Sean Roberts - "The Single Source of Truth"

Three Questions with Jeff Wettlaufer - Senior Technical Product Manager, Microsoft System Center

2010-10-26T14:17:00Z

questions with Jeff Wettlaufer

Senior Technical Product Manager System Center - Microsoft Corporation will be speaking at the free System Center event held at Inframon War on Cost at the Churchill War Rooms on November 5. Registrations still open at www.waroncost.com

1- Why people should come to see your session?

[Jeff Wettlaufer] Automated OS deployment processes can reduce rollout labor costs by up to 90%. OS Image Management Labor costs can be reduced by as much as 50% through image reduction and centralized System Center capabilities. Management and Support costs experience at least 18% reduction when centrally managed by System Center. In this session I will talk about how System Center helps reduce your operating costs through a new, flexible approach to user centric computing. In a technical overview of our next release, I will show how this user centric approach allows the administrator (and IT Organization) to think about the user first when targeting applications and OS images. We will also cover how organizations can expect to reduce their infrastructure through hierarchy simplification, and improve their security and compliance through new capability automation. System Center also allows the user to have a flexible working environment that provides a secure well managed platform where and when they want to work, on the devices they prefer.

2- Tell us a little more about yourself and what do you do in your company to fight the War On Cost?

[Jeff Wettlaufer] I am a Sr. Technical Product Manager on the flagship System Center product, Configuration Manager. In the industry for 15 years as SMS, and as ConfigMgr now in its 5^th release, ConfigMgr 2007 R3 delivers increased cost savings through centralized power management, scale and performance enhancements, and OS deployment capability improvements. We are also in beta for the next release of Configuration Manager. This release truly delivers the User Centric vision of systems management. My job is to provide the technical readiness and capability overview of our features for our MS field, our partners and of course our customers. Through the relationship of System Center, Windows 7 and Office 2010, 20% fewer OS-related downtime calls can be achieved, a 25% reduction in the number of PCs that must be re-imaged each year can be targeted, a 90% reduction in desk-side support and as much as 25% reduction in desktop-related calls to the service desk can be realized. These are true cost savings that ring true for the 200 seat organization, or the 300,000 seat enterprise.

3- What up and coming technologies will help us continue to fight the war on cost?
[Jeff Wettlaufer] System Center is entering its next wave of exciting product lineup. Some of these are already in public beta, TAP or Community Evaluation programs. Over the next 24 months, our customers and partners will gain availability to market changing capability enhancements designed to increase security, lower cost of operations and deliver a true user centric experience across both physical , virtual and cloud based environments.

Come see Jeff talk about at the free System Center Event, Inframon War On Cost, November 5th, Churchill War Rooms, London. Registration at www.waroncost.com

Inframon War On Cost 2010; 5th of November, Churchill War Rooms London

2010-10-18T13:59:00Z

After the massive success of last years event on the World War 2 battle cruiser HMS Belfast, Inframon, the leading UK specialist in the Microsoft System Center suite bring you The War On Cost 2010, an exclusive free event at the Churchill War Rooms, that brings together some the worlds leading experts in Microsoft Systems Management Technologies, to show you how you can help your organisation successfully fight the ongoing War on Cost (www.waroncost.com)

Speakers :

Inframon keynote with Gordon McKenna - (MVP - Microsoft System Center, CEO Inframon Ltd)

Data Center to the cloud with Ryan O'Hara - (Senior Director, System Center Product Management - Microsoft Corporation)

Desktop and security convergence with Andrew Conway - (Senior Director, Identity and Security Business Group - Microsoft Coporation)

Microsoft Private Cloud story with Sean Roberts - (CFO - System Center BI Architect - Inframon Ltd) and Simon Skinner - (MVP - Microsoft System Center - Inframon Ltd.)

