System Center Service Manager 2010 Dashboard

About !!!

IT Challenges

IT administrators and IT support staff need easier access to key information about incident and problem resolution, change control, and its configuration management database.  System Center Service Manager orchestrates activities and connects knowledge from System Center Operations Manager, System Center Configuration Manager, and Active Directory® Domain Services. IT needs the ability to track this information without having access to a System Center Service Manager console.

Solution

The System Center Service Manager 2010 Dashboard can reduce costs and improve IT responsiveness by keeping track of incidents and problem resolution, change control, and its configuration management database—with an easy to use, customizable Web interface.  Because the Dashboard is built on Windows® SharePoint® Services, IT staff can access information without using the Service Manager console. The Dashboard is a free Solution Accelerator, and fully supported by Microsoft.

Key Benefits

Benefits of the Dashboard include:

• Actionable information out of the box. The Dashboard comes with a wide range of valuable built-in data sets, related to activities, change and incident management, and many more that IT managers can access without using the Service Manager console. 
• Centralized, near-real-time access to key information. The graphical Dashboard lets customers view any Service Manager data set in near-real time—without leaving their desk.
• Easy to build and configure. The Dashboard’s wizard-based tools let customers easily create new Dashboards in minutes. 
• Easy to customize. The Dashboard can easily be customized to meet the needs of different departments and other groups. Any data set in the Service Manager database can be presented on the Dashboard, in chart, gauge, and table formats.  
• Flexible & interactive. Users can easily filter data and create ad hoc, custom views. Filters allow users to quickly drill down from high-level to more specific data.

In More Detail

How the Dashboard Works

The System Center Service Manager 2010 Dashboard is designed to work with an existing Service Manager infrastructure. The Dashboard queries the Service Manager data warehouse database and uses the resulting data set to present key infrastructure metrics in a graphical format.

The Dashboard uses SharePoint Web Parts to manage and display data sets:

• Microsoft Dashboard Configuration Web Part. Use this Web Part to create and modify the SQL queries that produce the data sets and the other properties that govern how the Dashboard displays the data sets.
• Microsoft Dashboard Viewer Web Part. Use this Web Part to display the data sets. A Dashboard Viewer Web Part displays one data set at a time. The Service Manager Dashboard can contain multiple copies of the Dashboard Viewer Web Part at once, each copy displaying a different data set.
• Service Manager 2010 Dashboard Process Flow

The Service Manager Dashboard process flow involves the following sequence of activities:

1. An IT Service Manager requests a new data set.
2. The IT Administrator uses the Dashboard Configuration Web Part to define the new data set.
3. The IT Administrator stores the configuration information for the new data set (the information is saved in the Windows SharePoint Services Content database).
4. The IT Administrator adds a new copy of the Dashboard Viewer Web Part to the default Service Manager Dashboard and then modifies the Web Part to display the new data set.
5. The IT Service Manager browses to the Service Manager Dashboard site.
6. Windows SharePoint Services queries the Service Manager data warehouse database as specified by the data set configuration.
7. Windows SharePoint Services renders the new data set using the Dashboard Viewer Web Part.

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Windows Sysinternals

RAMMap v1.1

        Have you ever wondered exactly how Windows is assigning physical memory, how much file data is cached in RAM, or how much RAM is used by the kernel and device drivers? RAMMap makes answering those questions easy. RAMMap is an advanced physical memory usage analysis utility for Windows Vista and higher. It presents usage information in different ways on its several different tabs:

• Use Counts: usage summary by type and paging list
• Processes: process working set sizes
• Priority Summary: prioritized standby list sizes
• Physical Pages: per-page use for all physical memory
• Physical Ranges: physical memory addresses
• File Summary: file data in RAM by file
• File Details: individual physical pages by file

Use RAMMap to gain understanding of the way Windows manages memory, to analyze application memory usage, or to answer specific questions about how RAM is being allocated. RAMMap’s refresh feature enables you to update the display and it includes support for saving and loading memory snapshots.

