System Center's first semi-annual release debuts

Microsoft's released the first semi-annual version of System Center.

The new Tech Preview delivers on Microsoft's pledge to match Windows Server's twice-yearly updates, plus more occasional big-bang releases. Redmond reckons this release cadence is the way for you to get super-agile, even though it involves an upgrade treadmill because the Windows Server releases are only supported for 18 months.

The System Center release adds integrations with Azures's Service Map, offers a Virtual Machine Manager add-in to manage manage Azure ARM VMs and Azure Active Directory, and integrates the System Center Service Manager with Azure so you can pipe in the kind of data that fuels ITSM incidents.

TLS 1.2 support is another feature of the Preview, which is handy given its predecessors are known to be less-than-optimally secure.

Microsoft's also added:

• Support for Windows Server version 1709;
• Support for nested virtualization, software load balancer configuration, storage QoS configuration and policy settings, and migration of VMware UEFI VM to Hyper-V VM'
• Linux monitoring in Operations Manager;
• A new HTML5 console for Operations Manager, plus new widgets;
• Updated third-party Management Packs;
• Backup tools for VMware VMs.

Full release notes for the preview is here and the tech preview can be downloaded here, after you register to do so.

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