System Center Essentials 2010 Server (Includes Software Assurance)

System Center Essentials 2010 is a server application for monitoring IT services and installing and updating software throughout a network. System Center Essentials shares many features with System Center Operations Manager, System Center Configuration Manager, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager, but it is easier to use and includes all features necessary for most medium-sized organizations. Essentials has the capacity to manage up to 500 client operating system environments (OSEs) and 50 server OSEs.

Through a single console, administrators have a unified, organized view of the health and performance of an organization's entire IT environment. Essentials can provide IT departments with status reports at defined intervals as well as alerts when immediate attention is necessary. Alerts can be viewed through the console and delivered by email, pager, and text message. In many cases, when Essentials diagnoses a problem it gives the choice of automatically repairing the problem.

Essentials automates and standardizes the process of installing and updating software on servers and clients throughout a network. Microsoft's large library of software profiles allows Essentials to perform updates not only on Microsoft operating systems and applications, but also on many third-party and in-house applications, drivers, and hotfixes. Administrators can choose to deploy critical updates automatically or have them be subject to approval.

Essentials gathers more than 60 hardware attributes and a complete inventory of the applications running on each machine in the organization. Inventory information is available in summary or detail form.

The Virtual Machine Manager technology built into Essentials 2010 allows administrators to perform such tasks as creating virtual machines, converting physical machines to virtual machines, and choosing virtual machine host servers on the basis of calculated placement ratings.

This product includes SQL Server 2008 technology. SQL Server technology acquired with this product can be used only to support System Center Essentials 2010.

License Requirements: A server management license (ML) is required for each server device on which managed OSEs run, and a client ML is required for each nonserver device.