System Center 2016 Technical Preview 4 Arrives

System Center 2016 Community Technology Preview 4 (CTP4), released Nov. 2015, contains most of the product’s planned improvements for managing “software-defined datacenters” running on Windows Server 2016. Software-defined data centers use commodity hardware and Microsoft virtualization, storage, and networking to deliver high availability and automation. Organizations considering System Center for such data centers can begin evaluations with CTP4. CTP4 also signals retirement of some existing features with the final release of System Center 2016, which will probably occur early in the second half of 2016 when Windows Server 2016 is released.

Focus on 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