First published on CLOUDBLOGS on Nov 09, 2009
[Today's post is provided by
Levi Stevens
]
Up until now we have released support announcements on the
ConfigMgr Support Team
blog from our very own Customer Support Services. Moving forward, we will be announcing support for new configuration via our
Configuration Manager Team
blog directly from our finger tips to your eyes. While we are on the topic, you might be wondering what to expect from our team when new versions of our dependencies release. First, let's establish some terminology. We consider our ‘externals' anything that our product is dependent on (or specific features are dependent on) that is not developed by our own development teams. We have dependencies on platforms like Windows or SQL, or components like .NET Framework or the Bandwidth Intelligent Throttling Service (BITS). We currently track over 26 external dependencies against our product.
Each time a new version of an external is going to release, our team assesses whether or not we will offer support for this new external. Often this will involve some ‘scout' testing, some sanity check to see if there are any blatant issues and to size the cost to thoroughly test and validate the new release. In some cases we need to release a hotfix to enable support, and in some cases we find no issues during test and can simply release a support statement. As you can imagine the level of change affects our support approach. For example, the release of Windows 7 required integration of a whole new WAIK and upgrading to a new toolset for imaging. This wasn't something that we could simply hotfix, so this level of support and change was rolled into our next service pack release (SP2 released on 10/22).
You should look to our
Supported Configuration
pages as your law for what is supported by Microsoft. In most cases we are specific about what we DO support, so if you are checking to see if a new Windows Service Pack is supported yet, if it is not listed, that means it is not supported. When we do announce support, you can expect a new blog posting on our Configuration Manager Team blog and the official supported configuration page will be updated in the next document publishing cycle (quarterly).
In a few cases we document support implicitly. For example, we document that BITS 2.5
as a minimum requirement
in
the
ConfigMgr Prerequisites
. What does this mean when something such as BITS 4.0 releases? It means that our team is actively testing this new release and if we find issues we will document them.
How does ‘extended support' or an expired service pack impact support for new configurations? We do not test or add support for new configurations on a product that reaches extended support (like SMS 2003 coming in January) or with ConfigMgr 2007 RTM (with no service pack). If your company is planning on rolling out new platforms or components you should plan moving to mainstream supported products and service pack levels.
With that introduction, here are the support announcements for November 2009:
Windows Storage Server 2008 is
now supported on Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 and SP2
System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 and SP2 now support the Windows Storage Server 2008 operating systems for client installation. Site system roles of a standard distribution point and a branch distribution point are supported. Installations of the administrator console or other site system roles are not supported.
No software updates are required.
Windows Remote Management (WinRM) 2.0 is now supported on Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 and SP2
System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 and SP2 now support installing Windows Remote Management 2.0 on site systems running the out of band service point role.
No software updates are required.
--
Levi Stevens
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties and confers no rights.
