Entries tagged with management - TechNet Edge

System Center and Microsoft Exchange 2010

Dave Morehouse — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:41:00 GMT

PART 4 of 4

In this episode of Brad and Jeff's periodic chats about the management business at Microsoft, they talk about how System Center fits in the constellation of platform and server releases in the fall of 2009.

In part 4, Brad and Jeff cover briefly how System Center supports key workloads, such as Microsoft Exchange.

Also in this episode:

System Center and Windows 7

Dave Morehouse — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:05:00 GMT

PART 2 of 4

In this episode of Brad and Jeff's periodic chats about the management business at Microsoft, they talk about how System Center fits in the constellation of platform and server releases in the fall of 2009.

In part 2, Brad and Jeff talk about all the improvements in System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 and R3 that make deployment and management of Windows 7 clients far more energy efficient and cost effective than ever before.

Also in this episode:

System Center and Windows Server 2008 R2

Dave Morehouse — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:29:00 GMT

PART 3 of 4

In this episode of Brad and Jeff's periodic chats about the management business at Microsoft, they talk about how System Center fits in the constellation of platform and server releases in the fall of 2009.

In part 3, Brad and Jeff treat the relationship of System Center to the latest release of the server platform, Windows Server 2008 R2.

Also in this episode:

Driving Manageability Across Microsoft

Dave Morehouse — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:31:00 GMT

PART 1 of 4

In this episode of Brad and Jeff's periodic chats about the management business at Microsoft, they talk about how System Center fits in the constellation of platform and server releases in the fall of 2009.

In part 1, the discussion focuses at a general level on how System Center is a business central to Microsoft, not only from the standpoint of its strategic value in the marketplace, but also in terms of its technical importance to businesses across the company, from Windows client to Windows server, to all of the key server workloads, especially Exchange.

In parts 2, 3, and 4 that follow separately, they talk specifically about the way in which System Center supports, respectively, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Microsoft Exchange.

Also in this episode:

System Center Home
Because It's Everybody's Business (the joint launch and campaign site)

Implementing System Center Operations Manager in a Large, Belgian Hospital

HeidiC — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:03:00 GMT

Alexandre Verkinderen, System Center Operations Manager MVP, talks about the monitoring solution he implemented at AZ Sint Maarten, a large Belgian Hospital. Sigurd Corluy, System Engineer for the hospital, joins and explains why they need a monitoring solution and why they chose SCOM 2007. The hospital has business-critical application needs, such as monitoring patient registrations and patient medical files. It has a custom-made management pack for these.

AZ Sint Maarten uses Savision LiveMaps in their NOC to display diagrams of the datacenter and business processes. The application provides an intuitive, graphical view of the health of their racks and business applications.

Arlindo Alves, Microsoft IT Pro evangelist, interviews both.

Hyper-V: delegare l’amministrazione delle macchine virtuali

PierGiorgio Malusardi — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:49:00 GMT

Una delle domande più frequenti che mi vengono fatte, ultimamente, è come fare a delegare l'amministrazione di una o più macchine virtuali, in esecuzione su un host Hyper-V (o solo di alcune operazioni), senza dare però accesso in amministrazione all'host stesso.

Usando System Center Virtual Machine Manager, l'operazione è banale ed eseguibile dalla console di amministrazione.

Usando i tool nativi di amministrazione di Hyper-V (Hyper-V Manager per esempio) la cosa è un po' più complessa.

Nel video qui a fianco trovate come fare.

Buona visione.

Giorgio

Power Management and Troubleshooting Group Policy

Adam Bomb — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:04:00 GMT

I sat down with Michael Kleef and Mark Gray in the Group Policy team to talk about the kind of settings in Windows 7 that can be controlled by policy.
Mark also gives us a primer on how to troubleshoot group policy issues by turning on GP logging on the client.
Find out the latest about Group Policy by following the team blog.

What's new in Group Policy for Windows 7?

