Categories: System Center, ConfigMgr, OpsMgr

System Center Capacity Planner (SCCP) is a capacity-planning solution for pre-deployment, post deployment and change-analysis regarding server products. Within SCCP multiple models can be immplemented like Exchange Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Yesterday Microsoft released the model for System Center Operations Manager 2007 which help you design and scale your deployment. The model contains:

• Simple installation and setup
• Provides knowledge of System Center Operations Manager 2007
• Recommended topology for Operations Manager 2007 deployments in a Graphical User Interface
• Export topology to Visio and corresponding server configuration to Excel
• Model server performance and end-user response time for Operations Manager 2007 deployments
• Hardware library includes popular configurations for Operations Manager 2007 deployments
• Create custom hardware for Operations Manager 2007 deployments

You can download the model here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6fec1f12-a62c-4e8d-8a19-56879192adc3&displaylang=en

Enjoy!
Jannes Alink

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.