giving something back after taking a lot :-)

Maik Koster at myITforum.com

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MDT Web FrontEnd - How To create custom Lists to select from pre-defined values for a setting

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...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: , , , ,

Version 1.0 of the MDT Web FrontEnd released

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...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: , , , ,

Create your custom Boot Wizard - Make it available for all known and unknown Computers

April 18, 2009

This is the final article of a series creating a custom Boot wizard to dynamically choose the Task Sequence to run on the local computer. (See Create your custom Boot Wizard - some advanced stuff , Create your custom Boot Wizard - Display dynamic data and Create your custom Boot Wizard - Execute the Wizard, process the results and create the Boot Image for Reference). Now we will make this Boot Image available to all our clients no matter if they are already known to ConfigMgr/SCCM or not. We will...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: , , , ,

Create your custom Boot Wizard - Execute the Wizard, process the results and create the Boot Image

April 18, 2009

In the last two articles Create your custom Boot Wizard - some advanced stuff and Create your own Boot Wizard - Display dynamic data we created a Custom Boot Wizard which requests a list of available OSD Task Sequences (we actually get the collections the Task Sequences are advertised to) and shows this dynamic list to the user to chose from. In this article we now will create a script which will call our custom Boot Wizard and process the results of the users choice. If you deploy a Boot Image via...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: , , , ,

Create your custom Boot Wizard - Display dynamic data

April 18, 2009

What we are trying to built here is a Boot Wizard which will show a dynamic list of available OSD Task Sequences from SCCM 2007 to choose from. The chosen Task Sequence shall then be executed on the local computer. To ease our job regarding the final deployment and the management of the Boot Images, we want to have a single Boot Image to be used for WDS/PXE/CD Deployment for all known and unknown computers. In the last article ( Create your custom Boot Wizard - some advanced stuff ) we dived into...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: , , , , ,

Create your custom Boot Wizard - some advanced stuff

April 01, 2009

This is the first part in a series of articles about custom Boot Images in SCCM 2007 R2. It will cover the creation of a custom Boot Wizard and making it available for all known and unknown computers. We will be able to choose from a list of available Task Sequences and talk to the right SMS Server of the assigned site. It will be a lot of stuff but just stay with me, I would say it's worth the time spent reading. In this article we will cover the creation of a custom Boot Wizard. It will show...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: , ,

Extending the MDT Database with Custom Settings

February 16, 2009

The Settings within the MDT Database cover already a wide area of possibilities during a Deployment. But sooner or later you will probably reach a point, where you are in the need of adding or processing additional information. Think about Static IP Address assignment or prestaging a specific CollectionID for Deployment via SCCM, etc. There are probably a lot of things you might want to have. At least I reached this point quite soon during our deployments and started adding a new table for this and...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: , , ,

A Webservice for OSD and MDT Deployments

February 11, 2009

In the first posts I showed how you can create ( Create your own MDT Webservice - Part 1 , Create your own MDT Webservice - Part 2 ) and access ( Calling a webservice from a script using MDT 2008 ) a simple webservice to be used in Deployments to ease access to the MDT Database. In the last post you could find a complete set of stored procedures do manipulate the MDT Database on-the-fly ( Get access to the MDT Database ). Now we are going to combine this. For the ones just interested to download...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: , , , , ,

Get access to the MDT Database

January 31, 2009

The Title could be a bit misleading so what is this about? After we started with our Deployments we regularly came to a point where we needed to change, add or delete certain values within the MDT Database. You might think of adding Roles to a computer on-the-fly, prestaging a new computer with some different settings, giving a local siteadmin access to a subset of his location settings etc. And you really don't want to give the Helpdesk access to the Deployment Workbench and with it access to...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: , ,

Using Roles to deploy Applications based on previous Applications - Part 1 (ZTI - Refresh Scenario)

December 29, 2008

One common question regarding the deployment of a new operating system especially on refresh or replacement scenarios is how the user will get his previous applications back. All standard applications are probably already part of your thick image or will be defined as standard applications for all users or a specific location etc. However you will always have a bunch of applications which only a certain amount of users will use. And normally you don't want to spend time after the deployment to...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: , , , ,

Using Roles for software assignment in MDT

December 29, 2008

Within MDT you can define your specific settings via computer definition, Make/Model, Location or Roles. Also Applications in LTI or Packages in SCCM can be defined this way. But instead of assigning the applications/packages directly to a location or computer I suggest to use roles instead. This means you define a role per application you would like to distribute during your deployment process with the appropriate applications/packages setting. Then you assign this role to all computers, model or...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: ,