Expect More from Dynamic IT

Deploy new services faster, see a real-time view of the health and performance of your IT operations, and get peace of mind with a robust backup and disaster recovery solution. Let us show you how to build a dynamic, enterprise-class foundation for your IT operations that can quickly adapt to your business needs without busting your budget.

Microsoft offers one of the most comprehensive and affordable family of products to manage, monitor, and protect your IT infrastructure.  Software Logic's team of experts can help you quickly and effectively deploy System Center solutions so your business can start realizing the benefits of dynamic IT today.  If you are a Microsoft EA customer with Software Assurance let us show you how to leverage Microsoft services vouchers to help subsidize the cost of your System Center deployment. 

The System Center family consist of several products each designed to fulfill a specific role within your overall IT operation.  Each product is a capable solution in it own right, however maximum benefits are realized when using the suite as a whole.  Microsoft has designed each product to complement and integrate with the others in the family and form the foundation for a dynamic, enterprise-class IT operation that can scale from mid-sized businesses up through very large corporations.

Virtual Machine Manager

 Server virtualization has become the cornerstone for many IT operations to achieve high resource utilization, lower costs, and simplify server provisioning. With the initial release of Hyper-V, Microsoft introduced an alternative to VMware, the industry heavyweight.  Hyper-V was a capable virtualization platform, but it wasn't ready to take on VMware in the enterprise.  With the release of Hyper-V R2 and Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, Microsoft is leveling the playing field and bringing a mature, enterprise-class virtualization platform to market that can compete directly with VMware.

Is Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 and Hyper-V R2 an exact feature match with VMware's offering?  No it isn't; but at a fraction of the cost of an equivalent VMware offering is comes pretty darn close.  We've priced out deployments for our clients that have come in at 40 - 65% lower licensing costs than the comparable VMware deployments that we've done.  One can argue the subtle technical merits of both virtualization platforms, but based on our experience the real-world performance differences are negligible on the same hardware platform.

In our opinion, Microsoft's biggest advantage over VMware is more fundamental.  Supporting a VMware infrastructure is like managing two distinct IT environments.  The hypervisor, Linux-inspired management shell, and administrative tools of VMware are quite different from the Windows server environment that is running on top of the hypervisor.  In practical terms, IT personnel require more training and there is a substantial difference between the management of physical and virtual servers.  Contrast that to Microsoft's approach in which management of physical and virtual servers is nearly identical.  Experienced Windows server administrators require minimal training to get comfortable with Hyper-V and they can use the same tools to manage both physical and virtual servers.  For organizations working with ever-shrinking IT budgets, this is an additional cost savings that cannot be overlooked.

Configuration Manager

Combining hardware and software inventory, no-touch OS deployment, application deployment, patch management, and desired configuration management, System Center Configuration Manager 2008 R2 is an indispensible tool for organizations planning a Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 rollout in 2010.  Microsoft offers several free tools for assisting with OS deployment, but for organizations over 30 physical servers or 500 desktops this is a must have product that will pay for itself several times over.  Companies fewer servers or desktops can still get significant benefits, but may also want to look at System Center Essentials 2010 which is specifically designed for medium-sized businesses but with a reduced feature set.  SCE 2010 is at the release candidate stage as of this writing.

If your company has Desktop Deployment Planning Services (DDPS) vouchers as part of your Microsoft EA agreement with Software Assurance, Software Logic can accept those vouchers for Configuration Manager deployment planning.  We've helped several clients reduced their cost to get Configuration Manager deployed in advance of Windows 7 by taking advantage of this Microsoft benefit.  If you are getting ready to deploy Windows 7, now is the time to get Configuration Manager up and running in your environment.

Operations Manager

System Center Operations Manager is a comprehensive monitoring solution that covers server hardware, network hardware, storage systems, networking equipment, operating systems, and distributed applications.  It is an essential tool that can turn a reactive IT operation into a proactive one that identifies and resolves issues before they become critical and lead to service disruptions.

What distinguishes Operations Manger from other monitoring solutions on the market is the availability of management packs for dozens of Microsoft and third party applications.  For each major product that Microsoft releases, a management pack is authored by the same team that designed the product.  Who better to determined best-practice configuration and what to monitor for Exchange, SharePoint, Windows Server, etc. than the folks who actually designed and built them?  Each management pack includes best-practice configurations, monitoring rules, a knowledge base for issue resolution, and application-specific reports.

Data Protection Manager

System Center Data Protection Manager is Microsoft's best of breed data protection and recovery solution for Microsoft workloads including Windows Server, SharePoint, Exchange Server, SQL Server, Active Directory, and Hyper-V.  What sets DPM apart from most backup solutions is that it provides disk-to-disk continuous backup, disk-to-tape, offsite replication, and disaster recovery all from a single product.  Many companies that we talk to are using two, three, or even four different products to get a complete backup and disaster recovery solution.  This can put a significant burden on IT to get the integration and recovery scenarios worked out and lead to backup and recovery procedures that are overly complicated and error prone.

DPM offers a compelling array of features but it is strictly targeted at Microsoft-centric IT environments; you won't be backing up Oracle or DB2 with DPM.  If this scenario doesn't apply to your organization, then DPM should be at the top of your list for consideration.  Compared to other backup and recovery products, Microsoft is offering one of the simplest licensing models and very competitive pricing.  You won't find a list of two dozen different agents and options that requires a masters degree in licensing to figure out what to purchase.

Software Logic is a beta site for Data Protection Manager 2010 which is expected be released in April.  DPM 2010 adds support for Hyper-V R2 clusters, Exchange Server 2010, SharePoint 2010, and a new desktop agent for Windows clients.  Our team is running the product in a full production scenario backing up more than 70 different workloads including a 4-node Hyper-V R2 cluster, a multi-instance SQL Server 2008 cluster, Exchange Server 2010, and SharePoint 2010 as well as protecting for Windows 7 clients.