Joseph Hinkle at MyITForum.com

In case you weren't aware, there are polos available for alumni in the Alumni Lounge. They even have them to fit... umm... large people like me. Thanks Wilson!

This session was presented by Norman Cillo and Wally Mead.

I've watch at least one Wally session every year since I've been coming to SMS. You do a great job, Wally. Keep it up!

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 just rolls off the tongue. Every presenter has had trouble with it.

1st key point: OSD is Microsoft's preferred way to deploy Vista.

If you're familiar with OSD, the first portion of the session is review. I'm not going to reiterate it here. If you need more in-depth info about OSD, there are lots of good resources out there.

On of the review points brings me back to one of OSD's shortcomings. OSD in SMS 2003 is not as robust in bare-metal deployment scenarios, particularly machine-to-machine migrations. I've been a part of a team that has migrated about 800 computers using OSD. The problem is coming up with a solid process that works on machines that we had no control over before we are ready to re-image. I'm looking forward to the enhancements in SCCM 2007. They should help, especially the built-in support for state transfer to a network location.

The feature pack update requires SMS 2003 SP2. The update is required to support Windows vista image capture and deployment. It won't be available until mid-2006, after Vista Beta 2 is available. Beta 2 will be supported for deployment. The original OSD feature pack does not support Vista.

It will support both WIM formats. The current version, 0.9, will still be compatible, but all new images will be 1.0, the Vista format. There will be no migration utility to convert an image to the new version.

One interesting statement that Norman made was that they recommend that baseline applications be installed on the master image. I personally believe the opposite. I want to update that image as little as possible, so we deploy everything after the fact. We have a lot of machines that don't need Office and the other apps that are typically required for a standard user. Since I want to maintain a single image for all hardware, our image is a flat install of Windows XP with all of our OS level customizations. I run an update process that installs all non-storage drivers and other company-specific updates as a part of the post-install phase.

Sysprep does not need to be pre-staged in Vista. It is "found automatically". It uses unattend XML files supplied somewhere else in the process. Vista has the capability of using a binding server. In that case, the product key does not need to be supplied as a part of the OSD package.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Management Summit 2006, mms2006, SMS, system center, system center configuration manager, vista, Windows

This session was presented by Emma Archer and Tony DeAmicis.

System Center Reporting Manager is one of the products I wanted to learn more about here at MMS. There were a few key things I was unaware of. The first, and probably most important, is that it is more of a data warehousing application. All of the data from AD, MOM, and SMS gets pulled in for reporting purposes. The transfers from SMS happen on a schedule and is performed by a service that is installed on the site server.

From what I'm seeing, most of the reports are focused on MOM. All of the current reports that are in MOM have been ported to SCRM. There is a much smaller set of SMS reports. There is support for extended SMS_DEF.MOF data, but it seems to be a manual process. There is a table that can be extended.

The next version will utilize the report builder from SQL 2005.

It is very disconcerting when the recommendation is that we don't try to extend this product because there will be significant improvements in extensibility in v2. It makes me feel like the product was rushed to market and usability was not the primary concern. I realize that there are always limitations on what gets included in the v1 product, but when there is a complete re-write between v1 and v2, there clearly wasn't enough thought put into the features that are needed by the users of the product. I'm sure it will be better when we get to the common database schema for MOM and SMS, but right now I'm hearing "don't bother because the next version will actually be useful".

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Management Summit 2006, mms2006, system center

Big thanks to Dave and the gang at SMS Expert for letting me hang around at their booth. 

Stop by, say hi, and get a blinky badge. 

If you have a chance and are walking up 5th Ave. in the Gaslamp Quarter, stop by the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. The Apple Pie Caramel Apple is terrific. It sounds goofy, but it really does taste very much like apple pie. Start with an apple, cover it with caramel, white chocolate, brown sugar and cinnamon. What's not to like?

By the way, check out the giant chocolate bunny

Technorati Tags: gaslamp quarter, Microsoft Management Summit 2006, mms2006

If you see someone typing away on a MacBook Pro, stop by and say hi. So far, it looks like its a 1 in 5 chance of it actually being me.

I'll be in sessions all day, but I'm not sure which ones. I left my schedule in the room, so I'll be around CommNet after the keynote.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Management Summit 2006, mms2006

This session was presented by Ken Van Hyning, Group Program Manager of the Windows and Enterprise Management Division at Microsoft.

System Center is definitely focused on ITIL and knowledge management. Service desk is going to allow users to request software without IT involvement. It was unclear from the previous information, but was just mentioned specifically. It looks like it might require Office 2007 for some functionality. There is a desire to make it work out of the box, which is a relief. All of the integration could have been painful to set up. Everything will relate back to the CMDB, so everything in System Center will be integrated into one database.

