Microsoft Targets Hybrid Cloud With New Management Tools

Microsoft upgrades its management tools to help system administrators tackle increasingly complex hybrid cloud environments and data centre resources.

To this end it has made available a new System Center 2016 Preview, as well as its Operations Management Suite.

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft System Center is essentially a suite of systems management tools that includes System Center Configuration Manager and System Center Operations Manager.

System Center itself is geared towards managing the on-premises data centre. The Operations Management Suite meanwhile is designed to help gain control of hybrid cloud environments.

“Hybrid cloud has become the reality for IT,” blogged Mike Neil, corporate VP of Enterprise Cloud at Microsoft. “The challenge for IT Operations is managing across both existing traditional infrastructure and new cloud resources. Today, we are excited to announce the release of System Center 2016 Technical Preview 5, part of the ongoing development work to bring you management designed for the hybrid cloud.”

Microsoft said that the new System Center 2016 Preview will provide “increased agility” for data centre management, whereas Operations Management Suite provides “new options when working across multiple clouds.”

“With System Center and the Operations Management Suite, you can manage infrastructure on-premises, handle existing applications, and at the same time expand your management approach to cover new distributed, micro-services based applications that are designed for the cloud,” blogged Neil. “System Center 2016 will include integration with the Operations Management Suite.”

Specifically, System Center gains new capabilities including software-defined data centre support. This includes managing the lifecycle of Nano Server hosts and virtual machines, simplified deployment of the new Windows Server 2016 software-defined networking components, and support for Storage Spaces Direct and replicated storage volumes.

A data driven alert management should also allow administrators faster troubleshooting, scheduling of maintenance windows, as well as “increased scale in monitoring of Unix and Linux servers, and streamlined access to management packs.”

Windows Server 2016

Windows management has been overhauled and includes capabilities such as in-place upgrade and provisioning packages and profiles, as well as support for new Windows 10 features. Additionally, users are offered a “new servicing dashboard and improved mobile device and application management capabilities when connected to Microsoft Intune.”

Microsoft has also released a new version of Windows Server (Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5), that includes “additional layers of security” to help organisations block increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks nowadays.

System admins now have features to control privileged access, shield virtual machines and protect servers environment.

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