A common question I see at my customers or in the forums is "How can I create a Collection based on a Service". The question is a fair one since it can help you to detect if a certain application with a service is installed or not.

To make the Collection dynamic we need to create a 'Query based collection membership rule'. These types of rules are hosting a WQL query and the results of the query are updated on a schedule. By default the Collection will be updated once a day but you can change this on the 'Properties' for the Collection. Keep in mind though that the higher the update schedule the bigger the load is on the database.

In the following example we create a Collection to select all systems running the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Agent and that have a ConfigMgr client installed. The OpsMgr agent is running a service named 'HealthService'. This is the ‘Service name’ and not the ‘Display name’ as you can see in the Services (services.msc) MMC console. When you double-click a service in the console you can see the actual ‘Service name’. It is important that you use this name in your query.

To select all systems running the OpsMgr agent and that have the ConfigMgr client installed the query for the Collection looks like this:

select SMS_R_System.ResourceId, SMS_R_System.ResourceType, SMS_R_System.Name, SMS_R_System.SMSUniqueIdentifier, SMS_R_System.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup, SMS_R_System.Client from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_SERVICE on SMS_G_System_SERVICE.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where SMS_G_System_SERVICE.Name = "HealthService" and SMS_R_System.Client = 1

To select all systems that are NOT running the OpsMgr agent but that have the ConfigMgr client installed the query for the Collection looks like this:

select SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceID,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceType,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Name,
SMS_R_SYSTEM.SMSUniqueIdentifier,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,
SMS_R_SYSTEM.Client from SMS_R_System where Name not in (SELECT SMS_R_System.Name
FROM SMS_R_System INNER JOIN SMS_G_System_SERVICE ON SMS_G_System_SERVICE.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceID WHERE SMS_G_System_SERVICE.Name = "HealthService") and Client = 1

Looking at the last query example you can create a package containing the OpsMgr Agent installation MSI file and advertise it with a mandatory assignment to this Collection. This way you make sure that all systems that are not having the OpsMgr agent installed will be a member of this Collection and so automatically receive the OpsMgr agent package.
Note: In this scenario you might want to filter out the desktops.

During the Microsoft TechEd EMEA 2009 event in Berlin the first announcement was made that the ConfigMgr product team is working on a new solution accelerator named; The Configuration Manager dashboard.

Last week the product team made the announcement that the first beta of this new dashboard is publicly available.

What is a dashboard?
A dashboard is basically a webpage containing multiple reports with graphs. This enables ConfigMgr administrators to have multiple information in reports on a single page.

Requirements
To run the dashboard there are several requirements to be aware of. First of all you need of course a Configuration Manager site running R2 or with Service Pack 2.

The Configuration Manager dashboard is build with Microsoft Sharepoint webparts. A webpart is basically a frame containing code to display data in that frame. A single site can contain multiple webparts.

So in order to load these webparts you need to install Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 SP2 or you can use Windows SharePoint Server 2007 with SP2. You can download WSS 3.0 with SP2 here.

The server running the dashboard needs to have Microsoft .Net Framework version 3.5. The Full Redistributable Package can be downloaded here.

The dashboard has its own database therefore you need a database server running at least Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

As mentioned earlier the dashboard is webpage which can be viewed in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 or 8.

Installing the Configuration Manager dashboard
I have tested the dashboard with the following configuration. A single ConfigMgr Primary site, a remote database server running Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with SP1.

First I installed the required .Net Framework package on the ConfigMgr server. Next I installed Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) SP2. During the installation of WSS 3.0 you will be asked to install a basic or advanced configuration, I selected the Basic Configuration.

After the installation you will be asked to run the configuration wizard. Since this is a fresh installation you need to run this to create the WSS database and websites. Note that during the wizard IIS can be restarted.

Now Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 was installed and configured I downloaded the ConfigMgr dashboard installation files from the Microsoft Connect site.
After extracting the installation files I double-clicked the MSI file.

The installation of the wizard is very easy with only 5 steps. Of these 5 steps two of those are important and displayed below:

In the above displayed step you need to provide an account with access to the database server running the ConfigMgr database. That account also needs access to the ConfigMgr database. In my case the database server is named SR002 and my ConfigMgr database is named SMS_P01.

After that, click 'Next' and you see the window as displayed below. Here you provide a user account and Site Owner Email Address that needs access to the dashboard.
In this window you also provide the server running the dashboard database. In this case that is the server named SR002 and the database name is left default; ConfigMgrDashboardSessionDB

I also left the URL default in my case http://sr002:12345

After clicking 'Next' the wizard will ask for confirmation and after that the installation will start. This takes about 5 minutes.