Another focus is making it easy to customize and extend. I'm not sure what tools it will be using, but I'm guessing it will be some Visual Studio-like tool. Service Desk utilizes pieces of System Center, MOF, Visual Studio Team Services, Office, and Windows Server workflow services.

Service Desk will be driven by "solution packs". The direct comparison is MOM Management Packs. Out of the box, it will have incident and problem management, asset and life cycle management, and change management. The first example is change management. The theory is that you would install a change management pack that would install knowledge base articles into Sharepoint, forms into Forms server, and other pieces.

Analysts would be using Office to create new forms (Infopath), knowledge base articles, and reports. Visual Studio 2005 is the tool to do true extensions of the product, like console or portal changes.

Knowledge is available through Sharepoint and the portal. The CMDB will also be searchable from Sharepoint. It will use Sharepoint's approval engine to approve new articles. Knowledge articles will be in the standard Microsoft format. Search results will be integrated from TechNet and other Microsoft knowledge bases.

Forms will be hosted on Infopath Server 2007. The CMDB is the common database for all System Center data. It will contain relationships between asset items, users, etc.

MOM alerts can automatically generate an incident. The interface is still pretty rough, but it is very early code. I'm sure it will get the Microsoft treatment soon . Incidents will be easy to relate to other incidents to they can be worked on together. The workflow editor is a part of Visual Studio. It looks fairly simple, but it is looks like it would take a high level of knowledge to make a serious custom change.

Beta 1 will release in 2H 2006. Beta 2 will be available in 1H 2007, with RTM in the 2H 2007.

Q&A with paraphrased questions and answers:

1: Is the product going to automate user creation? The platform is there to do it, but it will not be a part of v1.

2: Will password change requests be automated? They are working with various product teams to create an integrated password reset tool, possibly with Winlogon and MIIS.

3: How does the CMDB in SCCM 2007 integrate with SCSD? SCCM is the first pass at the CMDB, but it is focused on a more granular part. It will be better integrated in the next version.

4: Will this help direct calls to the correct support team? Not out of the box, but it can be easily customizable with workflow.

5: What is the strategy to keep the data clean and discovering relationships? This space will be more focused on partners, but there will be things pulled in from SMS and MOM to help with that.

6: How do you identify relationships for the CMDB? There is a common CMDB model that helps define what entities are related. It can be done manually, but there is a focus on using SMS and MOM data to do this automatically.

7: Do you expect v1 to compete in all areas? The target is SMS and MOM customers, since no one integrates with them really. Competing with Remedy is not the primary target.

8: Will it integrate with Exchange 2007 and Windows PowerShell? You can create custom actions as a part of a workflow, but there will also be built-in functions. A form could be used to push the functionality to end users.

9: What are the requirements for the messaging system? No hard dependencies on Exchange. Sharepoint 2007, Forms Server 2007, and SQL 2005 are required.

10: Where does the data come from? It uses configuration and discovery from other products and relies on them for that data. There is no separate client.

11: Will there be a built-in knowledge base? One option is to integrate with the standard knowledge base. The other is to use a private knowledge base, similar to Right Answers.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Management Summit 2006, mms2006, service desk, system center

Kirill Tatarinov, CVP of Windows and Enterprise Management at Microsoft, is delivering the keynote.

I'm really excited about System Center Service Desk. I'm really hoping for more information to come today during the keynote. I will be in the Service Desk session today, even though it coincides with an SCCM 2007 session. It was a tough choice, but I'm really interested in the capabilities of service desk.

More people-ready commercials. Go figure. And more comedian. Oh, that's classic. The SMS admin from Ford Motor Company was here to listen to the minute-long Ford Aspire joke. Oops.

The morning news clip is one of the funniest things I've seen all week.

After a lengthy review, we've moved on to knowledge-driven management. Microsoft's Dynamic Systems Initiative, and by extension, System Center, is the main focus of this.

I get the feeling that Microsoft would really like for people to get away from SMS 2.0.

System Center Reporting Manager 2006 is now available. I really need to go by the expo booth to pick up some more info. There isn't a lot of new information so far, so there isn't much to say at this point. There is a nice case study video, highlighting the New Your City Department of Sanitation's System Center Data Protection Manager implementation. This was one of the best case study videos I've seen in a while. I'll try to dig it up somewhere.

Here we go! More stuff about SCSD. The main focus here is providing more knowledge available to the organizations using the product. The self-service portal is one of the main focuses, but it seems limited to solving problems right now. It doesn't seem to provide a self-service option for software requests. One of the main features of SCSD is tying alerts from MOM, data from SMS and support requests.

I'm really glad that Microsoft is taking the update infrastructure seriously. The new custom scan tool is going to be an incredible help for us in terms of making sure third-party applications are up to date. Adobe's support, as well as Citrix, was just announced. We don't use Citrix as a company, but I'm excited about Adobe's support.

