Thanks to everyone who made this possible! Much appreciated! Looking forward to work with the community!

Dear Jannes Alink,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in System Center Configuration Manager technical communities during the past year.

Prerequisites for Installing Configuration Manager
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb694113.aspx

About Configuration Manager Client Installation Properties
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680980.aspx

Planning for PXE Initiated Operating System Deployments
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680753.aspx

Operating System Deployment in Configuration Manager
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb632767.aspx

Step-By-Step Example Deployment of the PKI Certificates Required for Configuration Manager Native Mode: Windows Server 2008 Certification Authority
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc872789.aspx

Support
I want to address that beta 1 is not supported in production environments. This does not apply to customers that are involved with TAP.

Schema
With ConfigMgr v.next the schema changes are the same as for ConfigMgr 2007. Also the 'System Management' container is required with the specific rights. More information about the schema: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680608.aspx (related to ConfigMgr 2007 but also applies)

Internet Information Services
With v.next we still need IIS for some of the components. The prerequisites are same as for ConfigMgr 2007, only webdav is no longer required. More information about the IIS prerequisites for ConfigMgr 2007: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc431377.aspx

Operating System
For v.next we support the Windows Server 2008 (R2) operating system. We only support 64-bit for site systems, x86 is only supported for a branch DP or a file share DP.

SQL Server
Now we only support Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with SP1 and Cumulative update package 6 (KB977443). This update package can be downloaded here.

Microsoft .Net Framework 4.0
ConfigMgr v.next requires the latest .net framework: 4.0. The standalone installer can be found here.

Installation
Opening the beta 1 and running the splash screen you might be looking for the prerequisite checker. This is now called 'Asses server readiness'. In this build it is not implemented. During the installation wizard a prerequisite checker will run.

I'm running my lab in Microsoft Hyper-V with a single Domain Controller and two member servers running SQL server. One member server is the 'Central Administration Site' (CAS).

The CAS server is basically a central site as we know today with ConfigMgr 2007. The highest site in the hierarchy. One difference though is that it cannot manage clients. You need a CAS when you deploy more than one primary site. For single site environments a CAS is not required.

If you want to test with Secondary Sites keep in mind they require SQL as well with v.next. Reason is that we now use SQL replication to replicate information between sites. A full SQL installation is not required for Secondary Sites, SQL express can also be used. SQL express can be installed post of the installation or you can let v.next install it for you during the site installation.

I hope this gives you all a good start with installing v.next! Have fun!

ConfigMgr v.next is the new release of ConfigMgr 2007. The RTM release is for now scheduled in 2011.

This next release is focusing on 3 main areas including;

User centric application management - Empowering Administrators to define intent, and end users flexible access to the right application at the right time

- Allow the administrator to think users first
- Application management model to capture admin intent
- End user self-service software portal

Infrastructure simplification – Simplify management infrastructure, processes and administrative overhead

- Unified management across PCs and devices
- New role based administration and end-user experiences
- Automated content distribution and troubleshooting
- Redesigned core infrastructure and improved scalability

Simplify Client Management – Daily tasks, model based configuration management and improvements over existing capabilities

- Automated compliance remediation
- Client health and auto remediation
- Remote control enhancements
- Offline servicing of OS images

The above are only a few of new cool things we have now with v.next. More info about v.next can be found in my earlier post.

I want to encourage everyone to join the beta program and to provide your feedback.

Have fun!

The reason is the volcano on Iceland. Due to the ash clouds most of European airspace is closed. All flights are cancelled.

The plan was to keep you all informed about the cool stuff what was going on in Las Vegas. Today I cancelled all my meetings.
This is a huge bummer, not only for me but also for the MMS. About 25% of attendees are not able to make it and a lot of MMS speakers won't be there as well.

Some content of the MMS like the keynote will be streamed over the web. My friend Jeff Wettlaufer posted more information about that here.

For those that are able to make it; have a great time! For those who are a speaker; good luck with your sessions and hope the demo gods are with you all!

New Hotfix - KB980488 - Asset Intelligence does not collect the SMS_InstalledSoftwareMS" reporting class on an SCCM 2007 client in a Windows 2000 operation system

New Hotfix - KB980270 - The computer associations are not created by the import wizard in SCCM 2007

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Dashboard is now available!

So check all the new stuff, specially the dashboard!

To make the Collection dynamic we need to create a 'Query based collection membership rule'. These types of rules are hosting a WQL query and the results of the query are updated on a schedule. By default the Collection will be updated once a day but you can change this on the 'Properties' for the Collection. Keep in mind though that the higher the update schedule the bigger the load is on the database.

