Windows System Center 2012: The review

Microsoft's System Center suite of products is not easy to categorize as a group. The breadth of the offerings falling under the System Center moniker makes being asked to review all of System Center in a single article somewhat intimidating. Microsoft System Center logo System Center 2012 has already seen production …

[quarky]

"..employing Windows Server Datacenter Edition. For these organizations "8 extra Windows Server instances" comes "free" and the cost of server resources required to run the entire System Center suite is just a rounding error."

I thought Data Center comes with an ability to run an unlimited number of VM's. Where does the limit of eight come from?

[VWDan]

That's what he means, the extra VM's for a datacenter licensee are free. 8 comes from the required machines for Systems Center. I suppose it could have read "the 8 extra.."

[Anonymous Coward]

Done

"A proper installation of the System Center suite takes at least nine separate servers / virtual machines "

Oh $DEITY. I get separating critical admin functions for redundancy, that's why I set up two (physically separate, not just VMs) external MX relays, DNS servers, etc. I get frustrated, but can tolerate the need to partition apps that don't play well together onto their own VMs. If MS built the entire suite, they should be able to make them play together.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Done

They do, you can install all of them on the same server as long as it can handle it and they will work. They just don't recommend it

[HipposRule]

Re: Done

For our HO infrastructure of around 2500 clients over a couple of diverse locations MS said we'd get away with 1 additional server (we use WSUS on a different server but don't use MS for DNS/DHCP etc.)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easier just to use other products than it is to understand MS licensing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Including Oracle, IBM, VMware...

Are you sure about that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or

Choose a vendor that has people who can correctly advise you on what your options are and the costs. Why do their job for them?

[Trevor_Pott]

Re: Or

So, we trust Microsoft's VAR approach now, do we?

[Anonymous Coward]

DPM

I've not looked at DPM 2012 yet, but will be doing so in the next month or so as I evaluate backup software and develop reporting systems for backup environments. I have to say that I have been very impressed with the last couple of versions of DPM, it's got an excellent GUI and command line environment, with really excellent metadata services (ie: you can actually get information about how it's setup and working out of it) It's very close to the ideal of no-agent backup software with its replication of changed tracks to create images on the server. The problem is that there is no support for anything other than Windows, MS could have a pretty good tool which would trounce BackupExec, if they'd only add a Linux client. I don't see the problem in adding a non-Windows client, because they support Linux on Hyper-v, so you'd think that adding it as a client would be a logical step.

[RonWheeler]

Re: DPM

Agreed - DPM is a fantastic product for largely MS shops on HyperV. DPM relies heavily on VSS for quiescing the machine so linux, old Oracle etc is poorly supported. You can still back some lightweight linux 'appliance' type boxes pretty successfuly I've found - just dont expect database transactional consistency so you may need to supplement it with scheduled tasks, redirect database to MS SQL, or look elsewhere.

[Steve Knox]

Hmmm...

Everything else is a "Manager", except System Center App Controller. Now why would MS not name the product System Center App Manager...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmmm...

You'll notice that when IBM renamed their server range to I, p, e, z that aix didn't change to pOS...

[James Loughner]

SCA

Society for Creative Anachronism

Is MS going medieval???

Inquiring minds want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Licensing

We recently adopted System Center 2012 and are becoming familiar with it technically. I think it will prove to be quite good at what it does, especially compared with 2007. OTOH, the licensing was a fucking nightmare. Even the VARs can barely understand it, much less explain it.