November 10, 2011
Back in May this year I released a small tool that monitors and tracks all changes on Task Sequences on your SCCM Server and exports a copy for backup purposes each time a change happens. Today I just published an updated version of this script, that enables the same functionality for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager . Please have a look on the original Blog Post for some further reference about the usage etc. Find the updated Download on CodePlex .
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Filed under: SCCM, SMS, vbscript, Task Sequence, WMI, ConfigMgr
October 02, 2011
Has been a great sunny weekend so far and now I also received the following mail from Microsoft Dear Maik Koster, Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2011 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Setup & Deployment technical communities during the past year. I’m very proud being re-awarded as a Microsoft...
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September 16, 2011
Today I would like to share one of the coolest Tools I’ve seen for a while. As doing a lot of testing and developing, I typically have a bunch of computers and laptops flying around on my desk. And as you are reading my blog, it’s probably the same for you. How often did it happen that you have to constantly switch between them. Grab the wrong mouse, or have to use the touchpad as the laptop doesn’t have a mouse connected. Trying to test something on a Laptop just to recognize that the file...
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Filed under: kewl tool
September 09, 2011
Today I would like to share one of the handiest tools for servicing Windows systems, if they can’t be updated via WSUS or online at Microsoft Update , or if you for any reason want to install the updates from a CD/DVD/USB or even a share. It’s called WSUS Offline Update (formerly known as c’t offline Update ), created and maintained by Torsten Wittrock. It’s main purpose is to download all critical and security related Updates to a local folder and execute the required ones on a system, without the...
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Filed under: WSUS Offline Update
August 30, 2011
With the release of version 7.3 of the Deployment Webservice ( Download ) a completely new part has been added, integrating some functions of Roger Zanders awesome SCCM Client Center Automation library for Deployment usage. This library enables you to execute certain SCCM Client related task directly on a client like forcing Software updates or refreshing the Machine Policy. The offered functions are mainly identical to the ones offered in the SCCM Client Center Integration Pack for Opalis . And...
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Filed under: Webservice, Microsoft Deployment, SCCM, MDT
August 30, 2011
With the updated Version 7.3 ( Download ) just being published, the growing number of available functions, covering more and more demands in todays deployments, it’s not only an advantage of having such a huge toolset available. In its default implementation, the Web Service is configured to execute actions under certain user account. While this makes it pretty easy to troubleshoot and verify the functions are working, everyone with access to this web service will now be able to execute actions,...
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Filed under: Webservice, Microsoft Deployment, SCCM, Active Directory, MDT
August 30, 2011
Today I published version 7.3 of the Deployment web service. Beside some small bug fixes and minor additions, three new features have been added: 1. SCCM Client Center support A completely new web service part has been added that’s exposing a couple of functions (55 to be accurate) from the SCCM Client Center automation library written by Roger Zander , giving the possibility to execute certain tasks on a client like pushing Software updates, refreshing the machine policy etc. A full list of functions...
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Filed under: Webservice, Microsoft Deployment, SCCM, Active Directory, MDT
June 20, 2011
I recently had an interview with John Baker for TechNet Radio which has just been published. Check it out at http://bit.ly/mMBOr8 . Thanks to John Baker and Chris Caldwell for taking the time. At the end there is a demo of the new version 2 of the MDT Web FrontEnd and yes, I’m really late on the release ;-) Note to myself: Remove the “ So ” from my vocabulary and replace it with some more useful words.
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Filed under: TechNet Radio
June 13, 2011
As probably most of you have seen already, the Beta 1 of the upcoming MDT 2012 has been published to connect ( Download link ) recently ( Announcement by Michael Niehaus ). Main intent for this update is enabling support for the upcoming ConfigMgr 2012. But the team also included a couple other updates into this release like a “prettier” wizard, Cross-Platform support , etc. However some of the bigger changes “under the hood” did happen on the part that handles all drive and disk related activities...
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Filed under: MDT, MDT 2012, VHD
May 30, 2011
This could be called part 4 of WMI magician Kim Oppalfens 3 part series about WMI eventing in SCCM . In his series he first covered the basics of WMI eventing using wbemtest to create the event query and dig a bit through the returning objects. Then he guided us through a simple VBScript that monitored folders in SCCM to implement “securable” Configuration Manager folders . A pretty neat solution as folders aren’t securable objects within SCCM. However one drawback of his initial script is, that...
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Filed under: SCCM, SMS, vbscript, WMI, Step by Step
May 12, 2011
One thing I’m really missing in SCCM is some kind of versioning or history especially for those quite complex Task Sequences, sometimes consisting of hundreds of steps, each with a bunch of properties. And how often did it happen that you came back to the office and one of your Task Sequences suddenly behaved differently, just to figure out that “someone” changed “something” without telling anybody, especially not you? Or have you ever been working on a Task Sequence, just to recognize that...
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Filed under: SCCM, SMS, vbscript, Task Sequence, WMI, ConfigMgr
April 07, 2011
After we have configured the connection to our Database and created our model ( see the last post for more details ), we will jump now to the creation of our new Web Service. Create a Web Service Lets save our changes and add a new item. As mentioned already in my last post , I personally prefer the “older” asmx style web services most of the time. So we choose “ Web Service ” template for now (if you can’t find it easily, simply search for it) and give it a name. I’ll use MDT.asmx for this...
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Filed under: Webservice, MDT, Entity Framework, Development, MMS
April 07, 2011
OK, (probably) my two last post regarding my MMS 2011 sessions, if I haven’t missed something important . To be able to make our Deployments more dynamic and as unattended as possible, we need to have all the information available, that we need to take decisions automatically . We typically use information from the local hardware, the customsettings.ini and maybe the MDT Database. If we are really advanced, we also make use of some web services like the Deployment Web Service to drive our deployment...
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Filed under: Webservice, MDT, Entity Framework, Database, Development, MMS
April 05, 2011
While preparing for a session about MDT enhancements at the MMS 2011 (find the video at DeploymentResearch ), Mikael Nyström had a very interesting idea for a web service demo. The idea was to implement something simple that allows to set a single or all locations into some kind of “Maintenance Mode”. Meaning if you have some server maintenance to do or maybe some global issues and you don’t want to have any new deployments starting, just go to a webpage and “switch off” the deployment for that particular...
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Filed under: Webservice, MDT, MMS
April 04, 2011
One of the interestingly often asked question is how to properly name a computer. And it’s sometimes incredible to see how much time people can spend on that rather boring and actually not really helpful topic. Anyway, one solution a couple people really like is to have some kind of prefix and then just add a sequential number to it. In RIS deployments you have the option to do exactly that but with MDT this doesn’t work on default, forcing you to add your own bits to make this work. A couple people...
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