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WSUS 3.0 SP2 RC Program now available on Microsoft Connect!

Cecilia Cole: I am very pleased to announce that WSUS 3.0 SP2 RC will be available to the general public today, May 26, via the Connect Site.

All you have to do is sign in to your Connect account or sign up now in order to participate in the RC program.This program is available to all registered and authenticated users of Connect.

Service Level Dashboard 2.0 for Operations Manager 2007 R2 now available

The Service Level Dashboard Management Pack 2.0 for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 was delivered late last week by the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team, and is available for you to download today from the System Center Catalog.

Assisting you in tracking, managing, and reporting on your line-of-business (LOB) application service levels, the Service Level Dashboard displays a list of applications and their performance and availability against service level goals.

Operations Manager 2007 R2 hits RTM

The RTM of Operations Manager 2007 R2 was approved on the 22nd of May, which immediately initiated the next stage of the process ... getting this latest version of Microsoft's end-to-end monitoring product for IT environments and datacenters out to YOU! Read more in our overview whitepaper, What's New datasheet, or download the trial, and see customer stories and more information on our pages on Microsoft.com and TechNet.

The trial version of Operations Manager 2007 R2 RTM (build 7221) is now available via the Microsoft Download Center. General Availability of the product will be 1st July 2009, at which point new and existing customers will be able to obtain the bits from their respective customer download centers, such as MVLS.(continue at source)

Examining some common problems with site assignment

Brent Dunsire: In this post I'd like to share information gleaned from a quarters worth of support incidents as regards Configuration Manager 2007 Client Site Assignment. The goal is for this post to help by providing details on common problems driving calls to support.

It is worth noting here many of these details will assist in Client Installation failures as well even though that is a topic for another day. It is also worth noting that many of the problems perceived to be Client Installation failures are in fact successfully installed clients which are unable to assign to a site. In the Admin console when the property Client = No, you may have a successfully installed client that like E.T. cannot phone home. Actually, unlike E.T. it does not yet know where Home is...(continue at source)

Tool to verify AMT certificates

Steve Rachui: One of the challenges that some customers face when configuring AMT support in SCCM is certificates. There are two types of certificates needed.

Provisioning certificate – This certificate is used to connect with AMT capable systems in preparation for provisioning. AMT systems with firmware 2.2.x, 2.6.x and 3.2.1 or higher all support the use of the provisioning certificate. Provisioning certificates are normally obtained from a provider such as Verisign, Comodo, GoDaddy or StarField. The BIOS of AMT systems is preconfigured to support certificates from these providers so no additional work is needed. You can also use a certificate generated by a Microsoft Certificate Authority but that requires additional work and is only supported by AMT 3.2.1 or higher.

AMT client certificate – This certificate is generated during the provisioning process, is specific to each AMT client and is used for ongoing management of the AMT client. This certificate is generated by a Microsoft Certificate Authority and is an automated process.

Obtaining and setting up these certificates requires specific steps which I won’t go into here. Once the certificates are configured, however, it is useful to have a way to verify they are configured correctly. I wrote the attached tool to address this need. CertValidator.vbs is a vbscript that will check both the provisioning certificate and perform a test request of the client certificate to ensure all is configured properly.

Examining some common problems for Software Update Points

Brent Dunsire : In this post I'd like to share information gleaned from a quarters worth of support incidents as regards Configuration Manager 2007 Software Update Points configuration and operations. The goal is for this post to help by providing details on common problems driving calls to support and is focused on the area involving the SUP operations.

It is worth noting that Windows Software Update Server (WSUS) is a key dependency for the Software Update Point (SUP). When WSUS isn't happy, the SUP is also going to have a bad day... Along with this it’s crucial to allow WSUS to be configured by Configuration Manager - as independent configuration of the WSUS Server usually ends in tears, or at least an unruly conflict.(continue at source)

Better together: SQL Server Reporting Services integration with ConfigMgr

As mentioned earlier in several posts on my blog the R2 add-on for ConfigMgr delivers integration with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 and 2005 (SSRS). This enables administrators and managers to generate built-in or custom reports with relevant data across the entire enterprise.

The top reasons to use SSRS with ConfigMgr are:
- the ability to configure timeouts on a report basis
- the ability to export reports to PDF, Excel etc
- to create custom reports with SQL Report Builder or BI Development Studio
- the ability to easily import and export SSRS reports
- the use to enable report caching
- the use to enable snapshots
- to enable report subscriptions to file-share or e-mail

(continue at source)

FAQ - SQL Reporting Services Integration with System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2

Bhaskar Krishnan: At MMS 2009 we announced that, with the next release of Configuration Manager, SQL Reporting Services integration, introduced in Configuration Manager 2007 R2, will replace the existing ASP-based reporting feature. So I thought this would be a really good time to come up with a FAQ that would make your transition easier and also outline some caveats that you should be aware of.(continue at source)

OpsMgr 2007: How to get alerts for domain group membership changes

Using System Center Operations Manager 2007, you want to get an alert for any change in the domain admin group or any other group for that matter. If this is something you think you might want to configure then here are the steps to set this up. (continue at source)

Configuration Manager 2007 Documentation Library Downloadable Quarterly Update

The latest downloadable quarterly update for the Configuration Manager 2007 Documentation Library has been posted to the download center. The April 2009 version is the newest downloadable update available and contains new material and fixes to documentation problems reported by customers since the last update was published for the January 2009 version.

Both the January and April 2009 versions of the downloadable documentation help updates are now available on the Configuration Manager 2007 Help File Update Wizard download center page and additional, future quarterly updates will also be posted to this location.

