What’s new in System Center 2019?

In march 2018 Microsoft announced System Center 2019, Microsoft also published a roadmap where System Center 2019 is announced for Q1 in 2019.

Contents

• The System Center Roadmap
• System Center Orchestrator 2019
• System Center Data Protection Manager 2019
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2019
• System Center Operations Manager 2019
• System Center Configuration Manager 2019
• System Center Service Manager 2019

 

The System Center Roadmap

You can find the roadmap here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/9/6/59602436-C9C5-48A1-B305-827654B9077B/System_Center_Roadmap_EN_US.pdf

What’s new in System Center 2019?

Below you will find most of the new features of all System Center products.

 

 System Center Orchestrator

• 64 bit support.
• PowerShell version 4 and newer.
• Support for SQL Server 2017.
• Support for TLS 1.2.

 Process Automation

Orchestrate processes using graphical, PowerShell, and Python runbooks.

 Configuration Management

– Collect inventory.
– Track changes.
– Configure desired state.

 Update Management

– Assess compliance.
– Schedule update installation.

 Azure Functions

Event driven, compute on-demand, events occurring in Azure, third-party or on-premises systems.

 Heterogenous

– Windows and Linux
– Azure and on-premises.

 System Center Data Protection Manager

• Support Windows Server 2019.
• SQL Server 2017.
• VMware to tape backup.
• Modern backup storage improvements.
• Greater flexibility in recovering fom Azure.

• Rich Reporting and Monitoring 
  • Custom queries.
  • ITSM integration.
  • No infrastructure.
  • Enterprise Wide.
  • Custom Reports.
  • Cross tenant support.

You can connect to Log Analytics and push data to it or make use of Power BI.

 System Center Virtual Machine Manager

• Storage Optimization 
  • New option available for for a host/cluster: Optimize Disk Space.
  • Storage Health in VMM.
  • We can now see health of storage and operational status.
    • Storage Pool.
    • LUN.
    • Physical Disk.
    • You can deploy S2D clusters using VMM.
• VMM Roles 
  • New role:
  • Virtual Machine administrator (VM Admin).
    • Can read fabric but not change anything.
    • Scope (cloud or host groups)
    • Permissions:
      • Specific things like for example: Migrate, Save, Start, Stop, pause and resume…
• Host layer 2 network information (also in VMM 1807)
  • Layer 2 info for troublshooting.
  • Link Layer Discovery Protocol used to enumerate details.
• Connect your virtual network with datacenter physical network
  • GUI support for L3 Forwarding gateway creation.
• Secure data in transit between VMs in a subnet
  • NC controlled Virtual Network.
• Migrate UEFI VMware VM to Hyper-V Gen2 
  • Convert VM wizard:
    • Auto detect source VM firmware configuration.
    • Select default Hyper-V VM generation.
    • Default enable secure boot firmware.

 System Center Operations Manager

• HTML5 dashboards 
  • No dependency
  • Easy access
  • Extensibility
  • Faster resolutions
  • Inline actions
  • Operator friendly
• Notification and subscription enhancement 
  • Enhanced criteria builder with ability to perform “OR” and “Exclude” operations.
  • Rich HTML email notifications
  • Flexibility to customize HTML content
  • New setting available: “Enable HTML formatting for the email message“
• Enhanced alert management for Monitors
  • Current:
    Alert generating monitor -> Generates an alert:
• The operator works on the issue and closes the alert.
• The alert is closed.
• New:
  Alert generating monitor -> Generates an alert:
  • The operator works on the issue and closes the alert.
  • The alert is not allowed to be closed.
• New Dashboard: Alert Closure Failure.
• Linux/UNIX monitoring enhancements.
• Enhanced Linux/UNIX alerting in failover scenarios.
• No duplicate alerts.
• Updates & recommendations for Linux workloads.
• Management pack updates.
• Linux Log file monitoring:
  • Application Logs.
  • Network Protocols.
  • Cloud Services (Azure).
  • Others (Docker/DSTAT/MySQL).
  • Monitor any data source > Generate alerts in SCOM.
• Application Performance Monitoring Agent (available in Update Rollup 6 for SCOM 2016)
• Scheduled Maintenance Mode 
• Service Map integration 
  • Automatically discover and map servers and their dependencies in real time with minimal configuration.
  • Leverage SCOM monitoring for overlaying health information on the Service Map.
  • Azure Management Pack for SCOM.
  • SQL Server 2017 support.
  • Monitor Windows Server 2019.
  • Monitoring latest application servers like Tomcat 9, WildFly 14, WebSphere 9.0 and Web Logic Server 12cR2.
  • VSEA support for Visual Studio 2017.

 System Center Configuration Manager

• Support all patching scenarios enabled today for servers and VMs.
• Current branch releases aligns with Windows and Office.

 System Center Service Manager

• Improved UI responsiveness.
• AD connector improvement.
• Support for SQL Server 2017.
• Support for TLS 1.2.

 Service Catalog

Build and deliver turnkey applications to your enterprise IT customers.

 Azure Policy

Enable security and management at scale for Azure resources.

 Azure Blueprint

 

 Ticketing

Partner-enabled solutions.