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Kerrie Meyler

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Comparing System Center Essentials with Operations Manager and Configuration Manager

By Kerrie Meyler on Sat, 01/05/08 - 2:41pm.

While I've talked a bit before about the differences between OpsMgr 2007 and System Center Essentials, in my earlier post on Microsoft System Center, the following two tables offer a direct comparison of the feature set between Essentials and OpsMgr and Essentials and Configuration Manager. This should give you a clear picture of the capabilities of Essentials. Remember, Essentials is limited to monitoring only 30 servers.

Features Available in Operations Manager 2007 and System Center Essentials 2007:

Features	OpsMgr	Essentials	Comments
Management packs	X	X
Monitor servers, clients, and services	X	X
Management pack authoring	X	X	Essentials has a basic interface; the OpsMgr interface is more sophisticated.
Role-based security	X		Essentials does not include a facility for role-based administration.
Multiple management servers in domain	X	X	All monitored systems must be in the same Active Directory forest.
Reporting	X	X (basic)	Essentials does not include a data warehouse or fixed grooming schedule (only a maximum of 37 days of report data can be stored); the Operations and Reporting databases are on the same server, and Report authoring is not supported.
Fault tolerance support	X		Essentials does not support database clustering of the Operations or Reporting database or clustering the Essentials management server.
Connector framework	X
ACS	X
AD Integration	X	X	AD integration with Essentials consists of pushing Group Policy Objects (GPOs) and creating AD security groups.
PowerShell Integration	X
Web console	X

Features Available in Configuration Manager 2007 and System Center Essentials 2007:

Features	ConfigMgr	Essentials	Comments
Update management	X	X
Software distribution	X	X
Hardware and software inventory	X	X	Essentials captures approximately 30 hardware and software attributes.
Operating System deployment	X
Mobile device management	X
Desired configuration management	X
Branch office support	X	X (basic)	Essentials does not include site servers.
Network Access Protection (NAP) support	X
Wake on Local Area Network (LAN)	X

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About Managing Microsoft

Kerrie Meyler, MVP, MCSE, MCTS, MCT, is an independent consultant and trainer with over fifteen years of experience in IT. While at Microsoft in Field Technical Sales for four years she focused on infrastructure and mangement, presenting at numerous product launches. Kerrie has presented Operations Manager 2007 at TechEd 2007, MMS 2009, MMS 2011, and internal Microsoft conferences, receiving company recognition and awards including a SPAR MGS award. Kerrie worked with Microsoft Learning to develop functional specifications for the original Operations Manager Microsoft courseware, 2550: Implementing Microsoft Operations Manager 2000 and did the beta teach for that course.She also participated in development for several System Center certification exams.

Kerrie is the lead author of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Unleashed, System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 Unleashed, System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Unleashed, System Center Opalis Integration Server 6.3 Unleashed and System Center Service Manager 2010 Unleashed.

Check out an excerpt from System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed, Chapter 3: Looking Inside OpsMgr.

You can also check out an excerpt from System Center Configuration (SCCM) Manager 2007 Unleashed, Chapter 3: Looking Inside ConfigMgr.

Read a sample chapter of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Unleashed at Chapter 1: Introduction and What's New.

You can also read a sample chapter of System Center Opalis Integration Server 6.3 Unleashed at Chapter 1: Introducing Opalis Integration Server 6.3 and System Center Service Manager 2010 Unleashed at Chapter 1:Service Management Basics.

System Center Service Manager 2010 Unleashed was selected as the September, 2011 book giveaway for Microsoft Subnet.

Enter the monthly contest.

Read a free chapter excerpt of System Center Service Manager 2010 Unleashed

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