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• SCCM
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Using LINQ and the Entity Framework to query SMS/SCCM

Even if this title doesn’t mean anything to you, just bear with me for a moment. I’m about to show you a nice and easy way to query a database (the SMS/SCCM Database in this case) and this even for all records which have specific bits in a bitmask set as it happens quite often within SCCM. Recently I had to query some information from SCCM again I wanted to use within my MDT Web FrontEnd . I wanted to have a list of all available packages and be able to search within this list. Additionally return...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: SQL, SCCM, SMS, Entity Framework, LINQ

Some things I don’t like about the MDT Database

Actually I really like the idea of the MDT Database and the flexibility it brings into your deployments. But there are a couple of things which are, let’s say not optimal, and some drove me nuts during the creation of the web frontend. Combined Primary Keys change during time The “Settings_Administrators”, “Settings_Applications”, “Settings_Packages” and “Settings_Roles” tables are all built according to the same schema. They have a combined Primary...  ... Read the full post or  the 2 comments. Filed under: SQL, Microsoft Deployment, MDT, Frontend

Extending the MDT Database with Custom Settings

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: MDT 2008, Webservice, SQL, Microsoft Deployment

Get access to the MDT Database

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: MDT 2008, SQL, Microsoft Deployment

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

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: MDT 2008, SQL, Microsoft Deployment, SCCM, SMS

Set or Get a single Setting from MDT Database

After implementing the function to Update the Computerinformation in MDT as explained in the last post, I found more and more settings from the MDT Database I wanted to get or set during the execution of the scripts. So instead of reading the complete set of settings for an entry I started creating similar functions to get/set the Computername, the UDDir, etc. But just after a couple of settings it was obvious that this couldn't be the final solution. The MDT settings table contains 84 different...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: MDT 2008, Webservice, SQL

Update Computerinformation in MDT 2008

Now as we know how to create our own webservice and how to use it from a script , we can go ahead to the more useful topics. We actually want to extend the current MDT implementation. So I would like to start with a function which was already quite useful on a couple of different implementations. We want to have an easy way to update the Computer information, mainly Serial Number, MAC Address and UUID. The benefit might not be obvious but to give you an example. We use this to prestage a computer...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: MDT 2008, Custom Scripts, Webservice, SQL