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Jeff Wettlaufer has put together a short video showing one of the cool new features soon to arrive when R3 is released
OS Deployment enhancements in Configuration Manager 2007 R3
Check it out here > http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2010/01/20/os-deployment-enhancements-in-configuration-manager-2007-r3.aspx
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Great news, the ICP's (International Client Packs) for ConfigMgr 2007 SP2 are both available
Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 International Client Packs are now available
International Client Packs (ICPs) contain international-language clients to use with System Center Configuration Manager (SC Config Mgr) 2007 SP2. ICP downloads contain only the Config Mgr client files, not the English-language SC Config Mgr 2007 SP2, which is required.
ICP1 contains the following languages:
- English
- French
- German
- Japanese
- Spanish
ICP2 contains all languages from ICP1 plus the following:
- Chinese (Simplified)
- Chinese (Traditional)
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- Finnish
- Greek
- Hungarian
- Italian
- Korean
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Portuguese (Brazil)
- Russian
- Swedish
- Turkish
For all the details and to download the ICPs see http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=4C8FA7D6-1671-4D76-860B-195B16C214A8&displaylang=en
J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer
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EXCELLENT write up on client approval on the ConfigMgr Support Team Blog (these guys turn out gold regularly!)
How It Works: Automatic Client Approval in Configuration Manager 2007
Purpose:
This post is intended to explain how client approval works when a Mixed Mode Configuration Manager 2007 site is configured to automatically approve clients in trusted domains and to offer insight into how to troubleshoot scenarios where this is not working as expected. The configuration is shown below:
The short version:
- The new client performs a CCM_POST to CCM_System_WindowsAuth on the MP.
- The MP responds with a 401 as the request is anonymous and contains no security data.
Follow this link for the full article: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/archive/2010/01/20/how-it-works-automatic-client-approval-in-configuration-manager-2007.aspx
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We're expecting to sync with MS around 6PM GMT to get the IE out of band patch in to the hierarchy so we can push this out quick.
New Bulletin Summary
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Bulletin Identifier
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Internet Explorer
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Maximum Severity Rating
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Critical
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Impact of Vulnerability
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Remote Code Execution
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Restart Requirement
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The update will require a restart.
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Affected Software
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All supported versions of Internet Explorer on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008*, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2*.
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* Where indicated in the Affected Software table on the Advance Notification Web Page, the vulnerabilities addressed by this update do not affect supported editions of Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2, when installed using the Server Core installation option. Please see the Advance Notification Web page at the link below for more details.
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As you can see, you need to reboot a platform to get the patch to show as installed in your reports.
More info here http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-jan.mspx
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Noticed this earlier:
Hopefully you have been enjoying the DPM 2010 beta since September, but we are almost finished with the Release Candidate and our last milestones towards delivery.
Please join us on January 14 at 9:00 AM Pacific US Time to see what is coming in the Release Candidate We will demonstrate the pre-RC software that our early adopters have been running in production. We’ll demonstrate the new Windows client protection capabilities, the new SQL/SharePoint/Exchange protection and recovery features, as well as the enhanced Disaster Recovery scenario. We’ll also update you on our auto-healing/auto-scaling features, as well as a few surprises that weren’t in the beta. Come join us to see what is coming in DPM 2010.
TechNet Webcast: Get Ready for Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010 Release Candidate (Level 300)
Start Date: Thursday, January 14, 2010 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Duration: 90 Minutes
Audience(s): IT Generalist
[Read More and sign up for this webcast]
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Bless her cotton socks, good old SMS2003 moves out of mainstream support at the end of January 12th of Jan 2010, and it's site on the microsoft domain has had a refresh and has now become more of a portal to assist in migrating from SMS2003 to ConfigMgr. This doesn't mean it is no longer supported by MS, just means it moves from mainstream support to extended support($$$).
Jeff Wettlaufer recently blogged about this:
This week SMS 2003 moves out of mainstream support, and enters what is
called Extended Support. This is a natural transition for every Microsoft product. Information about the SMS 2003 product lifecycle can be found here.
