Since I spend a great deal fo my time on here discussing Microsoft’s System Center products, I felt that I should make you all aware of a GREAT giveaway they are doing over at www.myITforum.com. They are having a raffle for a full attendance pass to MMS 2009 (www.mms-2009.com) donated by Secure Vantage Technologies, but you the raffle ends April 15th so get over there FAST! More info on the raffle (rules, fine print, you know the drill) can be found here: http://www.myitforum.com/contest/swag/mms2009.asp#.

Good luck!!!

I really wanted to sub-title this entry as: "Microsoft wants me to run how many System Center servers?!?!?" so I will.

I have been working with System Center Service Manager (Microsoft’s foray into the service desk arena), in some form or another, since it’s original announcement and beta release going on 2 years ago. Therefore, I am very excited that Service Manager is looking like it should see a release sometime in 2009 or 2010. And while I have found the latest iteration of Service Manager to be an excellent product (you can get info about downloading the latest beta of SM here: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/service-manager.aspx), what I really want to get into today is not SM’s capabilities (these may change over the next 12 or so months at least a little, plus most of it is still under NDA anyway) but the basic underlying architecture that Microsoft has chosen. Service Manager is built using the System Center Configuration Manager database. At first glance this may seem to be a good thing, Microsoft has found a way to consolidate databases making it possible to run 2 products SCSM and SCCM using only 1 database. But…The old (and new) version of Forefront, Microsoft’s anti-malware product, is built on the Operations Manager database. And again I hear you say "Great! Now I can run 4 products with only 2 databases." And once I again I say, "But wait there’s more." We still need WSUS to complete the management puzzle. So now we can manage our entire network using Microsoft’s System Center suite of products using (by my count) 5 products and a bare minimum of 6 servers, some of which may be virtualized against Microsoft’s recommendations. Awesome! Except I’m a mid-sized business so use Systems Center Essentials…

Oops!

So what are we Mid-Biz’s to do? As of right now I am sorry to say that I cannot find a way to put all the pieces together so that they fit. Obviously, for a mid-biz 6 servers just for management is not a realistic solution and that’s not even mentioning the overkill that SCCM and SCOM would be for someone with under 500 clients on their network. As I covered back in September, making SCE and Forefront work together is very possible, but trying to add Service Manager to the mix just does not work well right now.

Well, it is about time I got caught up out here. It’s been a while since I posted, due to the large number of upgrades and migrations I’ve been running at work.

Since early this year I have migrated from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007, replaced my existing anti-virus software with ForeFront Client Security, rolled out XP SP3 and Office 2007 SP1, installed a pilot program of Vista SP1, upgraded our AD from 2003 to 2008 and starting next week I am heading a full blown MOSS 2007 implementation. It makes me tired just typing it all.

Oh and I almost forgot that stuck in the middle of it all was TechEd 2008 in Orlando where I worked the System Center Essentials booth for Microsoft as well as doing a couple of talks and moderating a Birds of a Feather session for SMBs dealing with Microsoft and the overwhelming number of solutions they offer us. 

It’s been crazy and incredibly busy, but what a great set of solutions we are getting set up for the future!

I will be blogging all about the transitions that we have been going through as well as some of the gotchas I discovered along the way.

Stay tuned…