Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Steve Rachui, Premier Field Engineer for Microsoft, for his extensive assistance as technical reviewer. (Steve blogs at blogs.msdn.com/steverac.) We want to thank Pavel Dzemyantsau, Chief IT Engineer at EPAM Systems, for his input and numerous contributions to several chapters. We also want to thank Arie de Haan, Owner and Lead Consultant at Pandinus, for his contributions to several chapters and valuable input.

Thanks also to developmental editor Dick Margulis, who wrestled our widely varying original drafts into publishable form. We thank the production team at Wiley: production editor Christine O’Connor, copyeditor Liz Welch, and proofreader Josh Chase.

We also appreciate the input of our customers and our fellow Operations Manager consultants and trainers. Thank you!

—The authors

I want to thank my family and especially my wife Amporn and my mother Lenie for their support while I was spending long hours of writing during the past few months. I know this meant there was less time and attention for personal life, but now is the time to make up for it.

Thank you to Peter Daalmans, Pete Gaughan, and Agatha Kim for getting me involved with writing this book and of course for their continuing inspiration.

Thanks to BICTT for supplying the test environment we used for screenshots, testing, and playing with the possibilities of this great product we are writing about.

It was very inspiring to work with the other authors, contributors, and editors throughout the process. It was also great fun to work with Ivan Hadzhiyski, who I pulled into the author’s group for this book and joined forces with for some pieces of the book and for setting up the test environments together. I think we have all learned a lot about the writing process and have gained even more respect for all the book writers out there. Also a big thanks to Dick Margulis for his quick comments and good advice.

Also a warm thank-you to the very active System Center community, consisting of all the product group members, fellow MVPs, bloggers, forum posters, and more.

—Bob Cornelissen

Special thanks first to my beautiful wife Laura for her patience and support throughout the long hours I’ve spent writing my chapters for this book. It’s not easy trying to keep an active three-year-old boy entertained on your own and I appreciate all the effort involved. She’s now also an unofficial System Center expert due to my constant requests for her nontechnical opinion! Thanks of course to my son Matthew for making sure that I’m awake every morning at 6 a.m.—weekends included—some of my best writing happened during those early morning hours! His energy is infectious and definitely helped inspire me when I needed it.

Thanks to Paul Keely and Pete Gaughan for asking me to come onboard with this book and for giving me the opportunity to work with some fantastic technical minds throughout the process.

Thanks also to my colleagues at Ergo who’ve given me the opportunity to work solely on System Center over the past few years and have always been very accommodating any time I needed time off at short notice to get some of the chapters over the line.

Finally, a big thanks to the System Center community and all the blog writers, forum posters, presenters, and general contributors around the world who have given up their own time to make what initially might seem like impossible problems turn into simple solutions.

—Kevin Greene

I want to thank my family for their understanding and patience. Many weekends and personal moments were lost during the writing of my chapters, but that is how things happen sometimes.

Thanks to the Wiley team and especially to Pete Gaughan for their feedback and continuous support in the whole process of making this book happen.

Special thanks to all the authors, contributors, and editors for their great job. Their optimism and determination were really inspirational. Special thanks to my friend Bob Cornelissen for involving me in this process and providing the lab environment for tests and screenshots.

I would like also to express my gratitude to the whole System Center community—MVPs, bloggers, and team members. One of the reasons System Center is so successful is the passion of all these contributors across the world.

—Ivan Hadzhiyski