14 DAY TRIAL // Project Codename “Concero” is part of the evolution which will be introduced by the next major iteration of System Center 2012. Concero (meaning ‘connected’ in Latin) will be available to customers running System Center 2012, as a new capability designed to streamline management of both private and public Cloud assets.
Essentially, System Center 2012 is designed to offer a centralized management toolset for the administration of all applications and services whether they are deployed on-premise or hosted on third-party servers, such as those from the software giant running Windows Azure.
“We recognize that customers will be in an environment where they will be consuming cloud capacity from multiple providers,” revealed Vijay Tewari, Principal Group Program Manager, System Center Project Codename “Concero.”
“The initial release of “Concero” will enable customers to deploy, manage and control applications and services deployed on private clouds built using System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 and in the public cloud offering of Windows Azure. This provides a consistent and simple user experience for service management across these clouds.”
Microsoft made it a point to underline that System Center 2012 will be tailored to scenarios in which customers will manage private Clouds.
The management solution covers products such as Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V as well as additional virtualization platforms out of the box.
Of course, the hope is that customers will eventually transition from private to public Cloud entirely. However, until such a time, Microsoft is ready to tend to their needs and help catalyze the migration.
Tewari enumerated some “key capabilities of “Concero”:
(a) Ability to access resources across multiple VMM Servers
(b) Ability to register and consume capacity from multiple Windows Azure subscriptions
(c) Deploy and manage Services and virtual machines on private clouds created within VMM 2012 and on Windows Azure
(d) Copy Service templates (and optional resources) from one VMM Server to another
(e) Copy Windows Azure configuration, package files and VHD’s from on-premises and between Windows Azure subscriptions
(f) Enable multiple users authenticated through Active Directory to access a single Windows Azure subscription.”
