Download the Free ebook: Introducing Microsoft System Center 2012 R2

The folks at Microsoft Press have given everyone an early Xmas present with the release for download of a new e-book titled 'Introducing Microsoft System Center 2012 R2, Technical Overview'.

I've taken a quick scan through the content and it looks like they've covered everything that you need to know as an introduction to the System Center 2012 R2 suite of cloud and datacenter management products. An added bonus for me is that my good friend and ex-workmate John McCabe wrote a significant piece on the new Service Management Automation (SMA) tool working with the Windows Azure Pack in Chapter 10.

A big thanks has to go to the main authors Mitch Tulloch and Symon Perriman along with all of the other expert contributors to this book for making it a free resource to the general community - well done all!

You can download the book in PDF format from here:

Free ebook: Introducing Microsoft System Center 2012 R2

SCOM 2012 R2 - Deploying Highly Available Solutions on Windows Server & SQL 2012

My good friend and fellow Irish CDM MVP Paul Keely has just published a new whitepaper that outlines how to deploy SCOM 2012 R2 in a highly available (HA) configuration using Windows Server 2012 and SQL 2012.

The paper comprises 18 pages of different HA scenarios using these technologies and is a great read for anyone either about to embark on a new SCOM HA deployment or someone who's just thinking about a new customer design that delivers the contingency of uptime that has come to be expected these days.

Here's Paul's own description of it:

This guide covers the options available for deploying SCOM in a HA configuration using Microsoft technologies. We start off with a base SCOM design, and then go through clustering, SQL AlwaysOn, Stretched Clusters and Hyper-V replica.  This is an overview guide for all the options.


You can download the guide directly from TechNet here:

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/SCOM-2012-R2-HA-options-540beb95

Thanks Paul!