System Center Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 Beta Announced and Download

Today it was announced Service Pack 1 SCCM 2012, which adds important features to the product (other products too).

IMPORTANT: This downloads not only a Service Pack, contains full products with SP1!

As has already become known by the public, today a Service Pack is not simply a set of updates and hotfix. The Cumulative Update became the collection of hotfix and Service Pack also contains the fix of the CUs also contains new features. It was very clear with Windows 2008 R2 SP1 with Hyper-V 2.0

Some new features of SCCM SP1 2012:

• Deploy automated OS for Windows 8, Windows Server 2012

Today it is possible to do with the SCCM distribution of these new 2012 the SOs with the OSD, but we do not support the new features to be configured, and these will be added in SP1

• Distribution points Distribution Points using the Azure

This inclusion is very interesting by allowing companies with Azure account take traffic software downloads by remote employees

• Automating tasks with the added support to PowerShell

With the inclusion of PS in other products seen as a scripting language was lacking in some automation tasks through scripting, and now the SP1 will allow this with SCCM 2012

• Customer management with Mac OS X e Linux/Unix

This is a long-awaited feature, since in May 2011 is already spoke in support. Now, finally, we have this possibility

• Integration with Windows Intune

With Service Pack 1 SCCM 2012 and the new version of Intune will be possible to integrate the two platforms (on-promise and cloud) to manage users within and outside the company, but using a single console by SCCM. An interesting point is that the license of Windows Intune to who owns the SCCM 2012 will be reduced!

Which the final version of these products? The beginning of 2013.

If you wish to test these new features, it is important to remember that Beta products are not supported by Microsoft. The ideal is to use them for testing and maybe manage controlled environments.

Link to download the SCCM 2012 SP1 Beta: Microsoft Download Center

Release Notes: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj591611.aspx

Windows Intune account for 30 days of testing: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windowsintune/try-and-buy.aspx

About others System Center 2012 products:

• Virtual Machine Manager
  • Improved Support for Network Virtualization
  • Extend the VMM console with Add-ins
  • Support for Windows Standards-Based Storage Management Service, thin provisioning of logical units and discovery of SAS storage
  • Ability to convert VHD to VHDX, use VHDX as base Operating System image

• Data Protection Manager
  • Improved backup performance of Hyper-V over CSV 2.0
  • Protection for Hyper-V over remote SMB share
  • Protection for Windows Server 2012 de-duplicated volumes
  • Uninterrupted protection for VM live migration
• App Controller
  • Service Provider Foundation API to create and operate Virtual Machines
  • Support for Azure VM; migrate VHDs from VMM to Windows Azure, manage from on-premise System Center
• Operations Manager
  • Support for IIS 8
  • Monitoring of WCF, MVC and .NET NT services
  • Azure SDK support
• Orchestrator
  • Support for Integration Packs, including 3rd party
  • Manage VMM self-service User Roles
  • Manage multiple VMM ‘stamps’ (scale units), aggregate results from multiple stamps
  • Integration with App Controller to consume Hosted clouds
• Service Manager
  • Apply price sheets to VMM clouds
  • Create chargeback reports
  • Pivot by cost center, VMM clouds, Pricesheets
• Server App-V
  • Support for applications that create scheduled tasks during packaging
  • Create virtual application packages from applications installed remotely on native server