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Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

What’s New

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 5.0 includes the following new features for simplified IT infrastructure planning:

• Heterogeneous IT environment inventory
• Software usage tracking for Windows Server, SharePoint Server, System Center Configuration Manager, Exchange Server, and SQL Server
• Microsoft Office 2010 readiness assessment
• SQL Server discovery and assessment for consolidation
• Windows 2000 migration assessment

                         
Figure: Three Key Functions of Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

Secure and Agentless Inventory

MAP provides secure, agentless, and network-wide inventory that scales from small business to large enterprises. It collects and organizes system resources and device information from a single networked computer. Assessment tools often require users to first deploy software agents on all computers to be inventoried, but this tool does not. MAP uses technologies already available in your IT environment to perform inventory and assessments. These technologies include Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the Remote Registry Service, Active Directory Domain Services, and the Computer Browser service.

You can use MAP to inventory the following technologies:

• Windows 7
• Windows Vista
• Windows XP Professional
• Office 2010 and previous versions
• Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 R2
• Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Server
• VMware ESX
• VMware ESXi
• VMware Server
• Linux variants
• LAMP application stack discovery
• SQL Server 2008

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Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Datasheet

Malware and Virus Scanning Architecture in Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010

Malware and Virus Scanning Architecture in Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010




Being a security gateway, the new TMG 2010 has a malware inspection capability built right in it. It inspects all http as well as https traffic to ensure none of the malware infected traffic can get into the corporate network. You may ask my company antivirus program is doing exactly the same thing why do I need to use the gateway to do this? It is important all computers within the corporate network have Anti-Virus installed but sometime their definition may not be up to date especially roaming users by using the gateway not only you can protect those server and client machine, it also provides a centralized monitoring role as well as content policy enhancement.


By using the malware filter, you can safeguard your corporate network with the Microsoft Anti-Malware engine.






From the diagram above it shows how the Malware inspection works starting from


1. PC requests some resource from the internet, it can be a web page or downloading a file.


2. The Forefront TMG will check whether this user is allowed to connect to the request web page by company policy.


3. If the user is allowing to connecting to his/her desire web site, the connection will proceed. On the other hand if the user is not allowed to connect to his/her desire web site the TMG will return a restriction or warning (subject to the policy) message back to the user.


4. If the user is allowing to connecting to the web site a request will reach the intended website and the web server will serve back the content right back to the user.


5. If the Proxy feature is enabled it will catch in the proxy engine.


6. The content then pass on to the Malware Inspection Filter to ensure it is free Malware and serve back to the user’s PC. If there is some form of Malware embedded within the content, TMG will stop it right away.


The TMG is using the Microsoft Anti Malware Engine for malware detection and it will automatically update its engine as well as the AM signature from the Microsoft Cloud service and have them stored locally to ensure the signature database is always up to date and efficiently.

Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010 Service Pack 1

Overview

The service pack includes the following new features and feature improvements: New Reports
• The new User Activity report displays the sites and site categories accessed by any user.
• All Forefront TMG reports have a new look and feel. Enhancements to URL Filtering
• You can now allow users to override the access restriction on sites blocked by URL filtering. This allows for a more flexible web access policy, in that users can decide for themselves whether to access a blocked site. This is especially useful for websites that have been incorrectly categorized.
• You can now override the categorization of a URL on the enterprise level; the override is then effective for each enterprise-joined array.
• Denial notification pages can now be customized for your organization's needs. Enhanced Branch Office Support
• Collocation of Forefront TMG and a domain controller on the same server, which can help reduce the total cost of ownership at branch offices.
• When installed on a computer running Windows Server 2008 R2, SP1 simplifies the deployment of BranchCache at the branch office, using Forefront TMG as the Hosted Cache server. Support for publishing SharePoint 2010
• Forefront TMG SP1 supports secure publishing of SharePoint 2010.

Ms Office 2010

See what’s new in & top 10 benefits of:

Word 2010
PowerPoint 2010
Outlook 2010
Excel 2010
OneNote 2010
Access 2010
Publisher 2010
InfoPath 2010
SharePoint Workspace
Communicator
Visio 2010
Project 2010
Microsoft Office 2010 Beta FAQ
Microsoft Office 2010 Partner Resources Overview Video
Microsoft Office 2010 Partner Training Resources
Microsoft Office 2010 Partner Sales & Marketing Resources
Top 10 benefits of Microsoft Office 2010 Beta

Maintaining High Availability for Microsoft.com

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=84c59af0-da50-49bf-84e3-dd3f5bd6c0cd