Toolkit Helps Plan for Windows 8

The free Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit has been updated and is in a public beta. Customers can use MAP 7.0 Beta to perform inventories of hardware and software, assess their readiness for Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and other Microsoft software as well as plan for virtualization using Linux and VMware. MAP can also carry out performance assessments to determine resources needed to consolidate SQL Servers or move applications to Azure. However, to generate meaningful results the performance assessments must accumulate data over days or weeks, and gathering inventories may require configuration changes so that MAP can collect necessary information.

What Is MAP?

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 MAP access. MAP then produces Excel spreadsheets of inventories and assessments and Word documents (summary proposals) giving specific recommendations for updates. For example, using a list of PCs obtained from Active Directory, MAP can attempt to find the computers on a network and perform hardware, driver, and software inventories. Using those inventories, MAP can assess whether the computers can run the latest versions of Windows or Office and whether software in use is compatible with Office 365.