System Center Advisor (SCA) Is A Free Service!

Yesterday Microsoft published a blog posting all about SCA. The most important news to share was this: ‘…as of January 2013 , Advisor is free to Microsoft customers in supporting countries. Trial periods are a thing of the past and Software Assurance is no longer required for taking advantage of the Advisor service…’.

These supporting countries are:

Even though the SCA architecture is totally SCOM based (including MPs, a Gateway Server) it’s anything but a REAL TIME monitoring solution.

Data is collected, based on the MPs which are customized for SCA. Once a day (in the night) actually the collected data is sent to the cloud and processed. Based on Best Practices, experiences by Microsoft Customer Support Services and so on, feedback is given about the configuration of the monitored products.

So this way you’ll know whether your Microsoft based environment is up to specs. Microsoft technologies supported by SCA are:

• Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2:
  • Active Directory
  • Hyper-V Host
  • General operating system
• SQL Server 2008 and later
  • SQL Engine
• Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and later
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and later
• Microsoft Lync Server 2010

Personally I guess there is more to come, not only about the supported Microsoft technologies but also about the functionality of SCA itself. At least that’s what I think based on this entry in the same blog posting: ‘…Last but not least...stay tuned for some exciting Advisor news during this years MMS 2013…’

On itself offering SCA to Microsoft customers is a logical step. Why not start trouble shooting before issues really start happening? So prevention is key here. Now with Azure and SCA this is feasible and will save Microsoft in the long run money and make the way their products are received and evaluated only a better experience.

For myself I wonder how long it will take before SCOM itself becomes a cloud service offering by Microsoft. Not too long I guess.

Want to know more about SCA? Check out these links:

1. Detailed information about SCA;
2. Getting started with SCA;
3. Supported countries for SCA;
4. Previous postings about SCA on my blog.

I’ll keep you posted about the latest SCA developments.