Jeff Wettlaufer has put together a short video showing one of the cool new features soon to arrive when R3 is released

OS Deployment enhancements in Configuration Manager 2007 R3

Check it out here > http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2010/01/20/os-deployment-enhancements-in-configuration-manager-2007-r3.aspx

Great news, the ICP's (International Client Packs) for ConfigMgr 2007 SP2 are both available

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 International Client Packs are now available

International Client Packs (ICPs) contain international-language clients to use with System Center Configuration Manager (SC Config Mgr) 2007 SP2. ICP downloads contain only the Config Mgr client files, not the English-language SC Config Mgr 2007 SP2, which is required.

ICP1 contains the following languages:

• English
• French
• German
• Japanese
• Spanish

ICP2 contains all languages from ICP1 plus the following:

• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• Finnish
• Greek
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Korean
• Norwegian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Russian
• Swedish
• Turkish

For all the details and to download the ICPs see http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=4C8FA7D6-1671-4D76-860B-195B16C214A8&displaylang=en

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

EXCELLENT write up on client approval on the ConfigMgr Support Team Blog (these guys turn out gold regularly!)

How It Works: Automatic Client Approval in Configuration Manager 2007

Purpose:

This post is intended to explain how client approval works when a Mixed Mode Configuration Manager 2007 site is configured to automatically approve clients in trusted domains and to offer insight into how to troubleshoot scenarios where this is not working as expected.  The configuration is shown below:

The short version:

1. The new client performs a CCM_POST to CCM_System_WindowsAuth on the MP.
2. The MP responds with a 401 as the request is anonymous and contains no security data.

Follow this link for the full article: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/archive/2010/01/20/how-it-works-automatic-client-approval-in-configuration-manager-2007.aspx

We're expecting to sync with MS around 6PM GMT to get the IE out of band patch in to the hierarchy so we can push this out quick.

New Bulletin Summary

As you can see, you need to reboot a platform to get the patch to show as installed in your reports.

More info here http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-jan.mspx

Noticed this earlier:

Hopefully you have been enjoying the DPM 2010 beta since September, but we are almost finished with the Release Candidate and our last milestones towards delivery. 

Please join us on January 14 at 9:00 AM Pacific US Time to see what is coming in the Release Candidate  We will demonstrate the pre-RC software that our early adopters have been running in production.  We’ll demonstrate the new Windows client protection capabilities, the new SQL/SharePoint/Exchange protection and recovery features, as well as the enhanced Disaster Recovery scenario.  We’ll also update you on our auto-healing/auto-scaling features, as well as a few surprises that weren’t in the beta.  Come join us to see what is coming in DPM 2010.

TechNet Webcast: Get Ready for Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010 Release Candidate (Level 300)

Start Date:  Thursday, January 14, 2010 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Duration:  90 Minutes

Audience(s):  IT Generalist

[Read More and sign up for this webcast]

Bless her cotton socks, good old SMS2003 moves out of mainstream support at the end of January, and it's site on the microsoft domain has had a refresh and has now become more of a portal to assist in migrating from SMS2003 to ConfigMgr. This doesn't mean it is no longer supported by MS, just means it moves from mainstream support to extended support($$$).

Jeff Wettlaufer recently blogged about this: 

This week SMS 2003 moves out of mainstream support, and enters what is called Extended Support.  This is a natural transition for every Microsoft product.  Information about the SMS 2003 product lifecycle can be found here. 

SMS 2003 has been an incredibly popular product, and has been considered the most widely deployed management tool in the world.  Many customers who at some time were running a version of SMS have since migrated to Configuration Manager 2007, but we recognize this is not the case for everyone.

The industry has moved at a pace unparalleled by most.  Technology has accelerated in capability, adoption, depth, breadth, and complexity.  From a management perspective, the landscape configuration management technology embraces has grown from basic inventory and software distribution to new areas like OS deployment, Virtualization, Asset/ Performance and Workflow management, data protection, NAP and model based configuration management.  In addition to capabilities, new working styles, scenarios, users (Gen ‘Y’) and security models have become daily routine for Administrators. 

The management landscape has changed, there is no debating it.

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 is in the 4th release since SMS 2003.  With a 5th (R3) entering beta soon, and with the mainstream support cycle ending for SMS 2003, we wanted to collect as much assistance as possible

[Read More...]

The ProxyCfg.exe utililty is an important tool, which us SMS Admins will encounter when we need to adjust proxy settings on a client so that it can communicate with the assigned site servers WSUS role.

I needed ProxyCfg to solve a problem on a Windows 2008 Enterprise server today, and found out that ProxyCfg.exe has been deprecated on Vista and Win2008, but what replaces it?

