Actually, "Extending System Center" is a pretty broad title, because that could cover at least an entire chapter in a book (and it does, in System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed!). However, I wanted to mention a new product, Essential Business Server (EBS 2008), available from Microsoft as a Release Candidate beginning May 2008. The EBS product, geared towards the medium-sized market, runs on Windows Server 2008 and uses Essentials in the background. Essentials is part of EBS, but you don't actually see it. This is a very cool example of how Microsoft can use the System Center technology in the background as the management component for other products.  

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When you first install Operations Manager 2007, you may be a bit overwhelmed with all the information that is available to you (if you could figure out what it is and how to find it!), and the fact that you have to forget most of the things you learned if you had MOM 2005. However, there is training available, several books are out - I may be a bit biased, but System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed is the best one available, and there are also numerous utilities and software available for OpsMgr 2007, some of which is at no charge.

Be aware that the software listed in this article is not supported by its author(s) unless otherwise stated.

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Talking about MOF (or ITIL for that matter) isn't the most exciting topic in the world. But I thought it would be interesting to discuss how Microsoft eats their own dogfood, so to speak, in using MOF with its System Center family. Read on ...

Microsoft touts their Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) as a collection of best practices, principles, and models. The MOF provides direction to achieve reliability, availability, supportability, and manageability of mission-critical production systems, focusing on solutions and services using Microsoft products and technologies.

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Introducing a new blog - http://configmgr.spaces.live.com/, started in conjunction with my next book project. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Unleashed. I have three great coauthors - Byron Holt, Rod Trent (myITforum.com), and Pete Zerger (systemcenterforum.org).

The book is still in its early stages, but we hope to have it hitting the bookshelves (real and virtual) early next year.

If you want to hear what I sound like :), I was recently interviewed by Consortio Services - you can find the podcast discussing the Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed book at http://www.cstechcast.com/home.aspx?Episode=25.

I also spoke with John Fontana of Network World discussing Microsoft's announcements for Operations Manager at MMS 2008, that article is available at http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/051208-microsoft-management-plans.html.

Yes, Las Vegas is generally an interesting place without shows above and beyond its regular fare.

But the 2008 Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) had its own debut - pigs with wings. Now these were not live pigs, but four inches long by three inches high, complete with wings ... and sunglasses. And big smiles on their faces, being hurled by eager Microsofties into a cheering audience.

What was this about? Its often said that when Microsoft announced it was going open source, "pigs would fly" ... okay, you get it. The other saying at MMS this year was "well we tried to freeze this place over, but Las Vegas is too hot."

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Today at the 2008 Microsoft Management Summit (MMS), Bob Muglia's keynote focused on what Microsoft is calling the "Dynamic Datacenter." What does Microsoft mean by dynamic?

Microsoft has an infrastructure model, also known as the IO model, which can be considered a framework for aligning IT with business needs.The 4th stage of this model is "dynamic," where IT becomes a strategic asset to the organization. The IO model is discussed at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/infrastructure.

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I was asked the other day by Network World if I could respond to a reader's request to answer the question:
"If server/switch/router or application x is down, what else will be impacted?"

Good question. With today's distributed computing environment, application dependency mapping is crucial if you want to align IT applications with business processes. You want to be able to know if a database server is down, what applications are going to have problems since they use databases residing on that server. If a part of the network is down, or an application is inaccessible, what does that mean to the rest of the environment?

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Viruses and spyware just got more personal for me.

A friend of mine who's not terribly computer-literate called me late last week. His computer - which was heavily secured with the complete line up of a leading vendor's anti-virus software - had been badly infested by spyware. He took it to a local computer fix-it place who after two weeks gave up and reformatted the hard drive. When he bought the computer he was not given the Windows disks (fairly common among some large computer resellers), so the computer shop put a version of Windows on there that didn't pass the Windows Genuine Advantage test. Now I was being asked to help.

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Articles continue to appear questioning the Windows desktop. 0ne of them by Paul Thurrott in Windows IT Pro (http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/98874/does-windows-still-meet-your-needs.html) thinks Gartner is full of hot air.

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April 9, 2008, Gartner Emerging Trends conference - Apparently several Gartner Group analysts (Neil MacDonald and Michael Silver) had more things to say about Vista, and by extension, Windows in general. This included the complexity of the OS, its lack of modularity, and its hardware requirements. When looked at in light of an increasing movement to Web-based and other OS-agnostic applications, that's not good news.

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Now that's an interesting question. Which version are you most enamored with? Let's start by translating the version numbers into names. Windows 5.1 (client version) is Windows XP. Windows 6 client version is Windows Vista. Windows 7 ... well it doesn't exist yet, but it has been in the news this week.

Earlier this week, Bill Gates announced that Windows 7, code name of "Blackcomb" (named for a ski slope at Whistler, British Columbia), would be available sometime in 2009. Now unless you're in love with Vista, that's exciting. (And if you've installed Vista and like it, you may have been annoyed that there could be a new OS by next year.) However, by the next day, Microsoft announced that Windows 7 would not see the light of day prior to 2010.

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Its finally here! Operations Manager 2007 has been unleashed, and Network World is doing a giveaway for a free copy of System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed!

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The System Center Virtual User Group was launched on March 27th. This is a user group dedicated to providing resources for education and collaboration for users of Microsoft System Center technologies worldwide. Check it out at www.systemcenterusergroup.com.

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Operations Manager 2007 is a product established on the concept of model-based management. The abstraction of services into models is necessary to describe and act on physical entities such as routers, and logical entities such as distributed applications, using software tools.

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"Avodart" recently posted a comment to an entry on DSI dated 12/12/07. The comment read:

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Its been a long road, but today marks the official published date for System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed, ISBN 0672329557, at a whopping 1416 pages! The book is now being shipped to bookstores and online sellers such as Amazon.com.

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This was left as a comment to an earlier blog article:

"Nobody decides to pursue a career in IT because they find systems management fascinating. That's what a Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) MVP recently told me. And yet, IT professionals' highest priority, according to Windows IT Pro's 2006 Industry Trends survey, is "managing IT infrastructure," and their biggest pain point is "limited budgets and expanding responsibilities." Systems management may not be sexy, but it nevertheless consumes a huge amount of IT energy and effort—not to mention 70 percent of IT budgets."

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While Microsoft SQL Server is capable of supporting huge databases and applications, one of its marketing strengths in smaller organizations and departments is the perception that it "just runs itself" because of its automated tuning and maintenance features. Decentralized IT environments may even have individual departments where SQL Server is installed for departmental applications.

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The Command Shell is an Operations Manager specific implementation of PowerShell. PowerShell of course is Microsoft’s extensible command line interface and scripting language, available for Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and part of Windows Server 2008.

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