Microsoft System Center Enterprise Suite Unleashed is the first and only definitive real-world guide to the entire Microsoft System Center Enterprise Suite. It brings together tips, tricks, best practices, and lessons learned by top consultants who’ve deployed System Center in some of the world’s largest enterprises and most successful small businesses. Drawing on years of early adopter and production experience, Rand Morimoto, Chris Amaris, and their team cover the entire System Center lifecycle and its components for system configuration, operations management, data protection, virtual machine management, help desk support, change management, asset control, capacity planning, and mobile device management. You’ll learn about individual components and how to integrate them to build automated, exceptionally efficient managed environments. For smaller businesses, the book also presents Microsoft’s streamlined, lower-cost IT management offering, System Center Essentials 2010. Use System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to image, update, manage, and support servers and clients Proactively monitor your systems to identify and fix problems before they fail Use System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 to provide reliable, timely backup/recovery Implement and manage all aspects of virtualization, including virtual guest sessions on both Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware Make the most of System Center Service Manager 2010’s integrated tools for managing help desks, incidents, assets, and changes Use System Center Capacity Planner to properly size, procure, and deploy new systems Remotely track, secure, patch, update, and support mobile devices with System Center Mobile Device Manager Simplify small business IT management with System Center Essentials 2010’s wizards and auto-configuration components

Microsoft System Center Enterprise Suite Unleashed is the first and only definitive real-world guide to the entire Microsoft System Center Enterprise Suite. It brings together tips, tricks, best practices, and lessons learned by top consultants who've deployed System Center in some of the world's largest enterprises and most successful small businesses. Drawing on years of early adopter and production experience, Rand Morimoto, Chris Amaris, and their team cover the entire System Center lifecycle and its components for system configuration, operations management, data protection, virtual machine management, help desk support, change management, asset control, capacity planning, and mobile device management. You'll learn about individual components and how to integrate them to build automated, exceptionally efficient managed environments. For smaller businesses, the book also presents Microsoft's streamlined, lower-cost IT management offering, System Center Essentials 2010. Use System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to image, update, manage, and support servers and clients Proactively monitor your systems to identify and fix problems before they fail Use System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 to provide reliable, timely backup/recovery Implement and manage all aspects of virtualization, including virtual guest sessions on both Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware Make the most of System Center Service Manager 2010's integrated tools for managing help desks, incidents, assets, and changes Use System Center Capacity Planner to properly size, procure, and deploy new systems Remotely track, secure, patch, update, and support mobile devices with System Center Mobile Device Manager Simplify small business IT management with System Center Essentials 2010's wizards and auto-configuration components

This is the definitive real-world guide to Microsoft System Center 2012, Microsoft's newest and most powerful version of System Center. Authored by consultants who've deployed System Center in hundreds of enterprises and innovative smaller businesses, this book brings together up-to-the-minute tips, tricks, and techniques you just won't find anywhere else. You'll learn how to use System Center's powerful capabilities to build highly-efficient managed environments that encompass datacenters, cloud environments, client computers, mobile devices, and more. The authors address planning, design, implementation, integration, and administration, and cover every component, including Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, Data Protection Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Service Manager, and Orchestrator. Use Configuration Manager 2012 to deliver software and updates in highly-distributed environments including datacenters, clouds, and mobile devices Reliably manage and report on assets with Configuration Manager 2012 Perform monitoring, alerting, operations, and security reporting with Operations Manager 2012 Use Data Protection Manager 2012to protect file systems, SQL, Microsoft Exchange, and SharePoint Leverage Data Protection Manager 2012's improved central monitoring and remote recovery Run Hyper-V virtualized environments with VMM 2012--including new private clouds and mixed private/public fabrics Use Service Manager 2012 to provide top-down integration, and use Orchestrator 2012 for bottom-up process automation and integration "glue" Give users an efficient self-service portal for creating service and incident requests and browsing service catalogs Manage service offerings and implement enterprise-wide change control with Service Manager 2012 Ensure compliance by creating, executing, and repeating auditable, documented processes with Orchestrator 2012

