MMS 2007

Okay I haven’t posted in a while. I’m sorry. I had a couple of big events come up that took precedence. First I had to setup and administer the computers systems for a small conference (70+ machines). I decided against using SMS for this conference, so I took myself out of the SMS loop. The 2^nd event was the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS 2007). This event is all about SMS and the upcoming Systems Center Family. The Systems Center family includes Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Data Protection Manager, Essentials, Virtual Machine Manager, and Capacity Planner. System Center Configuration Manager is the important one here. It’s actually the next version of SMS. SMS v4 will officially be called Systems Center Configuration Manager (SCCM 2007).

At MMS 2007 I learned all about the cool features that SCCM 2007 will be providing. There are tons! If you haven’t yet, get Beta 2 of SCCM 2007. I will be installing it this week and giving a review of my experience. I can tell you that at the SMS 2003 to SCCM 2007 upgrade lab, the process was very easy. MMS 2007 has also convinced me to install SMS SP3 once it’s available. My original plans were to skip SP3 and wait for SCCM 2007. However the additional reports and collections regarding Vista has forced me to reconsider this decision. SP3 is now a must have for me.