In March there have been several news announced by Microsoft on Operations Management Suite (OMS) and System Center. In this series of articles, which we make with monthly basis, are listed all the main innovations of the current month, accompanied by the necessary references to be able to conduct further studies.
Operations Management Suite (OMS)
Azure Automation
In Azure Automation new features have been officially released that allow you to:
- Manage the distribution of updates (Update management).
- Collect inventory information about the applications installed on systems (Inventory).
- Track changes made on the machines (Change tracking).
The our article, posted in recent months, shows how to configure the Azure Automation Account to take advantage of these new features and reports the key features.
Figure 1 – Related solutions in Log Analytics
Azure Backup
Azure Backup introduces several new features that address the following aspects:
- Large disk support: ability to protect disks of size up to 4 TB, both typologies: managed and unmanaged. The limit was previously of 1 TB.
- Backup and Restore performance improvements: to reduce the execution time of the backup and restore will be retained snapshots, performed during the backup process, for 7 days.
- Instant recovery point: the recovery point is made available instantly at the moment of creation of the snapshot made by the backup job, in a similar way to the checkpoint created by Hyper-V or VMware.
- Distribute the disks of restored VM: during the restore process you are given the opportunity to choose where to place the disks unmanaged of virtual machines. This reduces the configurations, post restore activities, that would be required putting all disks within the same storage account .
To take advantage of these improvements you need to upgrade your subscription which owns the Recovery Service Vaults. The upgrade can be performed directly from the Azure Portal (there will be an appropriate notification in the dashboard of the Recovery Service vault ) or via PowerShell commands. For further information you can consult theMicrosoft's official announcement.
Figure 2 – Subscription upgrade process at the new stack
Microsoft has also announced that the Azure Backup service is now also available in the regions of Azure France (France Central and France South).
System Center
Microsoft has officialized the release of Windows Server 2019 which will be available to the public in the second half of 2018. In the same time will be made available System Center 2019 and it will have full support for Windows Server 2019 from the very first day of release.
System Center Configuration Manager
During the month has been released the version 1802 for the Current Branch (CB) of System Center Configuration Manager that introduces new features and major improvements in the product.
This summarizes the areas impacted by this update:
Modern Management
- Endpoint Protection workload transition in co-management
- Management insights
- Co-management reporting
Figure 3 – Co-management reporting
Microsoft 365 Adoption
- Phased deployments
- Windows AutoPilot Device Information report
- Support for Windows 10 ARM64 devices
- Surface Device Dashboard
- Microsoft Edge browser policies
- Report to show default browser for client machines
- Windows 10 Servicing for a specific collection report
- Improvements to Office 365 client management dashboard
- Improvements for Windows Defender Exploit Guard
- New settings for Windows Defender Application Guard
Streamlined Infrastructure
- Configure Windows 10 Delivery Optimization to use Configuration Manager boundary groups
- Add management points to your boundary group fallback relationships
- Moving Distribution Points between sites
Improvements in Cloud Management Gateway
- Cloud management gateway support for Azure Resource Manager
- Install user-available applications on Azure AD-joined devices
- Windows 10 in-place upgrade task sequence over the Internet
Improvements in Software Center
- Approve application requests for users per device
- Improvements to client settings for Software Center
Improvements in OSD
- Improvements to Windows 10 in-place upgrade task sequence
- Deployment Template for Task Sequences
Miscellaneous Improvements
- Support for hardware inventory strings greater than 255 characters in length
- Run scripts
Figure 4 – Run Script status
To see the complete list of new features and to get more details about it you can access the Microsoft's official documentation.
The update will be made available globally in recent weeks and will be displayed in the node "Updates and Servicing" in the SCCM console. To force the availability of this update you can use this PowerShell script.
For System Center Configuration Manager has been released the version 1803 for the Technical Preview branch. In addition to general improvements in the solution are introduced useful changes that can improve the Configuration Manager infrastructure. Furthermore, interesting improvements have been made to the Software Center. All the new features included in this update can be found in the article Update 1803 for Configuration Manager Technical Preview Branch.
Please note that the Technical Preview Branch releases help you to evaluate new features of SCCM and it is recommended to apply these updates only in test environments.
System Center Updates Publisher
System Center Updates Publisher (SCUP) is the Microsoft solution that allows you to manage custom third-party update. This month a new version of SCUP has been officially released and can be downloaded at this link. The new release introduces support for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. All details about this release can be found in the’official announcement.
System Center Operations Manager
Following, are reported the news about Management Packs of SCOM:
- Management pack for For Certificate Services 2016.
- Management Pack for Windows Server Operating System 2016 and 1709 Plus
Evaluation of OMS and System Center
Please remember that in order to test and evaluate for free Operations Management Suite (OMS) you can access this page and select the mode that is most appropriate for your needs.
To try System Center products you can access to the’Evaluation Center and after the registration you can start the trial period.
