Microsoft Datacentre Security & Management Update

If you’re like me getting to MMS in Las Vegas next month is something that will probably never happen and it’s at this Microsoft flagship management event that System Centre 2012 will finally launch, probably the best worst kept secret this year. However here’s the next best thing, Microsoft are running a series of UK based events entitled “The Best of MMS”. The 3 events will all run in May for details and to register click here.

Staying with System Centre 2012, it’s always good to see Microsoft eating their own dog food so to speak. In this interesting article Charlie Satterfield, Sr. Program Manager in the Management & Monitoring team, talks about how they’re transition to System Centre 2012 to provide the monitoring piece for www.microsoft.com, TechNet, Windows update, and MSDN.

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Microsoft promotes safe Internet use in schools

Microsoft Ireland joined other tech companies to promote safe use of the web in Ireland’s schools last month. Volunteers from the company, supported by the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE), were amongst tech industry professionals who took part in the promotion of Safer Internet Day. Orla Sheridan, consumer channels group director, Microsoft Ireland, said: ‘We take the issue of Internet safety very seriously and have continuously invested in schemes and programmes to help educate young users of the Internet and their parents about how to use this great resource in a safe and efficient manner. We are delighted to be partnering with the government, educational representatives and law enforcement agencies to highlight the importance of this issue.’

Microsoft Datacentre Security & Management Update

Well unless you’ve been living in a cave the big news this time is the release of Windows 8 Server Beta which can be downloaded from here. If you want to get the best out of Windows 8 Server Beta you must register in order to gain access to all of the technical resources. However over on the Windows 8 TechNet page a Springboard Series has been launched to provide resources and keep you apace of developments.

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Symantec and Microsoft work better together for virtual environment protection

When customers move to a virtual environment that can change the dynamics of their network and system protection – the best way to make sure that they are safe and sound is to use the best solutions around. Symantec System Recovery Server Edition (formerly Backup Exec System Recovery) is ideal for deployment with Microsoft Hyper-V and other virtual systems. It delivers fast and reliable system recovery that will restore physical and virtual systems in minutes, even to bare metal, dissimilar hardware, remote locations, or virtual environments. With more than 787,000 protected systems, Symantec System Recovery is proven, trusted, and reliable backup server software – and it’s a perfect answer when you need a simple backup solution for newly virtualised systems. Call the Software team or email software@computer2000.co.uk to find out more.

Microsoft Datacentre Security & Management Update – February

We’ll start this time with Windows 8, as I’ve mentioned before this release of Microsoft’s server platform will include Hyper-V 3. The feature set has been greatly enhanced to compete with VMware’s Vsphere 5, but don’t forget that Microsoft’s System Centre 2012 suite will be required to provide the management.  In this article there is a direct comparison between the product sets, so you can decide which suits your customer needs best.

The System Centre 2012 suite licensing model was announced this week and Microsoft has listened to the community by simplifying the process. With the present release of the System Centre products there are different licensing models per product and over 100 SKUs in total. With the System Centre 2012 release there are 2 SKUs, for physical and lightly virtualised workloads there is the Standard Edition and for more heavily virtualised workloads there is the Datacentre Edition. Microsoft have produced a “Buyers Guide” website to help you through the process you can also get the datasheet and FAQ.

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Sign up now for 2012 Microsoft Licensing Boot Camps

The dates for our famous Microsoft Licensing Boot Camps have now been set up to the middle of this year – and places are being booked-up fast so please get in touch right away if you want your business to benefit from this exceptional series of crash-courses. Many resellers who have already been through our Microsoft Boot Camps have benefited by being able to win more new customers and do much more software licensing business as a result too. One example is detailed on pages 32–33, where you can read a case study on Expressware – a small Gloucestershire reseller that took part in our Boot Camps last year.

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Microsoft Datacentre Security & Management Update – February

Last time out we went a bit System Centre mad, so this time we’ll start with news of Windows 8. The beta version of the product is due for release this month and the feature I’m looking forward to most is Hyper-V 3. I blogged about a while back with what hopefully would be in the product, well some more details relating to Storage, management of storage with PowerShell and the new VHDX format disks.

Back to System Centre and a new product in the family that may have escaped your notice. System Centre Advisor, which is now a benefit of Software Assurance for Windows Server or Microsoft SQL server. So what is System Centre Advisor, to find out more and download the 60 day free trial click here.

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Microsoft and HP team up on public and private cloud services

HP and Microsoft have announced a new four-year partnership to deliver public, private and hybrid enterprise cloud solutions built around Office 365 and its on-premise equivalents. Microsoft solutions will be offered via HP’s cloud data centres. Brandt Faatz, vice president of Workplace Services at HP Enterprise Services, stated: ‘This alliance with HP not only broadens Microsoft’s geographic reach, it gives customers maximum flexibility to choose a cloud computing solution that meets their organisation’s specialised messaging and collaboration needs’.

Microsoft makes changes to rules on government licensing

Microsoft has made some changes to the rules on selling licences to government recently. From now on, you are no longer able to sell central or local government licensing deals through the Open Licensing scheme; instead you need to use the Open Value or Select routes. While this won’t affect many agreements, it’s worth making your licensing teams and your government customers aware of the changes. If you have any questions, please get in touch with our Microsoft Licensing expert, Simon King – email simon.king@computer2000.co.uk.

Microsoft expected to complete Skype deal

Microsoft was expected to win EU approval for its $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype this month. The granting of approval was the last major stepping stone to the deal going ahead. The US Federal Trade Commission gave it the go-ahead as long ago as June. At the same time, rumours were circulating that Microsoft were preparing to make a further foray into the web with a bid for Yahoo.