Archives for: April 2009

Well here is the first post right from the MMS in Las Vegas. I just attended a session named ConfigMgr State of the Union with Bill Anderson and Josh Pointer.

The session was focusing on what happened in the past regarding ConfigMgr like the release of Service Pack 1 and the R2 add-on.
Besides the past it was of course also focusing on the future like the release of Service Pack 2 and the next version of ConfigMgr for now named ConfigMgr.Next.

Service Pack 2
So let’s first take another look at Service Pack 2. The beta is planned for release in June and the RTM is scheduled about 90 days post the RTM release of Windows 7.

The main topics the Service Pack will deliver are:

Support for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
P2P support for Windows 7 (Branch cache)
Support for USMT version 4.0 for Operating System Deployment
The certificate for Asset Intelligence is no longer required
Intel Active Management Technology (iAMT)
64 bit performance counters to monitor site running on a 64 bit platform with OpsMgr
Muli select and delete functions in the driver catalog

ConfigMgr.Next

In the session we saw a lot of demonstration on the next version of ConfigMgr 2007. It is currently of course still under development so no guarantees about the new stuff mentioned below.

Console
With the new version the console is completely new and no longer based on the MMC.
The console is like you have now with OpsMgr 2007 and has the following main nodes in it:

Administration
Resources (Collections, Users, Computers)
Deployment
Monitoring (Client Status, Client Health, Client Activity where you can also set SLA’s on them.)
Reporting
Software Updates
Site Hierarchy Management

Role Based Access Control
Other improvement is that security is now based on Role Based Access Control. So now more instance and class rights. You can define roles like; Security admin, OSD admin, Software advertiser etc. The roles can be copied and customized to fit your own specific needs.
Part of the role based access control are scopes. You can for instance create a scope for the deployment of a package.

Desired Configuration Management
New feature in DCM is that you can set thresholds. A threshold could be a percentage of compliancy. So or instance that compliancy must be above the 80%. If it is below that threshold it will generate an alert in the console.
Software Updates
A new improvement for Software Updates is the ability to create Auto Deployment Rules. These rules can be used to deploy updates like definition files on a regular basis.

Distribution Points
Couple of new things here as well. On a distribution point you will have the ability to specify schedules and rate limits like you have with a sender. With this you no longer need an extra site on a branch location so you have a more flatter hierarchy which is of course easier to manage.

A distribution group can now be added to a State Based Distribution Group. So you can create groups with DP’s in it. These groups can be used to update packages to an entire group at once and when a new DP is deployment you make this one a member and it will automatically receive all the applied packages.

Requirements
New things on the requirements as well. To implement ConfigMgr.next you need SQL 2008 x64 and Windows Server 2008 x64, x86 is only supported for a branch DP or a file share DP.

With R2 SQL Reporting Services was introduced which will be the only supported reporting platform for the next version of ConfigMgr.

Overall I’m very much excited about the new look, features and requirements. I hope to see more of the next version upcoming days here in Vegas. We keep in touch!

I just finished packing my bag for my trip to Las Vegas. In Las Vegas I will attend the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2009.

The MMS is a early year event about all the management solution of Microsoft. So a lot of System Center. Yesterday I planned my agenda, which was hard due to a huge amount of interesting sessions I wanted to attend. So I needed to make some compromises.

The MMS is from 27/04/2009 till 2/05/2009. Perhaps we meet in Vegas!

In the month May, Microsoft has 5 new webcasts regarding ConfigMgr. An overview:

TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft does IT: System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Client Health Strategies (Level 300)
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
9:30 A.M.–10:30 A.M. Pacific Time

TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft does IT: Using Local Policies to Solve Complex System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Client Challenges (Level 300)
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
11:00 A.M.–12:00 P.M. Pacific Time

TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft does IT: Deploying Windows 7 Using System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and OSD. (Level 300)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
9:30 A.M.–10:30 A.M. Pacific Time

TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft does IT: Using Virtualization with Hyper-V to Deploy System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (Level 300)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
11:00 A.M.–12:00 P.M. Pacific Time

TechNet Webcast: How Microsoft does IT: Delivering Internet-based Client Management (Level 300)
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
9:30 A.M.–10:30 A.M. Pacific Time

You can register here!

System Center Service Manager is a new product in the System Center family. Microsoft has three main goals with the product:

- Comprehensive and easy to use and customizable Service Desk capabilities
- Central integration point for service management workflows across other System Center solutions
- Built-in support for service management best practice frameworks such as Microsoft Operations
Framework (MOF) and Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

As mentioned, integration is part of the solution and this is really great! Service Manager has three connectors whichs delivers that integration. A connector for Active Directory, Operations Manager 2007 and Configuration Manager 2007 SP1. In this post we will talk about the last one.

For Service Manager, only version ConfigMgr SP1 is supported. ConfigMgr can collect a lot of information about resources on the network. Information about hard- and software, software deployment, software updates and configuration management information is all collected and stored in the database of ConfigMgr.
Besides the ConfigMgr administrators this information is also very valuable for the Service Desk. With the in Service Manager built-in connector all ConfigMgr assets can be imported and stored in the Configuration Management Database of Service Manager.

Compliancy
A feature in Configuration Manager 2007 is Desired Configuration Management. Based on a configuration item and baseline compliancy of clients can be validated. A simple configuration item can be that the item checks if the Windows firewall is enabled. With the baseline you can specify a schedule and a target collection. When the firewall is disabled for systems in that target collection they will be non-compliant.
These configuration baselines can also be imported in Service Manager so Service Manager can monitor for software-, security and version compliancy. When non-compliancy is detected incidents can automatically be created for these non-compliant systems.

Roadmap
Service Manager is planned for release first quarter of 2010. I’m involved in the Technology Adoption Program (TAP) with Microsoft. Currently we have implemented latest code (CTP2) and the connector with ConfigMgr is created. Upcoming months we will definitely test some scenarios with Service Manager and Configuration Manager 2007, so keep in touch!

Now the follow up of SMS 2003; ConfigMgr 2007 is out for a while and ConfigMgr v5 is in progress it is good to be aware of the support lifecycle for SMS 2003.

For a complete lifecycle overview take a look here:
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/Default.aspx?p1=2890

Microsoft released a new hotfix with Knowledge Base ID 67359. The hotfix fixes an issue where not all advertised task sequences are processed. This is because of a synchronization issue in the execution manager.

More information and the download is available here:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=967359