Microsoft MAP Toolkit 6.5 Beta Program Now Open

Microsoft has opened its Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 6.5 Beta review program. MAP Toolkit 6.5 is an agentless inventory, assessment, and reporting tool that helps administrators understand their current IT infrastructure and determine which Microsoft products best fit their needs.

MAP Toolkit can help determine whether infrastructure is ready for Windows 7, Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office 365, or Windows Server 2008 R2. It identifies computers running Windows Server operating systems or virtual technologies, as well as those lacking up-to-date security software. It can discover and report on computers running Microsoft, VMware, and Linux platforms, including Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) application stacks. It can also discover virtual machine (VM) candidates, inventory Microsoft SQL Server instances, databases, and components, and discover MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase databases. To make the process easier, MAP Toolkit includes numerous wizards to help with setup, hardware and software assessments, and report and proposal generation.

New features in the MAP Toolkit 6.5 Beta include:

  • Ability to customize Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track configurations;
  • Ability to set usage thresholds for virtualization hosts and infrastructure;
  • Enhanced user interface controls that enable users to find, filter, and select the list of machines targeted for virtualization;
  • Additional in-depth migration analysis of applications to the Windows Azure platform;
  • Software usage tracking for Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) servers;
  • Discovery and reporting of active devices running the Windows operating system;
  • Discovery and reporting of SQL Server "Denali";
  • Discovery and reporting of Oracle instances on HP-UX-based Itanium servers; and
  • General usability enhancements.

The Microsoft Assessment and Planing Toolkit is provided by the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team to help organizations plan, deploy, and manage new Microsoft technologies. It is freely available and fully supported by Microsoft. For more information or to download the toolkit, visit the Microsoft site.

About the Author

Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • glowing brain, connected circuits, and abstract representations of a book and graduation cap on a light gray gradient background

    Snowflake Launches Program to Upskill 100,000 People in Data and AI

    Cloud data platform Snowflake is embarking on an effort to train and certify more than 100,000 users on its AI Data Cloud by 2027. The One Million Minds + One Platform program will provide Snowflake-delivered courses, training materials, and free access to Snowflake software, at no cost to learners.

  • two abstract humanoid figures made of interconnected lines and polygons, glowing slightly against a dark gradient background

    Microsoft Introduces Copilot Chat Agents for Education

    Microsoft recently announced Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, a new pay-as-you-go offering that adds AI agents to its existing free chat tool for Microsoft 365 education customers.

  • hand touching glowing connected dots

    Registration Now Open for Tech Tactics in Education: Thriving in the Age of AI

    Tech Tactics in Education has officially opened registration for its May 7 virtual conference on "Thriving in the Age of AI." The annual event, brought to you by the producers of Campus Technology and THE Journal, offers hands-on learning and interactive discussions on the most critical technology issues and practices across K–12 and higher education.

  • Three cubes of noticeably increasing sizes are arranged in a straight row on a subtle abstract background

    A Sense of Scale

    Gardner Campbell explores the notion of scale in education and shares some of his own experience "playing with scale" — scaling up and/or scaling down — in an English course at VCU.