Paul Thomsen at myITforum.com

Client health solutions

Summary: we talk about client health a lot on this blog, but ultimately we all want solutions. What solutions are available?

In a past posting I listed the solutions Microsoft IT uses for client health management. And occasionally I've talked about how to build reports. But of course there are more client health solutions. I'm sure I'll miss some, so please let me know what I'm missing. Here's my current list of computer management client health solutions:

• Reports
• The first step in solving a problem is understanding the extent of it. Reports address that task
• From this blog you can find queries that can report client counts and client activity. They can be rendered as SMS or ConfigMgr web reports
• If you're using the Client Health Tool (below), then it has a web report and Excel spreadsheet. Its data is also fairly good for distinguishing online broken clients and approproximating offline client counts. It's ConfigMgr R2 equivalent even has standard ConfigMgr web reports ready to go!
• From this blog you can also get details to save the various pieces of data and thus build sophisticated reports
• Computer startup scripts (or logon scripts)
• As your computer starts up you can have them run a script that checks the health of your clients and tries to repair them if need be
• A computer startup script is preferred over a logon script because it will run in the system context, and as soon as the computer starts up (but asynchronously and in the background, so it doesn't delay user log in).
• Brian Mason has a great background article on this concept: http://www.myitforum.com/articles/8/view.asp?id=10774
• As Brian says, DudeWorks (Rob Olsen et al) has a free download for the purpose, and they have a support forum to discuss it (myITforum.com occasionally has threads on it as well)
• Client Push Installation
• This is a standard client deployment method for SMS and ConfigMgr
• If you know which clients might be unhealthy, you can try pushing the client at them to see if re-installation helps (it does sometimes)
• Remote Scripts
• If you have administrative rights on your client computers, you can write a script that remotely initiates inspection or repair tasks
• For example, Don Hite has a simple script that kicks off a ccmrepair:
  http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/dhite/archive/2008/03/09/vbs-script-to-repair-a-remote-sms-client-with-error-handling.aspx
• Manual Remediation
• Yes, this is what we're all trying to avoid. It's expensive because it's time consuming and may involve travel. But it works, so for completeness we must keep it in mind
• Most often you will find that the root cause is not in SMS or ConfigMgr itself. For example, it might be a WMI problem (see below). Fixing those issues will also help other software that depends on those components
• Checking the state of the SMS or ConfigMgr service itself (ccmexec) is a good starting point. It may be stopped or disabled, which is easy to correct. Finding out why it was stopped or disabled may be trickier, as is correcting that problem
• If the computer seems fine but ccmexec is not working, running the command ccmexec /repair may help
• If the repair doesn't work, a simple client re-installation may help. Deinstalling and re-installing is another variation that sometimes helps
• Manual Investigations
• This is all the usual technical troubleshooting we all do, including log analysis (which can be partially automated)
• Again, manual investigation is not our favorite solution, but it's the ultimate method to take the mystery out of anything you can't explain by other means
• The SMS Client Health Tool
• It's just a reporting tool (no repairs), but it provides some valuable data that is not available elsewhere. In particular, it scans management logs for client policy requests (which should happen hourly, by default). For those clients that don't request policies, it pings them to find if they're online, and if possible it will try to retrieve a few core details about the state of the client.
• This is a free download available from Microsoft since September 2004:
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sms/bb676776.aspx
• It was originally for SMS 2003 SP1, but I've used it successfully with every version of SMS and ConfigMgr since then
• A new version will be available with ConfigMgr R2, called Client Status Reporting. I'll blog more about that soon.
• Brian Tucker has a great blogcast on it at the BlogCastRepository:
  http://www.blogcastrepository.com/blogcasts/folders/sms/entry5439.aspx
• Collection-based Targeting
• Chris Sugdinis is a Microsoft Premier Support dedicated support engineer who has done some briliant work in the client health space, including building a solution based on collection-based targeting
