System Center Roadmap 2011
This was one of the slides from the second keynote at MMS last week. This is a slide they show every year to highlight what is coming in the System Center arena over the coming year. What is really exciting about this one is that a new version is coming for everything in the System Center family this calendar year. This is a lot of very exciting changes coming. This does come with a caution though…there’s a lot of work to be done ahead of time to be prepared for the launches!
Anti Malware–the landscape just changed
HUGE announcement at MMS just now. Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 is now part of the Microsoft Core CAL. This means that all the customers who have a Core CAL already…which many who own ConfigMgr have it licensed via the Core CAL…ALREADY have the licensing in place for FEP…they already own it. If you have a Core CAL…it eliminates the need to purchase a separate AV license. You can just use FEP…which is managed via the ConfigMgr console…which eliminates a separate management infrastructure for malware…you simply manage it all via ConfigMgr.
This will likely have a big impact on AV vendors. I can hear clients asking the question now…”I already have FEP licensed via the Core CAL…and I can manage it with ConfigMgr which I already have deployed. Why should I renew my AV licensing with ______________?”
This is huge. It should be very interesting to see the full impact of this announcement over the next year or so.
ConfigMgr 2012 Beta 2–OSD Findings
I was poking around in one of the ConfigMgr 2012 Hands on Labs at MMS today to see what is new/different. I came across some pretty interesting things when looking at task sequences.
[Thanks to Torsten for pointing out an oversight on my part…that one of the “new things” I mentioned is already in ConfigMgr 2007. I’ve done plenty of OSD…I’ve never noticed the “Apply Data Image” task sequence step. Heck…I even pointed it out to two other people yesterday and they had never noticed it either.]
First, there is a new option for “Apply Data Image”. Not apply an OS Image…take a WIM file that does not include an OS…and apply that to a disk/partition. Definitely some cool options with that.
Second, I was looking at the “Options” tab on a task sequence item and found some new (and VERY cool) options there. The new options with their key components that were available as criteria on the Options tab are:
- File Properties
- Path
- Version
- timestamp
- Folder Properties
- Path
- timestamp
- Registry Setting
- Exists
- Not exists
- Equals
- Not equals
- Greater than
- Greater than or equals
- Less than
- Less than or equals
- Installed software
- Choose filename which fills out
- Name
- Version
- Product code
- Upgrade code
- Options for
- Match specific product (Product code and upgrade code)
- Match any version of this product (Upgrade code only)
- Choose filename which fills out
Over time I have written vbscripts to pull file properties, registry settings and installed software to then set a TS variable…which I could then use later as criteria in a “TS variable equals xyz” condition on a task. It is very cool that this will be part of the core functionality in ConfigMgr 2012.
MMS Bible Study–Details
Three years ago I started leading a brief morning Bible study at MMS. I’ve had numerous emails from people over the last few years who were very encouraged by this event. Every year up til this one Rod Trent has graciously offered his room for a meeting place. Because it was being held in his room, I’ve never posted the location on my blog to protect his room number. This year Rod’s room was too small for the group to meet in, so he contacted the MMS event staff and got us an actual meeting room. We met this morning and had a decent turnout…in spite of me not getting the meeting room info out to my email list til late last night.
If you are interested in coming, we will be meeting each morning for the rest of the week at 7:15am in Reef D on Level 2 at the convention center. If you are interested, we’d love to have you join us. We will be wrapping up no later than 8:00 each morning to allow time to get to breakfast and the first session of the day…Reef D is only a short walk away from the meal room.
ConfigMgr 2012 Beta 2–Tomorrow?
During the State of the Union session at MMS this morning, there may have been a slip of the tongue by one of the presenters. They had been saying that Beta 2 for ConfigMgr is “very soon”…then at one point I’m almost positive that I heard a slip of the tongue stating “when you download it tomorrow”.
By no means definitive, and could have just been a slip that is not based in reality…or it could have been a slip to an announcement that was being held for tomorrow.
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The Realm of the Verbal Processor 