Verify SQL connection from your machine

Everyone know System Center products are heavily rely on SQL server, we must prepare the SQL server first in order to proceed with the System Center products installation. Sometimes we would like to verify the connectivity between System Center servers and SQL servers, since we are not SQL server expert, how we gonna achieve that by using tools or is there any other primitive way (such as ping, or telnet command in command prompt) to troubleshoot that?

Here, I would like to share with everyone a good tip.

Create a blank text file on your desktop using Notepad, and then rename the text file extension from 'txt' to 'udl'. Double click the udl file, a Data Link Properties windows will prompt out. Here we go! Now we are able to test out the SQL connectivity by using this small interface! Is that cool?

Although this is not a big news, I doubt a lot of developers knew about this, and I got this tip from my best friend Koh Nyap Hong. He is a great developer and thanks for him to share this tip with me. Now, I would like to share this tool with all IT Professionals, this will be a very useful tool for you to troubleshoot some basic SQL errors.

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.2 RTM is now Available!

MAP 3.2 RTM is now available!! This RTM released has expanded its assessment capabilities to SQL Server 2008, ForeFront/NAP, Microsoft Online Services migration, as well as providing a Power Savings assessment.

MAP 3.2 assessment areas now include:

• SQL Server 2008 Migration Proposals and Reports (NEW)
• Forefront/NAP Readiness Proposals (NEW)
• Microsoft Online Services Migration Surveys, Proposals, and Reports (NEW)
• Power Savings Proposals (NEW)
• Server Migration Reports and Proposals (Windows Server 2008 and "virtualized guests by hosts" reporting) (NEW)
• Server Consolidation Reports and Proposals (Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Hyper-V)
• Desktop Security Assessment to determine if desktops have anti-virus and anti-malware programs installed and up-to-date, or if the Windows Firewall is turned on
• Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 Hardware Assessment Reports and Proposals

If you are interested to download or if you would like to know more about it, please visit the website below:
Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator Installation Prerequisites

I just tried to install MAP on virtual machine. I found that there are few components you need to install before installing MAP on your system.

Below are the list of required components:

• .Net Framework 2.0
• Microsoft Office 2007 or Microsoft Office 2003 with SP2
• SQL Express or SQL Server
  

The installation steps is pretty straight forward. Just you need to specified the database (there is a wizard provided by MAP to help you go through this process) if you run an assessment project.

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!