Effective November 2024, Microsoft System Center 2025 will be generally available. It supports infrastructure modernization, offers capabilities to manage heterogenous infrastructure, and enhances security. This is the next Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) release of System Center. By November 2024, all System Center products will be released in its 2025 form.
What is Microsoft System Center?
Microsoft System Center is a set of tools that helps IT professionals manage their organization’s servers, client devices, and applications. It is designed to work well with both on-premises data centers and cloud environments. The suite includes capabilities for monitoring system health, automating system management tasks, and ensuring software updates are deployed efficiently. This toolbox keeps an organization’s IT infrastructure running smoothly, ensures security, and helps with quick troubleshooting to minimize downtime.
System Center products
System Center products include:
- Service Center Configuration Manager (SCCM): Facilitates management of IT environments, offering capabilities for deploying applications, software updates, and operating systems. Enables real-time actions on managed devices and provides cloud-powered analytics for both on-premises and internet-based devices.
- System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM): Manages virtualized datacenter infrastructure, providing tools for creating and managing virtual machines and services.
- System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM): Provides backup and recovery solutions for Microsoft workloads, including SQL Server, SharePoint, Exchange, and virtual machines.
- System Center Operations Manager (SCOM): Monitors the health and performance of your IT environment to ensure the infrastructure is running efficiently.
- System Center Service Manager (SM): Delivers an integrated platform for automating and adapting IT service management best practices to your organization’s needs.
- System Center Orchestrator (SCORCH): Automates workflows, helping to integrate and streamline routine tasks across your datacenter.
System Center releases
The illustration below shows System Center releases, and you find System Center 2025 as the most recent LSTC release.
Main new features of System Center 2025
System Center 2025 introduces several new features and enhancements:
- Management Support for Windows Server 2025: System Center 2025 is designed to manage Windows Server 2025 from day one, ensuring compatibility with the latest server technologies.
- Heterogeneous Infrastructure Management: It adds support for management and monitoring of Azure Stack HCI 23H2 clusters with VMM & SCOM 2025, and supports the latest versions of Linux distributions.
- Enhanced Virtual Machine Management: VMM 2025 allows for an enhanced experience when converting VMware VMs to Windows Server and defaults all VMs created through VMM to Generation 2 for faster and more secure booting.
- Data Protection Management: DPM 2025 introduces the ability to exclude specific disks from backups in Hyper-V environments and integrates with SharePoint Subscription Edition. It also provides virtual TPM (vTPM) support for VMware and the capability to securely store passphrase in Azure Key Vault.
- Security Enhancements: System Center 2025 reduces the use of CredSSP and NTLM as authentication mechanisms and supports Transport Layer Security (TLS) version 1.3 for secure data transmissions.
These features provide a simplified and secure datacenter management experience, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or across platforms.
Licensing
Editions: Datacenter & Standard
The licensing options for Microsoft System Center 2025 are primarily divided into two editions:
- Datacenter Edition: This is suitable for managing highly virtualized servers. This is ideal if you are running a datacenter with a lot of virtual machines and want unlimited operating system environments (OSEs) or Hyper-V containers.
- Standard Edition: This edition is designed for managing physical servers or lightly virtualized environments. It allows for up to two OSEs or Hyper-V containers.
Model: Core-based
Both editions are licensed under a core-based model, which means the cost depends on the number of cores in the managed hardware. The Datacenter Edition provides full functionality for all the included System Center components, while the Standard Edition has the same features but is intended for less dense or non-virtualized scenarios.
Are you interested in System Center 2025?
Contact SCHNEIDER IT MANAGEMENT for a expert services on how to best implement System Center 2025 into your organization’s IT infrastructure.
More information
Find the announcement here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/system-center-blog/announcement-system-center-2025-is-here/ba-p/4138510.
Watch the Intro to System Center 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LLIWRIkWMU.
For the yet to be updated pricing page of Microsoft System Center, please visit: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/system-center/pricing.
For more on Microsoft licensing, visit our Microsoft vendor page at: https://www.schneider.im/software/microsoft/.
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