Microsoft signs off on final releases of two management products
Microsoft has released to manufacturing two of its key system management products: System Center Essentials 2010 and Data Protection Manager 2010.
Microsoft officials made the RTM announcement on April 19, the kick-off day of the Microsoft Management Summit. (Nope, I didn't go to Vegas, after all; I'm covering MMS from afar...)
What's new in this pair of on-premises management products? Jason Buffington, Senior Technical Product Manager for System Center, gave me a virtual walk-through:
System Center Essential 2010: The biggest news around this suite, aimed at mid-size companies (with 25 to 500 PCs, by Microsoft's definition) is the integration of elements of Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, Buffington said. The SCE 2010 release enables users to maintain management across physical/virtual server environments, he said. The suite -- which includes elements of Microsoft's enterprise-management suite, such as Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Windows Server Update Services and more -- now provides users with a unified view of their physical and virtual systems.
MSDN and TechNet subscribers can get the final SCE 2010 bits as of today, April 19. Volume licensees can get them during May, and full packaged product availability will be no later than June 1, Buffington said.
Data Protection Manager 2010 (codenamed "Zinger"): The big news here is on the scale-up/enterprise-level functionality Microsoft has focused on with this release, Buffington said. From a single DPM 2010 server, customers can manage 100 production servers, 1,000 Windows clients and/or 2,000 SQL Server databases, he said. DPM 2010 adds support for Exchange Server 2010, SharePoint Server 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2 workloads, and adds support for Windows Server 2008 R2's Hyper-V Live Migration capability. The latest release also can protect disconnected Windows clients (the policies will stay in effect even when clients are offline).
MSDN/TechNet subscribers and volume licensees can get the final DPM 2010 bits in May. Full packaged product availability for DPM 2010 will be no later than June 1, Buffington said.