Observations and stuff I find interesting – mostly about System Center
2010-11-07 Leave a comment
Hey folks, if you would like to test drive the beta of the next version of Configuration Manager, Microsoft’s VHD Test Drive program has a fully configured SCCM VNext VHD available for download here.
2010-10-22 Leave a comment
It was a bit tough to wrap my head around the whole concept of hard link migration in USMT. In the past, if I wanted to re-image a user’s machine, I needed to safeguard all the user’s precious data first. I might store their documents on a network server, or removable storage. Once I’d done that, I would rebuild their machine, and then restore the user data from it’s temporary vault. Problem was, all this data transfer took time. If the user had a lot of local data, it could take a very long time. Read more of this post
2010-10-06 2 Comments
Today Microsoft Learning announced the official release of course 6451B: Planning, Deploying and Managing Microsoft® System Center Configuration Manager 2007 on October 5, 2010. The course will be available for order by Learning Partners on October 27, 2010.
Course Syllabus can be accessed at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Course.aspx?ID=6451B.
What is new? This course has been revised significantly from the original release of 6451, and updated to include both SCCM R2 and R3 features. It’s a great course!
2010-10-01 Leave a comment
WIM2VHD is a tool that will create a bootable VHD from a Windows 7 or 2008 R2 WIM image without having to run Windows Setup. Read more of this post
2010-08-29 Leave a comment
It’s less than one month away – Microsoft TechDays 2010. http://www.techdays.ca/ There’s a great Deployment track as well as an interesting looking Management track. Check it out – it’s two days worth of great material.
2010-08-26 Leave a comment
Configuration Manager provides remarkable troubleshooting log files. Both Configuration Manager servers and Configuration Manager clients log pretty much everything they do, and these log files are a wealth of troubleshooting information. Microsoft maintains a complete List of Log File in Configuration Manager at their technet site. I’ll be posting more about log files soon.
2010-08-23 Leave a comment
Microsoft is providing a fully configured virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 R2 and SCCM v.Next. Just follow the link to download the test VM.
2010-08-23 Leave a comment
Was reading a great how-to article today on Steve Rachui’s Manageability blog. It’s a sample proof of concept only, you would have to tweak it to work the way you want it to, but it has some great potential. Why would you want to drive imaging from the command line? One compelling reason – you don’t want the team responsible for delivering image to have access to the SCCM Console. Users could visit a web page to have an OSD image delivered. Very cool!
You’ll find the whole article at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/steverac/archive/2010/08/23/os-imaging-via-web-page.aspx.
2010-06-01 Leave a comment
6451B “Planning, Deploying, and Managing Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager R2″, the revised version of the 6451 course, is now available in Beta. The original 6451A was a good course, based on the original RTM version of SCCM. The B version is now updated to include R2 version features.
Students will learn most of the material that was included in the original 6451A, with the addition of the following new content; Read more of this post
2010-05-25 Leave a comment
Yesterday Microsoft released the beta 1 version of the next generation of SCCM. Check out some of the cool new features, including links to the beta download at http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/archive/2010/05/24/the-next-generation-of-client-management.aspx.
Configuration Manager Team Blog
Yet Another System Center Blog 