I'm pleased to announce that the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 is now Release Candidate.

In this build a couple of bugs are fixed and it will fully work with Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2.

Same as previous version the MDT fully integrates with ConfigMgr. When you install the MDT 2010 you find the 'Configure ConfigMgr Integration' wizard in the Start Menu folder of MDT 2010.

The integration delivers some very cool new options in the ConfigMgr task sequencer:

Please sign up at connect for the download and to give your feedback:
https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=14

Last week a couple of new hotfixes have been released:

The Task Sequence Media Wizard incorrectly calculates the required space and generates many CD or DVD images if the task sequence references multiple programs in the same package in System Center Configuration Manager 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=971689

Some programs are not executed when the "If an application fails, continue installing other applications in the list" option is enabled in System Center Configuration Manager 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=970636

Hardware Inventory data files larger than 50MB may fail to process on a ConfigMgr 2007 site server
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=973754

Hotfix 970636 is already included in Service Pack 2 for ConfigMgr. For a complete list of all the 76 hotfixes in Service Pack 2 click here.

The title says it all, Configuration Manager goes Unleashed.

In the past several months, I have been working as a contributing author for the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Unleashed book. I’m proud to announce that the book is now finished and released to the printer.

The book contains 1224 (index included) pages and delivers a deep dive through designing, deployment, setup, features and components. The book covers Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 and the R2 add-on, and advance information on Service Pack 2 is included.

The lead author of the book is Kerrie Meyler (MVP OpsMgr) which was also the lead author of the famous System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed book and is starting work on an eBook for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.
Other coauthors and contributors of the book are Byron Holt, Greg Ramsey, Jason Sandys, Cameron Fuller, Tony Puca, and Pete Zerger. Steve Rachui was the technical reviewer!

You can already pre-order the book through Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/5gtlkg and find additional information at http://configmgr.spaces.live.com. It will be available early August of this year.

I want to thank Kerrie for the opportunity to work with her!

Today I received a special email from Microsoft with the congratulations for presenting me the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for the year 2009.

Dear Jannes Alink,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2009 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in System Center Configuration Manager technical communities during the past year.

The Microsoft MVP Award provides us the unique opportunity to celebrate and honor your significant contributions and say "Thank you for your technical leadership."

This award is part of the MVP program. More information about this program can be found here.

Thanks to everyone who made this happen.

Hereby the official announcement of Microsoft:

The System Center Configuration Manager team would like to announce that the following has been released and available for download:

Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 2 Beta
This is the official Beta build for Configuration Manager 2007 SP2.

New features:

- Refer to the SP2 Overview article posted on the primary Configuration Manager MSConnect site for all the new features and new supported configurations
- Hotfixes included in SP2 article can be found on the primary Configuration Manager MSConnect page.
- Deployment guides for BranchCache and the new AMT features are available in the download section. .
- The new OpsMgr07 R2 ConfigMgr07 Management Pack can also be downloaded, this supports 64bit OpsMgr client agents.

Please review the Release Notes before performing any installation and upgrade.

Join the open beta program through Microsoft Connect to download the software and to provide your feedback to the product team.

Enjoy!