Operation manager R2 and V.Next with Justin Incarnato - (Senior Program Manager System Center - Microsoft Corporation) and Daniel Savage - (Senior Program Manager System Center - Microsoft Corporation)

System Center Operations Manager V.Next highlights with Jeff Wettlaufer - (Senior Technical Product Manager System Center - Microsoft Corporation)

Service Manager the better together story with Sean Christensen - (Senior Technical Product Manager System Center - Microsoft Corporation)

Inteligent datacenter application protection with Jason Buffington - (Senior Technical Product Manager System Center - Microsoft Corporation)

Datacenter IT Process automation with Greg Charman - (Opalis Technology Specialist - Microsoft UK) and Adam Hall - (Senior Technical Product Manager Management and Security - Microsoft Corporation)

See www.waroncost.com for more details

Desperately Seeking a Permanent Senior SCCM Guru (57k OTE)

2009-11-26T21:29:00Z

Senior SCCM Consultant

NO AGENCIES, HAWKERS or SPECULATORS!!!!

Inframon, a well known and established MVP lead System Center consulting firm is looking for a permanent System Center Configuration Manager Senior consultant to build up this side of the business. This role is a hands-on role where you will get the opportunity to apply your experience across multiple customer environments simultaneously. Whilst most of the work is London based, being a consulting firm you will be onsite on average 75% of the time and this may result in you being away from home.

The successful candidate will be a hard worker (we’re not looking for a 9 to 5’er!) and will be happy to go the extra mile when needed. You will have excellent interpersonal and written (yes, that means documentation!!) skills and have had experience liaising with key business stakeholders. Your personal organizational skills are second to none, however you’re able to deal with the ambiguities of a small business and handle new challenges and tasks thrown at you with ease.

Technically you will have been working with SCCM since its release in 2007 and have at least 3 years experience with SMS. Must have skills include;

1. Advanced architecture and design

2. Software Distribution

a. App-V

b. Application Packaging and Sequencing

3. Operating System Deployment

4. Patch Management

5. SMS to config manager migration experience

Ideally the candidate will be able to demonstrate the following skills/knowledge:

1. Microsoft Certifications (MCP/MCITP in config mgr/AD etc)

2. Experience with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager

3. Active Directory

4. Out of Band Management

5. NAP

6. Direct Access

In return we offer a very competitive base package starting at 45K plus bonus’ up to an additional12k per year, driving your potential salary up to 57K+!

But it’s not all about money. Our staff regularly attend and speak at TechEd EMEA/USA and MMS, we are on just about every TAP under the sun and this all runs on our mind blowingly big/fast lab kit! Our motive is; “Do you have an idea? Go try it out!”

As a small but fast growing firm that is experience %200 growth rate, you have the opportunity to join at the right time! So if you feel you’re up to the challenge, please contact us at (careers@inframon.com) and we’ll be in touch.

PS. We are always on the look out for talented individuals with skills across the whole System Center suite - so if you have skills in other areas of the suite, please feel free to forward your cv to the address above.

Shortcut: Running command as administrator

2009-04-30T08:45:00Z

How many times do you do start->run->cmd->enter then execute your command only to get the dreaded "the requested operation requires elevation" ?? Millions yes!

I learnt something new and cool today I wanted to share. If you press ctrl-shift-enter from the run box it'll run the command as administrator! This works in server 2008 and vista as well I'm told.

Cheers

Sean

No Indexers when creating sharepoint shared service OR Windows Sharepoint Search Service Missing OR Office Sharepoint Server Search Missing

2009-04-28T17:34:00Z

If you've got any of these problem then this means that there are no index servers specified in your farm. Instructions on how to do this can be found over at http://www.cjvandyk.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=96. However if you can't find the office sharepoint server search service in your farm OR after configuration it you notice that it is missing then I've got some bad news for you.

The search service will only appear in it's fully functioning state on a server when you choose "complete" installation rather than "web front end only". I can't find or see any way to modify the install preference after installation so you'll need to uninstall that front end web server and reinstall it. Alternatively you could do a complete install on a separate server and get it to join the farm.

Cheers

Sean

Adding SSRS 2008 Web Reference in Visual Studio 2008

2009-04-12T13:06:00Z

If you wish to interact with the SQL Server Reporting Service 2008 web service programatically you must add a web reference into your Visual Studio project to the web service which generates a WSDL file that visual studio will use to generates the necessary stubbs.

