1 May 2008

Microsoft has announced the public beta release of new System Center solutions for the management of multi-vendor virtualisation, operating systems and applications.

Microsoft worked closely with customers to deliver a comprehensive enterprise strategy for an integrated management solution. Key additions include cross-platform, expanded interoperability and multi-vendor virtualisation management solutions, which are further extended by the contributions of Microsoft’s growing partner ecosystem.

“By taking our knowledge of the Windows environment and expanding it to address heterogeneous management needs across platforms, applications, hardware and virtualisation, we are opening up a new level of opportunity for companies to drive greater efficiency, responsiveness and value for their business,” said Microsoft senior vice president of the server and tools business Bob Muglia, at the Microsoft Management Summit 2008 in Las Vegas.

System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions build on existing Operations Manager 2007 technology and capabilities, and are designed to help customers extend the value of their Microsoft System Center investments. New end-to-end IT systems monitoring capability incorporates industry standards and proven open source technologies, including Web Services for Management (WS-Management) and OpenPegasus, extending the capabilities across both physical and virtualised Windows and non-Windows operating systems and applications.

Microsoft also announced beta versions of the updated System Center Operations Manager 2007 Connectors, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. Connectors is based on many of the same extensible open source technology and industry standards as the Cross Platform Extensions. It tightly integrates with Virtual Machine Manager 2008, which enables customers to configure and deploy new virtual machines and to centrally manage their virtualised infrastructure, whether running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 or VMware ESX Server.

A number of partners, including Brocade, Dell, EMC, Emulex, HP, NetQOS, QLogic and Quest, announced they will deliver management packs to enable partners and customers to integrate their domain-specific knowledge directly into Virtual Machine Manager and further integrate physical and virtual management.

Microsoft also announced that it will be joining the OpenPegasus Steering Committee and contribute code back to the open source community under the Microsoft Public License, an Open Source Initiative (OSI)-approved licence.

The betas can be downloaded from the Microsoft Connect Web site.

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