System Center Linux and UNIX Support

It was approximately two years ago that Microsoft announced that customers running System Center would be able to leverage automated management across mixed source environments. It was at the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2008 that Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft, revealed UNIX and Linux support in System Center. Fast-forward a couple of years, and it appears that customers are asking about the Redmond company’s plans to support future releases of UNIX and Linux as they will be released, according to Robert Hearn, Sr. program manager Customer & Partner Community System Center Cross Platform & Interoperability.

“The cross platform integrations currently support the following operating systems: AIX 5.3 (Power), 6.1 (Power); HP-UX 11iv2 (PA-RISC and IA64), and 11iv3 (PA-RISC and IA64); Red Hat Enterprise Server 4 (x64 and x86) and 5 (x64 and x86); Solaris 8 (SPARC), 9 (SPARC), and 10 (SPARC and x86 versions later than 120012-14); and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (x86), 10.1 (x86 and x64) and 11,” Hearn noted.

For those unfamiliar with the product, the lineup of System Center solutions from Microsoft is designed to streamline IT pros management tasks. At the start of 2008, the Redmond company embraced Linux and UNIX platforms with System Center, allowing for administrative work to be performed on both physical and virtual information technology (IT) environments. Support is available not only across data centers, but also for client computers, and devices. The promise from Microsoft is that support for new Linux and UNIX releases will be added to System Center in its evolution.

“Our plans are to continue to support these operating systems and to provide updated support for any new releases of these operating systems within 180 days of their general availability (release date). We know there are a lot of other distributions out there, some gaining popularity. We continue to monitor trends and customer requests, and if we determine that we need to support additional platforms, we will. Until then, we will rely on the community to take our current products and extend them to fit the other platforms,” Hearn added.