The answer is the NetSH command.

To show the current proxy settings (from a CMD prompt)

1. NetSH
2. WinHTTP
3. Show Proxy

Or

1. NetSH WinHTTP Show Proxy

To set the proxy

1. NetSH
2. WinHTTP
3. Set Proxy proxy-server="PROXY.COM:8080" bypass-list="SERVER.COM"
4. Show Proxy

Or

1. NetSH WinHTTP Set Proxy proxy-server="PROXY.COM:8080" bypass-list="SERVER.COM"

More commands are available

dump           - Displays a configuration script.
import         - Imports WinHTTP proxy settings. (equiv of ProxyCFG -u)
reset          - Resets WinHTTP settings. (equiv of ProxyCFG - D)
set            - Configures WinHTTP settings.
show           - Displays currents settings.

So now all functionaly of ProxyCfg can be accomplished using the NetSH command

ProxyCfg -U = NetSH WinHTTP import Proxy ie

ProxyCfg -D = NetSH WinHTTP reset proxy

ProxyCfg -P = NetSH WinHTTP Set Proxy proxy-server="PROXY.COM:8080" bypass-list="SERVER.COM"

Should get you up and running again ...

This video just made my jaw drop!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNR74UCidBI&feature=player_embedded#

(It gets going, and yep you ain't see nothing like it, at around the 55 second mark)

Of course, it is very safe for work so check it out!

... Just had to watch it again, be warned it's addictive viewing!

Round of of recent KB articles (courtesy of the ConfigMgr Support Team Blog)

KB976073 - The Windows Deployment Service stops responding when you use a PXE service point on a computer that is running a System Center Configuration Managr 2007 SP1 site server

KB978021 - The Distribution Manager that is in System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 does not honor the "Number of retries" and "Delay before retrying (minutes)" retry settings

KB977176 - A "Run Command Line" task of a task sequence object in System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 does not work on a 64-bit client

KB978022 - Memory leak in System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 if the distribution point role is enabled

Over at the ConfigMgr Support Team Blog, interesting write-up on failure encountered when using the ConfigMgr Service Manager to connect to Secondary Site servers ...

Here's a unique issue I came across the other day that I thought you might like hearing about.  In this case, we were unable to connect to a ConfigMgr 2007 Secondary Site server from Tools => Service Manager unless we were using a domain admin account.

When attempting to connect to the Secondary Site server in Service Manager we received the following error message:

ConfigMgr Service Manager

Error communicating with the specified ConfigMgr Site Server

This error can occur if the SMS Groups do not contain the proper Site Server computer accounts. 

You may also receive the following error when attempting to connect to the Secondary Site server in Service Manager if the logged on account is not a member of the Secondary Site Server's Local Administrators group:

ConfigMgr Service Manager

Access to the specified server has been denied. You might not have enough security rights to complete this operation

Cause

SMS Group membership and/or Local Administrator group membership configuration is not configured correctly.

Resolution

[Read More...]

Over on the WSUS Support Team Blog, announcement of a new KB highlighting an issue when using Windows Update or Microsoft Update to install updates

Symptoms: When you install updates by using Windows Update or Microsoft Update, you receive the following error code:

Note Microsoft SQL Server 2005 may be installed on your computer when you install applications such as Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Mail.

Cause: This issue occurs because the installation of an update to SQL Server 2005 is not completed.

[Read More...]

The Gods have blessed us! Well, actually no, Microsoft just decided to release one security update this patch cycle!

Oh boy, my patch chores won't take long this month ...

Steve helps us ConfigMgr folk appreciate the value of the ConfigMgr logging capabilities by talking about logging and process flow in OpMgr. Although it sounds painful living without many log files, they do seem to have some cool debug\troubleshooting tools which Steve covers off quite well.

Three Cheers for the Authoring Resource Kit Tools! Part I - The Workflow Analyzer

Have you ever been faced with troubleshooting OpsMgr and needed a way to trace the flow of a particular component – maybe a rule or monitor – or a discovery – to see what it was actually doing and what information was being submitted?  Have you gotten frustrated with the ETL logs and the native OpsMgr events?  Join the crowd!  :) 

I’m not saying that ETL or the OpsMgr event logs are bad – quite the contrary…there is a great deal of information in both – and in a troubleshooting scenario it’s often helpful to take logs or traces from a healthy agent and compare them to a broken agent – thats troubleshooting 101.  In addition, the ETL tracing and event logging abilities of OpsMgr have just gotten better as we’ve progressed from RTM to R2! 

But, what if we need that extra bit of deeper understand of whats happening ‘behind the scenes’?

