System Center Today
To
get started, let's look at what products are shipping today and
what each product is designed to do. This will help to shape the
discussion around the current products that are part of the System
Center offering.
System Center is the name for the Microsoft Systems
Management family of products. The System Center products are built
to help with integrating systems management tools and technologies
to enable IT personnel to better support operations, reduce
troubleshooting time, and improve planning capabilities. The System
Center feature components include operations management, change
management, storage management, incident and problem management,
capacity planning and management, and data protection. The current
management-related products from Microsoft include the
following:
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Microsoft Operations Manager 2005
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Systems Management Server 2003
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System Center Data Protection Manager
2006
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System Center Capacity Planner 2006
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System Center Reporting Manager 2006
Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM 2005) is a
solution to enable operations management that provides event and
performance management, proactive monitoring and alerting,
reporting and trend analysis, and system-specific knowledge and
tasks to improve the manageability of your servers and
applications. While MOM 2005 is primarily focused on managing
Windows-based servers, there are third-party solutions that enable
you to manage server applications and services running on other
platforms as well. MOM 2005 includes a variety of features designed
to make it easier for administrators to deploy and use the
management tools, improved support for management packs and
reporting, and features to ensure that the management
infrastructure is secure and reliable. As a component of the System
Center, MOM 2005 is a cornerstone of the operations toolset.
Systems Management Server 2003 (SMS 2003) enables
you to manage client computers and servers within your
organization, including tasks such as troubleshooting, software
asset management, software distribution, software updates,
reporting, and many others. It is a comprehensive solution for
software distribution and systems management and can be integrated
with MOM to ensure that systems are updated appropriately.
In addition, Windows Software Update Services
(WSUS) enables IT administrators to deploy the latest product
updates to Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP
operating systems. By using WSUS, administrators can fully manage
the distribution of updates that are released through Microsoft
Update to computers in their network. SMS tends to be used in
larger enterprises more exclusively, but there are some use cases
for WSUS as described in earlier chapters.
Another area of the System Center solution stack is
focused on data protection. Microsoft realizes that data protection
is increasingly important to IT administrators. As the volume and
value of data created and managed within business operations
continue to increase, conventional backup systems require
operational and labor overhead. While providing some protection,
those solutions are typically hard to use and can be unreliable.
The System Center Data Protection Manager 2006 (DPM) product is
designed to provide efficient, continuous protection of critical
data while removing the burden of scheduling and tracking backup jobs, and
maintaining backup systems on multiple servers. By centralizing
protected data on the DPM server, DPM enables rapid disk-based
recovery of files, folders, shares, and servers while saving
administrators' time and reducing the downtime cost associated with
recovery. DPM also provides flexible synchronization and
replication options that enable administrators to fine-tune
synchronization and replication behavior to best match their
requirements and operating environment. As a result, DPM delivers a
solid data protection solution and fills an important need in the
System Center architecture.
System Center Capacity Planner 2006 helps to
increase operational efficiency by providing a way to efficiently
plan an Exchange 2003 or MOM 2005 environment for immediate needs
and future requirements. To realize the full benefits of this
technology, IT administrators need to implement the operational
processes and best practices necessary to effectively manage
Windows-based systems and applications. This includes the Microsoft
Operations Framework (MOF) and components of Information Technology
Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a framework of best practices to
promote the definition and delivery of quality services in the IT
sector. System Center Capacity Planner 2006 helps the IT
administrator to effectively size an application implementation
by:
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Providing and analyzing
infrastructure sizing information for distributed server
deployments: Capacity Planner provides an easy way to identify
the hardware, software, and architecture required for an
organization to deploy an enterprise application. It also provides
prescriptive architecture recommendations tailored to the
requirements of the enterprise.
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Delivering hardware
utilization analysis: Capacity Planner simulates the user
workload on a model of the IT infrastructure. It calculates the
utilization of each device of the infrastructure including servers,
disk subsystems, LANs, and WANs. With this information, the IT
administrator can determine if the proposed deployment will meet
current and future performance and capacity requirements.
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Delivering transaction
latency analysis: Capacity Planner can calculate the latency of
key transactions running on the infrastructure. For example, in an
Exchange 2003 environment, the IT administrator can view the
latency of an e-mail sent from one branch office to another. If the
delivery time for the e-mail is unacceptable, Capacity Planner
provides analysis to guide the IT administrator to upgrade the
specific hardware component that is in the critical path of the
transaction.
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Providing hardware and
architecture "what-if" analysis: The IT administrator can
propose changes to a modeled IT infrastructure to determine the
most desirable hardware configuration and architecture. Once the
model is changed, a load simulation can be run to predict, for
example, how much mail traffic will be generated or the impact of a
change in hardware performance such as disk speed. This helps the
IT administrator better understand how to design for future
capacity needs.
With all of these different operational
requirements and tasks facing the IT organization, access to
critical information is important to effective management from a
process and technology perspective. With an ever increasing
quantity of data and new regulations to comply with, many IT
professionals are looking for tools to help integrate the
information and enable better decision-making. Often the data is
spread across the organization and it is not easily available. IT
has to dedicate a great deal of resources and sometimes develop
custom solutions, just to put data together and produce the
necessary reports. The System Center Reporting Manager 2006 is a
step in helping address these concerns through providing a data
warehouse and reporting platform to enable the integration of
management data. Building upon the reporting capabilities in MOM
2005, System Center Reporting Manager enables the following:
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Access to data on IT systems resource utilization
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Support to better plan hardware, software,
and security update deployment
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Ability to obtain data necessary to
troubleshoot more effectively and in less time
System Center Reporting Manager 2006 also provides
reporting capabilities through a data warehouse tuned for query
performance and the ability to off-load historical reporting from
operational databases. If you are planning to consolidate servers,
analyzing if your servers are equally loaded, or trying to better
understand how server performance has varied over many months, you
will need to integrate server performance data with business data
over a long period of time. System Center Reporting Manager 2006
provides a data warehousing ability and enables visibility into
asset information, performance, and business data regarding all
servers and server groups in your environment.
Additionally, with System Center Reporting Manager
2006, you are able to analyze purchase trends before making a
decision. You are also able to evaluate and compare server
performance across vendors before acquiring new equipment. This
helps the IT administrator use the systems management and
operational data to drive costs out of their environment and to
make objective decisions regarding IT investments. While most
organizations strive to do this today, it can be challenging if you
don't have the right information.
System Center Reporting Manager 2006 also provides
you with information to evaluate efficiency and effectiveness
regarding the deployment of new applications and security updates.
This enables you to improve these processes and planning. With
System Center Reporting Manager 2006, you are able to analyze the
impact that such configuration changes could have on the
performance of your servers. Another benefit of System Center
Reporting Manager 2006 is to help IT professionals responsible for
support determine the scope of their activities, get a better sense
for number of installations that need to be supported, or ascertain
hardware characteristics. This information can be broken down by
cost center, business unit, and geographical region to enable
detailed analysis by portion of the infrastructure or business unit
being supported.
System Center Reporting Manager 2006 increases
operational efficiency by providing a platform for integrating
operations management data and change and configuration management
data. In order to realize the full benefits of this integrated
technology, it is also important for enterprises to implement the
operational processes and best practices necessary to effectively
manage Windows-based systems and applications, including Microsoft
Operations Framework and ITIL.
All of these products that are part of the
System Center solutions are designed to address real problems faced
by IT professionals. While not all of the products are completely
integrated, over time the integration will become more
comprehensive and valuable.