On the 22th of May, Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for Configuration Manager 2007. To download the Service Pack click here.

Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 now offers full support for management with Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, integrates customer feedback, feature Integration with Intel vPro Technology and enhances Asset Intelligent features.

• Full Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 Support: Deploy and manage Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008—with full support for the latest Windows platforms, from planning through inventory, to deployment, and into operational scenarios such as software distribution, software update management, desired configuration management, and more.

• AMT Integration: Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 integration with Intel Active Management Technology (AMT) enables hardware-based power control (on/off/restart) and delivers many new remote diagnostic and troubleshooting capabilities. Configuration Manager can now perform scheduled or on-demand power control operations on Intel vPro enabled systems in the enterprise, enabling higher levels of software update compliance as well as increasing application installation and operating system deployment success rates. The new out of band management console provides direct hardware interaction using Windows Remote Management (the Microsoft implementation of WS-MAN). This enables remote boot control, allows forced PXE boot for operating system deployments, remote network boot for customized remote tasks and diagnostics, and direct inspection of hardware inventory and power state—even if the system is powered off.

• Asset Intelligence: Building on the original release within Configuration Manager, this enhancement to the inventory capabilities of Configuration Manager 2007 provides improvements for stronger inventory of hardware, software, and software licenses in use throughout the enterprise. The enhancements made enable administrators to more easily, and more accurately, inventory and manage hardware and software assets as well as view and manage purchased software license information. By providing this essential information, Asset Intelligence makes it easier for administrators and asset managers to more effectively plan for upgrades, migrations, and software license compliance reporting.

Asset Intelligence in Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 adds the following additional functionality over that provided by the Asset Intelligence feature in Configuration Manager 2007:

The Asset Intelligence feature node has been added to the Configuration Manager console to allow easier Asset Intelligence–related administration tasks and rich reporting capabilities.

The Asset Intelligence Configuration Manager Console home page has been added to provide at-a-glance feature state status and information.

The Asset Intelligence catalog has been expanded to contain categorization and identification information of a large catalog of software titles—both Microsoft and 3rd party—as well as the hardware requirement information for many software titles found in today’s IT environments.

The ability to customize the Asset Intelligence catalog with additional software categorization information and hardware requirements information has been added.
New reports have been added that enable administrators to generate a total of 70 reports, based on inventoried information, that present data about hardware, software, and license usage.
General reports are linked to more specific reports and allow IT administrators to query general information or drill down to more detailed levels if required.

Hardware inventory enhancements have been added to gather information such as processor age, speed, and USB devices in use or when hardware has changed since the last inventory or during a specified period of time.
Installed software inventory enhancements have been added that gather information about installed software in use in the enterprise.
These enhancements allow IT organizations to identify and better categorize their software assets.

Robust reports provide information about types of software in use to help identify redundant software and optimize software support and purchasing.

Software license management capabilities have been added that allow purchased software license data (both Microsoft and non-Microsoft) to be imported into the Asset Intelligence catalog to enable better license management and reporting.

Improvements have been made to provide data about utilized Client Access Licenses (Windows Server, and Exchange Server) and computers acting as Key Management Servers for Windows Vista activation.
The report output format is congruent with Microsoft License Statements facilitating system-wide license tracking and compliance.

Recently I noticed that quite a few people are facing problems with pushing advertisements to Windows Vista clients after they installed Windows Vista Service Pack 1.

The problem is that advertisements don't arrive at the Vista SP1 clients anymore. The reason for this is that SMS 2003 is not aware of the platform Windows Vista SP1. Microsoft released a fix for this issue, the fix can be downloaded here.

The hotfix only adds another supported platform in the database. To solve the problems you also have to select the new supported platform in your program under the requirements tab, even if you selected for instance 'All x64 Windows Vista'.

Regards,
Jannes Alink

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