When the installation is finished you can access the dashboard by entering the URL as stated during the installation in your Internet Explorer browser.

The default dashboard will show you the following graphs:

Sofware Deployment Status
Software Updates Management
OS Deployment Status
Client Operating System (Top 10 only)
Desired Configuration Management
Client Health State

For each webpart you can specify some filters so you can filter on advertisement, site code or collection. In my case the Software Deployment Status webpart looks like this:

You can also remove or customize webparts or even write your own to meet your specific needs. I think the product team already delivered a nice and interesting add-on to ConfigMgr.

More information about the dashboard can be found at:
Configuration Manager Dashboard Beta Program on Connect
About Configuration Manager Dashboards

Enjoy!

The ConfigMgr documentation team has delivered a new update regarding the content in the ConfigMgr Technet Libary.

One of the updates I had requested was about the deployment of the client after applying a Service Pack. When Service Pack 2 was released a common question we saw in the community was; Do we need to upgrade the clients manually?

The answer was yes but it was not clearly documented. I'm glad this is now updated on the Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 Upgrade Checklist.

A complete overview of all the changes in this update can be found here.

Many thanks to the product documentation team!

Half December 2009 the ICP1 was already released for ConfigMgr Service Pack 2. Now also the ICP2 is released.

ICP stands for International Client Pack and it contains multiple language files. ICP2 contains all the languages of ICP1 and:

Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Finnish
Greek
Hungarian
Italian
Korean
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Portuguese (Brazil)
Russian
Swedish
Turkish

You can download this pack here.

Well this will be my last post of this year. Nothing technical in this post just a overview of the year 2009.

It was a very exciting year which started with a new job at Inovativ in February. Inovativ enables me to specialize myself more and more on the System Center platform.

My first project this year was running the Technology Adoption Program (TAP) for OpsMgr R2. I went to Microsoft Redmond for a 3 day training which was a great experience!

Besides my projects I have been working with Kerrie Meyler as a contributing author for the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Unleashed book. I have been writing articles before, but writing chapters for a book was a new, fun and cool experience. The result is a great book which has been published in July.

In April I went to the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) in Las Vegas. This is the main event for IT Management solutions from Microsoft. It was a great time in Vegas and met lots of interesting people.

No events in May. Early May I gave a single day master class about the basics of ConfigMgr. With Inovativ we have those master classes a couple of times a year.

In July I received the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award which was the crown on all my contributions to the community. A huge and excited milestone for myself! Thanks again to everyone who made this happen!
That month we also had our SCUG meeting where I gave a session about deploying Windows 7 with System Center Configuration Manager SP2.

In the month September and October we had some great announcements. September started with the announcement of ConfigMgr R3. A new release with new features and improvements. That month Inovativ had his own event in the Netherlands; Meer dan Beheer. I gave a presentation about System Center Configuration Manager. The event was a great success!

Service Pack 2 of ConfigMgr became RTM in October! In October I also attended the Microsoft Technet Live event as ‘Ask the Expert’ in the Netherlands. Steve Ballmer did the keynote, pretty cool! I always like those events in the Netherlands where you meet colleagues and customers. Steve also did an interview at the Erasmus University. Although some is in Dutch you can watch the interview here.

November I went to the System Center Service Manager TAP event and the Microsoft TechEd EMEA event in Berlin. Microsoft TechEd is the congress for everyone working in IT. This year the main focus was; Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Exchange 2010.
I was ‘Ask the Expert’ at the ConfigMgr booth. I met a lot of people and really loved answering all kind of questions regarding ConfigMgr!

This year was the first time the event was held in Berlin. Although a bit colder than Barcelona (where the event was held previous years), Berlin is a great city to stay, especially with Wally Mead, Samuel Erskine and fellow ConfigMgr MVPs; Torsten Meringer, Ronni Pedersen and Adrian Stoian.

Right after TechEd we had our second SCUG meeting in the Netherlands. We had two speakers from Microsoft Redmond; Wally Mead for ConfigMgr and Daniel Savage for OpsMgr. Thank you guys!

And now it is December and the last day of the year. While writing this post I’m amazed to see what you can achieve in a single year! Overall it has been a great year for me and if 2010 will be as good as 2009 I’m pretty satisfied.

I wish you all a great and happy new year!