Archives for: April 2008

When you deploy Configuration Manager 2007 on servers with an x64 Operating System like Windows Server 2003, you can face some problems in conjuction with the Office Web Components.

Office Web Components are required to display charts and graphs in your reports. Even if you install the Office Web Components, charts and graphs in reports running from an x64 Reporting Point are displayed.

The reason for this is that the Office Web Components are 32-bit and so do not function on a x64 Reporting Point with IIS running in 64-bit mode.

Symptoms are errors like:
This report has a chart, but the Microsoft Office Web Components required to view charts are not installed on the Reporting Point. Please contact your administrator.

To solve this issue you need to configure IIS to run in 32-bit mode. To change the IIS mode to 32-bit, run the following command:

Cscript adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32BitAppOnWin64 true

Keep in mind that no other 64-bit applications reside in IIS, because they will fail in 32-bit mode.

Good luck!
Jannes Alink

This management pack monitors the health of KMS hosts in your network.

Updated items are:

KMS initialization failures
DNS SRV publishing failures
The KMS machine count is below a specified low-water mark
No KMS activity has occurred for designated periods

Updated reports:

A data collection rule is provided that sends all client requests logged by KMS to the MOM database for subsequent analysis.
A sample set of SQL reports is provided that can be used as a basis for extensive reporting on client activations.

You can download the management pack here.

Regards,
Jannes Alink

Hi all,

ConfigMgr SP1 RC (Build 6181) is available on Microsoft Connect.

Best regards,

Jannes Alink

Desired Configuration Management (DCM) is a technology to check if systems are compliant to the exact configuration-, security, software- or patch requirements that are defined by the organization global policies. It also gives you the capability to check if illegal or non-approved software is installed. All of these compliance rules are set in a ‘baseline’ that can be assigned to a group of systems which is called a ‘collection’.

Within Configuration Manager you can define how often DCM should made a comparison between the baseline and the collections. If a system is not compliant you can create an automated task so the system gets compliant. In this way you can check if a registry key exists for instance to monitor if antivirus software is installed. If this is not the case you can push the antivirus software with an ‘advertisement’. With an advertisement you can distribute software with an automated script.

So DCM creates a dynamic environment where it reacts proactive on systems that are not compliant by the defined rules and so the organization policies. The default integrated reports provides a clear picture of the environment and the systems that are compliant or not. Research has proven that administrators in enterprise environments spend an average of ten thousand hours to keep their systems compliant. The same research also proved that fifty percent of the total downtime is due to misconfiguration.
DCM can extremely reduce those numbers. DCM is not totally new as it was introduced with SMS 2003 R2 but it was not fully developed yet. The main improvement with DCM in ConfigMgr is that you can assign an action to a baseline so that systems get automatically compliant.

Patch Management was introduced with SMS 2003 and it delivered a suite of tools that improved the management of patches. Within ConfigMgr the foundation of patch management is still there, but there are some more advanced configuration options available. Also more components and wizards are added so the technology is improved and the overall management is improved. The administrator now has the possibility of multiple templates where you can store the default configuration options for the organization. With the use of ‘search folders’ you can group multiple patches based on the requirements of the administrator. Also a good improvement is the possibility to group multiple languages for a single patch.

Another good improvement and change is that patch management in ConfigMgr is based on WSUS 3.0 technology. This gives the possibility to select patches of all the Microsoft update-categories, but also non-Microsoft patches can be distributed now.
With SMS 2003 there was a limitation and patches where detected with scantools. Now the detection of patches is based on the ‘client agent’ that queries the Windows Update Agent on the client. The results are represented in state messages in stet of the Hardware Inventory. State Messages are generated more frequently so the results are more up accurate.

Although a lot have improved it is necessary to install WSUS 3.0 on the Software Update Point before patch management is possible with ConfigMgr. The Software update Point is a new Site system role. This role is necessary in every primary site. The role can be placed on any server. The only requirement for the role is an installed and configured WSUS 3.0 environment. The Software Update Point role connects WSUS with ConfigMgr.

April 2008
- BizTalk 2006 R2
- Windows Key Management Services (KMS) 2003
- Exchange 2007 (Update for Exch07 SP1)

May / June 2008
- Windows 2008 Group Policy
- Windows 2008 Active Directory (AD)
- Windows 2008 Application Server
- Windows 2008 Print Server
- Windows 2008 Terminal Services (TS)
- Windows 2008 Windows Server Operating System (BaseOS)
- Windows 2008 Network Access Protection (NAP)*
- Windows 2008 Cluster Services (MSCS)
- Windows 2008 Domain Name Service (DNS)
- Windows 2008 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
- Windows 2008 Internet Information Services (IIS)

- ISA 2006
- Windows 2003 Domain Name Service (DNS)
- Windows 2003 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)

During the installation of Configuration Manager 2007 you will be asked to download the latest updates or to provide a path if you already downloaded the required files.
This is ofcourse a good buitin feature but could cause some frustrations when working with a virtual machine which has no connection to the internet.

To limit your frustrations you can do the following on your host machine:

1 On your local drive create a folder like c:\ConfigMgr_updates

2. Insert or mount your ConfigMgr installation CD and type the following Command from the command prompt: My CD drive here is D:\)

D:\SMSSETUP\BIN\i386\SETUP /download c:\ConfigMgr_updates

3. This command will automatically download the necessary files into the new folder c:\ConfigMgr_updates

When the download is complete you can copy the files to your virtual machine. In the ConfigMgr installation you can point to the files and continu your setup.

Enjoy!