Info on asset management! Microsoft has acquired AssetMetrix, a Canadian asset-management firm. The implementation inside SMS looks good, but it was clearly the first pass at making it work. There is an Asset Management with SMS 2003 session that will discuss that in full. I'll try to make it, but I'm not sure what else I have scheduled.

Bill Anderson did a demo of Softricity, an application virtualization server app. It was very cool, but not useful for us in our environment. From the reaction of the crowd, it seemed like a very limited number of people who found it useful.

Operating system deployment is the next area of focus. I didn't know about Key Management in Vista. Apparently, there is no product key any more. The task sequence systems is very nice. I really like the editor and the drag and drop features in it. The drilldown session this afternoon will cover it in more detail.

System Center Operations Manager 2007 will ship by the end of the calendar year Configuration Manager 2007 and Service Desk will ship in 2007.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Management Summit 2006, mms2006, service desk, SMS, system center, system center configuration manager

The We Share Your Pain video from this morning's keynote was actually released last October. The Wikipedia entry is here.

We Share Your Pain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Management Summit 2006, Microsoft Management Summitg 2006

David Zifkin of Microsoft presented this session.

Three goals:
1) Maintain PC Configuration
2) Simplify configuration management
3) Desktop Configuration and Task Automation

The basic thought is to run all users as standard users with User Access Control. Vista will open up what the standard user can do, like change power settings, time zones, and printers. Time Zone and clock settings changes are now separate. If a program believes that it must write to Program Files, it actually writes to a virtual store that is layered on top of the actual program files directory.

Windows Resource Protection is the new version of the Windows File Protection service. System files and registry settings are protected to everything except the OS service that controls the install, presumably the Windows Installer Service.

There are 500 new Group Policy settings. Power settings can now be controlled in group policy. Device installation and usage settings allow the device controls outlined in the keynote this morning. Group policy utilizes the Network Awareness service to apply policies as soon as a domain controller is available. A computer is now allowed to have multiple local group policy objects.

The Group Policy Management console is now included in Vista, as well as better searching and filtering facilities. There are also template files to accelerate policy deployment.

Vista will require fewer reboots for patches. We've heard all this before, but it has improved by 17% according to the presentation. The new WIM format will allow a patch to be applied directly to the image. Automatic updates can be applied to anything, not just critical patches.

Reboot Manager will prevent reboots by restarting appropriate services when a Windows Installer is run. It will also allow reboots to be scheduled. Office 2007 and IE7 will also work with Reboot Manager to restore the user's state to what it was before the reboot, even with an unsaved Word document or email.

There are thirteen new WMI providers, including Network Access Control and BitLocker full-drive encryption. BitLocker looks interesting, especially for mobile computers. With full-drive encryption, it would make it very difficult for a stolen computer to be compromised.

There is also a new Event Viewer and Event Logger infrastructure called Windows Eventing 6.0. There is a reduction in the amount of information that is logged, in an attempt to reduce the clutter in the event log. This has been one of my biggest irritations with Windows at this point. Who cares about 95% of what is logged? All of the logs are XML based. The new Event Viewer will have multiple logs for different applications instead of a single Application Log. There are also even subscriptions so they can be viewed centrally.

There is also a new Task Scheduler with new triggers, conditional launch and chained actions. There are conditions based on time and system availability. There is a new task dashboard that includes active and upcoming tasks.

The Reliability Analysis Console analyzes uptime and determines a stability rating. The rating is affected by any crashes and hangs. The console uses the data for the last 120 days to determine this. The console shows other information, like application installs, that could have affected uptime. This data will be able to be captured by Operations Manager for analysis across multiple computers.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Management Summit 2006, mms2006, vista, Windows

There is a little New York-style pizza placenamed Ciros at 536 Market at 5th Ave. We stopped by there for lunch today and I got what might be the biggest stromboli I've ever had. It was about a foot long!

It was loaded with toppings and wasn't greasy at all, even though it had pepperoni and sausage on it. I barely cracked open the marinara sauce, but what I had was good. It was a little heavy on the tomato, but it was still very good. Check it out if you want a cheap lunch.

Technorati Tags: food, gaslamp quarter, san diego

My pre-session notes: I have traditionally loved this session. Bill Anderson always does a terrific job presenting. Last year, he said that he wouldn't be doing this session, but I saw that he was on the schedule, so that is a very wonderful thing. Now that he is heading up the SMS v5 project team, I'm sure he'll provide some great insights. The session is about to start, so we'll see shortly.

Too funny. Bill and Dustin Engalls are dressed up like monks mourning the death of SMS. As I blogged here, it has been renamed System Center Configuration Manger. Bill is now the Lead Program Manager for Configuration Manager. The top ten list is "Why on EARTH would you still be running SMS 2.0?".