Adam Bomb — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:01:00 GMT

I recently visited again with Lilia and Michael in the Group Policy team, and they showed me a couple of the improvements coming for group policy management - the UI has been improved now so it's much easier now to see all the information available about a particular setting.
For all things Group Policy, check out the Tech Center on Technet.
You can follow Michael and Lilia from the Group Policy blog, and Michael's TechNet blog.

Using Service Manager with Operations Manager

Adam Bomb — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:01:00 GMT

While at MMS last April, I ran in to Clare Henry on the Ask the Experts night, and she introduced me to a few members of her team and got a demo for me of Service Manager.
It's pretty slick - you can use the trouble ticket tool to drive activities in Operations Manager. This way your help desk people can have basic operations activities performed without requiring administrative permissions or OpsMan access.
You can find out more about Service Manager here. Oh, and look, you can take it for a test drive.

TechNet Video: Virtualisierung und Verwaltung - Effizentes integriertes Management physischer und virtueller IT-Systeme

Michael Korp — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:36:00 GMT

Häufig "bricht" die Virtualisierung die normalen Prozesse im Betrieb der IT-Infrastruktur. Aber das muss nicht sein. Mit den richtigen Hilfsmitteln und Lösungen ist die Virtualisierung einfach ein weiterer Weg übliche IT-Dienste sehr effizient zum Anwender zu bringen und dabei mit den gleichen Werkzeugen des System Managements verwaltet zu werden. Dies gilt sowohl für den bereich der Hardwarevirtualisierung von Servern, wie auch den verschiedenen Clientfokussierten Technologien.

Exchange 2010 new Management Features with Astrid McClean

Adam Bomb — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:01:00 GMT

In this visit to Astrid, she showed me a few of the new management features in Exchange 2010. There are many administrative tasks that can now be done via a browser - no management console install required.
There are several things users can now do for themselves, like creating and managing distribution groups, again, via a browser interface.

Using PowerShell to manage GPOs

Adam Bomb — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:01:00 GMT

I went back to the Group Policy team to find out more about what I could do to manage machines using GPOs. This time Lilia, with some help from Lindsay, showed off ways you can use PowerShell to both query and make changes to registry settings.
Beyond the registry though, there are some settings you can make with Group Policy that aren't stored in the registry.

Lindsay demos a PowerShell script that she wrote searches for any kind of settings in all of the GPOs in a domain. You can find all the different values of a setting in your environment without opening up a report for each GPO. To get the script and read more about it, go to the Group Policy Blog.

Insight Control for System Center

Dave Morehouse — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:49:00 GMT

Brad Anderson chats with HP's Scott Farrand about a new management solution from HP, Insight Control for System Center, which integrates the hardware management features of HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers with Microsoft System Center.

For further info, check out this page on the HP site.

TechEd 2009 with Bill Ramos

Zach Skyles Owens — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:58:00 GMT

In this interview Bill Ramos, Program Manager for SQL Server Management Studio, talks about his upcoming sessions at TechEd. He’ll be talking about getting the most out of SSMS in addition to Policy Based Management and Data Collector. Check it out!

Desktop to Datacenter - Part 11 - Hyper-V Server 2008 Installing, Configuring, Managing

Viral Tarpara — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:21:00 GMT

Join Partner Technology Specialist, Matt McSpirit, on this multi-part virtualization series where he discusses the topic in depth showing demos and scenarios that customers go through. Whether you are a small IT shop learning about virtualization or a company designing a datacenter, watch these short videos to get you up to speed on what Hyper-V can do for you

This video is Part 2 - Hyper-V Installing, Configuring, Managing.

How System Center Helps Reduce IT Costs

Dave Morehouse — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 02:05:00 GMT

In this video, Jeff Wettlaufer begins to ramp up what will be happening at the Microsoft Management Summit this year in a chat with Brad Anderson, GM of the Management Services Division. They talk about System Center's role in reducing IT infrastructure costs and touch on desktop and server optimization, referring to some key documents that can be found on the Microsoft Core Infrastructure Optimization Web site (check it out!).

