News

System Center Service Manager 2010 SP1 Released

• By Kurt Mackie
• 12/16/2010

Microsoft today released the first service pack for its System Center Service Manager (SCSM) 2010 management solution.

SP1 upgrades or installs on top of SCSM 2010, which was released in April. It adds support for 10 additional languages and provides fixes for about 500 customer-requested items and other product issues, according to Microsoft's announcement. SP1 contains fixes up through Cumulative Update No. 3 and adds support for SQL Server 2008 R2. However, the service pack contains no new product features.

Installing the service pack entails navigating a complex list of caveats, as described in Microsoft's announcement. IT pros can perform a slipstream installation which combines System Center Service Manager 2010 plus SP1. Alternatively, SP1 can be installed on top of the release-to-manufacturing version of System Center Service Manager 2010. Microsoft's announcement explains that "the same bits are used for install and upgrade."

Microsoft's announcement cautions that an SP1 upgrade should be applied first before upgrading the authoring tool to avoid a version mismatch. The authoring tool is one of three methods of customizing Management Packs in SCSM, according to this TechNet article description.

The evaluation bits for SCSM 2010 SP1 can be accessed here; the authoring tool SP1 can be downloaded from this page.

SCSM is part of Microsoft's System Center management product suite. It works with System Center Configuration Manager, System Center Operations Manager and Active Directory Domain Services to provide support for "incident and problem resolution, change control, and asset lifecycle management," according to Microsoft's data sheet description of the product (PDF download).