Jason Condo at myITforum.com

Leveraging the MDT customsettings.ini for defining drivers for SCCM OSD

2011-10-18T19:12:23Z

I have had customers want to manage device drivers easily and while the built in task sequence for applying drivers allows you to specify a condition and then install a specific category of drivers or all drivers from a package ( http://blogs.technet.com/b/deploymentguys/archive/2008/02/15/driver-management-part-1-configuration-manager.aspx ), I like looking at a simple task sequence without 20 tasks for installing devices. If you have MDT integrated, you can add a gather sequence and add the following...(read more)

Am I treating the problem or a symptom

2011-06-30T13:35:00Z

Like I said in my blog post before, make sure you are treating the problem and not the symptom. Also, I said I was going to go back and rebuild to see if my experiences were really a problem or whether they were just a symptom. It really didn’t take me this long to rebuild, but I was working on another server for my lab and was running into problems again with the base VM VHD I had just created and had used for my lab ConfigMgr server. I was seeing similar errors as the ConfigMgr server as in normal...(read more)

Office 2010 SP1 Availlable

2011-06-29T13:29:00Z

In case you missed the news on Monday, SP1 for Office 2010 has been released. You can find the downloads here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/search.aspx?q=office%202010%20service%20pack%201...(read more)

MSSQLSERVER fails to start with SSL error

2011-06-29T12:50:00Z

During the ConfigMgr 2012 setup I ran into a problem were the installation was hung and not proceeding. Opening the log in the lower left of the progress window showed that setup was assigning a self signed cert to SQL and then was not moving on. After 30 minutes, I was pretty sure that something was wrong. Assuming there was a problem related to previous troubleshooting attempts (other previous issues) I decided to kill setup and reboot (hoping it wouldn't break something). Upon reboot, I found...(read more)

SQL Connection Protocols and ConfigMgr 2012 install

2011-06-28T20:58:02Z

I was having problems getting my ConfigMgr 2010 Beta2 setup to connect to the locally installed instance of SQL. I was racking my brains trying to figure out why. It kept saying that it couldn't connect and to make sure I had a supported version of SQL and that SQL 2008 SP2 and/or SQL 2008 R2 were not supported. This was quite aggravating for me because I knew I had SQL Server 2008 installed, added SP1, and then added CU10. With that you should end up with a version of 10.0.2799, which I confirmed...(read more)

ConfigMgr 2012 Beta2 Lab Ramblings

2011-06-28T20:47:28Z

With a little time between engagements and some time off the road I felt it was time to rebuild my ConfigMgr portable lab I run around with. It was broken from some client troubleshooting so instead of trying to upgrade to 2012 from 2007 R2, I chose to rebuild the lab from scratch. It is a great practice lesson in remembering all those things I take for granted in an environment. Now my Demonstration/Lab server is a single server implementation with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 that has the following...(read more)

OpsMgr 2007 R2 and Secondary Logon Service

2009-12-15T21:05:00Z

Came across an interesting situation today. I was working with a client installing an RMS POC and was having difficulty getting the agent to report to the RMS. It would install, uninstall, and all the logs looked fine, but the targeted server would alway appear offline. What was even more curious was that the RMS server itself was showing up as not connected. While troubleshooting, I noticed in the tasks that we had some errors stating that an account being used to install the agent did not have...(read more)

Ohio System Center User Group

2008-11-05T23:59:11Z

Ohio System Center User Group hosted by Bennett Adelson . From the Microsoft Solution Center at Bennett Adelson, we invite you to join us for the Ohio System Center User Group. This group’s focus is on the Microsoft suite of applications for managing and maintaining the infrastructure environment bundled under the System Center umbrella. This suite includes Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr), Operations Manager (OpsMgr), Virtual Machine Manager, Reporting Services, Mobile Device Manager, and Data...(read more)

Alert: Agent proxying needs to be enabled

2008-09-12T02:23:36Z

If you have ever seen this error referring to proxying needing turned on for your OpsMgr Management Servers, the error can be misleading. Alert: Agent proxying needs to be enabled for a health service to submit discovery data about other computers. Source: SERVERMP01.contoso.com Path: SERVERMP01.contoso.com Last modified by: CONTOSO\OpsMgrAdmin Last modified time: 9/11/2008 6:14:43 PM Alert description: Details:Health service ( 37BCD2D5-B326-759F-ECAC-101C5686D158 ) should not generate data about...(read more)

Catastrophic Failure has occurred....

2008-08-21T21:45:00Z

During the process of adding a Gateway server for an Operations Manager environment, I received the following error while adding a certificate using MomCertImport.exe. The certificate is valid, but importing it to certificate store failed. Error description: Catastrophic failure Error code:0000FFFF Now to me, a catastrophic failure makes me think the server is going to burst into flames. While I doubt that will happen, I think someone had a good sense of humor when they wrote that message. Some quick...(read more)

Another example of great website publishing practice

2008-08-21T20:21:00Z

Not. While useful for developers, trace logs and debugging should not be accessible to external visitors. Not only does it allow the user to peak inside your directorystucture, code snippets, and possibly even values, running code with debugging assemblies or flags enabled adds overhead to your servers....(read more)

Example of what not to do on public facing websites

2008-08-09T02:43:48Z

as a general rule, you should ensure that debugging is turned off for public facing sites....(read more)

Enterprise Branding - Systems

2008-08-01T12:00:44Z

I have been an advocate of branding systems so that automation scripts and reporting can be executed to get the information branded. While SMS and ConfigMgr clients can read information from a system and dump it to a database, it is only as good as the information gathered and generally cannot be referenced when executing installs or non-SMS functions. In addition, sys admins have come up with some pretty ingenious ways to make changes to reports or editing the def.mof to manipulate the data to get...(read more)

My Trip to Seattle

2008-07-31T12:00:50Z

Last week, a few of us got together in Seattle for the evening. Here are a few pictures from the night and my trip to Mount Rainier the next day. Seattle from Kerry Park on Queen Anne Hill: (From left to right: Brian Mason, Greg Ramsey, Yves Robitaille, and me) There are pedestrian walkways all over Seattle and the surrounding area. I thought this was quite inventive and effective as I watched someone cross in front of me carrying one of these flags. Some shots at Mount Rainier: Too bad it was cloudy...(read more)

ConfigMgr and Remote SQL - Dogfight

2008-07-30T19:24:27Z

It seems that this discussion comes up quite often on whether to install the ConfigMgr database on the same server or on a separate server. While there are camps that side one way or the other, I thought I would throw my hat in on this topic. Generally speaking, both installation are OK. (GASP :o) Before you throw me off a cliff, hear me out. Installing the site database on the computer on which the primary site is installed generally results in good site performance if adequate hardware is used...(read more)