To get the most recent downloadable Configuration Manager Documentation Library help, go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=71816b0f-de06-40e0-bce7-ad4b1e4377bb&displaylang=en.

SCVMM R2 RC Features

Since releasing VMM R2 Beta, we’ve been working on an update to R2 and we’re readying a RC version that will ship in early June (VMM TAP customers will get an early preview later this month). In this context, I just wanted to give a headsup on some new features that we’ve added since Beta that’ll show up in the RC release. Most of these features are a result of feedback we got from customers and partners, we do listen to your feedback, so please keep it coming. Without further ado, here are the features.(continue at source)

ConfigMgr 2007 Distribution Points Load Testing

Chris Adams: At Microsoft, we have 280,000+ client machines that are managed worldwide and in our past life we were planning to scale our service to other companies client machines as well. As part of the platform team responsible for ensuring that our ConfigMgr 2007 infrastructure could scale to support hundreds of thousands of clients (and even millions), we had to find a way to solve a rather non-trivial mechanism for testing our Distribution Points (DP) to ensure they could effectively manage the connections thrown at them by the CCMEXEC (SMS) client agent.(continue at source)

WMI Troubleshooting Tips

Brian Huneycutt: The Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) subsystem has evolved over time to become a key dependency for many applications, Configuration Manager being one of them. We've been intertwined since the .698 build of WMI shipped with Systems Management Server 2.0 (there was even a WBEM Inventory component in SMS 1.2).

Given this history and relationship it's important to know what to do when something goes wrong. (continue at source)

Recap of Edge Videos Produced for MMS 2009

Dave Morehouse: Just wanted to give you all a summary of the various videos we put together in the run-up to and during MMS. All together, we produced and published with the amazing help of Adam Carter and Joey Snow from the Edge team, 11 videos (with 2-3 more in the hopper):

• How System Center Helps Reduce IT Costs, Jeff Wettlaufer and Brad Anderson, 3.12.09
• What Virtualization Means for the Desktop, Jeff Wettlaufer and Brad Anderson, 4.23.09
• Microsoft Management Summit 2009 Day 1 Keynote Recap with Brad Anderson, Adam Carter and Brad Anderson, 4.28.09
• Operations Manager R2, Adam Carter and Sacha Dawes, 4.28.09
• Microsoft Management Summit 2009 Day 2 Keynote Recap with Brad Anderson, Adam Carter and Brad Anderson, 4.29.09
• Microsoft Management Summit 2009 Keynote Demo, Joey Snow and Jeff Wettlaufer, 4.29.09
• Behind the Scenes at MMS for the Keynote Demo, Joey Snow and Jeff Wettlaufer, 4.29.09
• Finding Cost Savings in the Cloud, Isaac Roybal and Jon Schmitz,  4.29.09
• Announcing System Center Essentials 2010, David Mills, Jeremy Winter, and Adam Carter, 5.1.09
• Visio Integration with Operations Manager R2, Adam Carter and Dale Koetke, 5.6.09
• MMS 2009 Day 2 Keynote Demo (On Stage), Jeff Wettlaufer and Brad Anderson, 5.6.09

To give you an idea of the popularity of this channel, collectively and cumulatively since they were posted, these videos have garnered already more than 70,000 views, with 2/3 of that within the last 2 weeks. You’ll find additional System Center-related videos in our Edge topic area.

ConfigMgr 2007: The Preload Package Tool (PreloadPkgOnSite.exe) Explained

When using the Preload Package Tool (PreloadPkgOnSite.exe) to preinstall a package on a DP on a child site, the tool may not work as expected and the package may not show as being installed on the remote DP where the tool was used.(continue at source)

ConfigMgr 2007: How to manually kick off a client provisioning task

By default the SCCM server's site control file sets the agent to provision check automatically every 24 hours. This is not configurable in the UI nor is it an option on the Actions tab of the agent (unlike Hardware Inventory or Machine Policy Requests). In a lab or testing environments this 24 hour default cycle may not be convenient but with the steps below you can execute this check at will or use while troubleshooting issues.(continue at source)

Resolving Certreq Errors: Key Size and User Permissions

Carol Bailey: I've openly admitted that I don't find the command-line utility, Certreq.exe, the easiest of the Certificate Services methods to use when it comes to deploying certificates for Configuration Manager native mode. But to some extent I made my peace with Certreq and started to recommend it when the later versions of Web enrollment no longer allowed installing certificates into the computer store. I always recommend installing directly into the computer store rather than installing into the user store and then exporting the certificate - because apart from the extra admin overheads, this workaround requires that the private key is exportable, which is not advisable for security reasons. Using Certreq.exe to request a certificate means that you can install directly into the computer store by using the parameter MachineKeySet = True.(continue at source)

Take System Center Service Manager for a test drive today!

Try out Microsoft System Center Service Manager in a free, online virtual environment:

http://www.microsoftservicemanagertestdrive.com/

The scenarios in this lab will demonstrate an overview of a Microsoft System Center Service Manager installation and initial configuration, covering the following topics:

* Installing Service Manager
* Importing data from Active Directory,System Center Configuration Manager, and data and alerts from Operations Manager 2007 SP1 and above
* Configuring User Roles within Service Manager
* Manually adding users that were not imported from Active Directory
* Creating several templates, configuring initial parameters, creating queues, lists, and groups, and then creating a management pack to save any custom objects
* Installing Service Manager in a production environment in a scenario where Service Manager is installed on four computers

System Requirements: http://scsm.vlabcenter.com/systemrequirements.aspx