GP) .

Jeff Wetlauffer demo: desktop and mobile device management space. Demonstrating the task sequencer from SCCM 2007. Again talking about the driver catalog and how only the appropriate drivers are made part of the image. Can make sure that the disk is partitioned in the same way on all machines getting the OS. (e.g. 1 partition that is 4gig and the second one that is 100% of the remainder of the disk space.

Now he's using operations manager monitoring Vista--showing us data on the time it takes for client machines to boot. It is broken up to show different parts of the boot sequence so we can see that there is a perf degradation over time--and we can see what the likely cause is. Seeing root causes like CPU over-utilized; fragmented files and exhausted memory.

This week launching configuration packs for doing desired configuration management. Allowing administrators to check for drift from the standard configurations.

Another demo of Softgrid--now showing us at a more technical level--that running an app through Softgrid actually runs the app on the client machine without touching the client registry--so where there is a need for two different apps to ahve mutually exclusive registry settings, we don't have a problem running both apps on the same machine at the same time.

48% of crit-sits (critical situations) would be avoided using SCOM desktop monitoring and DCM. Interesting way to reduce support burden. Maybe we should be thinking about using SCOM to monitor Vista machines as we roll them out.

Server Management Suite Enterprise --check out the link--might be cost effective:
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/svrmgmtsuites/howtobuy/default.mspx
We would get a combination of management products, and the ability to manage unlimited number of virtualized machines: "Comprehensive solution for end-to-end management of physical and virtual server environments that includes the Enterprise Server management licenses for Operations Manager 2007, Configuration Manager 2007, and Data Protection Manager 2007; the license for Virtual Machine Manager 2007; and, rights to manage an unlimited number of operating system environments on a single server ."