June 2010 - Posts
I wanted to take some time to show you some of the power management reports that are provided with R3. There are quite a number of reports, however there are a few key ones that I think most people will want to use.
For all of these reports I will be showing data against my hyper-v environment. So you probably will see different data in your own test environment if you have physical machines, and for that matter, just more data in general.
I think one of the first ones that people will look at is the “Power Capabilities Report”, this report will show you the capabilities of the targeted systems.
“Power Computer Activity” is a neat one because it’ll show you when the computers are on, and when users are actually using the computers. It will also show you the monitor activity, however I don’t have data to show that from my virtual environment.
“Environmental Impact Report” displays a graph showing carbon dioxide emissions saved by a given collection over a specified time period.
“Power Consumption” displays the total computer power consumptions (in kW) for a specified collection over a specified time period.
“Power Cost” displays the total computer power consumption cost (in dollars) for a specified collection over a specified time period.
“Power Settings” displays an aggregated list of power settings used by computers in the specified collection. You can drill-down into this report to see a list of computers using specific power settings. (Note this is not the full report, there are many more options not in this screenshot)
Lets take a look at how we can add some applications the UDI wizard to be presented to the user. This post will cover the basics of adding an application the be presented in the wizard and making it mandatory. There will be later posts on some of the more advanced functions you can do with applications, for example like “mapping.”
First lets configure our package selection screen. We want to configure our server name (1), then refresh the data (2), and then we want to select the application we want to add (3), and finally add it to the select packaged list (4):
Next we want to add the application the list:
Notice that we don’t see Office 2010 listed. This is because in order to show up on the list, the checkbox for allowing this program to be run from a TS needs to be selected.
Now, some interesting behavior with the UDI designer, is that even after checking this box, you still won’t be able to see the program listed. Let me show you below.
Lets refresh our data:
And now try to see the program again:
Still not listed. So what we need to do in order to get the program to show us is actually remove it from the list and re-add it again.
Now it’s listed again:
And now we can actually add it as an application to our wizard:
Now we have it selected and configure other properties if we would like to:
Most commonly, you would pick “Mark as Selected” and/or “Selection Locked”. For this purpose, we are going to leave these cleared and just present it in the wizard. You’ll now have an entry for OSD applications.
If we run the Task Sequence on a machine, we will now see that we have Office 2010 listed as a selectable application:
Now, lets go ahead and add another application, but make it mandatory this time. Here we’ve taken Adobe Reader 9 and marked it as selected and locked the selection.
And when the Task Sequence is ran again, it will show up like this in the wizard and we can see that Adobe Reader 9 is checked and grayed out and we are unable to clear the check box:
Here we can see Adobe Reader installing in the Task Sequence using the options we just showed above:
Now you’ve seen the basics of adding applications to the UDI wizard and presenting them to the user. Along with making a application mandatory to the user, this would be great for items like virus scanning software or other client agents you might want to force to be installed through UDI.
I started writing this blog a week ago and just couldn’t find the time to finish it, as it turns out my girlfriend would prefer I spend time with her instead of writing a blog post. Then I decided I would make use of my time on a return flight home and finish the post. So thanks to Hyper-V, Windows Live Writer and good battery life on my laptop, here is a post on a first look at UDI in MDT 2010 Update 1 (Beta).
This will show an XP to Windows 7 refresh of a Hyper-V virtual machine. I haven’t done any customizations to UDI other than providing the Domain to join and a list of a few Organization Units to pick from. I’ll show you how to customize the UDI interface in coming blog posts. First, let me show you the options I’ve configured in the UDI Wizard Designer to get the basic process to run.
Computer Page
We’ve configured the Domain of Deployment.com, we’ve added a few OU’s that can be chosen to place the computer into, we’ve disabled the Workgroup field and we’ve changed the default selection to be the Domain.
User Configuration Page
We’ve unchecked “Allow user to add additional accounts to the local Administrators group.
Language Page
We’ve set the Timezone to Central Time.
After you make changes to the xml, make sure to save the file and then update your distribution points to reflect those changes.
Lets kick off an OSD advertisement in Windows XP and see what the process looks like as it actually runs.\
Here we have a few non-mandatory task sequences available to be executed, we are going to choose the Windows 7 x86 UDI task sequence.
Here we have our task sequence starting to execute:
Next we have the Welcome screen of the UDI wizard presented to the user:
Next we have our pre-flight checks being run and passed:
Next we have the Computer Details page which allows us to name the machine, join a domain or workgroup, along with provide credentials to join the domain:
Next we have the screen where we can set the local administrator password:
Next we can set the Time Zone and keyboard layouts:
Next we can chose the image, select the volume and the windows target directory, note that you can optionally select a format here:
Next we can select the applications to install, here is where you could also make applications mandatory by configuring the pane in the UDI wizard designer or just allowing users to choose from a list of applications, or even use package mapping to detect what was installed on the machine.
Here is our demo, we don’t have any applications configured as I wanted to show you the bare minimum to get UDI going.
