14 DAY TRIAL // It’s quite a busy end of the year for the Forefront team at Microsoft. Not only was Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 released to manufacturing, but Forefront Protection Server Management Console (FPSMC) 2010 was also wrapped up. The RTM bits for Forefront Protection Server Management Console 2010 are available through the Microsoft Download Center as of December 17th, coinciding with the general availability deadline of FEP 2010.
As the software giant made it already clear, FPSMC 2010 is designed to offer IT administrators a centralized tool designed to streamline the management of Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server and Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint servers in their organization.
“FPSMC provides multi-server management through a browser-based interface, and supports the following features:
• Signature redistribution
• Policy (configuration) deployment
• Centralized incident, spam, and engine version reporting
• Centralized quarantine management
• Auto discovery of new servers
• Integration with Forefront Online Protection for Exchange,” revealed Andrew Schiano, Software Development Engineer in Test.
Microsoft had already said that it was planning to RTM FPSMC 2010 by the end of this year, and in this regard, the company managed to live up to its promise.
FPSMC 2010 is offered completely free of charge by the Redmond company, but of course, the same cannot be said of Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server or Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint.
The solution introduces a graphical interface set up to simplify administration of assets by offering functionality such as server discovery, configuration deployment, reporting, quarantine management, and update deployment.
“The FPSMC will automatically install .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 if they are not already present. The FPSMC will also automatically install SQL Server 2008 Express Edition R2 if you select the Express installation. You must manually install Microsoft Chart Controls for .NET 3.5 SP1 before you can install FPSMC,” Microsoft advised.
Forefront Protection Server Management Console (FPSMC) 2010 RTM is available for download here. Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 RTM is available for download here.