What’s New

MAP 7.0 Beta is now available for download!

The latest version of the MAP Toolkit adds eight new scenarios to help you build the IT fabric of the future while supporting your business needs of today. Included are hardware and infrastructure readiness assessments to plan your deployment of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, size your desktop virtualization environment, ready your information platform for the cloud with SQL Server 2012, and virtualize your existing Linux servers onto Hyper-V. The VMware migration assessment helps you identify opportunities to lower your virtualization costs with Hyper-V and the licensing assessments now cover Lync 2010 Standard and reporting for active users. Download the MAP Toolkit 7.0 Beta and jumpstart your future today!

Join the beta now. (Windows Live ID required)

Download This Solution Accelerator

Launch the download of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 6.5.

Launch the download of the Getting Started Guide for the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit.

Launch the download of the Training Kit for the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit.

About This Solution Accelerator

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) is an agentless, automated, multi-product planning and assessment tool for quicker and easier desktop, server and cloud migrations. MAP provides detailed readiness assessment reports and executive proposals with extensive hardware and software information, and actionable recommendations to help organizations accelerate their IT infrastructure planning process, and gather more detail on assets that reside within their current environment. MAP also provides server utilization data for Hyper-V server virtualization planning; identifying server placements, and performing virtualization candidate assessments, including ROI analysis for server consolidation with Hyper-V.

The MAP Toolkit’s new capabilities help users to securely assess heterogeneous IT environments while enabling the evaluation of workloads for migration to Microsoft’s private and public cloud platforms. Consolidate existing server workloads using the updated Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track capacity planning feature. The revamped Azure Migration feature in MAP 6.5 provides more in-depth analysis of the suitability of migrating on-premises applications to the Windows Azure platform. Other significant new features in MAP 6.5 include the discovery of active Windows devices, Software Usage Tracking for Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP), and the discovery of Oracle instances on Itanium-based servers with HP-UX to assist in the planning of migration to SQL Server.

MAP 6.5 helps make the following IT planning projects faster and easier:

Private cloud readiness planning with Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track
Migration of on-premises applications to Windows Azure platform
Migration to Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Office 365 and Microsoft Office 2010
Migration to Windows 7 compatible versions of Internet Explorer
Migration to cloud-based services
Server virtualization with Hyper-V
SQL Server consolidation appliance and migration to SQL Server 2008 R2
Assessment of current software usage and client access history for simplified software asset management

MAP is just one of the tools provided by the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and Security Compliance Manager provide tested guidance and automated tools to help organizations plan, securely deploy, and manage new Microsoft technologies—easier, faster, and at less cost. All are freely available, and fully-supported by Microsoft. Learn more.

Included in the Download

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit includes the following components:

Microsoft_Assessment_and_Planning_Toolkit_Setup.exe. The installation package includes the tool, release notes, Getting Started Guide, and toolkit help (.chm file). Download now.
Readme_en.htm. Provides information you should read before installing the MAP Toolkit, including installation prerequisites and known issues. Available as a separate download. Download now.
Getting_Started_Guide.en.docx. Provides information about installing the tool, describes supported assessment scenarios, and shows how to use the results. Available as a separate download. Download now.
MAP_Training_Kit.zip. Contains sample databases and training materials. Available as a separate download. Download now.

Feature Overview

MAP performs three key functions: inventory, compatibility analysis, and readiness reporting.

MAP provides secure, agentless, and network-wide inventory that scales from small business to large enterprises. It collects and organizes system resources and device information from a single networked computer. Assessment tools often require users to first deploy software agents on all computers to be inventoried, but this tool does not. MAP uses technologies already available in your IT environment to perform inventory and assessments. These technologies include Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the Remote Registry Service, Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), and the Computer Browser service.

You can use MAP to inventory the following technologies:

Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP Professional
Office 2010 and previous versions
Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 R2
Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Server
Windows Internet Explorer 9 and previous versions
VMware vSphere
VMware vCenter
VMware ESX
VMware ESXi
VMware Server
Selected Linux distributions
LAMP application stack discovery
SQL Server
MySQL
Oracle
Sybase
Hyper-V

Note: To see a list of platforms on which MAP can be installed, refer to the “Installation Prerequisites” section of the MAP Release Notes.