Finally we have a summary screen showing the options that have been configured:
The process starts and it’s staging WinPE to the disk:
Here we are in WinPE, running an offline User State Capture (thank you USMT 4.0):
Next we apply the image to disk:
Next we Setup Windows and install the ConfigMgr client:
Install applications if applicable (none in our demo here, so this step went through very quickly):
Restore User State:
Here is the deployment finished and we are presented with a summary screen. (I really like this):
There you have it, that’s the basic overview of UDI running an XP to Win7 refresh and what it looks like. Looks like it’ll be very promising!
This post is provided as-is, use at your own risk.
My latest lab is on Server 2008 R2 and I was having a weird issue with the MP not installing. Even though I had configured WebDav correctly as per the TechNet article here, however my mpsetup.log was still giving me errors about WebDav not being correctly configured. Upon opening up the webdav_schema.xml I could see that it wasn’t actually set correctly.
I tried clearing the settings, uninstalling WebDav, restarting the server and reinstalling, reconfiguring, but even that didn’t work.
This post here pointed me in the right direction and credit is due where credit is due!
http://www.ithastobecool.com/2009/06/24/sccm-2007-r2-on-server-2008-weird-webdav-errors-on-mp-installation/
After manually modifying the webdav_schema.xml, then I was able to successfully install the MP site role.
This blog will cover the installation of ConfigMgr R3 into your lab environment as well as provide some additional information in regards to R3. R3 is still in beta, so I would not recommend you install it in production. I’ve actually been working with a client that is in the R3 TAP, so I wanted to post some information regarding R3 for the general public to get a glimpse as well, as I haven’t seen much information out there on R3 yet.
Please be sure to read the notes at the very bottom of this post as there is some really good information there that I haven’t seen listed anywhere else yet.
ConfigMgr 2007 R3 Beta Requirements:
- R3 beta can only be installed on a ConfigMgr SP2 environment
- R3 beta can only be installed on an evaluation copy of ConfigMgr. 2007 (this is fixed with the latest Beta refresh on Connect)
ConfigMgr 2007 R3 Main Features:
- Power Management (Server OS’s are not supported)
- Collection/discovery improvements
- New OEM task sequence media (pre-staged media)
- 300,000 Clients when using default settings
For a overview of R3, please see the attached documents from Microsoft.
(powerpoint slides)
This installation will be against a R2 environment, however, if you want to do a clean install, you can go straight to R3. R3 DOES include R2.
Extracted Files:
Once you extract out the download from Microsoft Connect, you will notice two files. One is the .exe for the R3 install, the second one is KB977384, which must be applied to your site server before the R3 install.
So here is our ConfigMgr Site, SP2 and R2 installed:
First lets get the KB installed:
In the middle of the install, you will also be prompted for what you would like to do with a patch for the ConfigMgr client:
Next we need to extract out the R3 install:
Next, we open up the splash screen and can read the notes, or install:
Lets Install:
Now we can see that R3 is installed:
First, you’ll notice you have now have a “Power Management Client Agent” under Site Management – Site Settings – Client Agents:
You’ll need to enable this to start collecting data to show in the reports:
You will also now have a “Power Management” tab on Collection settings:
Initially you probably don’t want to enable this and start forcing power policies, you probably just want to collect some data for a few weeks to see how your systems are being used.
Here is some more information on the power settings you can apply:
Next we’ll want to configure the reports so you can view the data you are gathering, and preferably before you start enforcing policies. The reports are SQL Reporting Services only and have to imported.
Browse to “C:\Program files (x86)\Configuration Manager\Reports\Power Management”
And now you’ll see the new reports listed:
In terms of OSD, there is a new option available for pre-staged media, this is media containing both the operating system image and bootable media.
There is also a new feature to add resources to a collection:
If you are selected on a resource, you will have 2 new options as well:
“Add To Collection” adds the currently selected resource(s) to an existing collection. “New Collection” adds the currently selected resource(s) to a new collection.
R3 also enables you to have “delta” discoveries, there is a new “Enable Delta Discovery” option on the discovery methods. This allows for faster collection updates and for getting resources into collections quicker. This is a favorite feature of mine for AD System Group Discovery, if you are using AD groups for targeted software distribution.
There is also a setting on collections for adding in new resources as they discovered instead of waiting for a full collection evaluation.
Here are some additional notes as well to take into consideration.
Power Management
- If user changes settings, R3 will set it back at the next power interval change
- If there are multiple Wakup Times, then the closest to midnight wins
- If there are in multiple collections, one with power settings, one without, the “non” power policy will take precedence
- Wakeup timer is a one-shot at time to wakeup
- Reports are SSRS only, there is a cab to import to show reports (demonstrated above)
Collections
- Focus for R3 is evaluating new sytems
- “Fast Evalualtion” setting on collections
- A new collection needs a full evaluation to show existing clients
- Collections are eval’d by periodically executing a query
- Results are inserted into temp table
- Table is merged with master collection results table (collectionmembers)
- If there is no change in results, master results table not changed
- If only a few resources have changed, evaluation process faster due to only processing changed resources
- “Dynamically add new resources” works for OSD, or first time a client sends in inventory, 5 minutes to discover, 5 minutes to update collection
Just wanted to provide a quick preview of installing MDT 2010 Update 1. I plan on creating several blog postings covering the new UDI feature (formerly Modena) and showing a few examples of what you can do with it. I would also highly recommend you read the documentation provided with MDT.
