Summary: It's my pleasure to hear confirmation that I'll be attending MMS 2009, and I'm especially honored to be speaking again. I've often said that the conference is the highlight of my year, and it's still true. I hope to see you there!
There's lots of great SMS/ConfigMgr teams in the world (like the multi-MVP team at Wells Fargo) and I'm pleased to work on one of them. In recent years I've often spoken on behalf of the team, but this year we're going to have multiple team members participating in 5 presentations, as below. I'll be the primary presenter for SI01 and SI03. Mark Seely is our local policies expert and thus will be the main contributor to SI03. Chris Adams will be the primary speaker on the others, with Ben Shy being the main contributor to SY23 and Cameron King the main contributor to SI02. We'll all be at the conference and look forward to chatting with you on these and many other topics.
SI01 Client Health for Configuration Manager - What the Numbers Tell Us
ConfigMgr client health concepts and solutions are well known, but what do the numbers tell us? This detailed analysis based on Paul Thomsen's experience with over 300,000 clients will allow you to use effective client health management strategies.
SI02 How Microsoft IT Uses OSD, Including for Deploying Windows 7
Microsoft is the first organization anywhere to use Windows 7 on a large scale, and that includes deployments via Configuration Manager OSD (operating system deployment). Microsoft's challenging corporate environment has required significant enhancement of the OSD end-user interface, driver management, and USMT. Microsoft's experts will share their best practices, highlight how to anticipate and address challenges, and discuss how to address complex scenarios such as using OSD with NAP.
SI03 Using Local Policies to Solve Your Most Complex Configuration Manager Client Challenges
Any organization may have special-case scenarios where some clients must be managed differently. You may need software distributions or agent cycles to have special scheduling options. You might not want to use a separate site for large-scale client settings testing. Some clients may have special inventory reporting requirements. All of this and more is possible by using local policies on the clients you designate. The solutions are often complex, sometimes requiring scripting skills, but the power is limited only by your imagination.
SI04 Using Virtualization with Hyper-V for the Deployment of Configuration Manager
In this session, you will learn how to leverage virtualization in your data centers to host Configuration Manager site servers and roles. In this step-by-step session, we explain how to deploy Hyper-V for maximum performance of your SCCM infrastructure. We share prescriptive guidance around testing your site server and roles prior to deployment to ensure success in production. Lastly we show how to create a single image, store it in your library, and deploy it effectively. Using knowledge gained in building a desktop management service based on ConfigMgr 2007, we will show you how to correctly size, test, and deploy ConfigMgr 2007 using Microsoft's Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008.
SY23 Demystifying Native Mode Security to Deliver Internet-based Client Management
Internet-based client management (IBCM) is a tricky environment to prepare for and deploy. Using extensive experience deploying an internet-facing service based on SCCM 2007, learn how to plan and architect your Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for use in SCCM 2007 and other certificate-based services. Beyond that, understand key PKI decisions and terminology to become the go-to person for IBCM provisioning issues such as certificate EKU's, CRLs, OCSP's, and certificate chaining. Learn how SCCM 2007's IBCM is designed to use PKI and how to correctly provision certificates for your clients and infrastructure, including securing your certificates properly and managing the certificate lifecycles.
SI06 The Microsoft IT Deployment of Application Virtualization (App-V) 4.5 with System Center Configuration Manager
Microsoft IT has deployed an application virtualization capability to 47,000 clients using Application Virtualization 4.5 and System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2. We will provide insight on how Microsoft is working to use this technology to reduce application packaging and support costs, and how we plan to improve customer satisfaction as we scale this capability to over 300,000 desktops worldwide. During this session you will also obtain best practices on architecture design, sequencing and client configuration considerations and how we're pushing the new features in the 4.5 release.
Summary: SMS 2.0 was released to manufacturing (RTMed) on February 8th, 1999. (Yes, I'm a day late)
There are various ways to look at SMS 2.0. One is "that's so old" - we've had SMS 2003 since then, and ConfigMgr 2007, and even ConfigMgr 2007 R2. Plenty of service packs and tools of various sorts (including OSD and MDOP). So yes, it is old.
Another point of view is "good riddance". SMS 2.0 had a checkered history, for a variety of reasons. It went on to have five service packs, and the first two were needed to get it to the stage larger customers were sufficiently satisfied with it to put it into production. SMS 2.0 did end up having a large number of customers, so it wasn't that bad, but both the product team and the community struggled heroically to get it to that stage.
But my favorite point of view is that SMS 2.0 served as a huge turning point in computer management, setting the foundation for much of the work you and I still do today. Terminology such as "collections" and "advertisements" were introduced in SMS 2.0. WMI, though not part of SMS itself, had the same parentage and was fundamental to SMS 2.0. Most of the components we still work with today, such as the collection evaluator, were born with SMS 2.0. Patch management was introduced in the lifetime of SMS 2.0, making the "why do we need SMS (and you)" an easy question to answer. Best of all I remember so many great people who contributed to building SMS 2.0 and then supporting it (you are the unsung heroes of computer management).
So let's take a moment to toast the wonderfulness that was SMS 2.0, and all the people that made it so. Yes, it was a struggle, but it made us stronger in so many ways.
p.s. Part of how I remembered the anniversary was that I started at Microsoft on the day that SMS 2.0 RTMed. I still remember attending the ship party and being in awe. It has been a fantastic 10 year ride!