This was fairly straight forward using visual studio 2005 because we could simply right click on the solution -> add web reference. For some reason a genious at Microsoft's has in their brilliance decided to obfuscate this functionality in visual studio 2008!

In addition to this you must also track down the correct url to the SSRS 2008 service asmx file. Logically one would assume it to be either reportservice.asmx or reportservice2008.asmx - however this is not the case, instead you must access the reportservice2005.asmx .... my guess is it has remained the same name for backward compatibility but why not keep the reportservice.asmx?? hmm...

Below are the end to end steps to add a SSRS 2008 web service reference in Visual Studio 2008:

Right click on "Service References" -> "Add Service Reference"
Click on the "Advanced..." button
Click on "Add Web Reference"
Addin the URL to the webservice. Remember you need to put in http://your.sql.server/reportserver/reportservice2005.asmx?WSDL !!!!
GO
Click Add Reference

Viola! You're now setup with your proxy and ready to interact!!

Sean

References:

SQL Reports Deployer: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/reporting-services/SQLReportsDeployer.aspx
SQL Reports Explorer: http://www.codeplex.com/RSSExplorer
Adding visual studio 2008 web references: http://blog.joelowrance.com/archive/2007/08/06/web-references-in-visual-studio-2008.aspx

Powershell & 7Zip incremental backup solution

2009-03-20T14:45:00Z

Last night at the wmug meeting in Victoria, not long after bragging about how 'big' my server was (8 gig) and getting shot down by Firdious' 24 gig beast, I then did the natural thing that any former programmer would do when surrounded by IT Pros .... "ohh yeah, you well should see my powershell script!"

Download Script Here

What: This script will use 7zip to either create a full or differential backup of a folder for you and place it destination location. After the first backup it will perform incremental backups of individual file changes within the folder using the inbuilt functions of 7zip.

Why: A good way to get up to speed on powershell

Usage: powershell.exe d:\7ZipBackupScript.ps1 -sourcefolder d:\backup -outputfolder z:\output -archivename BackupSet -days 30

Note1: The first thing you'll have to do is edit the script and update the path for 7zip. You'll of course need to have 7zip already installed (and powershell for that matter)

Note2: the -days command dictates how many days until a new full archive is created. It determines if a full archive is due by trying to find the last archive (using the archive name) in the -outputfolder location. If it can't find it or the last one is older than the -days then a full archive will be created, otherwise a diff will be created

Caveats: This script is provided 'as is' complete with bugs. There is no implied warranties or garuntees, use at your own risk. This script is unsigned so you'll either need to sign it or set your execution level to unrestricted. 7zip is also quite a cpu intensive task so ensure you schedule this accordingly.

Known Bugs

Doesn't like spaces in paths
If an archive turns out to be invalid then 7zip throws some sort of super exception that I can't get powershell to capture

Key Learnings

Functions in Powershell do not work like I expected as they do not return a value. Instead the values your parameters will capture is infact what is written to stdout. Yep that took me a while to work out!
If you want to use functions, the code that calls that function must come after the function itself... another scripting quirk that would seem perfectly natural to scripters but not programmers.
It was my original intention to learn powershell so i could use it in Operations Manager for agent actions. This may actually not turn out to be that useful because you need to firstly insure that the agent has powershell and powershell has significantly high impact upon resources.
Scripts won't just run, you need to sign them or set your execution level to unrestricted set-executionpolicy unrestricted. Signing them is a convoluted process... maybe another blog idea?

Resources

http://www.powergui.org/index.jspa - Powershell gui is an awesome free tool by quest for writing powershell
http://sradack.blogspot.com/2007/05/compressing-sql-server-backups-with.html - Where I got the 7zip compression bits from
http://www.wintellect.com/cs/blogs/jrobbins/archive/2008/01/05/new-year-s-resolution-powershell.aspx - He had a similar idea
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx - Microsofts powershell site - lots and lots of info.