Thursday, December 20, 2012

SYSTEM CENTER 2012 SP1 - on TechNet/MSDN


Oh dear.

We’ve been waiting for this day so badly, that I can’t find the proper words.

Now, I know I sound like some mental geek or whatever term you would prefer to use, but this is a mixed bag. Yes – the software itself is amazing, and every component is truly leveraging the platform of Windows Server 2012. My bread and butter, which is Hyper-V, is most likely the most interesting I’ve been working with in my career, and Virtual Machine Manager will give this world class hypervisor some steroids in the long run.

A much, much deeper cluster and fabric integration than in previously releases, and all in all, better fabric management. Enhancements in services as well, letting you create more sophisticated distributed applications, using both Windows Servers and Linux – and you don’t have the domain limitations either.
Network virtualization and SMB3.0 support is one of the major topics. VMM will take care of it all.

Now this was just me rambling about VMM, but the key enhancements in Service Pack 1 from Microsoft is as follows:

Benefits

System Center 2012 SP1 delivers the following benefits:

Support for Windows Server 2012

Enables Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 to work together and also simplifies configuration and administration of new features introduced in Windows Server 2012 such as Hyper-V virtual networking.

Support for 360 Degree Application Monitoring

Enables you to monitor applications from outside your organization using the Global Service Monitor service, giving you a user’s view of application availability. Using the Operations Manager component of System Center 2012 you can schedule and monitor the results of synthetic transactions run against your web-facing application from the many Azure points of presence across the globe.

Support for Windows Azure Virtual Machines

Enables you to move virtual machines between your on-premises servers and Windows Azure with manual and automated management operations, further integrating Windows Azure cloud capacity into your datacenter.

Support for Hosted Service Provider Clouds

Enables you to integrate cloud capacity from Service Providers directly into your datacenter operations. Service Providers also benefit from a standardized and extensible REST OData API that enables integration with your management tools and the Service Provider’s own customer portal for self-service operations

System Center 2012 SP1 is only available on TechNet/MSDN for evaluation, testing and development (NO PRODUCTION), so use your TechNet/MSDN subscription to access the bits.

-kn

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