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Microsoft Readies Fall Release for System Center 2025
Microsoft this week announced that System Center 2025, the newest version of its long-term servicing channel, will be generally available in the fall of 2024.
This update will include all System Center products – Data Protection Manager, System Center Operations Manager, Virtual Machine Manager and Service Manager – and will feature what Microsoft said will be improvements to support modern infrastructure and provide enhanced security. Microsoft said that the upcoming System Center will also be fully compatible with Windows Server 2025 (rumored to arriving by year's end) and will be compatible from day one with Azure Stack HCI 23H2 clusters.
System Center 2025 will feature numerous security enhancements, including a move away from older authentication methods such as CredSSP and NTLM. The suite will now default to Generation 2 VMs for quicker and more secure startups, and will adopt Transport Layer Security (TLS) version 1.3 to safeguard data transmissions. Additionally, DPM 2025 will introduce capabilities for securely storing passphrases in Azure Key Vault and provide support for OLEDB 19.
On the infrastructure side, Microsoft is touting the upcoming support for Azure Arc. "With the General Availability of Azure Arc-enabled SCVMM from November 2023, you can now use Azure Management services like Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Azure Monitor, Azure Update Manager, etc. to secure, govern, monitor and configure your SCVMM managed VMs through Azure Arc," wrote Microsoft. "You can also get the latest Arc enabled capabilities of Windows Server 2025 like Hotpatching for Arc-enabled SCVMM VMs right from Day 0."
As for what's getting cut in System Center 2025, Microsoft will discontinue the Azure Profiles feature of VMM and the System Center Service Provider Foundation (SPF), integrating these capabilities into the Arc-enabled VMM.
Microsoft will be opening up a preview in the coming months. To take part, users can sign up here.