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May 27, 2008
I got a really good question today on maintenance windows and patching and how they can or cannot work together. Specifically if you had a maintenance window defined, but told the patches to install ignoring the maintenance window but suppress the reboots until the maintenance window will it install the updates and hold off on rebooting the clients until the maintenance window? First let's go over defining maintenance windows. Assuming you already have a collection of computers built that you...
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Filed under: Patching, SUP, ConfigMgr, Configuration Manager, SCCM, Maintenance Windows, WSUS
December 03, 2007
In ConfigMgr there is a new feature that hasn't gotten much attention called Maintenance Windows. This is a feature that I have heard numerous requests for and it gets a bit closer to the infamous 'Big Red Button'. So what is a maintenance window? A maintenance window is a rule applied to a collection of ConfigMgr clients that prevents those clients from: Executing a program, including a standard program such as setup.exe Running Software Updates And launching any Operating System Deployments...
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Filed under: Packaging, Patching, Documentation, ConfigMgr
October 09, 2007
I used to hate the second Tuesday of every month. I honestly liked it better when patches were released as they were ready. What happens with the scheduled updates is that everyone knows that it is coming and that means that everyone expects their SMS Engineers to have the patches deployed that night, no matter how late, no matter how many people, no matter what! And on Wednesday morning, usually around nine, everyone wants to know the status of the deployments. For me I had some advantages, one...
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Filed under: SMS 2003, et. all, Security, KB Articles, Rants, Packaging, Patching, Reports, SCCM 2007, Funny, SUP, ConfigMgr, Configuration Manager, SCCM
October 06, 2007
On the System Center Configuration Manager site there is currently a list of five audiocast or podcasts that you can listen to. They are all fairly short and cover a specific area of ConfigMgr. Wally kicks it off with the best practices for upgrading and setup, and also discusses a few new features and prerequisites. I am sure they will add more to this over time so if you are reading this months after it has been posted use the bottom link to get to the page and see the whole list. NOTE: The links...
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Filed under: Packaging, Patching, System Center, TechNet, Microsoft, SCCM 2007, OSD, SUP, BDD, ConfigMgr, Configuration Manager, SCCM, Podcast
September 03, 2007
Kevin is right, this has already been talked about , but he does a nice job of explaining the two types of multicasting. Two drawbacks to this however...First you cannot multicast across subnets, well you can but if your network supports this you are wide open to a SQL Slammer type of attack where one laptop brings your network to its knees. Second, you have to have Server 2008 to make this work. A simple, less costly solution, that you can utilize now is to use the 1E OSD Plus Pack , or SMSNomad...
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Filed under: Active Directory, Group Policy, Packaging, Patching, Beta, Longhorn, News, Microsoft, SCCM 2007, OSD, SMSNomad Branch, OSD Plus Pack, ConfigMgr, Server 2008
June 26, 2007
Back in May Microsoft released the same type of fix for Windows 2003 and now it is ready for XP clients. SMS admins understand the pain of WMI corruption as well as anyone, and probably better than most. Getting permission denied errors when it has nothing to do with permissions, trying to diagnose client issues remotely when WMI is not reporting the correct or latest data, the painful memories return so quickly... With this update applied you should get better stability from WMI, integrated into...
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Filed under: SMS 2003, Patching, News, Microsoft, WMI
May 18, 2007
Error message in the WUSSyncXML.log file when the Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates tries to synchronize and to download software updates: "Error retrieving object PackageID" View products that this article applies to. Article ID:936906 Last Review:May 14, 2007 Revision:1.0 On This Page SYMPTOMS CAUSE RESOLUTION Method 1 Method 2 SYMPTOMS The Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates (ITMU) is installed on a Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 site server. The SMS site server synchronizes...
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Filed under: SMS 2003, KB Articles, Patching
May 16, 2007
If you didn't believe me when I said reducing your power consumption could save you millions? Would you will believe the CIO of Verizon? In the article below he explains how 1E's NightWatchman alone is going to save them $500,000 per year! Through NightWatchman, application rationalization, and thin client technology they have saved $20 million so far. How Verizon Does Green Computing John Hinshaw, CIO of Verizon Wireless, talks about the methods he's using to make the company's vast...
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Filed under: Patching, News, NightWatchman
May 12, 2007
While the article below highlights complaints posted to the WSUS product team blog if you read in the newsgroups it seems that this has fixed a number of peoples problems. They essentially lowered the priority that the process runs under so while the CPU will still show 100% used you can still work as it will hand back CPU cycles as other processes or threads request them. There is a trade off here, you can scale back the scan to only use < a certain percent of the total CPU available and extend...
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Filed under: KB Articles, Rants, Patching, News
April 17, 2007
Systems Management Server 2003 Inventory Tool for Dell Update Brief Description SMS 2003 Inventory Tool for Dell Updates is an add-on to SMS 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) that enables customers to use the SMS 2003 Software Update Management feature to update their Dell servers. SMS 2003 Inventory Tool for Dell Update includes the following components: Setup – Windows Installer based setup that allows SMS administrator to install all required components on the SMS site server. Inventory Tool for Dell...
