I thought I'd write a quick post to cover some of the useful information that I've seen filtering through since MMS 2012 and also to post some useful links that I didn't get chance to while balancing my tablet on my knee during sessions.
Johan Arwidmark has released a brilliant "Hydration Kit" to help deploy a complete ConfigMgr 2012 infrastructure, fully automated, for a lab/test environment.
http://www.deploymentresearch.com/Blog/tabid/62/EntryId/57/The-Hydration-Kit-for-ConfigMgr-2012-RTM-is-available-for-download.aspx
The sessions from MMS 2012 can be watched on-demand from the http://www.mms-2012.com/digitalmms site. The individual slide decks are also available from here.
If you don't want to trawl through so many sessions grabbing the slide decks, you can download the entire stack from the myITforum site.
Similarly, with the video sessions, you can find a nifty little PowerShell script here on the scomfaq site that will allow you to download all the sessions for offline viewing, or supply your own text list of session ID's if you don't want them all. Just be careful, there's around 26Gb of videos available to download!
Various System Center solution accelerators, add-ins and resource tools have been released:
Service Manager 2012 Exchange Connector 3.0
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012
Security Compliance Manager 2.5
Many other Addons that I previously listed
Keynote Day 1 saw the "official" announcement that System Center 2012 was RTM and GA (General Availability) which was no huge surprise (For those customers that took my bet that April 17th was the release date I'll collect my winnings later!)
Another non-surprise was the announcement that Windows Server "8" was officially renamed to Windows Server 2012 (shortly followed with the Windows client team announcing that Windows "8" will be officially called Windows 8).
Keynote Day 2 was more client focused, but the main announcement was that Intune will be receiving a big feature update in the next release with the ability to manage iOS and Android devices, not just through Exchange ActiveSync policies, but by being able to allow applications to be installed from a centrally controllable "approved" list. Details are still sketchy and the demo showed a web page being used on iOS, but fingers crossed this will change to being an app.
Microsoft's Eric Main posted more information on the changes. Here's an excerpt with some additional details:
"The next release of Windows Intune will integrate with Windows Server Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange Server, allowing IT to manage the many devices brought into the workplace, even if they’re not owned by the organization. IT will also be able to use Windows Intune to set security policies for mobile devices and enforce password protection, encryption and even kick off a remote wipe if a device is compromised. Windows Intune’s mobile device management will support any device with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync capabilities, including Windows Phone, iOS and Android."
I took both the new Private Cloud exams while I was out there;
70-246 - Monitoring and Operating a Private Cloud
70-247 - Configuring and Deploying a Private Cloud
For those of you thinking about taking these exams and don't work daily with ALL of the System Center 2012 products, I'd recommend you look at attending the classroom based courses:
Learning Plans and Classroom Training
10750AB: Beta: Monitoring and Operating a Private Cloud with System Center 2012 (5 Days)
10751A: Configuring and Deploying a Private Cloud with System Center 2012 (5 Days)
Unfortunately I have to wait until June time to find out my results, fingers crossed that I passed!
Much to the disappointment of my wife who was hoping to come to Las Vegas with me next year and a colleague who also had his sights set on Vegas, the announcement was made that MMS 2013 will be held in New Orleans in June next year. Rumours are already circulating that this may well mean a combining of both MMS & TechEd since MMS is usually held in April/May and TechEd in May/June time. Since both events usually have the same set of Microsoft staff attending a fair portion of the sessions it would certainly make sense.
Finally, while I did the usual sweep of the vendor stalls looking for swag, I personally thought it was rather light on goodies. I did however find swag gold from BDNA. For those people that don't know me, I tend to drink a lot of Relentless, so being a geek these were the highlight of the swag gathering!
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