May 2007 - Posts
The question about how to inventory physical RAM chips installed on SMS clients seems to come up a lot. I've created this blog post to create a centralized location for the answer to this question. Anyway, the MOF edit I use for this is below. If you modify this extension be sure to take note of the compound key (Tag and CreationClassName) and array designator [] for DeviceLocator--leave those in the edit or you will have issues...trust me. The SMS_Units property I added is just to make the information more 'human friendly' when displayed in Resource Explorer.
[SMS_Report (TRUE),
SMS_Group_Name ("Physical Memory"),
SMS_Class_ID ("Microsoft|Physical_Memory|1.0")]
class Win32_PhysicalMemory : SMS_Class_Template
{
[SMS_Report (TRUE)] string BankLabel;
[SMS_Report (TRUE), SMS_Units("Megabytes")] uint64 Capacity;
[SMS_Report (TRUE)] string Caption;
[SMS_Report (TRUE)] string DeviceLocator[];
[SMS_Report (TRUE)] uint16 FormFactor;
[SMS_Report (TRUE)] string Manufacturer;
[SMS_Report (TRUE)] uint16 MemoryType;
[SMS_Report (TRUE)] uint32 PositionInRow;
[SMS_Report (TRUE)] uint32 Speed;
[SMS_Report (TRUE),Key] string Tag;
[SMS_Report (TRUE),Key] string CreationClassName;
};
Hope this helps,
~Jeff
Seven short (10 questions each) quizzes have been made by your friendly neighborhood SMS writers...er, Configuration Manager writers....aka the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 User Assistance team, to help you learn about the new features and capabilities of Configuration Manager 2007. If this interests you (and i hope it does 
) then please take a minute to take a quiz or quizzes of your choice and let us know what you think. We're really interested in your feedback on these, both on the format and the content of the quizzes. You can send feedback to smsdocs@microsoft.com.
From the download page (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b9fb478a-ec98-47f2-b31e-57443a8ae88f&DisplayLang=en):
The System Center Configuration Manager 2007 User Assistance team has created a set of 7 quizzes to help you assess your understanding of the dependencies and requirements for key features of Configuration Manager. These quizzes are intended to raise your level of awareness of the some of the nuances of these features before you configure and use them. They can also be used to help train other Configuration Manager administrators within your organization.
Each quiz contains 10 or more questions that can be answered Yes or No. Regardless of your answer, the quiz will display the correct information, and include one or more links to the corresponding related content located on TechNet.
We are testing the usefulness of this format, and ask for your feedback on the format and the content contained in each quiz. Please send feedback to SMSDOCS@Microsoft.com.
To take a quiz about Client Deployment, select the ClientDepQuiz.ppsdownload.
To take a quiz about Desired Configuration Management, select the dcmQuiz.pps download.
To take a quiz about Internet Based Client Management, select the IBCM.pps download.
To take a quiz about Network Access Protection, select the NAPQuiz.pps download.
To take a quiz about Native Mode, select the NativeMode.pps download.
To take a quiz about Operating System Deployment, select the OSDQuiz.pps download.
To take a quiz about Software Updates, select the susQuiz.pps download.
The View Provider can be used to perform simple WQL queries during client hardware inventories. The below mof edit was created to demonstrate this for my inventory lab at MMS 2007, and I figured it would be a handy example to others when modifying their inventory for specific information.
Any valid WQL query using a simple select statement can be used in the ViewSources line, but remember to test these mof additions in a lab to ensure that what you are doing is acceptable in terms of the performance hit on clients when they perform hardware inventory.
The following example will query the client System event log looking for installed update events (4377 events) during hardware inventory:
//------------------------------- Data Class ------------------------------------
#pragma namespace("\\\\.\\root\\cimv2")
[Union,
ViewSources{"Select * FROM Win32_NTLogEvent WHERE LogFile = 'System' AND EventCode = 4377"},
ViewSpaces{"\\\\.\\root\\cimv2"},
dynamic,provider("MS_VIEW_INSTANCE_PROVIDER")]
Class NTLogEvent
{
[PropertySources("LogFile"), Key] string LogFile;
[PropertySources("RecordNumber"), Key] UINT32 Recordnumber;
[PropertySources("Message")] String Message;
[PropertySources("TimeGenerated")] DateTime TimeGenerated;
};
//-------------------------- Reporting Class-----------------------------------
#pragma namespace("\\\\.\\root\\CIMV2\\SMS")
[SMS_Report(TRUE),
SMS_Group_Name("Installed Updates"),
SMS_Class_ID("MICROSOFT|Win32_NTLogEvent|1.0") ]
Class NTLogEvent: SMS_Class_Template
{
[SMS_Report(TRUE), Key] String LogFile;
[SMS_Report(TRUE), Key] UINT32 RecordNumber;
[SMS_Report(True)] String Message;
[SMS_Report(True)] DateTime TimeGenerated;
};
You can get this MOF edit (as a .txt file) by right clicking HERE and selecting Save As...
Hope this helps,
~Jeff
If you find yourself blocked by a required prerequisite when you're running setup to evaluate Configuration Manager 2007 Beta 2 in your lab environment (or TAP production environment) there is a setup switch than can come to your rescue: Setup /NoPrereq. Using this setup switch will cause setup to run and skip the prerequisite checking process. This means that none of the prerequisite check rules will run during setup so I'd recommend that you first run setup with the prerequisite checking turned on to ensure that you've resolved as many setup prerequisites as you easily can.
This setup switch will only be available in pre-RTM builds. So when Configuration Manager 2007 is officially released, this switch won't work. For now though, if you're installing any of the currently released builds of Configuration Manager, this switch will allow you to install a Configuration Manager 2007 site without verifying installation prerequisites.
Hope this helps,
~Jeff