Tuesday, May 29, 2012

System Center 2012 & The Unified Installer: Some Good Resources

With the release of System Center 2012 and all its related components, Microsoft also released the Unified Installer. This product helps one to build a lab or test environment running System Center 2012 by performing new distributed installations for ALL of the System Center 2012 components.

I haven’t used this tool since I want to install everything by myself, experiencing the installations first hand and learn from it. But none the less, when you’re interested in a ‘quick’ manner to build yourself a test lab, the Unified Installer might be the tool you’re looking for.

But where to start and how to perform such an installation? Since many components are involved so there is still much work to be done. Gladly there are many good resources available all about using the Unified Installer. In this posting I have put them together in a short list:

  1. RTFM
    Like any installation, RTFM is key. So go here and READ before you CLICK!

  2. Private Cloud Evaluation Guide
    This document (in pdf-format) is all about the Private Cloud and as Microsoft sees it. It tells way much more compared to the first item I mentioned, since it describes a scenario and environment in which the Private Cloud is situated. And yes, it contains a comprehensive manual about using the Unified Installer as well. The guide can be downloaded from here.

  3. Steve Rachui’s blog
    Steve Rachui, PFE for Microsoft, has posted an excellent article all about his installation experiences with the Unified Installer. Also how to trouble shoot some issues like SC2012 components not installing. Also a section about the cons for using the Unified Installer is a good one. Nice to see that he’s unbiased and just shares his thoughts openly. This posting can be found here.

Even though it’s much to read I strongly advise any one who is interested into using the Unified Installer to read all these documents since it will prepare you thoroughly. And even when you decide not to use the Unified Installer, all these documents will tell you much about SC2012 in general so it’s time well spent!

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