Tag: Cloud

Documentation: Cloud Infrastructure Solution for Enterprise IT

If you are designing Public, Private or Hybrid Cloud based on Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1 this set of documents will be very useful for a starting point. They will offer you the basics you will need in order to design your Cloud and take the necessary decisions. Download all 4 documents from here.

System Center 2012 SP1 General Availability and VHD Downloads

It is official: System Center 2012 SP1 has reached General Availability. Summarization of the new capabilities you can find on the System Center blogs:

If you want to test the components you can download VHD files that will help you with that:

I trial version of the product can be downloaded from here.

Documentation for download:

List of SC 2012 SP1 KB articles:

Kevin Holman’s QuickStart deployment guides:

Microsoft Virtual Academy Courses:

  • Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals – Learn how Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V, and System Center 2012 SP1 can help you build, deploy, and manage private cloud architecture. NOTE: This course becomes available on Jan 15.
  • System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 Updates – Learn about the enhancements to each of the System Center 2012 SP1 components, which includes added support for Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012 and tighter integration with Windows Azure. NOTE: This course becomes available on Jan 16.
  • COMING SOON: System Center 2012 SP1 Capabilities – Learn about the configuration and management of the infrastructure, services and applications available from System Center 2012 SP1. NOTE: This course becomes available on Jan 31.

Orchestrator and Service Provider Foundation

If you want to know about the new feature in System Center 2012 SP1 named Service Provider Foundation there is a great article on Technet Wiki. The title of the article is Cloud Resource Management with System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) – Orchestrator and Service Provider Foundation.

Introducing SCVMM Service Templates and Datacenter Automation by Solution Accelerators Team

Update: As I wrote Microsoft is announcing two new Solution Accelerator beta programs for System Center products and now it is official at Microsoft SCVMM team blog.

Solution Accelerators Team in Microsoft is starting two new initiatives:

  • System Center Virtual Machine Manager Service Templates – Solution Accelerators Team will probably create a site where SCVMM service templates will be published and supported by Microsoft.  The first release will include templates for various Windows Server 2008 R2 and 2012 Roles – Domain Controller, DNS, DHCP, IIS and File Server. There will be also add-in for SCVMM that will be able to browse and download these service templates.
  • Datacenter Automation for the cloud  – From this initiative we will probably see scripts and runbooks for Orchestrator supported by Microsoft. The first solutions will be focused on SharePoint and Windows Server – Orchestrator Runbooks for quick SharePoint farm back-up and recovery scenario; Back up a Web application; Back up a service application; Trace logs; Checking Disk Space, CPU and RAM; Sharepoint WMI scan for perf/alerts; Scan for missing patches / WMI.

The two initiatives will start as beta programs on Microsoft Connect soon.

Let’s Build a Cloud… With PowerShell! – Part 1: Deployment and Configuration

Yigal Edery shows a glimpse of the new model on how to manage the Cloud. No need to explain further because “a must read” article. Read it here.