We’re expecting a lot of discussion about System Center 2012, which should officially launch next week. We’ll be paying particular attention to the updates to Configuration Manager and Virtual Machine Manager, any licensing information, and looking at how the revamped management suite ties into Microsoft’s overall cloud strategy. Of course, Windows Server 8, Hyper-V 3.0 and PowerShell v3 will be topics to keep an eye on, though there likely won’t be much news coming on these products during the show.

Are you attending MMS 2012? What are your plans – sessions you plan to attend, people to meet, parties to crash? What would you like us to cover? Let us know in the comments, or on Twitter (@WindowsTT).

If you can’t make it to Vegas, you can still watch the live-streamed keynotes from Microsoft Management and Security Division vice president Brad Anderson on both Tuesday and Wednesday, and breakout sessions will be archived. Follow the #MMS2012 hashtag for updates all week long, and look out for our news coverage here and on SearchWindowsServer.com.

What we do know is that the systems management suite was quietly made available to volume-license customers on April 1 (no joke), as reported by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley. There has been no confirmation about when all users will be able to download the final version of the product, but Microsoft has said to expect more information to be revealed at the Microsoft Management Summit, April 16-20 in Las Vegas.

System Center 2012 features several updated products that build on Microsoft’s private and public cloud strategy – including a revamped Virtual Machine Manager and device management with Configuration Manager. It will be licensed only as a single bundle.

Microsoft announced the Release Candidate version of System Center 2012 in January, and the Community Technology Preview for Windows Server 8 in early March.

Have you downloaded the latest version of System Center 2012? We want to hear from you. Let us know your thoughts in the comments, or find us on Twitter @WindowsTT.

ZDNet UK just posted some screenshots from the SCVMM 2012 demos last week, for anyone interested in a few visuals of the interface in action.

ORIGINAL POST 1/25/2011

Those who enjoyed Microsoft’s cloud push last year are really going to like 2011. Many of the technologies that have been discussed over the past year are slowly beginning to see the light of day, starting with next version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM).

During a live meeting this week, Microsoft product manager Kenon Owens demoed the yet-to-be released SCVMM 2012 (previously dubbed “v.Next” before TechEd Europe in November). Microsoft is positioning SCVMM as a key component for organizations looking to private clouds, and Owens broke down some of the ways the software can be used to control infrastructures and services in a cloud-based environment.

The infrastructure part is based on what Microsoft is calling fabric management. Senior program manager Shon Shah described fabric management at TechEd Europe as “taking a bare-metal machine and provisioning it to be a standalone Hyper-V host or even a Hyper-V host cluster. It also involves configuring the storage and network, which is new in (SCVMM 2012).”

The idea is to allow administrators to take the server, network and storage aspects of their physical resources and specify how those resources are allocated in the cloud. For example, an admin can create various “clouds” in SCVMM, then specify how much access each cloud has to their physical resources (networking, load balancing, storage capacity, etc.). Owens described the whole process as “really just taking logical servers and then passing them up into the clouds.”

Once the infrastructure is in place, services can then be pushed out to admins and users based on Active Directory and identity specifications. Owens said admins will be able to assign group permissions to specific clouds, limit quotas for what certain users can access, and so on — straight from the SCVMM console. “These services are more than just the OS images, but the apps inside it, like SQL Server, etc.,” he explained.

These kinds of definitions are becoming commonplace in any cloud-focused presentation from Microsoft these days. Senior product manager Ian Carlson said the company plans to fight the inevitable cloud fatigue currently washing over IT by being very clear as to how Microsoft defines cloud computing and everything in it. He implied that much of the confusion and frustration is rooted in how different vendors have different definitions for different words, which has exacerbated some of the cloud pushback from IT professionals.

“We are trying to come up with a firm taxonomy of the terms we are using,” Carlson said. “So when we talk about something like an appliance, people know that we mean something very specific.”

A few more tidbits of note:

• One important update with SCVMM 2012 is that Citrix XenServer has been added as a supported virtualization platform (SCVMM 2008 only supports Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware). It’s Microsoft’s hope that total support for the “Big Three” of server virtualization will give customers more flexibility when managing host groups and clusters in the cloud.

• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 is on track for general availability sometime in the second half of 2011, though no specific release date has been set for a beta. A point release for Microsoft’s Virtual Machine Manager Self Service Portal (currently in version 2.0) should be out ahead of that in H1.

• Microsoft provided no update as to the release of its Windows Azure appliance (expected out by end of year), though Carlson did note that its partners and customers are currently “making progress.”

For more information on System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Microsoft virtualization, visit SearchWindowsServer.com.

VMware’s vCenter Update Manager for vSphere is designed for this exact same purpose, but it doesn’t work with Microsoft’s VM management product, as vCenter Server is required to run the tool. Microsoft’s VMST is similarly platform-specific, with System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 or R2 being a prereq. You are also required to have either WSUS 3.0 SP1/SP2 or some version of System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to apply the updates.

