SCCM 2007 R3 Announced

The System Center team has today announced the plans for the upcoming SCCM 2007 R3.

The added features are mostly about power management,  a feature I think captures the zeitgeist in a great way.

In these times of financial crisis, IT-departments are looking to cut costs, and are at the same time encouraged to “think Green IT”

The upcoming release of the SCCM 2007  R3 can help IT-departments address both these concerns – by providing tools for power management for SCCM 2007 clients.
More

SCCM 2007 SP2 Beta Available on Connect

The most notable new features are the new Operating System Support
• Windows 7
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2008 SP2
• Windows Vista Sp2

To get your hands on it you must register at Microsoft Connect.
( Right now the Service Pack  are not available.  The MS team had to pull it from the site because of some issues with the installer -but it will probably be back up any minute..)

Chris Adams and Cameron King from The Microsoft SCCM 2007 OSD engineering team have made a webcast of the presentation they held at MMS in Las Vegas this spring on how Microsoft deploys Windows 7.

The webcast is available from  Here

The Microsoft SCCM 2007 OSD engineering team have also made  a post on how to utilize BGInfo.exe from the Sysinternals Suite in OSD.
BGInfo can be used to give end-users a stylish and informative background-screen that will show the user whats going on right now and where in the overall OSD process the machine is at this time.

Check out their blog at “Cravings of OSD”

HP Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center released

As HP promised at MMS, they have just released their HP Insight Control Suite for System Center.

HP Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center enables Microsoft System Center customers to deploy, monitor, control, and optimize their HP ProLiant and HP BladeSystem platforms directly from Microsoft System Center products.

• Deploy servers quickly: Quickly and reliably configure, deploy and update HP ProLiant servers through Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, including pre-OS server configuration and firmware and driver update.

• Proactively monitor health: Enable System Center Operations Manager and System Center Virtual Machine Manager to respond intelligently to hardware events, including automating virtual machine evacuation from distressed hardware.

• Control from anywhere: Take control of servers regardless of location, reduce travel time, and accelerate server recovery by launching iLO Advanced directly from System Center Operations Manager.

• Optimize power confidently: Up to triple data center capacity by safely capping power usage to fit more servers within existing power envelopes – without putting the electrical infrastructure at risk – with Insight Control power management.

• Unmatched service levels: With HP Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center, customers can take advantage of Insight Remote Support, advanced server monitoring built on HP Systems Insight Manager, that automatically forwards HP ProLiant and BladeSystem service events to HP call centers and tracks server warranty and support contract status.

Have a look at this video where Brad Anderson and Scott Farrand talks about the basic functionality and also check out the other more marketing oriented videos highlighting key features.

This all sounds very interesting and I can’t wait to get my hands on this and start poking around.

Read More