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Filed under: SMS Tools, Patching
April 14, 2007
This should sound familiar to a number of people. WSUS Celerons and SVChost "BK" posts in what we've been suspecting all along..that 927891 isn't working/doesn't always work. Oh in my network where I don't have Celery.... I mean Celerons .... so the applications of 927891 does help a lot, but if you have underpowered machines, celerons you are STILL getting nailed.... KB927891 helps resolve the svchost.exe crash; the one where it drags down the other services hosted in the same PID and reports the...
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Filed under: KB Articles, Patching
April 06, 2007
Late last year a flood of calls came into Microsoft Premier Support Services (PSS) regarding the SMS patch scan causing computers to lock up or freeze for a long period of time while the patches were installed. This problem got immediate attention by the product teams and a new version of ITMU was released to help resolve the issues being reported. The issues actually lie in the WUA agent that is installed on each computer not really with SMS itself, the problem was also complicated by the Wsusscan...
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Filed under: SMS 2003, KB Articles, Patching
April 02, 2007
Large WSUS deployments will have their performance degrade over time if the WSUS database is not maintained properly. The WSUSDBMaintenance script is a T-SQL script that can be run by SQL Server administrators to re-index and defragment the WSUS database. Download At Source Source: Bink.nu | WSUSDBMaintenance T-SQL Script With the implementation of WSUS into SCCM 2007 this will become an important task. I have heard from a number of customers that they used WSUS and it was fine for a couple months...
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Filed under: Patching
January 23, 2007
Omar, Omar, Omar....Why must you always.....read on folks. SCCM 2007: No ITMU but WSUS!! "If you are considering SCCM 2007 and you have your 'legacy' SMS 2003 running on ITMU or ITCU? -Forget it! SCCM 2007 will use WSUS. But will a few lesser screenclicks really speed up your patch management? The integration of ITMU / ITCU in SMS2003 was for me one of the biggest milestones for centralised patch management. I was an advocate to get rid of WSUS. Ok, you had to put your mind to work managing all the...
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Filed under: Patching, News, SCCM 2007
October 27, 2006
Source . Hi Folks: There will be a new product category added to your WSUS server over the next day or two, under the Windows family. The new category will be titled “Windows Ultimate Extras.” Windows Ultimate Extras are programs, services, and premium content for Windows Vista™Ultimate. The Windows Ultimate Extras category will contain all Extras for Windows Ultimate as they are released throughout the Windows Vista timeframe. Ultimate Extras will be offered through WSUS, for clients...
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Filed under: Patching, Vista, News
August 16, 2006
Original source: Expect a new update of the IE patch From: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918899/EN-US/ A new version of security update 918899 is currently in development and will be released to all Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 customers by August 22, 2006. The new update will be available on the Microsoft Download Center and by using Windows Update. Customers who are using any version of Internet Explorer other than Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 together with any Windows version...
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Filed under: Patching
July 13, 2006
Hello Mr. Anderson – I bet you are really tiered of that joke…We use WSUS along with SMS, we do this for a couple of reasons. The main use is to patch machines immediately after they have been OSD’d or setup from CD. In the building where most of our imaging takes place their is also a private subnet that does not connect to the Internet, or the corporate LAN but our WSUS sits on it as well as the corporate LAN. We use a script to set the WSUS server and force it to check for and...
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Filed under: Patching, Microsoft
May 16, 2006
I have my updates approved automatically, if you don't you may want to check this tool out. WSUSster is an update approval tool for Microsoft Windows Update Services (WSUS). Take a look at the screenshot on http://www.wsus.nl/images/wsuster_large.png According to the authors of this tool, " A WSUS Server has a very bad interface for approving updates. That's why we decided to write our own approval tool which we called 'Wsuster'. We used the tool to migrate from SUS to WSUS. At this moment we use...
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Filed under: Patching
May 05, 2006
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912918 SYMPTOMS When you try to send an e-mail message in Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server or in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, you cannot send the e-mail message. Additionally, you may receive one of the following error messages or one of the following Non Delivery Reports (NDRs): This issue is known to affect the following third-party products: Research In Motion (RIM) Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) Good Technology GoodLink Wireless Messaging
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Filed under: KB Articles, Patching, Microsoft
April 26, 2006
Presented by Josh Pointer and Michael Kelley IF YOU MISSED THIS SESSION MAKE SURE YOU ATTEND IT - THE SLIDES DO NOT DO IT JUSTICE YOU MUST SEE THE DEMOS!!! Included in Beta 1: (You may want to skip this section and get to the good stuff in Demo 1 below) Operating System Deployment (OSD) Software Updates Management (SUM) New UI Based on MMC 3.0 Filter Drag and Drop for patch and folders!!! Branch DP's What's new in the Beta 1 Refresh? - Matches Vista Beta 2 release time Deployment of Vista and Longhorn...
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Filed under: SMS 2003, Packaging, Patching, Beta, Vista, Longhorn, News, Microsoft, MMS 2006
April 26, 2006
Bryan Keller Program Manager SMS eXtreme Team and Quincy Milton Group Manager SMS eXtreme Team. What is it? New point release. Available for purchase if you are not an SA customer, if you are an SA customer then its free Built on SMS 2003 SP2 (SP2 is a pre-req) Available in Q2 - end of May or early June Enhancements: Deprecated AC support for Windows 200 SP3 Systems and XP RTM Added FQDN support AD Security Groups Discovery Multi threaded SWINV Integrated ITMU Features: Scan Tool for Vulnerability...
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Filed under: SMS 2003, Patching, News, Microsoft, MMS 2006