Aidan Finn: SCCM 2007

ENERGY STAR Power Management Assessment CP for SCCM 2007

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:32:06 GMT

Microsoft has released a ConfigMgr Desired Configuration Management template pack for auditing the energy saving settings of your computers. Whether you believe in global warming or not, there's no denying that oil reserves are reducing and energy costs are rocketing. Governments are also considering carbon footprint charges. Anything you can do to reduce energy costs, i.e. reducing that carbon footprint, will save the business money.

Make use of the power control settings in Vista (via group policy) and make use of Configuration Manager DCM to monitor them and you might just reduce the operating costs of your business.

Preload Package Tool for ConfigMgr 2007

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:23:54 GMT

Microsoft has just released this very handy utility for SCCM 2007. It previously was released for SMS 2003.

Imagine this scenario. You've got a HQ running System Center Configuration Manager 2007. You've got a series of branch offices with limited bandwidth and local distribution points. You want to deploy your latest build of Office 2007. Now that is a big package. You could let it replicate over the WAN at the weekend but maybe your business is open 7 days a week. I've seen this scenario where SMS controlled the PC's in a retail operation whose market was 7 days a week. Using this tool, you could conceivably distribute the package via DVD and manually load it into your distribution points. Sure, this is manual work but it's meant to be used in only those exceptional circumstances where there are huge packages to replicate. Once you've imported the package on the distribution point, you add the site to the package properties in the SCCM console.

Here's how MS describes it:

"When software distribution packages are created, information about them is sent to child sites in the hierarchy. If a child site has a distribution point installed that is listed in the package properties to host the content, the content is transferred over the network and uses available network bandwidth sending compressed copies of all required package source files. To avoid using network bandwidth, the Preload Package Tool can be used to copy compressed software distribution package source files to the remote child site before assigning the child site distribution point to host the package source files".

ConfigMgr 2007 R2 Release Candidate Available

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:53:04 GMT

System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Release 2 (SCCM R2) is available for download for the purposes of testing and evaluation. What does this offer you?

Support for application virtualisation (SoftGrid) - I like the sound of SoftGrid and know some people who rave about it. Haven't played with it yet because it's got a limited (Software Assurance) market.
ForeFront Client Security integration - I was just asked about this yesterday.
Report on SCCM 2007 R2 using SQL Reporting Services - This will probably appeal to the larger customers who have SQL Reporting skills in house. Honestly, that's not all that common a skill.
Client health monitoring using a set of tools and reports - Yeah! This is necessary. The most common problem I have had with the SMS family is clients failing because of "stale" computer accounts.
OS Deployment Improvements: Deploy to a computer without pre-configuring a computer account. Excellent! Who needed all that extra manual work. I might as well have just used ImageX. Now we have a solution I can live with. Multicast Deployment is added. That's the last justifiable criticism the Ghost fans had. You can also now run command line tasks using alternate credentials.

One final note. Some of the rather quick SCCM MVP's have found that the R2 installation (20MB which installs on top of SCCM 2007 SP1) will only install on an evaluation edition of SCCM 2007 SP1. Doh!

I'm planning on installing a Hyper-V lab at home this week so I can get playing.

MVP - System Center Configuration Manager 2007

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:34:36 GMT

WOW! I just got a mail from the folks in Microsoft telling me that I've been awarded an MVP for SCCM 2007. I am absolutely chuffed. I'm supposed to be living on a budget but I feel some nice beer coming my way tonight.

That email was a real shot in the arm. Gotta get back to the writing again :)