System Center 2016 Reaches General Availability

System Center 2016 was released in Oct. 2016 in conjunction with Windows Server 2016. It contains many improvements for managing software-defined data centers running on Windows Server 2016. Software-defined data centers use commodity hardware and Microsoft virtualization, storage, and networking to deliver high availability and automation. System Center 2016 takes advantage of several Windows Server 2016 features, particularly for configuration management and virtualization. The release also signals retirement of some existing features, and a new per-core licensing model may cause some customers to reevaluate using the suite.

Aimed at Software-Defined Data Centers

The System Center product line supports computer configuration, monitoring, virtualization, backup, software deployment and installation, and other administrative tasks. System Center includes the following:

• Data Protection Manager (DPM) for backup, restore, and disaster recovery
• Operations Manager for monitoring and alerts