System Center Guide

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 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

Web Help Desk releases seamless out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft SCCM and SMS, providing IT professionals with up-to-date hardware and software asset details within the web-based help desk software. No table mapping configuration or SQL scripts required. In classic Web Help Desk style, simply choose your synchronization schedule, point to the SCCM/SMS deployment and select which SCCM/SMS data to be made visible, then carry on with your now enhanced service management operations.

Click here to learn more.

The issue was raised recently that we needed a means of identifying all new servers introduced to the environment so that we can add them to the appropriate patching collections within SCCM. With the help of Donnie Taylor, I was able to get the following query to work:

select SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceID,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceType,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Name,SMS_R_SYSTEM.SMSUniqueIdentifier,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Client from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_SYSTEM on SMS_G_System_SYSTEM.ResourceId = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where DATEDIFF(dd, SMS_G_System_SYSTEM.TimeStamp,GetDate()) < 30

Now there is no logic in the code to select only server-based operating systems, but I accomplished this by limiting this collection results to the “Windows Server Systems” collection.

There are many occassions where we want to install software on only particular platforms such as desktops, laptops or servers. By using a combination of System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, we can make this happen. Sadly, however, this hasn’t been very well documented and put into a step-by-step guide, so I’ve done that here.

The following 20 steps are what it takes to get Configuration Manager to use the MDT variables isDesktop, isLaptop, and isServer during an operating system deployment task sequence. If I’ve missed anything, please let me know.

1.  Download Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2008, Update 1.
2.  Install MDT to site server.
3.  From the Start menu, select Microsoft Deployment Toolkit | Configure ConfigMgr Integration.
4.  Create a package for the toolkit using the “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Deployment Toolkit \Templates\Distribution” folder as the package source. No program needed – just create the package.
5.  Configure your packages distribution points, as normal.
6.  In the Task Sequence Editor, click Add | MDT | Use Toolkit Package. Select the package that you created in step 4.
7.  Move this task between Install Operating System and Setup Operating System.
8.  Again, click Add | MDT | Gather.
9.  Choose the radio button for “Gather only local data (do not process rules). 
10.  Move this new task beneath the Use Toolkit Package task.
11.  From the Task Sequence Editor Install Software section, select the software package you like to have installed only on laptops (VPN software for example).
12.  Click the Options tab.
13.  Click Add Condition.
14.  Select If Statement.
15.  In the If Statement Properties page, select All Conditions.
16.  Highlight the line you just added beneath the “This group/step will run if the following conditions are met:”.
17.  Click “Add Condition” again.
18.  Choose Task Sequence Variable.
19.  In the Task Sequence Variable properties page, type isLaptop for the Variable, leaving the Condition set to equals and type TRUE for the Value.Remember, you also have isDesktop and isServer options to use as well.
20.  Save your Task Sequence.

I hope you’ll find this useful. Enjoy!

While attempting to install the User State Migration Toolkit on a Windows Server 2008 system, you will be presented with an error stating that “There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program run as part of setup did not finish as expected. Contact your support personnel or package vendor.”

This problem has been noted on the USMT team blog.

When you click the OK button on the error message the USMT301 folder will be erased. However, as a workaround to obtaining the source files to build a USMT package for operating system deployment with Configuration Manager, you can keep the error message up, copy the source files from the C:\Program Files\USMT301 folder to another destination. Just make sure to do this prior to clicking OK. Otherwise, they’re gone!

While recently testing Desired Configuration Management features of System Center Configuration Manager with a client, we ran into an issue with the DCM baselines coming down but not actually running or creating the client-side reports. After reviewing the DCMAgent.log file, it was determined that we were missing the  appropriate .NET framework version on the client.

The following article specifies that .NET framework version 2.0 or later is required for this feature to work.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680801.aspx

The System Center Professional User Group of Jacksonville will hold their 4th quarter meeting on November 19, 2008 at 6:30 P.M.  It will take place at New Horizons Learning Center, 7020 A.C Skinner Parkway Suite #180, Jacksonville, FL, 32256.
 
A meet and greet period is scheduled for 6:30 to 7:30 with food and drinks provided.  This will be followed by a presentation from sponsor SecureVantage Technologies entitled “Security Auditing with System Center Operations Manager and the Audit Collection Service.”  All System Center Professionals in North Florida are invited.
 
SPUGJax was created to connect I.T. professionals working in the Microsoft System Center ecosystem with products such as SMS, SCCM, MOM, SCOM, Microsoft virtualization technologies, SoftGrid and the many third-party tools that support System Center.
 
Please forward this post along to anyone you know working with Microsoft server applications.  Thank you.
 
A special thanks to all of those that attended the first meeting.  It was a great success.  1E, Inc. presented their suite of applications and provided sandwiches, drinks, sides and cookies by Jason’s Deli.
 
 
Respectfully yours,
 
Dan Taylor and Ivan Lindenfeld
http://spugjax.tech.officelive.com

The first public beta of SCCM Client Center V2.0 is online at: http://smsclictr.sourceforge.net/smsclictrv2/ 

This beta version is for testing only and should not be used in a productive environment. Feature-Requests and Issues should be reported on the smsclictrv2 Tracker (NOTE: a Sourceforge Account is required!).