SMS has had an 84% increase in volume, but call volume has remained flat. I know I've been very happy with the stability of the product. Apparently, I'm not the only one. There is a slide talking about ITMU. We haven't deployed it yet, mainly due to time constraints. I'm planning on doing that in conjunction with SP2. There are now scan tools for Dell, IBM servers, and HP servers. The HP tool will be released today or possibly later this week. SMS 2003 SP2 is a prerequisite for upgrading to Configuration Manager 2007. The software inventory data loader is now multi-threaded.

SMS 2.0 went end of life in March 2006. Microsoft is starting the "Take Control" campaign. It is a three day proof of concept. It looks like a 30% discount on licenses if the POC is complete.

SMS 2003 Device Management Feature Pack will be updated in May. Adds support for Windows Mobile 5 with password application support. Configuration Manager 2007 will introduce Smartphone 2003 and 2005 support. SMS will be able to manage them over the Internet. Later, Configuration Manager will ad support for new versions of Windows Mobile.

SMS R2 will be available for purchase to non-Software Assurance customers. That's great news, as my company is morally opposed to Software Assurance. For those of you who don't know, R2 includes the MBSA vulnerability scan tool and the Inventory Tool for Custom Updates. The Scan Tool for Vulnerability Assessment includes all of the mis-configuration scans included in MBSA 2.0. The Custom Update Tool adds scans for line-of-business updates and other third party tools. Last year, the demo was using Adobe's update catalog. One other thing that was mentioned is scan engine or signature management, specifically for Symantec and McAfee. More details about this in Kiril's keynote tomorrow.

R2 is the first example of shipping quickly. Dustin formed the eXtreme Team to ship features more quickly. Ideas coming are Self-service software distribution, support for non-Windows platforms, reporting enhancements, advertisement tracking, and client health.

There was an update on System Center Configuration Manager 2007. In the Simplicity pillar, there is a more simple UI, more flexible task sequencing, and Wake-on-LAN support. There is a LANDesk-like workstation distribution point and will build the DP from media if it is chosen by the administrator. There will be a true install in a service window option.

For deployment, there will be a new image deployment system in SCCM 2007. There will be built-in Vista compatibility scan. It will divide the machines into three groups based on the amount of work needed to make Vista work on the machine. There will be a Office Compatibility Tool that will scan macros and other Office features for compatibility with Office 2007.

SCCM 2007 should ship in the first half of 2007.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Management Summit 2006, mms2006, SMS

Longhorn server will be componentized so only the needed functions are installed.  Beta 2 will ship this quarter.

SMS client remediation with Network Access Protection. Longhorn server will have policy based NAP built-in. Network access protection policies can be set in SMS v4.

Drag and Drop has finally been implemented in the console for v4. Only 5 steps for deploy an update and set a network access protection policy. XP and Vista will be supported for Network Access Protection.

The We Share Your Pain video was absolutely hilarious.

Lots of information about Virtualization and Model-based Policy. The WS management standard has been ratified.

The Exchange team believes that you should not be running Exchange with MOM. MOM is now System Center Operations Manager. SMS is now System Center Configutation Manager.

They're announcing System Center Service Desk. Complete ERP solution that integrates MOM and SMS data to solve problems. Workflow is integrated intop the product. There is a self-service portal that will allow users to search a knowledge base and see status. No word on a timeline for release.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Management Summit 2006, mms2006

I'll be blogging from my Blackberry, so there is no spell check. I'll be cleaning up later, as well as adding appropriate links.

What an auspicious start. I got to watch a people-ready commercial, then a somewhat funny interview montage.

Rodney Sherwood, a comedian, is doing the intro. Its too early for comedy. He's pretty funny. I guess.
Have you ever seen a comedian try too hard? Its just a bunch of one-liners.

Another people-ready commercial, but at least its set to The Killer's

Finally, Bob Muglia, SVP of Servers and Tools, took the stage. Oh look! More people-ready stuff. Microsoft's promise to IT is that they will make us more effective. Yeah! Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista is the "solid foundation" for people-ready.

More about Vista now. Vista will be not only the most secuere realease of Windows ever, but the most secure client platform ever. Very bold statement. Every hacker in the world will be looking forward to testing that out.

The next Vista topic is manageability. Desktop features for MOM are still coming. Vista group policy demo showed a policy that restricted flash drive installation. There is nothing like seeing someone caulk USB port for security. New policy allows enumeration of allowed device classes, so you can allow certain things, like mice and keyboards.

Monad is now Windows PowerShell. It will be integrated in Exchange 2007.  All of Exchange configuration from the GUI is actually done from the command line. PowerShell will prompt for parameters that it needs if they are not supplied. Shell scripts allow piping output from one command to another, so you can query and execute a command one each returned record.

There is also a switch, called whatif, that can be used with any command line. It will dp a test run and show the results.

PowerShell will generate reports from the command line.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Management Summitg 2006, mms2006, SMS