[Read More...]

 Hey Steve, check out my logging capability!

Lifted directly from the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Team Blog:

Just an FYI that on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 10:00 AM-11:00 AM., we're hosting a Live Meeting presentation for System Center influencers titled “So you Want To Move from a VMware Infrastructure to Microsoft” presented by Kenon Owens, Microsoft Virtualization product manager.

Note:

• This Live Meeting presentation is exclusive to members of the System Center Influencers Program.  Not a member?  Visit the program information page on TechNet to learn more and apply to join.
• Join information is available on the System Center Influencers Program portal.  Members of the program will need to log into the Connect site to access the Live Meeting join information.

For all the details see http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2010/01/06/live-meeting-for-influencers-1-12-10-at-10-00-am-pst-moving-from-vmware-to-microsoft.aspx

J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer

[ I don't like a complete lift of content in case the source changes, usually just like to give you a taster then send you off to the site (here is the original in all it's glory) ]

Useful tips on issues that can surface when installing a (latest) ConfigMgr Service Pack

This document was created to help in troubleshooting Configuration Manager Service Pack 2 (SP2) install failures. This document is not entirely specific to Service Pack 2 and can apply to Service Pack 1 installs, upgrades from SMS 2003 to SCCM, and future service pack or Configuration Manager versions that rely on .mof file compilations, SQL SPNS, provider DLLs, etc.

Contents:

Section 1 Pre-Upgrade Best Practices

Section 2 General Troubleshooting

Section 3 List of Known Issues and Solutions:

A: SPN issues with SQL

B: Time Skew between remote SQL and Site Server

C: Re-Registering relevant files / errors attempting to re-register needed files.

D. Deleting Temp Files, setting Temp variables.

E. Searching for a "bad" custom or customized report

F. Checking for pre-existing duplicate reports that are new to SCCM SP2

G. Upgrade fails due to registry setting.

H. Site System does not have rights to remote SQL System or Clustered SQL Nodes

[Read More...]

(Thanks to Jannes Alink, MVP in ConfigMgr for offering up this link)

An issue I saw with a recent primary site upgrade to SP2 was with Asset Intelligence data in the DB causing the ConfigMgr 2007 SP2 to fail to install during the AI section of setup ... we had to identify the offending rows and remove them from the database before we could complete the upgrade. Think this might be a one-off, but if you experience it let me know!

The WSUS support team offered up this tip on resolving an 0x80070002 error that manifests due to some missing registry keys.

When running updates from WSUS 3.0 SP1 we are seeing the following error messages in the Windows Update Agent Log File C:\Windows\WindowsUpdate.log

We see these messages on all of our target Windows 2003 SP2 x64 servers WindowsUpdate.

2009-01-21 08:50:02:878 816 f2c PT +++++++++++ PT:
Synchronizing server updates +++++++++++
2009-01-21 08:50:02:878 816 f2c PT + ServiceId =
{3DA21691-E39D-4DA6-8A4B-B43877BCB1B7}, Server URL =
http://slon123456.csfb.cs-group.com/ClientWebService/client.asmx
2009-01-21 08:50:03:284 816 f2c EEHndlr WARNING: Failed to
populate ServiceStartup entries in Cache: error 0x80070002
2009-01-21 08:50:04:346 816 f2c EEHndlr WARNING: Failed to
populate ServiceStartup entries in Cache: error 0x80070002
2009-01-21 08:50:04:362 816 f2c EEHndlr WARNING: Failed to
populate ServiceStartup entries in Cache: error 0x80070002
2009-01-21 08:50:04:378 816 f2c EEHndlr WARNING: Failed to
populate ServiceStartup entries in Cache: error 0x80070002
2009-01-21 08:50:04:518 816 f2c PT +++++++++++ PT:
Synchronizing extended update info +++++


Cause:

When the Windows Update service starts up, we look to see whether there’s a registry key named
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Setup\ServiceStartup.

If that key doesn’t exist, then everything

[Read More...]

A remote controlled quadricopter drone with two cameras, wifi and flight stabilization.

http://www.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/en

Soon as they start selling this I'm buying one!

Oh, you've got to own a iPhone to be able to use it! (wonder if iTouch will be supported, you only need the wifi not cell coverage)

When I get some time later, I'll sit through this ... but for now, am passing in on to the horde that seem to read my blog:

Our very own Buz Brodin, a Senior Escalation Engineer here on our System Center Configuration Manager support team, recently posted a great video that goes through some demos and some tips and tricks for setting up and using Out Of Band Management with Intel AMT enabled clients.  If you haven't seen this and plan on using OOB Management with AMT clients then this is one you won't want to miss:

Check the video out here

If DPM is your thing then Chris's dive in to backing up and restoring SharePoint should certainly spin your wheels :-)

Chris Whitehead, who is a Premier Field Engineer for SharePoint in the UK and a fan of DPM, recently posted a series of blogs on SharePoint and DPM.