• Rick Jones has a great summary of the solution:
  http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/rjones/pages/sms-client-health-structure.aspx
• Chris Stauffer has introduced his own improvements to the solution (be sure to grab the attachment to his blog posting):
  http://myitcommunity.com/cs2/blogs/cstauffer/archive/2007/09/26/enterprise-health-checks-at-the-commonwealth-of-pennsylvania.aspx
• Fallback Status Point (FSP) data
• FSP is a new ConfigMgr system role that collects data on clients that have problems during installation or (in some cases) start failing to communication with management points
• In addition to the core product documentation that refers to FSPs and the in-the-product reports, you can check out a blog posting I wrote previously on FSP data.
• Maximize the number of clients that are online
• If you want more clients to be active (to apply patches tonight, for examples), then you can use IBCM and/or WOL
• Internet-based Client Management (IBCM) is a ConfigMgr feature that allows you clients to be managed when they're outside of your corporate network, as long as they can access the Internet
• Wake-on-LAN (WOL) is available in ConfigMgr and from third parties. Computers that are powered down can be woken up remotely
• Anything that improves server and environmental health
• If your SMS or ConfigMgr servers are working less than perfectly, or the environment your clients are working in has issues, then your clients will be less active, and thus less healthy, than they could be
• Consider using MOM's or OpsMgr's SMS or ConfigMgr management packs
• Use good ITIL or MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework) policies and procedures to keep your servers running smoothly
• Microsoft Consulting Services offers an "SMS Health" engagement where they'll assess your SMS or ConfigMgr server-side health and provide advice for improvements. More details are are available at:
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=C52E06CF-F702-4490-9A6A-3C98F309D4C9&displaylang=en
• No doubt other consulltants offer similar services, as may your Technical Account Manager or Premier Support specialist, if you've signed up for such services
• The community, including myITforum.com, the Microsoft forums and newsgroups, blogs, and other web sites offer advice on a wide variety of issues 
• Anything that improves computer health
• If the client computers themselves are running well, then that maximizes the opportunity for the SMS or ConfigMgr client to run well
• WMI Improvements 
• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is fundamental to ConfigMgr client activities, but historically it has had some reliability problems. It takes some time for them to develop, and they only occur on a small percentage of computers, but when we're aiming for 99.x% health, it doesn't take a lot to cause grief
• The WMI team has taken this issue very seriuosly and produced a thorough solution in the form of the WMIdiag tool and its guidance. I've got more links for it in this old blog posting
• The WMI team has also invested a lot of effort in understanding the root causes and made relevant improvements in Windows Vista. Those hotfixes have also been backported and are available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
• There are plenty of articles on the Internet on how to manually check or repair WMI. For example, Jeff Gilbert has this article:
  http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jgilbert/archive/2008/01/11/how-to-check-the-wmi-repository-before-rebuilding-it.aspx
• Guidance
• Understanding the world of client health can be challenging. We all have an intuitive understanding, but the more we dig into it, the more challenges we find. So reading about client health will help to get you comfortable with this world
• Rick Jones' and Chris Stauffer's documentation based on Chris Sugdini's collection-based solution (above)
• Don Hite's blog occasionally has articles on client health
• I hope this blog is useful
• My presentation at MMS 2008 on client health will take a 'start at the beginning' approach and dive into as much detail as time allows. So I hope that will make for a cohesive story
• check it out at presentation SI21, "Advances in SMS 2003 and Configuration Manager 2007 Client Health Management", which is Tuesday, April 29 11:45 AM - 1:00 PM in the Titian 2303 room
• or see it on the DVD, when that's available
• If you think more is needed, say so (to anyone that will listen, including in the comments of this blog)

Whew - that's a lot of options. You don't have to use all of them. Once you understand your needs, you can pick and choose the solutions that are appropriate for you.

And I hope you noticed that a lot of people have been working on client health, including Microsoft since September 2004. Together we are beating this issue.