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Configuring and Administering System Center Essentials 2007

Two of my friends and MVP colleagues, Björn Axell and Pete Zerger, has author a really cool 4-days System Center Essentials (SCE) course together. The course will cover all features of SCE including patch management, software distribution, inventorying and monitoring.

Don’t miss this chance to learn SCE from a real SCE-Jedi!

More info and registration here.

System Center Guides

System Center Essentials 2007 Migration Guide
This guide discusses various scenarios for upgrading to System Center Essentials 2007, and also includes a brief discussion of outgrowing and migrating from Essentials to System Center Operations Manager 2007. The guide includes the following:
• Migrating from WSUS to Essentials 2007
• Migrating from Operations Manager to Essentials 2007
• Migrating from Systems Management Server 2003 or Configuration Manager 2007 to Essentials 2007
• Outgrowing Essentials 2007: Migrating to Operations Manager 2007 and Configuration Manager 2007

Download here

System Center Essentials 2007 Operations Guide
This guide discusses best practices for everyday use of System Center Essentials 2007. The guide includes the following:
• Getting Ready to Operate Essentials 2007
• Managing Computers
• Monitoring Network Devices
• Deploying Software and Updates

Download here

System Center Essentials 2007 RTM

System Center Essentials (SCE) is a “all in one” System Management product, design for small and medium companies. SCE is has a built in limit to monitor 30 servers and 500 clients. The “core” of SCE is built on two products, Windows Server Updates Services 3.0 (WSUS) and System Center Operations manager 2007 (Ops Mgr 2007). SCE will provide patch management, software deployment, inventory and monitoring.

More info about System Center Essentials 2007 and trial software here
More info about System Center Essentials 2007 licensing and pricing here
System Center Essentials 2007 webcast and videos here

Both Pete Zerger and Björn Axéll has a lot of good information about SCE, you will find links to them under “Links”.

System Center Updates Publisher

System Center Updates Publisher is an add-on application designed to extend the software update management functionality in System Center Essentials 2007. It provides SCE administrators the ability to import, create, and publish custom software update information to their SCE server. By using the Updates Publisher to define a custom software update and publish it to the server, a SCE administrator can begin detecting and deploying that update to the client and server computers in their organization. The System Center Updates Publisher enables SCE administrators to do the following:

  • Create the correct applicability and deployment metadata for an update that can be managed through SCE
  • Import catalogs of updates from third-parties and from within the customer’s own organization
  • Export and share these software updates catalogs
  • Manage custom software updates information
  • Source: MS Connect webpage

    You can download it from the MS Connect website, here.

    System Center Essentials RC1

    System Center Essentials RC1 are now available on the Microsoft Connect site.

    What’s New in Essentials RC1?
    Capabilities:

    Support for upgrading from WSUS 2.0 and 3.0 Emailed Daily Health Report Automatic scheduled discovery of computers from Active Directory Enhanced network monitoring of SNMP-enabled network devices including a network topology diagram view Remote Control support for remote control of managed client and server computers Ability to import Update catalogs from third-party software publishers SQL Services based reporting on monitoring, hardware and software inventory Setup experience improvements for SQL Server selection and file locations More management packs including support for Exchange 2003, Dynamics CRM 3.0, and Active Directory

    Enhanced Platform support

    non-English US locales
    installing Essentials on x64 servers
    managing Windows Vista
    managing x64 systems
    Support for managing systems in multiple domains in a single forest

    Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007

    There is a demo of System Center Essential 2007 that you can watch here