I'm Rob Marshall, a consultant who specialises in the Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager product. I like to share, i do so by blogging and helping out when I can in the MS SMS newsgroups and participating in the ConfigMgr MVP program.
I was awarded and joined the program in 2009. It'd be an understatement to say it has to be one of the best experiences an IT engineer can have, if they really enjoy specialising in a product.
My biggest weapon for troubleshooting is, my formidable knowledge, no, only joking, you, the community. I find if I cannot answer a question, then I can usually find the answer from using Bing\Google, pouring over the documentation, and if that doesn't work, tinkering in mine or someone elses virtual lab.
The blogs pretty much about ConfigMgr, but it is also a platform for me to express my random urges to display something I've stumbled across, and that I imagine would entertain you or what not as equally as it did me.
Kim Oppalfens is hoping to get enough votes to put on an ultra-slick, seriously hardcore WMI session at MMS 2010.
He's still trying to get enough votes to raise this up so that it can take place.
I had an opportunity to talk to Kim about this session last week, and as a seasoned ConfigMgr admin it got me SERIOUSLY excited. We're not talking about the typical "how to fix WMI" here, no, this is more "How to make WMI jump through hoops you didn't even know existed". He's making WMI do serious MAGIC, and this is a session that shouldn't be missed if his slot is accepted.
Read more on his blog here: http://scug.be/blogs/sccm/archive/2010/03/24/wmi-for-the-sccm-admin-techdays-belgium-2010-mms-2010-birds-of-a-feather-session.aspx
A short clip from his blog posting to wet your appetite:
If you want to see this session go through then vote for this session by performing the following procedure:
· Log into CommNet (http://www.mms-2010.com)
· Click on “BOF Survey” in the left Nav
· In the “Commonly Requested Topics” dropdown select “WMI for the ConfigMgr Admin”
· Press “Submit”
Some of the fancy things I’ll demonstrate:
· Have suppress notification enabled when creating virtual applications
· Have the program of an advertisement disabled at advertisement creation if it is targetting a collection with more than X number of members to prevent Mass-deployments (Unless the program is in the mass deployment category or the advertisement has no mandatory schedule)
Some of the fancy things I’ll explain how to do
· Have any created program limited to predefined target platforms
· Eliminate the need for a Big Red Stop Button (BRSB) (copyright Shaun Cassells) http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/scassells/archive/2008/05/14/how-to-stop-an-errant-advertisement-in-sms-2003-sccm-2007.aspx
And that’s just the plain easy stuff J. If this has you intrigued, than be sure to vote, and yours truly will come to the party (I have some way more fancy tricks up my sleeve, and believe me by the end of this session you’ll think the M in WMI stands for Magic).
This is dark magic in ConfigMgr, Kim said he'll be wearing his magician cloak and a long pointy hat to set the scene as he pushes WMI to the limit!