Where can I get System Center Capacity Planner?

Short answer: System Center Capacity Planner is on TechNet disc 0422, which went out this month. We’re actually “featured content” — I think this is what we get in return for exclusivity!

System Center Capacity Planner (SCCP) ships this month and is only available to TechNet Subscribers. SCCP employs state of the art modeling technology to bring unprecedented functionality and flexibility to the process of performance analysis and planning of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 deployments. With SCCP the IT Professional will get the guidance required to plan a deployment in the most efficient manner, while also allowing for “what-if” analysis for future planning. Find it on TechNet disc 0422.

If you want to take a look at SCCP 2006 before paying for that all-important TechNet subscription, Chris Avis has done a couple of webcasts. He’s even posted demo sessions that didn’t fit into the webcasts as WMV files on his blog. Awesome stuff.

If you want to try-before-you-buy, and you happen to be in the Irvine area, then Kurt Shintaku is running another series of hands-on management labs right now. He’s covering a lot in three days, but hopefully he hasn’t reached SCCP yet :)

And big thanks to Microsofties Jeff Alexander, Dave Northey, and Tony Soper for driving traffic our way. I really like Tony’s analysis of “people who downloaded the SCCP 2006 beta also downloaded”, because it shows that our customer know exactly what they want. The top three hits are the existing MOM and SMS sizers and the WSSRA reference architecture (which includes capacity planning information).