Firstly, excuse the spelling of center – annoying to me as it probably is to you in the UK this is the official spelling of Microsofts management toolset.
A few years ago Microsoft launched System Center Essentials 2007. With this product they gave mid-sized businesses access to the same management tools as enterprises but in a more affordable and usable format.
Pro’s for System Center Essentials
- Unified management experience
- Virtualization creation & management
- Simple setup
- Comprehensive monitoring
- Update management
- Software and hardware inventory
- Monitor workgroup machines
- Monitor machines in same forest
- Software deployment
- Integrated reporting
- Low entry price
Con’s for System Center Essentials
- Limited to one Essentials server per domain
- No option for gateway servers
Where to position Essentials?
At the moment System Center Essentials 2010 is probably the best IT management solution for a majority of midsize businesses; as long as they are within the scale limits (max 50 servers and 500 Workstations). Nevertheless determining the right IT management solution for your company is dependent by the maturity and complexity of the IT environment and business needs.Getting started
The new version of SCE 2010 can manage up to 500 workstations and 50 servers. The SCE 2010 bundles System Center management products with a core version: Operations Manager, Configuration Manager and Virtual Machine Manager. Furthermore there is support for automatic updates, based on the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) technology. Everything is displayed in a proper integrated console.
Conclusion
Microsoft did a good job integrating OpsMgr, SCCM and WSUS into one product. The console is very good and the limitations are minimal.