Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator Available NOW!

A Great news for SCCM & Virtualization Fans!

Since Windows Server 2008 & Windows Vista SP1 are hot topic right now, you might think of migrating your current environment to this new technology. But how well you know about your current environment if you do not have proper IT Assessment process in place?

With the release of Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator, you may now make use of this tool to gather and organizes system resources and device information from a single computer. Another good news, you do not need to worry about deploying the agent to every system on your network (because most of the assessment tool need a agent on remote system to gather device information), and it is AGENTLESS!!

If you are interested, just visit the sites below and gather the information needed:

Download MAP 3.1: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=111000

Read more about MAP: http://www.microsoft.com/MAP

View demos on Team Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/MAPBLOG/

If you guys got any comment on this tool, feel free to feedback to us!

Malaysia Community Launch in KL

Hi guys,

Thanks for coming to the launch. It reaches ~100 participants. As promised, this is the slide that I used in the presentation - Managing Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

http://cid-147d10eebd539097.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public/Malaysia%20Community%20Launch

Long live community.

Cheers.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Pre req

As announced System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is in BETA.

Something to share on the pre-req:

1) SCVMM 2008 to install in Windows Server 2008 only

2) To install self service portal; For IIS, you will need:
a) Web Server (IIS) Role with Common HTTP features, Static Content, Default Document, Directory Browsing, HTTP Errors, Application Development, ASP.NET, .NET Extensibility, ISAPI Extensions, ISAPI Filters, Security, Request Filtering.
b) You will also need to add role service: IIS 6 Management Compatibility

You can install VMM Server, VMM Console as well as Self Service Portal in the same machine. However, if managing a big virtual infrastructure, you might want to split them.

Malaysia Partner Technical Community - CDP for Exchange

Dear Microsoft Malaysia partners,

Thanks for joining the session. As promised, the slide and video be able to download from:

http://cid-147d10eebd539097.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public/PTC

Hope you enjoy. Do send me a private e-mail if you to join our SystemCenter group.

Cheers

DPM and SCVMM how-to Video

Lots of our readers comments on how to get the video we posted in this blog.

http://cid-147d10eebd539097.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public

Thanks to SkyDrive, which we can now post it to the web.

Branch DP connections limitation

There are a lot of ppl questioning, what is the actual limit for SCCM branch distribution point? how should i design it to fit into my customer environment?

For your information, if you run Branch DP on Windows XP or Windows Vista client, you will only have concurrent limit of 10 users. But if you run Branch DP on Windows Server, you will not have the limitation for 10 users and the server's license model will apply on it, such as CALs, Per Server, Per Seat etc.

Hope the above information can give you some hints on SCCM design.

SMSMap & SCCM 2007 Capacity Planner

Recently I've found one interesting website called SMSMap. This website basically provide tools called SMSMap and SCCM 2007 Capacity Planner.

SMSMap is a tool similar like Active Directory Topology Diagrammer, it allows you to simplified the process of drawing the Visio diagram for your SCCM structure. Whereas SCCM 2007 Capacity Planner is a tool for you to plan out your SCCM structure for your organization (This tool is very useful, so far there is no official release from Microsoft regarding capacity planning for SCCM).

Below is the link for the website I mentioned above:
http://www.tondtware.com/downloads.html

Lastly, many thanks to Jeff Tondt for giving me permission to allow me to post his site link in my blog. Currently, Jeff Tondt is a Senior Consultant II for Microsoft Consulting Services. He focused on the System Management solution and he is SMS & SCCM expert.