System Center Essentials 2007
I was asked by our VP Product Management & Training to give a presentation and demo about System Center Essentials 2007 coming wednesday. So this weekend I got around to finalizing my SCE install and configuration on my VPC.
So what is SCE 2007?
Acoording to Microsoft:
Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007 SP1 (Essentials 2007) is a new management solution in the System Center family of IT systems management products. Essentials is specifically designed for IT professionals working in midsize businesses who often face IT challenges similar to those of larger enterprises—troubleshooting end user problems, automating management tasks, managing multiple systems, and diagnosing and resolving IT problems.
System Center Essentials 2007 provides a unified management solution that enables IT professionals in midsize organizations to proactively manage their IT environment with increased efficiency.
Well, I have to give them the credits for creating a unified console which contains almost everything troubleshooting, patch management and software distribution related. It's actually a pretty nice piece of software, but as with all the System Center products, it can be a hassle to get it to run smoothly in your demo environment 
Allright, time to look at the technical specifications:
SCE2007 is actually a jury-rig of SCOM and WSUS 3.0, and uses the SCOM Agent and Automatic Updates on the client-side.
If you are familiar with SCOM, you will have no problems setting up SCE2007 for Monitoring & Alerts.
SCE2007 even has it's own set of MP's available for download from the MS website: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/systemcenter/cc462790.aspx
Well, that was the part I really liked about SCE2007. The ability to see if a service is failing on a client machine, and resolving it from one and the same console. Of course, if you want to tailor the Monitors and Alerts you have to be familiar with SCOM, otherwise you will not know where to start 
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The second technology that was incorporated into SCE2007 is WSUS. WSUS is used for the Software and Updates distribution... This I didn't like so much, and I had a hard time pushing Updates to my Client box.... and eventually discovering that I had to resynchronize the Updates after approval... Turns out that SCE only downloads a list of available updates and descriptions... only after an update is approved, it is downloaded to the SCE server for further distribution in your network... Seeing I have a "Local only" network for my VPC's... It didn't go quite smoothly on the updates part....
Second is the Software Distribution. Software is also being pushed to clients via the WSUS mechanism...
Only disadvantage of this: You are only able to target computers. You can't push an application only to a specific group of users...
In a small or small-midsize business this will probably not be too much of a disadvantage, seeing as the amount of roaming users is little to nothing.
For software distribution (and updates as well) you have 3 options to push to the client:
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Push to Add/Remove Programs in the control panel of the Client. The user (or in most cases: local admin, seeing as the regular user does not have installation permissions) can then decide when to install the update/software. This is best recommended for updates/software that are optional.
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Push to client without a deadline. If you push software/updates without a deadline to a client, the client will install the software/updates based on the Automatic Updates settings on the client. By default SCE configures automatic updates to check-in with the SCE server on a 22-hour cycle and install updates at 03:00 AM. These settings can be configured in the SCE Managed Computers GPO.
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Push to clients with a deadline. If you push software/updates with a deadline you set a specific time and date to install the update on the clients, overriding their default settings. Additionally you can set a deadline in the past to immediately install the update/software when the client next checks in with the SCE server. In addition to that, from the SCE console you have the possibility to manually initiate a check-in with the SCE server on the client, this way you can install an update/software in about 10 mins (Automatic Update check-in takes around 10 mins to complete).
That's it for this post.
Seeing as I had some troubles getting my SCE2007 environment to run, I will write an article about troubleshooting SCE issues soon. In the meantime, if you have any questions about SCE feel free to drop me a mail at henk@we-blog.info.
-Henk