This was a good session about Configuration Manager 2012, and the new (more modern) way to deploy applications to the enterprise. Gone is the 'package' model (well not gone, you can still use it) but in is the the new Application model. It's built for the 21st century and how...
This session was a bit drier than others and it was mostly demos, so a bit light on technical content. The basic concept is that Microsoft System Center Service Manager and Orchestrator can be used together, along with other System Center products, to automate delivering IT services to customers. Microsoft...
This is the third and final article covering the content presented in the TechEd 2012 Configuration Manager 2012 pre-conference session, PRC04. Check out part one here and part two here. Software Updates Do not use WSUS for software updates. Poor reporting and you don't know the real status of the machines....
This is the second article covering the content presented in the TechEd 2012 Configuration Manager 2012 pre-conference session, PRC04. You can check out part one here and part three here. Migrating from ConfigMgr 2007 Do not do a 'big bang' migration and there's no reason to do so. Both environments (2007 and...
Today is the first day of Microsoft TechEd 2012, the annual mega Microsoft conference that I've attended for nearly 10 years. I attended a pre-conference session for Configuration Manager 2012. It was a good session with lots of great details. Because of the length of the session (about 6 hours)...
For those of you using Cisco UCS servers and the new Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager 2012, check out the UCS Management Pack v2.5. You can download it from here. According to the release notes the following operating systems are supported:Windows Vista Windows Server 2008Windows Server 2008 R2Windows 7What's new...
If you are a Cisco UCS customer and want to experiment with configurations but don't want to mess up your production environment, Cisco offers the free UCS Platform Emulator VM. They regularly update the emulator, and their most current version is v2.0.94849.368934. You can download the emulator here. You can...
One of the objectives for SM 2012 is to deliver IT as a Service (ITaaS). ITaaS objectives are to reduce costs, increase service levels, faster time to delivery, provide more data, more transparency, and increased compliance. Implementation components include automation, standardization, self-service, and compliance. The deployment of these components are...
This session focused on the brand new services template module in VMM 2012. Service templates are a method to rapidly, consistently deploy, and maintain applications regardless of what hypervisor (Hyper-V, ESX or XenServer) that you use. So this entire session applies to customers even if you are a VMware shop,...
This session covered how System Center Service Manager 2010 really integrates many of the System Center components to allow an organization to follow industry best practices, such as ITIL and MOF. Without an integrated solution, it's really hard automate these processes to reduce operational expenses and meet defined SLAs or customer...