System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Release 2 (SCCM R2) is available for download for the purposes of testing and evaluation. What does this offer you?
- Support for application virtualisation (SoftGrid) – I like the sound of SoftGrid and know some people who rave about it. Haven’t played with it yet because it’s got a limited (Software Assurance) market.
- ForeFront Client Security integration – I was just asked about this yesterday.
- Report on SCCM 2007 R2 using SQL Reporting Services – This will probably appeal to the larger customers who have SQL Reporting skills in house. Honestly, that’s not all that common a skill.
- Client health monitoring using a set of tools and reports – Yeah! This is necessary. The most common problem I have had with the SMS family is clients failing because of "stale" computer accounts.
- OS Deployment Improvements: Deploy to a computer without pre-configuring a computer account. Excellent! Who needed all that extra manual work. I might as well have just used ImageX. Now we have a solution I can live with. Multicast Deployment is added. That’s the last justifiable criticism the Ghost fans had. You can also now run command line tasks using alternate credentials.
One final note. Some of the rather quick SCCM MVP’s have found that the R2 installation (20MB which installs on top of SCCM 2007 SP1) will only install on an evaluation edition of SCCM 2007 SP1. Doh!
I’m planning on installing a Hyper-V lab at home this week so I can get playing.