WMUG

Thought I’d give one of the new features in ConfigMgr Technical Preview build 1705 called Improvements for SQL Server Always On Availability Groups a walk through, so that I could soak up all the SQL AlwaysOn Availability Group and Windows Server Failover Clustering knowledge. From the docs: With this release, you can now use asynchronous commit replicas in the SQL Server Always On availability groups you use with Configuration...

Couple weeks back I mentioned that Client Registration is broken for Management Point Replicas . I escalated it up to the product group and the great news is that it looks likely to be fixed at the next current branch hotfix rollup for 1...

Had a customer reporting issues with client registration when devices use Management Point Replicas . Had a look around and discovered that MP Replica’s are not processing brand new Client Registrations. You’ll see the issue manifesting in...

This is an idea of the highest order! It deserves to get the "Most votes ever on User Voice" due to its utter brilliance! Joking aside, quite a helpful feature if we can get it implemented. Man up, click here, apply a vote! User Voice: Trusted Source Locations - Complete the trusted source story

There's been a lot of interest in the Power BI dashboard and ConfigMgr template since I published a blog post about it on the SCCMentor website back in March. A presentation I ran at the last WMUG event generated even more discussion about the tool. One of the great features of the product is the ability to share out your dashboards to your Office 365 users with the click of a few buttons and you only needed access...

LogLauncher is back in the development dry-dock for a refitting, no small change indeed, as I’m adding in a feature request from Zeng (Sandy) , the ability to scan as many devices as you want, and see them in the navigation tree on the left so you can hop around them removing the need to open several LogLauncher processes to accomplish the same result, something like this working code example: Fortunately the code-base...

Was onsite with a customer recently, and had failure trying to upgrade their Build 1610 Current Branch Hierarchy to Build 1702. The problem was being reported in the SMS_DMP_Downloader log as follows: Download redist for update 0fb0a697-662d-45c2-a96c-8c95e5944df7 SMS_DMP_DOWNLOADER 05-Apr-17 12:42:14 PM 19500 (0x4C2C) ERROR: Failed to download redist for 0fb0a697-662d-45c2-a96c-8c95e5944df7 with command /RedistUrl http...

Things turn over so rapidly now, it would seem, and as we iterate forwards with new releases of ConfigMgr using the Servicing channel, we suddenly get hit with an announcement that support for something important or at least popular has been dropped, making us feel that things are moving too quickly, after a pace that hasn’t changed much for a decade. The following comes from the What’s new in Version 1702 documentation...

There are quite a few cool features in the Build 1702 release of System Center Configuration Manager Current Branch, the one I’m going to go over here is the feature that gives Software Update Points Boundary Group-awareness , or boundary affinity. This complements the already boundary group-aware Distribution Point, Management Point and State Migration Point roles, and with this introduction, we finally have usage control...

An overlooked part of content management for ConfigMgr / SCCM is Client Deployment and Client Upgrade. This is mostly because, organisations hardly feel the hit of pushing out the ConfigMgr client for the first time, or when updating the client to a higher version, having well-connected sites and fast and wide communication paths to most of the network. I’ve witnessed many times a Client Push take place to a high density...

I've started a new series of posts on the SCCMentor website to review some of the best ConfigMgr books that are out on the market. I thought it would be worth presenting these reviews on the WMUG website. In the first of the series I take a look at the second edition of the Microsoft System Center Endpoint Protection Cookbook. The book is authored by MVP Nicolai Henriksen, a ConfigMgr and , back in the day, SMS...

I setup Intune quite a lot for Intune Hybrid POC’s, and I thought I’d run off a simple guide for those that want to spin this stuff up in their own lab at home. The goal of this guide is to get it running so you can tinker with the features available through Mobile Device Management (MDM), this isn’t a guide on how to get Intune and ConfigMgr setup for a production environment, and it falls short of covering what you...

The ConfigMgr team just released a hotfix rollup for ConfigMgr Current Branch Build 1610, KB4010155. (28/02/2017) Lots of little changes, worth reading the list in the KB Update rollup for System Center Configuration Manager current branch, version 1610 Key for those of you that have Management Point Replica’s in place, the SPROC is fixed

Hot off the press comes Build 1702 for ConfigMgr Technical Preview! Announcement https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2017/02/27/update-1702-for-configuration-manager-technical-preview-branch-available-now/ Documentation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/core/get-started/capabilities-in-technical-preview-1702 Try It https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-system-center-configuration-manager...

I’ve released a point release for LogLauncher, it contains the following: Custom Locations now works on remote scans, instead of just local scans Progressive search implemented in the Log View, begin typing the log name to see it Monitoring in progress notifications introduced, red text in bottom left and applications title bar text changed to alert that monitoring it taking place The Product or Category being monitored...

A lot of my free time of late has been going into many things, one of which was redoing LogLauncher with modern ribbon look, and adding in some much needed functionality. Just a moment ago I updated the TechNet Gallery with V3.0, here’s what it looks like now: It has some strong features: Get at all ConfigMgr\SCCM logs easily, quickly Visualise changes to SCCM\ConfigMgr logs over time using the monitoring feature Open...

In Configuration Manager Current Branch v1610 Microsoft released one specific feature (previously available in tech preview) called the Cloud Management Gateway. To summarise, this offers an alternative solution to internet based client management ut...

They say the only constant in IT is change. It’s fair to say it’s been a little while since I last did any significant writing or presenting and a lot has changed in my world since then but here I am alive and kicking and getting back into the swing of the IT community again. Where have I been? Just taking time out really, I probably last surfaced somewhere around August 2016 when I was at System Center Europe in Berlin...

The Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 are running with enough power to act as a 'thin client' device to connect to a Citrix environment via a specific release of the Citrix Receiver. This blog post takes you through the basic steps to get you installed an...

I needed a brief moment to think of a suitable way to describe the feature for this posts title, as its pre-release name is Prevent installation of an application if a specified program is running , not as catchy as its in-console name of Installer Handling , which I decided not to use as it isn’t descriptive enough, and may not be the final name for the feature, and decided upon Recognise Deployment-blocking executables...

Finished up coding Version 2 of the Log Launcher in readiness for a weekend release. Weekends are not the best time to release tools I’ve found, but heck why sit on it a whole weekend waiting for Monday I wrote this tool for the ...

I thought it would be worth popping this into a blog post as I spent many hours recently troubleshooting problems with the Windows 10 Start Menu and Search bar in a Citrix PVS environment. In some instances the Start Menu was slow to load up or other...

Put simply, literally just a handful of customers will be opting to install System Center Configuration Manager Long-Term Service Branch. For 99% of the rest of us, Current Branch is the install base that should be chosen. It’s where the action is at. A recent Enterprise Mobility blog post on TechNet Blogs, described the Current Branch (CB) and Long-Term Service Branch (LTSB) ‘servicing’ models: If I was to have to distil...

System Center Configuration Manager Technical Preview Build 1609 was just released, and one of the most exciting enhancements, as an architect, is the redefinition of how a Boundary Group behaves. Note that there is a bug with Boundary Groups ...

Finding that I often do quick port tests related to ConfigMgr installations @ customer sites, and my traditional approach was to use TELNET and NETSTAT together, checking for ports marked as SYN (no synchronisation packet came back) as an indicator that the port is blocked or not being listened on, so I thought, why don’t I write a new (extensible) Tcp port checker to do the job for me. Falling back to the classic Tcp...