MDT (Microsoft Deployment Toolkit) 2010 Update 1 Overview
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) is the recommended process and toolset for automating desktop and server deployment. MDT provides you with the following benefits:
- Unified tools and processes required for desktop and server deployment in a common deployment console and collection of guidance.
- Reduced deployment time and standardized desktop and server images, along with improved security and ongoing configuration management.
MDT 2010 Update 1 supports deployment of Windows® 7 and Windows Server® 2008 R2 in addition to deployment of Windows Vista®, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP. Features such as flexible driver management, optimized user interface workflow, and Windows PowerShell™ can simplify deployment and make your job easier. Deploy faster and easier with MDT 2010 Update 1.
New in MDT 2010 Update 1
- Support for Microsoft Office 2010
- Improvements to the Deployment Workbench driver import process, detecting each driver’s true supported platforms.
- A new User-driven Installation (UDI) deployment method for Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. UDI gives information technology (IT) staff control over the deployment experience while empowering users to interact with and customize their operating system deployment through an easy-to-use wizard.
- Many bug fixes and other small improvements.
===============================================
The main MDT install is pretty straight forward, so I won’t cover that. As a note, you will need to upgrade your LTI deployment share once you install Update 1 if you are using any stand-alone MDT deployments. You will probably need to re-integrate your ConfigMgr MDT extensions as well just to be safe (I can’t verify one way or the other, so it doesn’t hurt to do it again), just re-run the “Configure ConfigMgr Integration” task.
In addition after installation you will see 2 new options in the Start Menu and I’ll cover those in more detail in a bit:
In addition one of the new features is support for Office 2010 in Lite-Touch:
You can launch the OCT right from within MDT:
In ConfigMgr (ZTI), you will see a new Task Sequence available to choose called “User Driven Installation Task Sequence”:
I noticed quite a few new steps in the Task Sequence versus a standard Client Deployment TS. Here a few screen shots to show you a summary.
Installing the UDI Config Service:
If you encounter this error, then you will need to do the following steps:
Download the URL Rewrite modules here:
Download the x86 version of the URL Rewrite module
Download the x64 version of the URL Rewrite module
Installing URL Rewrite:
Now we are good to go on the UDI Service Config installation:
Create a new folder for the virtual directory (called UDI in this example):
Click Ok, then Next
Configure your SQL Instance:
Now you will see a new site in IIS after the installation:
Next we’ll take a look at the UDI Wizard Designer.
Launch it and you’ll see the start screen:
You basically have 2 main sections in the UDI Designer, The Wizard screen and the Application screen.
On the right of designer, you will see the options to enable/disable/silent panes:
In the Workspace (center pane) you can work with and configure the pane items:
When you are on various workspaces, you can configure additional items on the Action pane:
The Application section allows for configuration of Applications present in UDI:
The Package Selection allows importing of ConfigMgr packages:
The OSD applications screen allows for display behavior off applications, what the dependencies are, if you want any mappings (if you have Adobe Reader 7.0, then install Adobe Reader 9.01) and delivery rules.
The Applications Settings in the Action Pane allows for selecting apps by default (allowing user to uncheck) or locking a selection (always checked):
Just a note on the XML’s used for driving the wizard (what you would edit with the Designer), the default XML used is UDIWizard_Config.xml which is located in the \scripts folder under your MDT 2010 Scripts Package you created in ConfigMgr.
That’s just a brief (sort-of) summary of the installation and new items in Update 1. Hope that helps.
If you have legacy iSeries Windows Client Access and need to do an upgrade to the latest 6.1 version, it can be a little challenging to get the old version uninstalled. Here is a script that will take care of the uninstall, credit goes to a former colleague of mine for creating this. This has worked with versions 5.4 and 5.2.
Begin Script
###########################
@echo off
if exist "C:\Program Files\IBM\Client Access\cwbunins.exe" goto legacy
exit 0
:legacy
cls
echo Uninstalling old versions.
"C:\Program Files\IBM\Client Access\cwbunins.exe" /s
reg.exe delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce" /v "CA RmDir" /f
rmdir /s /q "C:\Program Files\IBM\Client Access\Mri2924"
exit 0
###########################
End Script
Here’s a bunch of free books for download. Very Cool!
When troubleshooting TS’s or when you simply want to know what is all being used in the TS, it can be helpful to log the variables and the resultant values.
Use this simple script to output the variables (save as a vbs and output to a text file)
###Begin Script
Set env = CreateObject("Microsoft.SMS.TSEnvironment")
For each v in env.GetVariables
WScript.Echo v & " = " & env(v)
Next
###End Script
A list of the variables and their values can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb632442.aspx .
If you want another approach, see the blow post here by the Deployment Guys. This will dump to a OutputTSVariables.log for viewing.
Yet another approach here is a post by Michael Niehaus. He has a few methods there.