SMS 2003 has been an incredibly popular product, and has been considered the most widely deployed management tool in the world. Many customers who at some time were running a version of SMS have since migrated to Configuration Manager 2007, but we recognize this is not the case for everyone.
The industry has moved at a pace unparalleled by most. Technology has accelerated in capability, adoption, depth, breadth, and complexity. From a management perspective, the landscape configuration management technology embraces has grown from basic inventory and software distribution to new areas like OS deployment, Virtualization, Asset/ Performance and Workflow management, data protection, NAP and model based configuration management. In addition to capabilities, new working styles, scenarios, users (Gen ‘Y’) and security models have become daily routine for Administrators.
The management landscape has changed, there is no debating it.
System Center Configuration Manager 2007 is in the 4th release since SMS 2003. With a 5th (R3) entering beta soon, and with the mainstream support cycle ending for SMS 2003, we wanted to collect as much assistance as possible
[Read More...]
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The ProxyCfg.exe utililty is an important tool, which us SMS Admins will encounter when we need to adjust proxy settings on a client so that it can communicate with the assigned site servers WSUS role.
I needed ProxyCfg to solve a problem on a Windows 2008 Enterprise server today, and found out that ProxyCfg.exe has been deprecated on Vista and Win2008, but what replaces it?
The answer is the NetSH command.
To show the current proxy settings (from a CMD prompt)
- NetSH
- WinHTTP
- Show Proxy
Or
- NetSH WinHTTP Show Proxy
To set the proxy
- NetSH
- WinHTTP
- Set Proxy proxy-server="PROXY.COM:8080" bypass-list="SERVER.COM"
- Show Proxy
Or
- NetSH WinHTTP Set Proxy proxy-server="PROXY.COM:8080" bypass-list="SERVER.COM"
More commands are available
dump - Displays a configuration script.
import - Imports WinHTTP proxy settings. (equiv of ProxyCFG -u)
reset - Resets WinHTTP settings. (equiv of ProxyCFG - D)
set - Configures WinHTTP settings.
show - Displays currents settings.
So now all functionaly of ProxyCfg can be accomplished using the NetSH command
ProxyCfg -U = NetSH WinHTTP import Proxy ie
ProxyCfg -D = NetSH WinHTTP reset proxy
ProxyCfg -P = NetSH WinHTTP Set Proxy proxy-server="PROXY.COM:8080" bypass-list="SERVER.COM"
Should get you up and running again ...
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This video just made my jaw drop!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNR74UCidBI&feature=player_embedded#
(It gets going, and yep you ain't see nothing like it, at around the 55 second mark)
Of course, it is very safe for work so check it out!
... Just had to watch it again, be warned it's addictive viewing!
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Round of of recent KB articles (courtesy of the ConfigMgr Support Team Blog)
KB976073 - The Windows Deployment Service stops responding when you use a PXE service point on a computer that is running a System Center Configuration Managr 2007 SP1 site server
KB978021 - The Distribution Manager that is in System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 does not honor the "Number of retries" and "Delay before retrying (minutes)" retry settings
KB977176 - A "Run Command Line" task of a task sequence object in System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 does not work on a 64-bit client
KB978022 - Memory leak in System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 if the distribution point role is enabled
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Over at the ConfigMgr Support Team Blog, interesting write-up on failure encountered when using the ConfigMgr Service Manager to connect to Secondary Site servers ...
Here's a unique issue I came across the other day that I thought you might like hearing about. In this case, we were unable to connect to a ConfigMgr 2007 Secondary Site server from Tools => Service Manager unless we were using a domain admin account.
When attempting to connect to the Secondary Site server in Service Manager we received the following error message:
ConfigMgr Service Manager
Error communicating with the specified ConfigMgr Site Server
This error can occur if the SMS Groups do not contain the proper Site Server computer accounts.
You may also receive the following error when attempting to connect to the Secondary Site server in Service Manager if the logged on account is not a member of the Secondary Site Server's Local Administrators group:
ConfigMgr Service Manager
Access to the specified server has been denied. You might not have enough security rights to complete this operation
Cause
SMS Group membership and/or Local Administrator group membership configuration is not configured correctly.