By using Microsoft's new Opalis IT process automation software, your IT organization can dramatically reduce operational costs and improve efficiency by replacing resource-intensive, error-prone manual activities with standardized, automated processes. Microsoft doesn't sell Opalis as a separately licensed product: thousands of customers who've licensed Microsoft System Center with SMSE/D already have the rights to use it. They simply have to learn how. If this sounds like you, System Center Opalis Integration Server 6.3 Unleashed will help you do so. This book's expert author team offers you start-to-finish, step-by-step coverage of implementing key Opalis 6.3 features for maximum business value. Drawing on their extensive experience, they bring together coverage of related topics and techniques in ways that enable you and IT professionals to deploy Opalis more quickly and apply it more successfully. The authors begin with a high-level overview of Opalis 6.3 and the potential value it offers to your IT organization. Next, it guides you through architecture, installation, policy basics and design, foundation objects and integration packs, the SDK, and best practices based on real-world implementations.

System Center Service Manager 2010 offers enterprises a complete, integrated platform for adopting and automating service management best practices, such as those found in ITIL and Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF). Now, there’s a comprehensive, independent reference and technical guide to this powerful product. A team of expert authors offers step-by-step coverage of related topics in every feature area, organized to help IT professionals quickly plan, design, implement, and use Service Manager 2010. After introducing the product and its relationship with the rest of Microsoft’s System Center suite, the authors present authoritative coverage of Service Manager’s capabilities for incident and problem resolution, change control, configuration management, and compliance. Readers will also find expert guidance for integrating Service Manager with related Microsoft technologies. This book is an indispensable resource for every IT professional planning, installing, deploying, and/or administering Service Manager, including ITIL, MOF, and other IT consultants; system administrators; and developers creating customized solutions. • Understand Service Manager’s architecture and components • Discover how Service Manager supports ITIL and MOF processes • Accurately scope and specify your implementation to reflect organizational needs • Plan to provide redundancy, ensure scalability, and support virtualization • Design, deploy, and maintain Service Manager with security in mind • Use Service Manager’s consoles and portals to provide the right resources to each user • Create complete service maps with Service Manager’s business services • Fully automate incident management and ticketing • Implement best processes for identifying and addressing root causes of problems • Systematically manage the life cycle of changes • Use Service Manager to strengthen governance, risk management, and compliance • Customize Service Manager’s data layer, workflows, and presentation layer • Use management packs to simplify service desk customization • Make the most of Service Manager’s reporting and dashboards

This book is your most complete source for in-depth information about Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007! System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Unleashed is a comprehensive guide to System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) 2007. ConfigMgr 2007 helps you manage servers and desktops, integrates SMS 2003 “feature pack” functionality, and adds new capabilities. It enables you to assess, deploy, and update servers, clients, and devices across physical, virtual, distributed, and mobile environments, including clients that connect only over the Internet. This book guides you through designing, deploying, and configuring ConfigMgr 2007 with detailed information on topics such as capacity planning, security, site design and hierarchy planning, server placement, discovery, native mode, and using Windows Server 2008. You will learn how to tackle challenges such as setting up DCM and OSD, customizing inventory, creating queries and using query results, and configuring asset intelligence. Detailed information on how to... • Understand how ConfigMgr works • Plan your ConfigMgr deployment • Manage Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) • Architect for performance • Install or migrate to ConfigMgr 2007 with Windows 2003 or Windows 2008 • Discover and manage clients • Create and distribute packages • Understand patch and compliance management • Create queries • Use reports • Deploy operating systems • Secure ConfigMgr 2007 • Perform site maintenance • Back up ConfigMgr components

