Archives for: September 2009

Like the title says today Microsoft officially announced the ConfigMgr R3 release. You read it correct, this is not a typo but really R3. From my understanding this is the first R3 of a Microsoft product.

This release covers some very cool new features which shall be introduced in the upcoming months.One feature I can share is that this release covers power management for your clients. This will reduce your energy consumption which saves you costs and you build a Greener IT environment.

A Technology Adoption Program (TAP) is launched to test the release and to provide your feedback to the team. You can complete the nomination survey here.

More information about this release and a cool blogcast can be found here.

Updated 11/26/09: See also my deep dive post regarding ConfigMgr R3 here!

I think it is really great to see all the evolvements, releases and announcements last couple of weeks. Besides new product releases there are also a lot of evolvements in the organisation of events.

Below a quick sum up of very cool upcoming events you can't miss:

Meer dan Beheer
A Dutch Event held the 17th of September in Microsoft Inovation Center in the Netherlands. The keynote will be held by Robert Bakker; Product Manager for System Center and Virtualisation. Furthermore there will be a session on Windows 7, End-to-End Monitoring, Service Manager and I will give a presentation on deploying Windows 7 with ConfigMgr.
More info and registration here!

Microsoft TechNet Live - Join the new efficiency
Also a Dutch event organized and held by Microsoft Netherlands the 8th of October in the Netherlands. This event has a lot of interesting speakers with the main keynote speaker; Steve Ballmer!
Sessions regarding Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and sessions focusing on optimizing communications, security and your datacenter.
More info and registration here!

Microsoft Tech-Ed Europe 2009
Like the title says a Microsoft European event. This event will be held the 9th till the 13th of November in Berlin (Germany). This is the main Microsoft event for IT pro's and Developers in Europe.
More info and registration here!

I'm proud to announce the latest build of ConfigMgr Service Pack 2; 6468.2003 Release Candidate.

This build is the second step in the development of this pack. Taken from Microsoft Connect this pack delivers:

New Operating System Support
• Windows 7
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2008 SP2
• Windows Vista Sp2

New Features in Out of Band Management
Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 2 improves on the Intel AMT integration provided in Service Pack 1. SP2 adds full feature support for computers that have the Intel vPro chip set and AMT firmware versions 4 & 5. In addition to providing feature parity with SP1 and AMT firmware versions 3.2.1, 4.0 and 5.0, the following new features are supported:

Wireless Management (mobile only)
• Up to eight (8) wireless profiles per out of band service point
• Profiles support SSID, WAP2-Enterprise or WAP-Enterprise security, AES or TKIP encryption, client authentication options of EAP-TLS or EAP-TTLS/MSCHAPv2 or PEAPv0/EAP-MSCHAPv2
• Versions of AMT earlier than 3.2.1 are supported with the Intel translator

Authenticated Wired 802.1x Management
• Single profile
• Profile supports client authentication options of EAP-TLS or EAP-TTLS/MSCHAPv2 or PEAPv0/EAP-MSCHAPv2
• Versions of AMT earlier than 3.2.1 are supported with the Intel translator

Audit Logging
• Supported on AMT versions 4 and 5
• Select which out of band management features to audit (critical events not supported)
• Enable or disable audit logging per computer after provisioning
• View, clear, and export to file the audit log entries by using the out of band management console

Power State Configuration
• Enable configuration of the power settings to specify whether out of band management activity is supported when the host is on (S0), host is on (S0) or in standby (S3), or always on (S0-S5)

Data Storage
• Save up to 4096 bytes in ASCII characters in the AMT data storage of each computer
• View and save to the data store by using the out of band management console

Keep in mind that there is no upgrade path from Beta or RC to the final RTM build. Besides that only TAP customers receive support on this pack.

Please register at Microsoft Connect to download the bits and to provide your feedback to the product team.

Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) Service Pack 2 is now RTM and so released. It will work with ConfigMgr, and also fully supported.

With the new release also the Windows Update Agent is improved in reliability and improved scan times. Keep in mind that ConfigMgr will not auto-update the agent. You need to deploy the agent with ConfigMgr, the packages can be found here:

http://download.windowsupdate.com/windowsupdate/redist/standalone/7.4.7600.226/windowsupdateagent30-x64.exe

http://download.windowsupdate.com/windowsupdate/redist/standalone/7.4.7600.226/windowsupdateagent30-x86.exe

Other improvements are:

New Windows Server and Client Version Support
Integration with Windows Server® 2008 R2
Support for Windows 7 clients
Support for the BranchCache feature on Windows Server 2008 R2

WSUS Feature Improvements

Reports
New Update and Computer Status reports provide the ability to report on only the updates you’ve approved for installation. You can run these reports from the WSUS console or use the API to incorporate this functionality into your own reports.

Auto-Approval Rules
Auto-approval rules now include the ability to specify the installation deadline date and time for all computers or specific computer groups.
Update Files and Languages
Improved handling of language selection for downstream servers includes a new warning dialog that appears when you decide to download updates only for specified languages.

Easy Upgrade
WSUS 3.0 SP2 can be installed as an in-place upgrade from earlier versions of WSUS and will preserve all of your settings and approvals. The user interface is compatible between WSUS 3.0 SP1 and SP2 on the client and the server.

Software Updates
Stability and reliability fixes for the WSUS server, such as support for IPV6 addresses.
The approval dialog now sorts computer groups alphabetically by group name.
Computer status report sorting icons are now functional in x64 environments.

More information about this release and the download can be found at the Windows Server Update Services 3.0 SP2 Release Notes.