VMTS 3.0 supports Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 (naturally), and the Windows Task Scheduler can be used to schedule servicing jobs, according to Microsoft.

Earlier this month, VirtualizationAdmin.com published an extremely detailed breakdown by Janique Carbone of the installation process for VMST 2.1, which has now been completely replaced by this latest version. I’d expect the process has changed somewhat with 3.0, but the piece does include a lot of configuration tips and how-tos, so it still might be worth a read. Users also have the option to upgrade from version 2.1 if it’s already installed.

For more information of the latest server virtualization tools and utilities, visit SearchServerVirtualization.com.

• In case you didn’t already know this, Microsoft is really committed to the cloud. A large part of the Tuesday morning keynote was dedicated to how customers can (and will be able to) use System Center products to monitor and manage their cloud environments. In fact, System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 already has cloud monitoring support built-in, and there is a lot more to come.

  Most of the attendees I spoke with found the cloud talk to be extremely interesting, even if they are a ways away from actually implementing it themselves. One developer I spoke with who has played around with Windows Azure seemed especially pleased with the path Microsoft was on with System Center, saying “Azure is cool, but it’s really just a technology. It’s how you manage it – that’s where the really good stuff is.”

• Just to reemphasize, everyone I talked to found the cloud chatter to be mostly fascinating (rather than annoying), but hardly anyone seems to be close to actually doing it. One reason behind the reluctance was just a general lack of understanding from people about how to make the cloud work for them. As one attendee put it, “Going up and showing a demo or slides is all well and good, but how do I adapt it to my organization? How much does it cost to implement?”

• The one attendee I spoke with who actually was looking into a cloud strategy was a fellow named Aaron Cooper, a systems management solutions architect at the Royal Bank of Canada. He said his organization is in the process of a data center move, and the cloud could very well play a role for them. He said the main challenges he sees involve finding the time to plan things out and developing an implementation strategy with zero downtime.

  Cooper said the key to really reaping the cost benefits of cloud computing requires a great amount of vision. He added that anyone considering a move to the cloud should actually have a “visoneering team” on hand to plan things out, stay on top of the latest technologies and figure out how they will work best for the organization. “Visioneering is kind of my word, so make sure you credit me for that,” he said with a smile. No problem Mr. Cooper, consider yourself credited!

• Another topic that turned some heads during the Tuesday keynote was the concept of long-distance live migration. This was sort of buried under all the cloud talk, but it basically involves traditional live migration, only applying it offsite from data center to data center (with zero downtime). Microsoft president of server and tools business Bob Muglia said the company is providing this capability through a partnership with Hewlett-Packard.

• I didn’t speak with a lot of vendors at the show, but I did talk a little with the folks at Veeam. They just announced an update for their nworks product which basically helps users monitor and manage VMware machines using System Center Operations Manager 2007 and Virtual Machine Manager 2008 in the same way they would with machines running on Microsoft Hyper-V. Another win for heterogeneity.

• Finally, lots of RTM announcements went down last week as well. In case you missed it, System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, System Center Essentials, and (finally) Service Manager 2010 were released to manufacturing. The beta for Configuration Manager 2007 R3 was also made available.

  I sat down with Robert Reynolds, Microsoft director of product planning for System Center, to get the details on what’s new with all these releases and more (including VMM 2008 R2 and how the Opalis acquisition fits into everything). He also talks a good deal about Microsoft’s overall cloud strategy, echoing much of what Muglia talked about during his keynote.

For more information on Microsoft System Center and other systems management products, visit SearchWindowsServer.com.

According to Peter O’Rourke via Microsoft’s Virtualization Team Blog, “It’s their show, it’s not an industry show, and they set the rules.” In other words, don’t expect a demo.

I guess it’s not a total surprise given the current competition within the virtualization market. Still, aren’t VMware’s management capabilities supposed to be superior to Microsoft’s anyway? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen competitors giving demos at TechEd in the past. (I can’t honestly say that I spend time at every booth during those events though, so if anyone remembers Microsoft doing something similar, be sure to post in the comments section below.)

Anyway, back to SCVMM. I’m sure Microsoft is disappointed, but based on O’Rourke’s post, they are brushing it off better than they did with some other recent shenanigans.

The company is clearly very excited about SCVMM 2008 R2, which will be able to leverage the new capabilities of Hyper-V R2 and Windows server 2008 R2. Such features include Live Migration (duh), Clustered Shared Volumes (which has started to get more attention recently), and Virtual Machine Queue and TCP Chimney. According to Microsoft, the last two are designed to improve network performance for virtual machines.

You can get all the details on Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 and download a 180-day evaluation at the Microsoft website.