IT Manager Podcast #24 - High Performance Computing & Managing Teams

Rick Claus — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 08:01:00 GMT

In this episode of the IT Manager Podcast - we've stitched together 4 interviews we recorded at the Montreal International Gaming Summit in late November. Microsoft Canada used MIGS as a launch vehicle for High Performance Computing in Canada.

We get an update on the use of HPC in the Gaming industry and talk about how it can be used to help speed up the increasingly complex game development pipeline. This episode isn't just about technology - we also take the time to talk with Ubisoft Montreal about their approach to managing a team of developers and artists who created the long awaited FarCry 2 game title.

More information about the IT Manager Podcast series can be found on the IT Manager Podcast web page.

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Comments, Suggestions and Ideas for Future Topics can be left below as a comment or emailed directly to the IT Manager Podcast feedback alias at 1-800-693-3827

System Center Announcements at TechEd Barcelona

Dave Morehouse — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 05:45:00 GMT

Jeff Wettlaufer sits with Brad Anderson, general manager in the Management Services Division, to talk about the current state of the System Center product suite, and touches on some key announcements at TechEd 2008 in Barcelona. A big theme: how System Center can help save organizations money in managing their IT infrastructure.

What is New in Administration and Management with Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Adam Bomb — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Episode 6 in a series

I wrapped up my interviews with the OCS team with Anand Lakshminarayanan, who showed me some of the IT Admin specific features in OCS R2.

Color me impressed.

Need to plan an OCS architecture? How about a wizard that you provide with your locations, users, and feature requirements and it spits out a detailed Visio style architecture for you, including recommendations for number of servers and locations. Bandwidth requirements too!

Need to expose your OCS environment to the internet? No problem. Here's a wizard that will list out all the ports, IPs, etc. that you need to open. Just print it out and hand it off to your firewall guy.

Reports? Lots of reports added in R2. breakdowns of voice and video activity. Performance reports, including types of devices and how they're performing.

He also talks about virtualizing, scaling and managing OCS R2.

If you’re interested in learning more about Office Communications Server 2007 R2, go ahead and sign-up for their FREE virtual event and evaluation bits here: www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver

Desktop Virtualization and Configuration Manager

Dave Morehouse — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:20:00 GMT

Jeff Wettlaufer, technical product manager in System Center marketing, chats with Brad Anderson, GM of the Management Services Division, about the latest desktop virtualization innovations that are a part of the R2 release of System Center Configuration Manager 2007.

They briefly go over:

Key aspects of Configuration Manager R2
Application virtualization technology and the R2 release
Hardware virtualization technology included in MDOP licensing

Michael Noel on Virtualization Part II

Adam Bomb — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Part 2 of the video interview series with Michael Noel of Convergent Computing. Michael is a SharePoint MVP and recently sat down with Kelly Wagman from the System Center team to talk about some real world experiences he's had deploying our products.
In this video, Michael talks about using Virtual Machine Manager to deploy SharePoint in a virtual environment. He talks about disaster recovery and quickly provisioning a SharePoint farm.

Intro to System Center Essentials

Dave Morehouse — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:31:00 GMT

If you happen to be managing a mid-sized business IT environment (with, shall we say, ~50-500 desktops and up to 30 servers), and are tired of dealing with multiple tools and processes, and just wish you had a better way, David Mills, technical product manager, will show you what Microsoft has to offer in this space, System Center Essentials.

My chat with him starts with an intro to the product and the core issues it's designed to address, and he then shows us the product interface and gives us a walkthrough of the main features and benefits.

Edge at MMS!

Adam Bomb — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:29:00 GMT

hey - I just wanted to give you a heads up that Joey and I will be at MMS next week, covering the conference here on Edge. We'll have coverage starting Monday with recaps and demos of the announcements that are coming at the show.

