System Center 2012 Service Pack 1

Although Service Pack for System Center 2012  is still currently in Tech preview is has a lot of features that needs to be addresses.
Here is a list of new features in the latest CTP build 2 (Which was released 15/06/12)

  • Virtual Machine Manager
    • Improved Support for Network Virtualization
    • Extend the VMM console with Add-ins
    • Support for Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service, thin provisioning of logical units and discovery of SAS storage
    • Ability to convert VHD to VHDX, use VHDX as base Operating System image
  • Configuration Manager
    • Support for Windows 8
    • Ability to deploy Windows 8 Apps
    • Real-time administrative actions for Endpoint Protection related tasks
  • Data Protection Manager
    • Improved backup performance of Hyper-V over CSV 2.0
    • Protection for Hyper-V over remote SMB share
    • Protection for Windows Server 2012 de-duplicated volumes
    • Uninterrupted protection for VM live migration
  • App Controller
    • Service Provider Foundation API to create and operate Virtual Machines
    • Support for Azure VM; migrate VHDs from VMM to Windows Azure, manage from on-premise System Center
  • Operations Manager
    • Support for IIS 8
    • Monitoring of WCF, MVC and .NET NT services
    • Azure SDK support
  • Orchestrator
    • Support for Integration Packs, including 3rd party
    • Manage VMM self-service User Roles
    • Manage multiple VMM ‘stamps’ (scale units), aggregate results from multiple stamps
    • Integration with App Controller to consume Hosted clouds
  • Service Manager
    • Apply price sheets to VMM clouds
    • Create chargeback reports
    • Pivot by cost center, VMM clouds, Pricesheets
  • Server App-V
    • Support for applications that create scheduled tasks during packaging
    • Create virtual application packages from applications installed remotely on native server

Now even thou this is for the CTP2 build, ConfigMgr 2012 is still just in CTP1.
Information that was released during MMS, was that ConfigMgr would have extended manageability for Mac & Unix.
This will include:
* Hardware and software inventory
* Endpoint Protection
* Software distribution

This will simplify management for the IT-admin. A lot of users wish to use Mac OSX or Linux for specific reasons. Before it was hard to allow use of Linux/Unix or Mac OSX in the environment because, lack of manageability and the cost that would be needed to get the management tools you needed, and in many cases the Mac users doesn’t represent the majority of users and therefore was not a priority.
But with SP1 hopefully that will change, now you have the ability to administer Windows, Linux and Mac OSX computers from one console (Which includes a fully integrated antivirus solution)
These features for Mac & Linux are still not publicly available, so it remains to see if the functionality provided is good enough for an enterprise environment.

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