Managing IT datacenters is a complex task involving multiple teams and solutions. These IT environments grow quickly across local datacenter, cloud and co-locations, along with diverse array of management tools. Since its release in 2008, Microsoft System Center has provided leading-edge capabilities that deliver a simplified datacenter management experience to keep you in control – whether on-premises, in the cloud, or across platforms.
Today, we are excited to announce System Center 2025, the next release of our Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) will be GA (General Availability) in the fall of 2024, which means all SC products VMM, DPM, SCOM, SM & SCO will be released in its 2025 form by Q4CY2024. This release includes enhancements that provide support for infrastructure modernization, capabilities to manage heterogenous infrastructure while embracing enhanced security.
Manage heterogenous infrastructure and workloads
By delivering System Center 2025 (VMM, DPM, SCOM, SM & SCO) together with Windows Server 2025, we are bringing you management support for the latest Windows Server version right from Day 0. Being cognizant of your preference to manage heterogenous infrastructure with a single management plane, we are adding support for management & monitoring of Azure Stack HCI 23H2 clusters with VMM & SCOM 2025. You will also have enhanced experience while converting VMware VMs to Windows Server through VMM. The support for latest versions of Linux distros will be available with the General Availability of SCVMM 2025. DPM 2025 brings the capability to exclude specific disks from backups in Hyper-V environments, offering flexibility and efficiency in data protection strategies. Furthermore, it integrates seamlessly with SharePoint Subscription Edition and provides virtual TPM (vTPM) support for VMware.
Embrace enhanced security
We continue to enhance security in System Center products to ensure all operations, storage & authentication mechanisms used are secure and reliable. In System Center 2025, we have significantly reduced the number of scenarios which uses CredSSP and NTLM as the authentication mechanism. All VMs created through VMM will default to Generation 2 which provides faster and secure booting. With the support of Transport Layer Security (TLS) version 1.3, System Center products support the latest version of encryption technology, ensuring that all data transmissions are protected by the latest security standards. Recognizing the importance of safeguarding sensitive information, DPM 2025 introduces the capability to securely store passphrase in Azure Key Vault, significantly increasing data security by leveraging Azure’s robust cloud infrastructure. Support for OLEDB 19 further underscores DPM 2025’s commitment to security.
Support Infrastructure Modernization
As your datacenters evolve, so do our solutions. With the General Availability of Azure Arc-enabled SCVMM from November 2023, you can now use Azure Management services like Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Azure Monitor, Azure Update Manager, etc. to secure, govern, monitor and configure your SCVMM managed VMs through Azure Arc. You can also get the latest Arc enabled capabilities of Windows Server 2025 like Hotpatching for Arc-enabled SCVMM VMs right from Day 0. The end-of-life WS 2012/R2 VMs can continue to be in supported state with Extended Security Updates (ESUs) procured via Arc-enabled SCVMM.
Azure Arc-enabled SCVMM also gives the ability to perform lifecycle operations such as start, stop, create, scale, resize and delete your SCVMM managed VMs that are hosted in customers' datacenters. All these activities are governed by Azure Role Based Access Control (RBAC) enabling your teams to perform VM operations in a self-service fashion. This will serve as an effective replacement to the end-of-life approaching Windows Azure Pack.
Lastly, In System Center 2025, we are discontinuing Azure Profiles feature of VMM and System Center Service Provider Foundation (SPF) as these capabilities are now being built into Arc-enabled VMM.
Where do you start?
Thank you for being a valuable System Center customer – your passion and feedback has helped us shape this new release and we are excited for the journey ahead. For early to System Center 2025 (VMM & DPM), sign up here.
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