This is the comprehensive reference and technical guide to Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012. A team of expert authors offers step-by-step coverage of related topics in every feature area, organized to help IT professionals rapidly optimize Configuration Manager 2012 for their requirements, and then deploy and use it successfully. The authors begin by introducing Configuration Manager 2012 and its goals, and explaining how it fits into the broader System Center product suite. Next, they fully address planning, design, and implementation. Finally, they systematically cover each of Configuration Manager 2012's most important feature sets, addressing issues ranging from configuration management to software distribution. Readers will learn how to use Configuration Manager 2012's user-centric capabilities to provide anytime/anywhere services and software, and to strengthen both control and compliance. The first book on Configuration Manager 2012, System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Unleashed joins Sams' market-leading series of books on Microsoft's System Center product suite: books that have achieved go-to status amongst IT implementers and administrators worldwide.

This up-to-the-minute supplement to System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed brings together practical, in-depth information about System Operations Manager 2007, including major enhancements introduced with the R2 release, as well as essential information on other products and technologies OpsMgr integrates with and relies upon. Drawing on their unsurpassed deployment experience, four leading independent OpsMgr experts with a half dozen leading subject matter experts show how to take full advantage of new Unix/Linux cross platform extensions, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 integration, PowerShell extensions, and much more. They also present in-depth coverage of using OpsMgr with virtualization, authoring new management packs, and maximizing availability. A detailed “OpsMgr R2 by Example” appendix presents indispensable tuning and configuration tips for several of OpsMgr R2’s most important management packs. This book also contains the world’s most compre- hensive collection of OpsMgr R2 reference links. Discover and monitor Linux and Unix systems through OpsMgr with the new Cross Platform Extensions Utilize Microsoft’s upgraded management packs and templates for monitoring operating systems, services, and applications Monitor your system with the Health Explorer and new Visio add-in Create OpsMgr 2007 R2 reports and queries utilizing SQL Server 2008 Understand how Windows Server 2008 and OpsMgr integrate Use PowerShell and the OpsMgr Shell to automate common management tasks Efficiently manage virtualized environments (Hyper-V or ESX vCenter) Author your own OpsMgr custom management packs Implement advanced high availability and business continuity management Use targeting to apply the appropriate monitoring to each component Master advanced ACS techniques for noise filtering, access hardening, and auditing

'System Center Operations Manager 2012 Unleashed' joins Sams' market-leading series of books on Microsoft's System Center product suite: books that have achieved go-to status amongst IT implementers and administrators worldwide. The book provides coverage of planning, installation, and migration; configuration; and much more --

This is the first comprehensive Operations Manager 2012 technical resource for every IT implementer and administrator. Building on their bestselling OpsMgr 2007 book, three Microsoft System Center Cloud and Data Center Management MVPs thoroughly illuminate major improvements in Microsoft’s newest version–including new enhancements just added in Service Pack 1. You’ll find all the information you need to efficiently manage cloud and datacenter applications and services in even the most complex environment. The authors provide up-to-date best practices for planning, installation, migration, configuration, administration, security, compliance, dashboards, forecasting, backup/recovery, management packs, monitoring including .NET monitoring, PowerShell automation, and much more. Drawing on decades of enterprise and service provider experience, they also offer indispensable insights for integrating with your existing Microsoft and third-party infrastructure. Detailed information on how to... Plan and execute a smooth OpsMgr 2012 deployment or migration Move toward application-centered management in complex environments Secure OpsMgr 2012, and assure compliance through Audit Collection Services Implement dashboards, identify trends, and improve forecasting Maintain and protect each of your OpsMgr 2012 databases Monitor virtually any application, environment, or device: client-based, .NET, distributed, networked, agentless, or agent-managed Use synthetic transactions to monitor application performance and responsiveness Install UNIX/Linux cross-platform agents Integrate OpsMgr into virtualized environments Manage and author management packs and reports Automate key tasks with PowerShell, agents, and alerts Create scalable management clouds for service provider/multi-tenant environments Use OpsMgr 2012 Service Pack 1 with Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012