The System Center Family

Here are some references and articles regarding other components of Microsoft’s System Center family:

• Operations Manager is Microsoft’s end-to-end service management product, and is the cornerstone of the common system architecture used by other System Center products, including Service Manager. A product overview is available at http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/operations-manager/om-overview.aspx. Kerrie Meyler discusses the common system architecture at http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/common-system-center-architecture.

• For an overview of Configuration Manager, see http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/configuration-manager/cm-overview.aspx.

• For System Center Essentials (Essentials) deployment planning and installation, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=94444.

• The System Center Essentials Community TechCenter can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sce/bb677155.aspx.

• One scenario for System Center Essentials is as a means for managing and monitoring assets of small organizations, tied to a centralized Operations Manager server. Read John Joyner’s take on Microsoft’s direction for management tools in the mid-sized market at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1905780,00.asp.

• Opalis, being renamed as Orchestrator, was acquired by Microsoft in 2009 and is an automation tool for System Center and third-party products. Charles Joy, one of the “Opalis guys,” gives an 8-minute product overview at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmf6G7N7Tuk.

• Data Protection Manager (DPM) delivers data protection for SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, Virtualization, file servers, and Windows desktops and laptops. For an overview of the product, visit http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/data-protection-manager/dpm-2010-overview.aspx.