System Center 2012 Resources – Say How Much?

Posted on 4 mins read

Of course this is not a GA product (yet). Hyper-V 3.0 is not GA (yet). So this is all theoretical and in the future.

Microsoft is about to starting to push their Private Cloud offering.

The first thing I always look at is what are the components involved.

From the Download Microsoft Private Cloud Evaluation Software page :

  • System Center 2012 App Controller provides a common self-service experience across private and public clouds that can help you empower application owners to easily build, configure, deploy, and manage new services.
    System Requirements »
  • System Center 2012 Configuration Manager provides comprehensive configuration management for the Microsoft platform that can help you empower users with the devices and applications they need to be productive while maintaining corporate compliance and control.
    System Requirements »
  • System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager provides unified data protection for Windows servers and clients that can help you deliver scalable, manageable, and cost-effective protection and restore scenarios from disk, tape, and off premise.
    System Requirements »
  • System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection, built on System Center Configuration Manager, provides industry-leading threat detection of malware and exploits as part of a unified infrastructure for managing client security and compliance that can help you simplify and improve endpoint protection.
    System Requirements »
  • System Center 2012 Operations Manager provides deep application diagnostics and infrastructure monitoring that can help you ensure the predictable performance and availability of vital applications and offers a comprehensive view of your datacenter, private, and public clouds.
    System Requirements »
  • System Center 2012 Orchestrator provides orchestration, integration, and automation of IT processes through the creation of runbooks that can help you to define and standardize best practices and improve operational efficiency.
    System Requirements »
  • System Center 2012 Service Manager provides flexible self-service experiences and standardized datacenter processes that can help you integrate people, workflows, and knowledge across enterprise infrastructure and applications.
    System Requirements »
  • System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager provides virtual machine management and services deployment with support for multi-hypervisor environments that can help you deliver a flexible and cost effective private cloud environment.
    System Requirements »

Man - that is a lot of components.

I then went to look at the system requirements (CPU/RAM only) - I only took the recommended values

Totals

I would like to say two things regarding this list.

  1. I probably grossly miscalculated - and I am 100% sure that you can consolidate some of these components onto one machine - but for the sake of the argument - let us say they are all separate instances.
  2. Are you kidding me???? Do you know how many components that involves? And this is supposed to be “simple” ??

I would like to stress - this is not a price comparison of who is cheaper / better / more handsome. I just took into what are the resources needed to run such a solution.

One last thing. the offering is licensed in two editions Standard / Datacenter.

Licensing FAQ

Tell me someone in their right mind who would only by this for 2 VM’s. Which means you go for the Datacenter license - and ahem .. did I mention you need to have and Enterprise Agreement (EA) with Microsoft to be able to use this?

On a personal note - If people thought that VMware licensing was complicated - just try and understand this document above.

I actually would like to compare this to the requirements needed for a vCloud solution - it would be interesting to see, if I have forgotten any components below that would provide a parallel solution as the one above please feel free to let me know.

  • vCenter
  • vCenter Database Server
  • vCenter Update Manager
  • vCenter Update Manager Database Server
  • vCloud
  • vCloud Database Server
  • vCloud Connector
  • vShield Manager
  • Orchestrator
  • AutoDeploy
  • vCOPS Enterprise
  • vCenter Configurations Manager
  • Site Recovery Manager
  • Service Manager
  • vFabric Application Performance Manager

Your Feedback is welcome (and let the flaming begin!)