One of the things that we like about Chris is that he has a different point of view. 

- We in the DPM team think about “backing stuff up” … and what is necessary to protect each workload, such as SharePoint.

- Chris thinks about SharePoint … how to deploy it, how to manage it, how to troubleshoot it, and how to back it up.

Chris’ perspective has helped us build a better protection and recovery experience for SharePoint, and hopefully his blogs will help you too.

· DPM and SharePoint - Part 1 - A love/love relationship

· DPM and SharePoint - Part 2 - How does DPM protect SharePoint data?

· DPM and SharePoint - Part 3 - How does DPM restore SharePoint data?

· DPM and SharePoint - Part 4 - Why do I get this error? 

[Read More...]

Small write up on installing DPM 2007 SP1 on to W2008 with the Hyper-V role installed all on the very same host ...

You have installed a single Hyper-V server with some virtual machines and you want to complety snapshot them using Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (only with SP1) while they are running?
No problem, with DPM 2007 SP1 you can do [Read More...]

Found this WSUS Wiki today, very useful ...

Windows Server Update Services Wiki

Peter has some cracking SMS info on his blog,

Check it out: http://www.petervanderwoude.nl/

Not used this tool, first time i've seen it, as usual thought someone out there might be interested in seeing it. Boasts offline patching, no need for internet connection etc.

http://download.wsusoffline.net/

I'm not endorsing this product, just highlighting so you can check it out

Another good resource, this time lots of info on AMT\OOB implementation for ConfigMgr from a guy called Trevor Sullivan

http://communities.intel.com/people/Trevor.Sullivan;jsessionid=5685E821F048AC2A55D188DE23302974.node5COMS?view=overview

Go plunder that resource!

John Nelson over at myITforum has a excellent blog covering SMS.

You'll find a treasure trove of superb SQL queries that accomplish specific tasks as well as give you an insight in to how best to do things in SQL. Great resource for budding SQL\SMS guru's :-)

Johns treasure horde of SMS knowledge

Write up over on Computerworld on using WSUS 3.0 SP2 in the enterprise to manage your patch deployments.

Obviously this one is for environments that do not benefit from the joy of deploying patches using ConfigMgr 2007. Although the article is short it does get stuck in with how to get it running.

One of the challenges that comes with running a network is keeping your operating systems patched and secure. In response to this problem, Microsoft has released Windows Server Update Service  3.0 SP2 as a means to centrally download updates and control how they are deployed to the computers throughout your network. Additionally, WSUS provides extensive reporting features to quickly give you a snapshot of your computers' status. If your network is big enough [Read More...]

Fortunate I am indeed to get renewed as part of the ConfigMgr MVP programme for a second time:

Dear Rob Marshall,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2010 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 System Center Configuration Manager technical communities during the past year.

Going to be an amazing “tech year” 2010, we’ll be seeing the shadowy outline of ConfigMgr V.Next as it makes its way towards a public release (earmarked for release around 2011 as most of you already know) and blows your socks off with its features and capabilities.

A big thanks to Microsoft for renewing me! And no less a thank you to all of you that helped me out during the year. If all goes well then I’ll be bringing you a wealth of v.next information over 2010 to help skill you up for its release in both WMUG virtual and physical meetings, more so once the releases are available for public consumption leading up to RTM.

Quest have been filling a niche for a long time now, giving us the ability to extend ConfigMgr (SMS) to non-windows based platforms.

I landed on their agent-less extensions page earlier and thought I'd blog it because it surprised me how much OS support they have

http://management-extensions.org/configagentless.jspa

There is also an agen extensions page

http://management-extensions.org/configagentbased.jspa

Tons of info on that site to help an admin evaluation and implement these extensions.

For those of you with a slight interest in WQL queries for your ConfigMgr collections ...

Jeroen Erkelens writes up a good introductory guide to sub-select statements in WQL queries

Thought I'd throw this out there for those of you interested in diving

An underwater video forum thread that is growing on the Yorkshire Divers website (UK)

http://www.yorkshire-divers.com/forums/underwater-video-photography/62859-ydtv-your-diving-tv.html

Interesting mix of videos there from plain old SCUBA all the way through to technical\commercial diving.

I dived the Gianis D, out in the red sea last year as well as the Rosalie Moller and SS Thistlegorm (best wreck I've been in). Fantastic dives.