In the following example we create a Collection to select all systems running the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Agent and that have a ConfigMgr client installed. The OpsMgr agent is running a service named 'HealthService'. This is the ‘Service name’ and not the ‘Display name’ as you can see in the Services (services.msc) MMC console. When you double-click a service in the console you can see the actual ‘Service name’. It is important that you use this name in your query.

To select all systems running the OpsMgr agent and that have the ConfigMgr client installed the query for the Collection looks like this:

select SMS_R_System.ResourceId, SMS_R_System.ResourceType, SMS_R_System.Name, SMS_R_System.SMSUniqueIdentifier, SMS_R_System.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup, SMS_R_System.Client from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_SERVICE on SMS_G_System_SERVICE.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where SMS_G_System_SERVICE.Name = "HealthService" and SMS_R_System.Client = 1

To select all systems that are NOT running the OpsMgr agent but that have the ConfigMgr client installed the query for the Collection looks like this:

select SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceID,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceType,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Name,
SMS_R_SYSTEM.SMSUniqueIdentifier,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,
SMS_R_SYSTEM.Client from SMS_R_System where Name not in (SELECT SMS_R_System.Name
FROM SMS_R_System INNER JOIN SMS_G_System_SERVICE ON SMS_G_System_SERVICE.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceID WHERE SMS_G_System_SERVICE.Name = "HealthService") and Client = 1

Looking at the last query example you can create a package containing the OpsMgr Agent installation MSI file and advertise it with a mandatory assignment to this Collection. This way you make sure that all systems that are not having the OpsMgr agent installed will be a member of this Collection and so automatically receive the OpsMgr agent package.
Note: In this scenario you might want to filter out the desktops.

Last week the product team made the announcement that the first beta of this new dashboard is publicly available.

What is a dashboard?
A dashboard is basically a webpage containing multiple reports with graphs. This enables ConfigMgr administrators to have multiple information in reports on a single page.

Requirements
To run the dashboard there are several requirements to be aware of. First of all you need of course a Configuration Manager site running R2 or with Service Pack 2.

The Configuration Manager dashboard is build with Microsoft Sharepoint webparts. A webpart is basically a frame containing code to display data in that frame. A single site can contain multiple webparts.

So in order to load these webparts you need to install Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 SP2 or you can use Windows SharePoint Server 2007 with SP2. You can download WSS 3.0 with SP2 here.

The server running the dashboard needs to have Microsoft .Net Framework version 3.5. The Full Redistributable Package can be downloaded here.

The dashboard has its own database therefore you need a database server running at least Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

As mentioned earlier the dashboard is webpage which can be viewed in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 or 8.

Installing the Configuration Manager dashboard
I have tested the dashboard with the following configuration. A single ConfigMgr Primary site, a remote database server running Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with SP1.

First I installed the required .Net Framework package on the ConfigMgr server. Next I installed Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) SP2. During the installation of WSS 3.0 you will be asked to install a basic or advanced configuration, I selected the Basic Configuration.

After the installation you will be asked to run the configuration wizard. Since this is a fresh installation you need to run this to create the WSS database and websites. Note that during the wizard IIS can be restarted.

Now Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 was installed and configured I downloaded the ConfigMgr dashboard installation files from the Microsoft Connect site.
After extracting the installation files I double-clicked the MSI file.

The installation of the wizard is very easy with only 5 steps. Of these 5 steps two of those are important and displayed below:

In the above displayed step you need to provide an account with access to the database server running the ConfigMgr database. That account also needs access to the ConfigMgr database. In my case the database server is named SR002 and my ConfigMgr database is named SMS_P01.

After that, click 'Next' and you see the window as displayed below. Here you provide a user account and Site Owner Email Address that needs access to the dashboard.
In this window you also provide the server running the dashboard database. In this case that is the server named SR002 and the database name is left default; ConfigMgrDashboardSessionDB

I also left the URL default in my case http://sr002:12345

After clicking 'Next' the wizard will ask for confirmation and after that the installation will start. This takes about 5 minutes.

When the installation is finished you can access the dashboard by entering the URL as stated during the installation in your Internet Explorer browser.

The default dashboard will show you the following graphs:

Sofware Deployment Status
Software Updates Management
OS Deployment Status
Client Operating System (Top 10 only)
Desired Configuration Management
Client Health State

For each webpart you can specify some filters so you can filter on advertisement, site code or collection. In my case the Software Deployment Status webpart looks like this:

You can also remove or customize webparts or even write your own to meet your specific needs. I think the product team already delivered a nice and interesting add-on to ConfigMgr.

More information about the dashboard can be found at:
Configuration Manager Dashboard Beta Program on Connect
About Configuration Manager Dashboards

Enjoy!