System Center

Managing the software-defined datacentre

Microsoft's System Center package gives administrators control of IT infrastructure across an organisation's environments and platforms. It is aimed at administrators who need to keep physical and virtualised systems under control from one set of tools. The suite simplifies the deployment, configuration, management and monitoring of infrastructure and of the software-defined datacentre built on top of it, and the company says the result is greater agility and better performance.

One approach across several platforms

System Center unifies management across workloads on Windows Server, SQL Server and Linux, as well as Azure Stack HCI, VMware and Hyper-V. Azure Arc extends Azure management services to systems wherever they run, so an administrator can apply cloud-style tooling to servers in an organisation's own facilities. The software-defined datacentre is covered end to end, with networking, storage, compute and security managed together.

Automation and self-service

Automated workflow processes and self-service options take routine requests off the IT team, freeing staff for work that needs judgement. The company presents this as a way to increase efficiency across the whole estate.

Monitoring when something goes wrong

Infrastructure and workload monitoring helps teams diagnose and troubleshoot problems with infrastructure, workloads or applications. The aim is to keep systems reliable and performing well. Microsoft publishes a technical overview of the components in the suite, together with material on what is new in the 2022 release.

Client management for a mobile workforce

System Center Configuration Manager is described as the component that lets employees work from anywhere. The suite sits among Microsoft's cloud, security and management offerings, and it is used most often by IT teams and datacentre administrators who run their own infrastructure alongside Azure and other Microsoft cloud services.