What's new in SCE 2010

·    Virtualization management features—The virtualization management component in Essentials 2010, built on System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) technology, now provides centralized administration for managing your virtual machine infrastructure. Virtualization management tasks you can perform from within Essentials 2010 include the following:

·    Designating and configuring host servers

·    Creating and managing virtual machines

·    Converting physical machines to virtual machines or copying existing virtual machines (P2V or V2V)

·    Managing virtual machine snapshots for quick, temporary backups

·    Importing existing virtual hard drives and VMware virtual servers

·    Choosing virtual machine host servers based on intelligent placement rating calculations

·    Flexibility for your environment—The virtualization management component in Essentials 2010, now integrated into Essentials Setup, can be added or removed at any time. Essentials 2010 also supports the following:

·    Windows Server 2008 and above with Hyper-V for x64

·    Windows Server 2003 SP1 with Virtual Server 2005 R2 and above for x86

·    Maximize physical resources—Virtualization management in Essentials 2010 helps you maximize your IT resources with the following:

·    Comprehensive monitoring of physical and virtual machine resources, including hardware, operating systems, applications, and services

·    Rapid provisioning of hosts and virtual machines

·    Preconfigured virtual machine templates

Monitoring

·    Import management packs via the Web catalog—Download management packs from the Management Pack Catalog Web Service from within the Essentials 2010 console.

·    Inline notification creation—Add yourself or another subscriber to an alert notification from within the alert in Essentials 2010 to receive e-mail, instant message, text message (SMS), or command notifications when an alert occurs.

Software Deployment

·    Support for common targeting filters—In Essentials 2010, you can deploy software to all managed computers or specify certain configurations to deploy by selecting the operating system, architecture, and locale.

·    Modify properties of existing packages—You can edit software package properties before they are deployed in Essentials 2010 to change a package name and description, the system types to which the package is deployed, return codes, and additional installation parameters.

·    Localized titles and descriptions during package creation—Create alternate locales when deploying software to managed computers in Essentials 2010 to localize package names and descriptions during package creation.

Computer Management

·    Updated Overview panes—The Overview panes in Essentials 2010 provide a more comprehensive view of the state of your IT environment and also provide links to common tasks.

·    Streamlined group creation for common attributes—Dynamic group membership allows you to define the characteristics of group members so that members are automatically added to or removed from the group based on the defined criteria, enabling you to create more meaningful views and reports.

·    Notification banners for new management packs—Essentials 2010 displays notification banners to inform you when updated management packs are available.

·    Improved filtering and searching within views—The creation of customized views in Essentials 2010 enables you to more efficiently filter and search for information, such as software and updates deployed in your environment.

Inventory and Reports

·    Virtualization candidates—Essentials 2010 helps identify physical computers in your environment that are good candidates for conversion to virtual machines.

·    Host virtual machine utilization—Essentials 2010 shows resource usage and the number of virtual machines running on selected hosts for load balancing.

·    Security and Critical Update Compliance report—This report shows whether managed computers are compliant with important updates you have mandated through Group Policy or local policy in Essentials 2010.

·    Asset tag and BIOS serial number—You can track and view asset tags and the BIOS serial numbers of managed computers in Essentials 2010.

Read the complete post at http://scug.be/blogs/sce/archive/2009/09/30/system-center-essentials-2010-beta-available.aspx