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October 19, 2010
Roughly a year after the first public Beta and half a year after the initial release of Version 1 a new version of the MDT Web FrontEnd is getting closer. The new version will overcome a couple limitations of the first version plus it will get a whole bunch of new features. It’s still some work to do but I hope to have the first public Beta available at TechEd Europe 2010 . If you would like to support me on this project please read the bottom of this post. As an appetizer here are some first impressions...
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Filed under: Webservice, MDT, Frontend, TechEd
July 12, 2010
Recently I found an incredible useful solution that will be able to help you troubleshooting errors and especially exceptions of web applications like the MDT Web FrontEnd (Sadly not for pure web services). One typical way of troubleshooting them is to write all important information into a log file as the Deployment web service does (see the last post for more information on the implementation of NLog in the Deployment web service ). While often pretty useful it covers just the “ expected ” part...
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Filed under: Frontend, Development
July 07, 2010
One of the most important aspects of your applications and scripts (beside their actual purpose) is to log information about the currently running actions. On daily usage it might be useful to just verify if everything is working OK, or to have some kind of reporting based on this (logparser is quite helpful for such tasks). But as soon as a problem arises, this information is of huge importance to troubleshoot the current problem. So actually you can’t log to much, only to less. Logging in...
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Filed under: Webservice, Frontend, Development
July 03, 2010
since my last post. And I just wanted to take the opportunity to send a quick “ I’m still alive ” and give an overview of what is going to happen in the next time. In the last two posts ( VCS - Part 1 , VCS - Part 2 ) I wrote about Version\Revision Control Systems in general and how they could be of use, even for scripting or administrative purposes (yes, one article is still waiting to be published ;-) ). As not being a professional developer those typical developer tools are sometimes still new...
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Filed under: Custom Scripts, Webservice, Active Directory, Boot Wizard, MDT, Frontend, Development
April 20, 2010
I’ve always been a big fan of the PrettyGoodFrontEnd written by Johan Arwidmark . Originally written as a FrontEnd for ZTI deployments on SMS with BDD 2007 it has recently been updated for ConfigMgr (SCCM) 2007 Deployments with MDT 2010 integration. Similar to the Custom Boot Wizard I’ve mentioned already a couple times on this blog, Johan is now also using webservices to query the necessary information from MDT, Active Directory and ConfigMgr (SCCM). For this he wrote his own webservice reduced...
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Filed under: Custom Scripts, Webservice, Microsoft Deployment, SCCM, Boot Wizard, MDT, Frontend
April 05, 2010
One thing I really like about MDT 2010 is the implementation of Search Folders. By this highly flexible solution one can create a complete structure for several different scenarios at the same deployment share and group it for specific requests. It allows to e.g. handle 32 and 64 Bit applications in the same structure but giving a specific Task sequence only “access” to some of the folders. While this feature gives a great amount of flexibility to the Deployment workbench, the MDT Database is lacking...
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Filed under: MDT, Frontend, MDT 2010, Database
March 21, 2010
MDT has a built-in feature that allows you to install packages from SCCM on the fly during the Deployment process. More or less similar to installing applications from MDT . While this is great for dynamic deployments, it’s not that easy to use as you have to define the package with it’s package id and the program of the package to be run. A typical entry looks like MKO0023E:MDT – Install Microsoft Office 2007 I`m pretty sure that most of you that used this feature have spent already some time on...
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Filed under: SCCM, MDT, Frontend, How To
March 05, 2010
The Problem One of the main drawbacks of the MDT Web FrontEnd (there aren’t many ;-) ) is, that it does not have direct access to the Deployment Share(s). Normally that wouldn’t be a problem as most of the settings don’t interact with anything stored in the Database. Except applications imported into MDT. As you know you can import Applications into MDT and use them in your Deployment. As long as you choose them directly in the LTI Wizard no problem. But what if you want to add those applications...
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Filed under: MDT, Frontend, How To
March 04, 2010
First I would like to thank you all for your feedback so far. Almost 130 downloads within 3 days is quite impressive for such a solution. And although just released it was necessary to already patch a small bug. Cleaning up the code close before publishing the first version created a small bug that will cause an error on the access role evaluation. Sadly this affects all non-admin users configured in the frontend so it’s highly recommended to implement this patch. Luckily it’s enough to replace a...
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Filed under: MDT, Frontend
March 02, 2010
In the Last Post I showed you, how you can easily create a custom Setting in the MDT Database and use it in your custom scripts. In the example shown we added a custom Setting called “ CollectionID ” to the Database to enable some kind of Pre-staging for computers. With the example you would e.g. be able to pre-stage computer based on their SerialNumber in the MDT Database and then add it on the fly to the appropriate collection on the fly when pxe/cd booting the new computer. Very helpful if your...
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Filed under: MDT 2008, Microsoft Deployment, Frontend, MDT 2010, How To
March 01, 2010
Finally it’s done! I’m very happy to announce the release of version 1.0 of the MDT Web FrontEnd . It took a bit longer than expected since the last Beta from November 2009 but a lot of nice things needed to be added. But first, what is the MDT Web FrontEnd ? The MDT Web FrontEnd is a web based alternative for the MDT configuration database. It is 100% compatible to current MDT 2008, MDT 2008 Update 1 and MDT 2010 database installations running on SQL 2005 or 2008. Optionally (and recommended...
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Filed under: MDT 2008, Microsoft Deployment, MDT, Frontend, MDT 2010
February 01, 2010
In the last post I showed you how you can create custom Groups of settings, making it possible to give different Users a different amount of available and changeable information. In this post, I will show you some more advanced features of the MDT Web FrontEnd as it is able to handle custom settings the same way as handling the MDT built-in settings. MDT gives us a lot of possibilities right out of the box. But often you reach a point in your Deployment, where the built-in methods, scripts and properties...
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Filed under: Webservice, Boot Wizard, MDT, Frontend, MDT 2010, How To
January 25, 2010
In the last Post I showed you how you can use the MDT Web FrontEnd to restrict access to the MDT Deployment database. Following this you are able to restrict e.g. a Helpdesk User to only add and edit computers but that he/she can’t do anything else on Locations, Roles or MakeModels. But everybody who has access to the Settings of an Identity will still be able to see and maybe also change all Settings. This raises several problems. A User might still be able to see more then he is supposed to see...
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Filed under: MDT 2008, MDT, Frontend, MDT 2010, How To
January 17, 2010
The MDT Deployment Database is a great utility for your Deployments, no matter if you are using it in LTI or ZTI scenarios. Tim Mintner recently wrote an interesting article about what the Database is and why one should use it . If you use the Deployment console to access the database it has (at least) one major drawback, especially in larger Deployments. Out of the box, the console is the only way of accessing and changing the database (beside using the SQL Management Studio and making changes directly...
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Filed under: MDT 2008, MDT, Frontend, MDT 2010, How To
January 13, 2010
In some recent posts I wrote about how to create a custom boot wizard. During these posts I used an example which would be able to boot any known and unknown computer from SCCM, reads a list of available Collections having an OSD Task Sequence advertised to choose from, then drop the computer into one of these collections on the fly and wait until the Advertisement would be available for the computer before handing over to the Task Sequence engine which would then query the SCCM Server for an advertised...
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Filed under: Webservice, Microsoft Deployment, SCCM, Boot Wizard, MDT, Frontend
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