System Center Overriding SBS?

Reader Kirk Foutts is an IT manager who likes to poke around and come up with fixes that aren't exactly standard-issue. In the course of his explorations, he sometimes comes across some pretty interesting stuff -- in this case, what he calls "components in System Center that duplicate and conflict with components built into Small Business Server."

According to Kirk, these duplications and conflicts come as a result of Microsoft stating that System Center Virtual Machine Manager is the "supported solution to managing virtual  machines and systems."

He states that Systems Center "wants to take control" of some functions that are managed from a single SBS Microsoft Management Console. These functions include Windows updates, monitoring and reporting, firewall control and e-mail notifications.

Here's how Kirk puts it: "Looking at the System Center page, SBS 2003 and SBS 2008 are both listed as supported operating systems. This just doesn't work! This is even more confusing to me when I see that SBS 2008 has a virtual license. It's like laying the cheese out there for the mouse, but when the mouse gets there, it's really yogurt or something, not cheese."

"Adding System Center would bring in multiple software pieces for configuration and add complexity that I believe would simply be too much," he continues, adding "Don't get me wrong here, System Center and its little brother System Center Essentials are awesome tools. They just duplicate SBS and in that duplication there will be more expense and less efficient."

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 05/10/2010 at 12:48 PM