System Center Guide

In short, yes. But, when I recent customer requested documented reference to that fact prior to canceling a subscription to another inventory solution, I had to go digging - deep!

What I was able to find is the True Up Guide on Microsoft’s website.

Page 3 of the document confirms that indeed you may use several of the built-in reports to support your True Up efforts. While it’s a little dated and references SMS and SCE, it’s well understood that it naturally would cover ConfigMgr as an inventory method as well.

Here’s a link to the guide for your reference:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/5/b/85b71ce5-2f4a-4984-a021-a24df9814b71/TrueUp_brochure_letter.pdf

P.S. Make sure you’re using a service packed version of ConfigMgr as the their were issues with the RTM release that showed free Office viewers programs as the full products in the earlier reports. This issue has been resolved in SP1.

Don Brown has written an excellent article about exposing SMS agent properties through the Windows PowerShell. This local policy approach provides much more granularity than what’s available from the site properties. Check out the article at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/11/UtilitySpotlight/default.aspx.

Well, some of you may have noticed my activity level drop off this week. That was due to the overwhelming pressures of having to prepare for the Brandon Consulting System Center Practice Launch at the Guinness Store House on Thursday. I had visited the locale on several previous visits to Ireland, but never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined coming back to the Store House to launch the practice that I would be managing while living here.

Most visitors to the Store House would completely overlook the 3rd floor business centre that has a number of rooms available to rent for private occassions. Similarly, the 7th floor Gravity Bar (a glass-enclosed circular bar that provides a 360-degree view of Dublin and the end-point for the Store House tour) is also available for letting during the evening. This provided an excellent view of the city at night.

The launch event included 5 sessions held throughout the day, with myself delivering the lion’s share of 3 sessions. We kicked off with Bill O’Brien, Business Group Lead - Server and Tools for Microsoft Ireland, discussing Core Infrastructure Optimisation. This was followed by my three presentations on System Center Operations Manager, Configuration Manager and Essentials. We wrapped up with a brief discussion about the System Center licensing, presented by our licensing partner, Micro Warehouse.

In all, we had fantastic attendance and overhelming responses to our offer for a whiteboard session with prospective customers. At the end of the day, I sat exhaustively in awe of what had just transpired: I had just finished launching my new practice at the Guinness Store House. How amazing is that?

PS’SOFT ANNOUNCES ASSET AND SERVICE MANAGEMENT SUITE: “PS’Soft, a global provider of IT asset and service management solutions, today announced the general availability of its Asset and Service Management Suite which integrates the rich asset inventory data collected by Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. PS’Soft Asset Management solution integrates with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to deliver rich end-to-end software license management capabilities. Integration with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 enables PS’Soft to address the needs of a vast user base of Microsoft System Center customers. “