Comprehensive Data Analysis

MAP performs a detailed analysis of hardware and device compatibility for migration to Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Office 2010, and Office 365. The hardware assessment looks at the installed hardware and determines if migration is recommended. If it is not recommended, then reports provide information about why it is not.

The device assessment looks at the devices installed on a computer and reports availability of drivers for those devices. Device assessment can be used for migration and consolidation scenarios for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

MAP identifies heterogeneous IT environments consisting of Windows Server, VMware Server, VMware vSphere, VMware VCenter and Linux operating systems, including those running in a virtual environment, and provides discovery of LAMP application stacks. MAP’s VMware discovery feature identifies already-virtualized servers running under VMware that can be managed with the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager platform, or be migrated to the Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor.

For customers interested in server consolidation and virtualization through technologies such as Hyper-V, MAP helps to gather performance metrics and generate server consolidation recommendations that identify the candidates for server virtualization and suggests how the physical servers might be placed in a virtualized environment.

In-Depth Readiness Reporting

MAP generates reports containing both summary and detailed assessment results for each migration scenario. The results are provided in Microsoft Office Excel workbooks and Microsoft Office Word documents. Reports are generated for the following scenarios:

Identification of currently installed Windows client operating systems, their hardware, and recommendations for migration to Windows 7.
Inventory and reporting of deployed web browsers, Microsoft ActiveX controls, and add-ons for migration to Windows 7 compatible versions of Internet Explorer.
Identification of currently installed Microsoft Office software and recommendations for migration to Microsoft Office 2010 and Office 365.
Identification of currently installed Windows Server operating systems, underlying hardware and devices, as well as recommendations for migration to Windows Server 2008 R2.
Identification of currently installed Linux operating systems and underlying hardware for virtualization on Hyper-V or management by Microsoft System Center Operations Manager R2.
Identification of virtual machines running on both Hyper-V and VMware, their hosts, and details about hosts and guests.
Assessment of Windows 2000 Server environments and inventory.
Identification and analysis of web applications, IIS servers, and SQL Server databases for migration to the Windows Azure Platform.
Detailed assessment and reporting of server utilization, as well as recommendations for server consolidation and virtual machine placement using Hyper-V.
Discovery of SQL Server databases, instances, and selected characteristics.
Heterogeneous database discovery of MySQL, Oracle and Sybase instances.
Identification of SQL Server host machines and SQL Server components.

Software Usage Tracker Feature Overview

The enhanced Software Usage Tracking feature in MAP 6.5 simplifies your software license management and compliance process in terms of product coverage and the ability to track devices. The Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) scenario measures server and client usage for the FEP product, a recent addition to the Microsoft Core Client Access License (CAL) Suite. Active Devices is a new inventory scenario that allows organizations to report Windows devices that are active on the network. This information is useful in Enterprise Agreement scenarios as well as for maintaining Active Directory information for the environment. Run updated reports whenever you need to accurately assess current software usage and client access history in your environment. This reduces time and administrative costs for managing your server and client access licenses (CALs) and helps you to streamline the management of your software assets. This strengthened tracking feature provides consistent software usage reports for the following key Microsoft Server products:

Windows Server
SharePoint Server
Exchange Server
SQL Server
System Center Configuration Manager
Forefront Endpoint Protection

With the MAP software usage tracker, you can run updated reports whenever you need to accurately assess current software usage and client access history in your environment. This reduces time and administrative costs for managing your server and CALs and helps you to streamline the management of your software assets.

Microsoft Database Consolidation Appliance Feature Overview

The Database Consolidation Appliance allows customers to consolidate thousands of SQL Server instances into a single appliance, simplifying the management of all these databases, while also providing better agility through a fully elastic database infrastructure.

Related Resources

Community and Feedback

To interact with other members of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning community, learn more about the tool, and get help with questions, visit the Microsoft Assessment and Planning forum on TechNet at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=110990.

To send feedback or suggestions for improving the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP), send e-mail to mapfdbk@microsoft.com.

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Download This Accelerator

Join the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 7.0 beta now. (Windows Live ID required)

Download the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 6.5.