MAP Toolkit 3.1 RTM’ed

The tool formerly known as Windows Vista Hardware Assessment has now been reborn  – as the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 – MAP to it’s friends.

So what does this mean? Well it means that the tool has been revamped – now it is even more of a one stop shop for planning your hardware (and a bit of software) for an upgrade. It now includes Hyper-V assessment and desktop security assessment.

The official blurb reads:

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator is an agentless toolkit that will find computers on a network and perform a detailed inventory of the computers using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the Remote Registry Service, or the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Using this data, MAP will assess and report whether computers can run Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid). Assessments for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista also include device driver availability and recommendations for hardware upgrades that may be required.
MAP includes features for gathering performance metrics from computers you are considering for consolidation using Hyper-V in addition to Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. Using the performance metrics and a model virtual server host computer, you can generate reports that recommend placement of the physical servers in a virtual server environment.Other new reports include a Security Center Assessment for client computers, a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 inventory report as well as an enhanced virtual machine inventory report to help you assess your virtualization efforts to date.
MAP incorporates the assessment features provided by the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment Solution Accelerator, including localization of the Windows Vista assessment reports in French, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese.

So again – what does that mean? Well in short if you are looking to do any sort of deployment (server or client) and you need to document in any way the environment then this is the tool to use.

So .. what are you waiting for? Go get it!

Kyle