FAQ from the Technet chat of ConfigMgr 2007 – 29th of June

Yesterday I attended the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 chat with the Product Team on Technet , and I have summarized some of the most frequent questions that came up during the chat. 

Q: Is SCCM fully supported with IPv6 ?
A: Yes

Q: Will there ba a new toolkit for SCCM ? Or what is the recomendation regarding that ?
A: There will not be a new toolkit. Our goal is to work the existing tools/functionality into product and/or on the CD.

Q: Will SCCM 2007 be fully supported if deployed on VMware either ESX or GSX?
A: Only virtual Server

Q: Will mof updates process be changed in 2007
A: yes, we are looking into proving the experience.

Q: Can the Capacity Planner (Excel spreadsheet based) for SMS 2003 be used for SCCM 2007 or will there be a new one available for 2007?
A: Plans in this area are still being finalized.

Q: Any plans to integrate a web based admin console that is supported by MS?
A: No plans for web bases admin console for ConfigMgr 2007

Q: Will you be able to use network load balancing appliances to point clients to package distribution points?
A: No. This isn’t supported.

Q: Will SQL mirroring been supported for high availabiltiy of the sccm database ?
A: We support the SQL database on a cluster, but we do not support SQL database mirroring

Q: What are the plans for Softgrid Integration with SCCM ?
A: Yes, there are plans for SCCM and Softgrid integration. But this won’t be a feature at SCCM RTM.

Q: Is BITS 2.5 required for XP SCCM advanced clients to use download and execute? If yes, will it be installed as part of the SCCM client install?
A: Yes and yes

Q: Does the SMS 2003 XP advanced client support BITS 2.5? In other words, can I installs BITS 2.5 now on my SMS 2003 clients?
A: Yes, you can.

Q: What is the expected LAN traffic per hour/client? Are there any guides for the various agent and the size of packets it generates?
A: This data is still being gathered at this time.

Q: What is the DB size per client? Will SCCM require more space per client than SMS 2003? If so, at what ratio?
A: This is likely to increase due to the additional functionality provided by SCCM, data on this is still being gathered.

Newsgroup questions !

Are you new to SMS 2003 and need some quick answers ? Try the SMS Communitys and newsgroups. you can find them if you follow this link -> Community.

Another good resource is the Tech FAQs. They contain alot of  good information, if you need to know something check there first.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sms/2003/library/techfaq/default.mspx

An example of a question could be:

Question:

There seems to be a limitation on the Web Reporting tool of 10,000 records. Is there any way to increase that?

Answer:

You can change the limit by modifying the registry on the reporting point machine. Under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftSMSReporting key, add the DWORD value Rowcount and assign it the value for your desired maximum limit. The maximum row count in decimal is 32767. If you need to return more than 32,767 records, you can set the row count to 0xffffffff hexadecimal, which will return all rows. However, this significantly increases the workload on the SMS site database. If you experience problems displaying the values in reports, add the Values Rowcount registry key by using the same settings as above.
Be aware that if you increase this value, you might also need to adjust the AspBufferingLimit setting. For more information about changing the AspBufferingLimit setting, see the FAQ “When my Web reports contain a column that has more than 5,000 records I get an IIS error 500 on my IIS 6.0 reporting point. How do I fix this?” earlier in this document.

So if you havent checked the Tech FAQ:s out do so.

Microsoft SoftGrid 4.1 Service Pack 1

Service Pack 1 for Softgrid has been released. Blelow you will find some information from the KB further reading please go to this KB article KB938497.

New Capabilities
Microsoft SoftGrid 4.1 SP1 improves support for sequencing SxS applications that have public assemblies, such as the 2007 Microsoft Office release

Upgrade or Uninstall and Reinstall?
You can upgrade a client to SoftGrid 4.1 SP1 from a client version 3.2, version 4.0, or version 4.1. The upgrade process preserves all system configuration settings and user-profile settings. When you upgrade from version 3.2, the client software-application cache is flushed. After the upgrade, you must reload applications.
We recommend that you upgrade clients to the latest version. However, you can also uninstall earlier versions before you install client version 4.x. To uninstall earlier versions, use the Add or Remove Programs utility. When you uninstall, the local SoftGrid settings are removed for the user who performs the uninstall, and the cache is flushed.
If you are using an earlier version of the SoftGrid Sequencer, you cannot upgrade directly to version 4.1 SP1. You must restore the appropriate backup image base operating system on the computer that is running SoftGrid Sequencer before you install version 4.1 SP1. The backup image should contain end-user software that will be on every client computer.
You can upgrade all SoftGrid server components from version 3.1, version 3.2, version 4.0, or version 4.1. Upgrades from earlier releases of the Microsoft SoftGrid components are not supported. If you have older Microsoft SoftGrid components, uninstall them by using the Add or Remove Programs utility before you install version 4.1 SP1 components.
The server upgrade automatically validates existing applications and identifies application configuration problems.

