SCOM Zombie PSA#24: SCOM 2012 RC

 

As of today Microsoft released System Center Operations Manager 2012 Release Candidate. But in order to receive the download you’ll need to register for it here.

Here are the key things that are of interest to me taken right from the Microsoft website:

Feature Summary

• Setup
  Operations Manager 2012 has a new Setup wizard. For important instructions about how to install Operations Manager 2012, see Install Operations Manager 2012 Beta.
  • Yes, this was a lot easier now, just make sure your pre-reqs are all established ahead of time.
• Highly Available Management Group Out of the Box
  In Operations Manager 2012, all management servers are peers; there is no root management server. The workload is split among all management servers in a management group, which provides high availability without requiring a cluster.
  • In a global enterprise where servers are everywhere, I am looking forward to deploying and pushing OM12 to its limits.
• Resource pools
  A resource pool provides the ability to distribute workloads across multiple management servers, such as availability, network device monitoring, distributed monitor health rollup, and group calculation.
  • Very promising, in the lab it worked as planned & yet my lab is very small.
• Web console
  Operations Manager 2012 introduces a new Web console. In Operations Manager 2012, all Operations Manager views are available in the Web console.
  • Interesting
• Network monitoring
  Operations Manager 2012 provides the ability to discover and monitor network routers and switches, including the network interfaces and ports on those devices and the virtual LAN (VLAN) that they participate in. You can also delete discovered network devices and prevent the deleted network devices from being rediscovered the next time discovery runs. For more information, see Monitor Network Devices.
  • Looking forward to this section of OM12.
• Dashboard views
  As part of the network monitoring and application monitoring capabilities, Operations Manager 2012 includes new comprehensive dashboard views that combine multiple panels of information into a single view. In Operations Manager 2012, you can add the new dashboard views to My Workspace.
• Display dashboard views using SharePoint
  The Operations Manager web part displays specified dashboard views and can be added to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 sites. For more information, see Add a Dashboard View to a SharePoint Site.
• Operations Manager Module for Windows PowerShell
  Operations Manager 2012 provides a Windows PowerShell 2.0 module containing a full set of new cmdlets. The cmdlets in this module are only compatible with Operations Manager 2012. You can recognize the Operations Manager 2012 cmdlets by the "SC" preceding the noun. For additional information about the Operations Manager 2012 cmdlets, open the Operations Manager command shell and type Get-Help about_OpsMgr_WhatsNew. For information about how the Operations Manager 2007 cmdlets map to the Operations Manager 2012 cmdlets, type Get-Help about_OpsMgr_Cmdlet_Names.To use the Operations Manager 2012 cmdlets, you must establish a connection to an Operations Manager management group. You can establish either a persistent connection in which you can run multiple cmdlets, or a temporary connection when running a single cmdlet. For more information about connections, open the Operations Manager Shell and type Get-Help about_OpsMgr_Connections.
• UNIX- and Linux-based computers
  In Operations Manager 2012, the Discovery Wizard is easier to use for discovering UNIX- and Linux-based computers. You can now use Windows PowerShell to manage UNIX- and Linux-based computers, for more information, see the UNIX and Linux section in the release notes. High availability is also supported.
• UNIX/Linux Shell Command Template Management Pack
  This Management Pack implements authoring templates that allow the creation of rules, tasks, and monitors based on execution of shell commands on UNIX/Linux agents.
• JEE Management Packs
  These management packs monitor JEE (Java Enterprise Edition) application servers. Management packs are available for IBM WebSphere, Oracle WebLogic, Red Hat JBoss and Apache Tomcat. ((I think this will be a key bonus for my systems))