Resolution
[Read More...]
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Over on the WSUS Support Team Blog, announcement of a new KB highlighting an issue when using Windows Update or Microsoft Update to install updates
Symptoms: When you install updates by using Windows Update or Microsoft Update, you receive the following error code:
0x737D
Additionally, you may receive the following error message:
SQL Server Setup cannot upgrade the specified instance because the previous upgrade did not complete.
Note Microsoft SQL Server 2005 may be installed on your computer when you install applications such as Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Mail.
Cause: This issue occurs because the installation of an update to SQL Server 2005 is not completed.
[Read More...]
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The Gods have blessed us! Well, actually no, Microsoft just decided to release one security update this patch cycle!
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Bulletin ID
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Maximum Severity Rating
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Vulnerability Impact
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Restart Requirement
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Affected Software*
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Bulletin 1
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Critical
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Remote Code Execution
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May require restart
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Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2.
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Oh boy, my patch chores won't take long this month ...
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Steve helps us ConfigMgr folk appreciate the value of the ConfigMgr logging capabilities by talking about logging and process flow in OpMgr. Although it sounds painful living without many log files, they do seem to have some cool debug\troubleshooting tools which Steve covers off quite well.
Three Cheers for the Authoring Resource Kit Tools! Part I - The Workflow Analyzer
Have you ever been faced with troubleshooting OpsMgr and needed a way to trace the flow of a particular component – maybe a rule or monitor – or a discovery – to see what it was actually doing and what information was being submitted? Have you gotten frustrated with the ETL logs and the native OpsMgr events? Join the crowd! :)
I’m not saying that ETL or the OpsMgr event logs are bad – quite the contrary…there is a great deal of information in both – and in a troubleshooting scenario it’s often helpful to take logs or traces from a healthy agent and compare them to a broken agent – thats troubleshooting 101. In addition, the ETL tracing and event logging abilities of OpsMgr have just gotten better as we’ve progressed from RTM to R2!
But, what if we need that extra bit of deeper understand of whats happening ‘behind the scenes’?
[Read More...]
Hey Steve, check out my logging capability!
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Lifted directly from the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Team Blog:
Just an FYI that on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 10:00 AM-11:00 AM., we're hosting a Live Meeting presentation for System Center influencers titled “So you Want To Move from a VMware Infrastructure to Microsoft” presented by Kenon Owens, Microsoft Virtualization product manager.
Note:
For all the details see http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2010/01/06/live-meeting-for-influencers-1-12-10-at-10-00-am-pst-moving-from-vmware-to-microsoft.aspx
J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer
[ I don't like a complete lift of content in case the source changes, usually just like to give you a taster then send you off to the site (here is the original in all it's glory) ]
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Useful tips on issues that can surface when installing a (latest) ConfigMgr Service Pack
This document was created to help in troubleshooting Configuration Manager Service Pack 2 (SP2) install failures. This document is not entirely specific to Service Pack 2 and can apply to Service Pack 1 installs, upgrades from SMS 2003 to SCCM, and future service pack or Configuration Manager versions that rely on .mof file compilations, SQL SPNS, provider DLLs, etc.
Contents:
Section 1 Pre-Upgrade Best Practices
Section 2 General Troubleshooting
Section 3 List of Known Issues and Solutions:
A: SPN issues with SQL
B: Time Skew between remote SQL and Site Server
C: Re-Registering relevant files / errors attempting to re-register needed files.
D. Deleting Temp Files, setting Temp variables.
E. Searching for a "bad" custom or customized report
F. Checking for pre-existing duplicate reports that are new to SCCM SP2
G. Upgrade fails due to registry setting.
H. Site System does not have rights to remote SQL System or Clustered SQL Nodes
[Read More...]
(Thanks to Jannes Alink, MVP in ConfigMgr for offering up this link)
An issue I saw with a recent primary site upgrade to SP2 was with Asset Intelligence data in the DB causing the ConfigMgr 2007 SP2 to fail to install during the AI section of setup ... we had to identify the offending rows and remove them from the database before we could complete the upgrade. Think this might be a one-off, but if you experience it let me know!