I have to tell you, I got to see some of the stuff we'll be showing off at the conference, and I was blown away by it. Not moved to tears Scoble style, but bouncing on my feet excited about what we're doing. Keep checking back on Edge next week to see what's new, and leave us a comment here if there's something you'd like us to find out about for you while we're there.

And if you're attending the conference, and you spot a couple of overly-enthusiastic guys wearing Edge t-shirts and carrying cameras, come say hi!

Remote Server Admin Tools (RSAT) with Jason Leznek

Adam Bomb — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Jason looks after management in Vista, which makes him a busy guy. He was able to find time a quick 8 minutes for us between two meetings to give me a quick demo of the new RSAT tools for remote management of Windows Server 2003 and 2008. The new tool also includes support for Group Policy Preferences, which is a slick new feature that allows you to set defaults on a machine in the same way you'd set policy, but the user can later change them if they want to.
You can find more info at http://www.microsoft.com/grouppolicy

Windows 2008 Automation and Alerting Technologies

David Tesar — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:59:00 GMT

I met up with Otto Helweg and learned about some of the cool things you do out of the box with Vista and Server 2008 technologies around management, automation, and alerting. If you don't want or it doesn't make sense for your environment to fork over the cash for one of the full blown Microsoft SC* management software suites - this is a video you definitely want to watch. It's also interesting to see the types of things you can do on the fly, even if you already have a management/automation/alerting software in place.

Since this one is a little bit longer, I am including a breakdown of the video:

00:00 - Description of what he does in the Windows Server Customer Advisory Team (WinCAT)

01:20 - Tells us some of the management technologies he work to find solutions with: WMI, WinRM/WS web services for management (WS-man), Netnew, Windows eventing and forwarding, Task scheduler, powershell, group policy.

02:18 - Demo of triggering an event alert to centralized servers over the internet

04:33 - Whiteboard description of what happened. (see full description of this scenario below) DMTF = desktop management task force.

09:20 - Practical / Real-world application of where this scenario might be used

13:46 - Demo of WinRS doing a "dir /s" over an HTTP connection. How to make it

14:46 - How to make a secure connection using this

16:55 - Demo of subscribing to events using of a custom query filter and viewing them in the forwarded events log. Comparison and capabilities of Windows Server 2003 or below events to Windows Server 2008/Vista events. Description of the RenderingInfo section of the events. Attaching a task to an event. Showing the task automatically created in task scheduler.

23:22 - Triggers, Actions (now up to 32 serialized actions), in task scheduler.

26:43 - Recommended tips for how to get started with management technologies: Go to his blog (http://blogs.technet.com/otto), they are working on guides, some information on MSDN/TechNet.

Windows Server 2008 incorporates the most significant advance in enterprise management and automation technologies that assist IT in their efforts to achieve a “Dynamic Infrastructure” in the datacenter. This clip will not only show disparate in-the-box Windows Server 2008 management technologies, but demonstrate how they work together to enable new automation, alerting, and monitoring scenarios WITH NO CODE. These “Dynamic Infrastructure” foundational components include Task Scheduler automation, a new Windows Eventing and the Event Forwarding sub-system (with a peak at Windows Remote Shell).

These technologies will be presented in an enterprise context so they can be leveraged across a very large number of servers where automation, programmatic action, and alerting are critical. This demo will be enterprise management system agnostic, but provide the attendee with building blocks that will enable integration into existing IT monitoring systems. For this demo, the managed server is http://wsman.msft.net.

Demo steps include (easiest to follow along with 2 domain joined Vista/WS08 machines and a mutual Admin account):

· Use WINRS to connect to the managed server (winrs /r:<sever> cmd)

· Create a Windows Event subscription to the managed server using the local “Event Viewer”

· Stop and Start the Time Service (sc stop w32time) on the managed server

· Find the events in the local “Forwarded Events” log (note: you can increase the polling rate down from the default 15 minutes)

· Attach a Task to the forwarded events

This video takes this demo to the next level by managing a server that is outside the internal corporate network on a DMZ in the Internet. In addition, this managed server is in a workgroup and not domain joined.