I am writing this blog full with excitement. Why? Because me and my team would be going to showcase loads of exciting stuffs to the folks who are attending this event.
The cool stuffs which we are going the share are:
i) Cross Platform Monitoring via OpsMgr 2007 R2 Beta1
Here we will demo how OpsMgr will be able to monitor and manage non-windows servers. We setup 3 Linux servers (2 SUSE 1 Red Hat) and all of them would be monitored natively from OpsMgr
ii) SLA Dashboard
How would your IT managers be able to measure actual Service Availabilty against predefined Service Level Agreement ? SLA Dashboard in OpsMgr provides you all the reports that you need for you to do this !
iii) Desired Configuration Management (DCM)
How do I know whether the configurations of my servers complied to my standards defined in my organization ? If they are "drift" in the configurations, how do we detect them ? DCM is a feature within ConfigMgr2007 that scans for configurations drifts in your machines (not only servers but desktops and laptops as well !!!) and reports back to your ConfigMgr server
iv) Introduction to System Center Service Manager
The new kid on the block ... well it will be in about a year's time. Not only it will be the Service Management offering from Microsoft, it will also be the central integration point that connects the different solutions within Microsoft Sytem Center suit of applications !
v) Patch Management
How do I make sure that my machines are properly patched with the latest definitions ? And what if I want to patch non-Microsoft applications or even in-house developed applications ? We are going to share Patch Management using ConfigMgr2007 that would be able to not only manage the deployment of Microsoft patches but to a certain extent patches from non-Microsoft applications as well !
vi) Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool
We need to treat Virtualized servers with the same treatment and respect as Physcial servers. Hence when it comes to patch management, we will need to ensure that virtualized servers would need to be properly patched as well even those offline ones. The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing tool will enable to patching of offline virtual images within your environment
vii) Data Protection and Recovery
I am a backup administrator and my boss told me that I need to make sure that our Exchange Servers should be properly backedup. But I am no Exchange expert ?!!!! How do I know whether I can adequate backup Microsoft applications ?! With Data Protection Manager or DPM, the solution has all those "knowledge" built in the system so it basically knows what needs to be backed up not only for Exchange but the entire range of Microsoft solutions such as HyperV, SQL Server and the list goes on ! ALL IN ONE SINGLE AND EASY TO USE CONSOLE !
viii) Provisioning of Virtual Machines - Self Service Portal
How long does it take for your IT administrator to provision a virtual machine that you requested ? 1 week ? With Self Service Portal in Virtual Machine Manager or VMM, end user can literally provision a virtual machine by themselves and its really very quick and easy to do so !!!
