WMUG

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. Here’s the preview summary of the feature: This preview introduces important changes to boundary groups and how they work with distribution points. These changes will help simplify the design of your content infrastructure while...

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...

Hey you! ConfigMgr Current Branch Technical Preview build 1608 has released . I highly recommend building a lab VM to host a technical preview build, seeketh out a guide from Niall Brady and others on how to setup the Technical Preview, having one so you can check out impending features is the way to be super cool and be up on the latest product developments. Here’s a run down of the features available for tire kicking...

Technical Preview 5 using Build 1606 or 1607 let's you play around with the new Cloud Proxy feature, and I thought I’d run up a guide on this awesome feature to help others reach out to play with it a bit more easily, as it is a very enabling architectural element for us to have in the design toolkit and worth checking out. I found the release notes to be a little short on a few details when I got this guide underway...

Windows 10 Anniversary Update allows you to run Ubuntu and the Bash shell. This is an optional feature and is switched on via Windows features. Once enabled you'll need to restart your device. You'll then be able to search for bash. a...

I decided a while back that when I finally set about to publically document the pathway to enable a new type of Replica Management Point in ConfigMgr, that I wouldn’t go into much detail explaining what a Replica Management Point is, or ...

After a long holiday away from blogging, I am back! Over the next few months I plan on overviewing all the cool Technical Preview features, as well as rocking on back to Current Branch to kick the tyres on the super awesome functionality that is bundled. One technology I haven’t covered much outside of work is Intune. I’m really liking how that technology is progressing, and I plan on pushing out a few posts over the...

Update 1606 for Configuration Manager Tech Preview is now available through the Updates and Servicing node of your Configuration Manager Technical Preview installation. https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/06/20/update-1606-for-configuration-manager-technical-preview-available-now ConfigMgr as a managed installer with Device Guard ( https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/06...

On the 27th May 2016 Microsoft released an update rollup for Configuration Manager Current Branch related to knowledgebase article KB3155482 . This is a significant update in that it is the first update rollup to be released through the current branch...

I’ve been implementing Configuration Manager in an organisation recently which has multiple domains including a single label domain. Now to cut the whole post short I’m not going to step you through how to implement in a single label domain, it can’t/shouldn’t/isn’t supported to be done unless you set up a disjointed DNS namespace. I’m installing Configuration in a sub domain and that is all happy and wonderful so far...

Be aware, some of my customers and others in the community have been reporting issues once KB3159706 is deployed to their WSUS servers. This is a known issue, and you’ll need to do the manual steps at the end of the KB3159706 article to get your WSUS server operational again. This patch replaces KB3148812 which kind of had some ‘issues’. Here is an example of the kind of whining you’ll get if you connect to WSUS once...

If you follow WMUG the chances are you work with Microsoft System Center products, there is also a good chance that you’re in Europe. Quite probably, you like to attend seminars/conferences and user groups meetings too. Who doesn’t? It’s a day off work and you get to learn stuff and hang out with like minded people who you can bounce ideas off. So with that in mind I present to you… 3 days of top quality sessions in 4...

Before we get into this I should state that I’m not an IT security expert, I apologise up front for any inaccuracies or misunderstandings I may have made in this post. Feel free to correct me in the comments I was asked recently to extend an existing Configuration Manager environment to manage a number of untrusted devices. The solution to this involved creating a new HTTPS enabled management point, distribution point...

If you are interested in what Microsoft have to offer in the way of hybrid cloud and devops then I’m pleased to say that I will be speaking on 27th April in Birmingham at the Microsoft UK IT Roadshow. I will be speaking alongside a great speaker line up including Gordon McKenna – Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP (12th year!) Martyn Coupland – DevOps Team Leader and Author Ryan Boud – Senior Cloud Consultant and Author...

Well it’s been a little while now since I’ve done much blogging, particularly for WMUG as I’ve been a little pre-occupied the past 12 months or so writing a book with Packt Publishing. I’m very happy that my WMUG colleague Gerry Hampson agreed to co-author with me and he did a great job too. As the title suggests the book covers troubleshooting of Configuration Manager and covers many aspects of the product in all recent...

Today I see that ConfigMgr current Branch B1602 released, I installed it onto 1511 today, and thought I’d put together a brief guide to provide a light overview of the installation process, showing how easy it is now that it is integrated into the product . Configuration Manager as a Service (CaaS) really is kicking in, with the flow of change ramping up. The actual Updates and Servicing feature entirety relies on the...

I thought I’d cover On premise Mobile Device Management using ConfigMgr Build 1511. So let’s take a look. The simplified list of the pro’s and con’s of mobile device management versus full client management, laid...

Microsoft have just released a hotfix (KB3122637) to resolve an issue around support for the Exchange Connector, that impacts both the older and new version of ConfigMgr. I’ll use this hotfix to demo the Updates and Servicing feature , also known as the Easy Setup Channel, and it really does make an administrators life easier. This is something I’ve wanted for a very long time, to integrate updates so that we don’t have...

I solved two problems affecting System Center Store this week. System Center Store uses a specific URL to fetch the zipped and encrypted XML Manifest file from the web, this URL (a Microsoft owned domain, SharePoint farm) is rated as Script\Medium risk by BlueCoat, which causes it to be blocked by some companies Proxy servers, depending on how they have configured the categories for blocking. This caused the tool to fail...

Some time back I wrote a free content downloader (superb if I don’t say so myself!) that currently contains 141 of the finest tools, scripts and ‘things’ that make us engineers go “Cool”. Key features that make me want to reuse this tool are: No need to have to remember all the web locations for various tooling and content when I visit a customer Takes the clicks and pain out of getting content and tooling, just select...

Dear Robert Marshall, Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2016 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Enterprise Mobility technical communities during the past year. Very pleased to be informed that I am an MVP for another year. This...

In the following series of blog posts I will introduce you to C#, Visual Studio and the ConfigMgr SDK, and show you how to produce your own custom tooling easily. The motivation behind this series of postings is to enable you to create communi...

[UPDATE 12/02/2016: Today I received a message from David Foxen at Snow who informs me that the issue below has now been fixed. The revised version should be available to you (not sure about licensing etc) but the updated release notes are available ...

I’ve been looking at Azure Services for hosting an ASP.NET Application, and wanted to get an understanding of how to set this stuff up. I’m relatively new to wiring things up in Azure, and thought it’d be a good idea to log what I needed to do while going about getting Visual Studio publishing into Azure. Here’s how I did it. I originally set this up last night on my main development machine, my recollection of the steps...

Myself and Peter Egerton ran an 'Introduction to Windows 10 IoT on the Raspberry Pi' session recently at a WMUG event and we had some issues connecting remotely into the Raspberry Pi on the network we were presenting from. Not all was in vain...