System Center Capacity Planner 2006

System Center Capacity Planner is here and has been released –

Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner 2006 helps size and plan deployments of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 by providing you with the tools and guidance to deploy efficiently while planning for the future by allowing for "what-if" analyses in the following ways:

• Proactive performance planning: Helping an organization meet their service level goals consistently, now and in the future.
 
• Infrastructure planning and optimization: Plan for IT purchases to optimize cost.
 
• Help to ensure success of Microsoft Exchange 2003 and MOM 2005 deployments: Use to plan correct amount of infrastructure needed for a new application to meet service level goals.
 
• Performance analysis and predictive reporting: Automatically report performance trends and bottlenecks to manage current and future performance issues.
 

System Center Capacity Planner 2006 is designed to help you create a system architecture model for deploying a Microsoft server application, such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or MOM 2005. A typical system architecture model consists of the following information:

• Topology: Site locations, types of networks, network components, and network characteristics (bandwidth, latency)
 
• Hardware: Server distribution and characteristics, server and network mapping
 
• Software: Server role and service mapping, file and storage device mapping
 
• Usage profiles: Site usage and client usage
 

After you create a model, you can run a simulation that provides a summary and details about the performance of the application and its supporting components.

To get more information go here.

System Center Capacity Planner is available as part of your TechNet subscription.