System Center Advisor Watches Servers

System Center Advisor (previously code-named Atlanta) is available in release candidate form and is scheduled to be released in the fourth quarter of 2011. Advisor is a Microsoft online service that uses a local agent to watch for errors or configuration problems with Windows Server and SQL Server installations and alert administrators via a Web Portal and e-mail. Initially, Advisor only works with Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2; however, Microsoft plans to add other server products in the future. Although the free release candidate is available to anyone, the final service will be limited to those customers with Software Assurance (SA) on the watched servers.

Periodic Reporting on Problems

Advisor consists of three main components: an agent, a gateway server at the customer site, and a Microsoft hosted service. A local agent runs on each server to be watched and forwards reports about health and configuration information to the online service through the gateway server.