System Center Guide

Earlier today I ran into a situation with the SCCM 2012 setup failing at the Creating Database stage. I’ve since resolved the matter and unfortunately don’t have the original ConfigMgrSetup.log file that referenced the specific error message, but it was something similar to the following:

[SQL Error -08001] SSL Error: The Certificate CN Name Does Not Match the Passed Value.

As it turns out, the server name I was provided for the SQL Server 2008 R2, SP1 (CU6) cluster was actually a DNS Canonical Name (CName) record for the cluster. Not the actually cluster name itself. The reasons for them doing this are out-of-scope for this post, but once I changed the name of the SQL server to the actual name of the cluster the setup proceeded without issue.

NOTE: Because of the point that the setup originally fails, you will have to uninstall the site and start over as the site is partially installed.

When installing SCCM 2012 in a clustered SQL environment, you may receive the following error message during the prerequisite validation:

Configuration Manager only supports the use of primary FQDN’s, where the DNS hostname (first label in the FQDN) matches the NetBIOS hostname of the computer. The FQDN provided for this site system does not meet this requirement and cannot be used. Correct the FQDN and try again.

According to TechNet threads, this is a known bug and may be circumvented by using the /NoPrereq command line switch against Setup.exe in the folder SMSSETUP\BIN\X64.

ST. PAUL, MN–(Marketwire – March 3, 2010) – Shavlik Technologies, LLC, the market leader in simplifying and automating critical IT operations, today announced the Shavlik SCUPdates™ catalog which delivers update information from multiple vendors — like Adobe or Apple — to Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). More and more organizations today are leveraging the power of SCCM to assess, deploy and update Windows systems. By using the Shavlik SCUPdates catalog, SCCM users now have a single workflow for deploying updates for both Microsoft and non-Microsoft applications.

Read the full press release

Microsoft has made available for download Windows-7-friendly versions of two of its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) tools as part of its campaign to get more businesses to move to Windows 7, and soon, Office 2010.

Released on February 22 is the final version of Application Virtualization (App-V) 4.6, as well as the near-final Release Candidate of the Service Pack 1 build of Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V). These two tools ultimately will be part of MDOP 2010, the first of two MDOP releases that Microsoft officials are expecting to roll out in calendar 2010. (Today, MED-V 1.0 SP1 is being released simultaneously with MDOP 2010, as it is not yet in final form.)

MDOP is a bundle of various deployment tools that Microsoft sells to Software Assurance customers only. At the end of last year, when it added a previously-unscheduled MDOP 2009 R2 release to its line-up, Microsoft announced its intention to release MDOP 2010 in the first calendar quarter of this year.

Rest the rest of the article

In Randy George’s “Rolling Out Windows 7″ article for InformationWeek, SCCM is compared to LANDesk, KASE, Snap Deploy and others. Yet, the accolades for SCCM kept “rolling” on in…

Read the article here.

Here are the 5 key upgrade tips for an enterprise considering Windows 7:

1. Make application compatibility the first priority.
2. Use System Center Configuration Manager for image creation and deployment.
3. Start with basic group policy settings but then update.
4. Work with ISVs early and often.
5. Align Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 deployment timing.

Read the full article on the System Center team blog.

The IBM Deployment Pack for Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (SCCM) is used to configure IBM hardware components prior to deploying Windows using Microsoft SCCM. This kit extends Configuration Manager 2007 by providing a convenient integrated user interface that will be familiar to SCCM administrators. The Deployment Pack completes the end-to-end deployment scenario in environments where IBM-specific configuration steps are required including RAID, IMM, RSA2, BMC, and BIOS/UEFI.

More information, including a Users Guide, and download available from http://bit.ly/aR8oXD.

Microsoft has just released the Reporting Dashboard beta for SCCM. This dashboard lets customers utilize a browser based graphically rich reporting experience that showcases the robust reporting capabilities of the world’s leading system management product. The dashboard will help you stay informed of application and operating system deployments, security updates, system health status and more; whether on the plasma screen in your operations center, or your administrative desktop.

Find out more from the System Center team blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2010/02/02/system-center-configuration-manager-reporting-dashboard-beta-released.aspx

SccmAutoDoc is a command-line utility that documents a System Center Configuration Manager 2007 site in a human-readable format. Much effort has been put in making the document resemble closely to what you see in the Configuration Manager admin console. SccmAutodoc in other words documents your Site Configuration.

More information is available here.