Thoughts from MMS 2010
I’m attending Microsoft Management Summit 2010 in Vegas.
In my experience as a system administrator, I felt I was a pretty good administrator of systems, but that definitely did not mean I was a good manager of systems. Sure, we had some point management tools in place, but for the most part, you ran over to the machine, logged in and fixed the problem …. hopefully before anyone noticed. We had aspirations to have better management functionality, but fires kept popping up and we never were able to dedicate resources to what were perceived as larger management problems. Instead, we carried on with the break/fix mentality.
That is quickly changing, primarily ignited by virtualization efforts inside the data center. As virtualization enters, it reinforces the importance of good management tools. As IT advances, management is essential to eliminate routine and mundane tasks, automate tasks, and have any hope of achieving IT as a service.
Microsoft’s maturity in management tools is aligning nicely as IT looks to implement new tools and processes into their environment. ESG’s research shows that operational efficiency is a higher priority than reducing capital expenses. Management tools need to be in place to enable change and control management, regulatory compliance, predictive analysis, and more efficient use of IT FTEs.
Here are some highlights from MMS 2010:
- Virtual Machine Manager. VMM V-Next is aimed to help transition application owners to the virtual platform, enable IT self service, and incorporate external “cloud” resources.
- Operations Manager (OpsMgr). Monitoring for the modern data center that is composed of geographically distributed service environments requires visibility at all infrastructure layers and focuses on next generation applications. This also starts to pull in Azure.
- Hitachi announced deeper collaboration and partnership. OEM agreement for Windows Server 2008 R2, System Center, and SQL Server2008 technologies.
