Toolkit Assesses Latest Windows, SQL Server

The free Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) toolkit has been updated. MAP is an agentless, automated, multiproduct planning and assessment tool that customers can use to inventory hardware and software and assess readiness for versions of Windows and Office, as well as cloud services such as Office 365. MAP 9.1 includes new assessments for Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, and SQL Server 2014. It also discovers and inventories more SQL Server components. The improvements should help customers better assess readiness for migration to the latest versions of Windows and Office and track deployment and usage of SQL Server for more accurate licensing.

Support for New Windows Versions

MAP software runs on a single networked computer—the inventory computer—and uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to directly query devices across a network and collect data relevant to various assessment scenarios. No agent is needed on the devices being queried, but they must be configured to allow WMI and SNMP access in order for MAP to work. Customers can use MAP to perform inventories of hardware and software, assess their readiness for Windows and other Microsoft software upgrades (including Office 365), and plan for virtualization or consolidation using Hyper-V, Linux, and VMware. MAP can also carry out performance assessments to determine resources needed to consolidate SQL Servers—on premises or in virtual machines (VMs) on Azure—or move applications to Azure. The assessments are presented in the form of Excel spreadsheets and Word documents.