Note: Applications that you sequence with the SoftGrid Sequencer version 4.x may not stream correctly to SoftGrid clients that are running version 3.x. You can upgrade target clients to version 4.x or continue to stream version 3.x sequenced applications to the older clients. Testing with client versions 4.x and SoftGrid Sequencer version 4.x is recommended.

Download locations
SoftGrid Sequencer (4.1.1.303)
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/6/c/06cf3aac-347e-4e42-9355-fcfcec3c7f43/SoftGrid_sequencer_setup_4.1.1.303.exe
SoftGrid Server (4.1.1.302)
http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/f/c/afc8cf1f-d271-426e-923a-b04a34674c3c/SoftGrid_server_setup_4.1.1.302.exe
SoftGrid for Terminal Services (4.1.1.302)
http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/0/1/f01b4fcd-8778-4e49-b56c-7ae6ab72f6ff/SoftGrid_ts_setup_4.1.1.302.exe
SoftGrid for Windows Desktops (4.1.1.302)
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/b/8/5b87fbe8-5973-4a57-9b04-44e2f3d80be4/SoftGrid_wd_setup_4.1.1.302.exe

Having a hard time to find SMS documentation ?

If you are having a hard time to find SMS documentation , then it would be a great thing to add this url as a Favorite. It contains most related information you need to start working with SMS.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sms/2003/library/proddocs.mspx

SMS 2003 Supported Configurations

In one way I am not supprised and in another I am supprised of how many people that are trying to install SMS without reading the documentaion. Therefor I am posting a link to the supported Configurations here and hopefulle bring some light to them.

SMS 2003 SP1 Supported Configurations

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sms/2003/library/sp1supportedconfigs.mspx

SMS 2003 SP2 Supported Configurations

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sms/smssp2/supconfig/0bdafa4a-71b3-4ed6-94bb-42a9f3986951.mspx

SMS 2003 SP3 Supported Configurations

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sms/sms2003/supconfig/cdc59381-dc2e-438c-a4a1-c2bcbb746ab5.mspx?mfr=true

SMS 2003 and Network Communication

As many people finally are starting to use firewalls on their local servers and pc, theese document will come quite in handy when you are implementing SMS in your environment or when your inplementing a firewall in your SMS environment.

Ports that Systems Management Server 2003 uses to communicate through a firewall or through a proxy server
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826852

Scenarios and Procedures for Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003: Security
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3d81b520-a203-4376-a72d-fd34a6c4a44c&DisplayLang=en

Service Manager Beta1

Finally its here ! The beta of System Center Service Manager. I have been waiting for this ever since I heard about the product , now I can finally play with it.

 Beta 1 provides a wide range of functionality for you to test and evaluate:
· Distributed install
· Administration wizards for easy solution configuration
· AD connection wizard
· SMS 2003 SP3 connection wizard
· Asset inventory including the first phase of asset reconciliation in the CMDB
· Incident management including queues, customizable drop-down values, asset linking, and notification workflows
· Change management including queues, customizable drop-down values, asset and incident linking, multiple review stages, activity management and notification workflows
· A self-service portal which includes knowledge search, service request submission, and software provisioning integrated with SMS 2003 SP3
· Knowledge Management including authoring, viewing, comment and rating all integrated with Word 2007 and SharePoint 2007
· Data Warehousing and Reporting including 6 sample reports for incident, change and asset data

Please remember : Production deployments on beta 1 are not supported. We are unable to provide any upgrade from Beta 1 to Beta 2.

More information is available on the Http://connect.microsoft.com for Beta testers.

Virtualized applications

Have you heard of Softgrid ? If you havent I strongly recommend you to take a look at Softgrid. Sofgrid is a software that virtulizes applications, so that they no longer are installed on the client operating system. Today many organisations spend several hours customizing, packaging and testing their MSI packages before deploying them to their enterprise.

A virtual applications runs with with full priviliges in its “virtual bouble” directly streamed from the application server or via Terminal Services without affect to the local operating system. This saves alot of effort in testing and risks for application incompabillity.

A typical softgrid environment could look like this. I will post further articles about the different components within softgrid.

More resources on softgrid is upcoming here and untill then you will find more information on www.microsoft.com/softgrid

If you would like to discuss Softgrid or System management you are more than welcome to contact me.