Take Your Apps Virtual with Microsoft SoftGrid

Kedar Shah and Ahmer Sabri has written a really good article about Softgrid. Softgrid is a product from microsoft to virtualize applications. A step further from server virtualizations.

My personal opinion is that this is a really good product when used rigth, Softgrid isnt right in all situations but its very good om many situations, its possible to replace many MSI packaged applications with this and in the long run you will save money in your packaing and testing process. The integration to System Management Server isnt the best at the moment and there are some design considerations.

You can read the full article here http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/08/SoftGrid

Updated KB Articles

Below you will find recently updated SMS KB articles.

• After you install SMS 2003 SP3, the Wmiprvse.exe process may generate high CPU usage on client computers during hardware-inventory operations
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937882/en-us

• SMS 2003 OSD Feature Pack continues to deploy new images even though the Windows USMT 3.0 or a later version returns an error code
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939363/en-us

• SMS 2003 MIF files do not support keywords that are listed as unsupported by the Distributed Management Task Force
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/840203/en-us

ConfigMgr 2007 RC1 (5831)

Configuration Manager 2007 is now finally RC 1 and is currently build 5831. All ConfigMrg beta testers are now able to download it from the connect website. 

• Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 is now supported for site server and site system roles, and is correctly detected as part of setup prerequisite checking.
• SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 is now required for the SQL database server role.
• Windows Server Update Services 3.0 RTM is now required for the Software Update Point site system role.

http://connect.microsoft.com/

ConfigMgr 2007 – Mixed Mode Client approval

In ConfigMgr 2007 there is a new option to configure client approval. I will not cover the native mode configururation in this how-to. The default behaviour is to approve all domain joined clients, though you may want to change that due to different reasons.

To configure client approval follow this step by step guide.

1. Open the ConfigMgr 2007 Administrator Console
2. Expand the Site Management container
3. Right click on your site
4. Choose properties
5. Go to the “Site Mode” tab
6. Choose your site mode (Mixed/Native)
7. Choose you preffered approval settings if you are running mixed.

Mixed mode configuration page.

Native mode configuration page, I will cover this in another guide.

ConfigMgr 2007 – Clients in brief

So what does ConfigMgr 2007 bring regarding client scenarios ?

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Deployment

There are a few deployment methods for clients listed below , thoose listed in bold are new to ConfigMgr 2007

• Software Update Point (Client installed via WSUS as mandatory update)
• Group Policy Installation (ADM file will be available in RC1)
• Client push installation (new feature site system computer account can be used for installation and the local sitecode is default, uses remote WMI instead of remote registry)
• Logon installation (for users with administrative rights)
• Software distribution (existing client upgrades)
• Manual installation

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Components

The new client now only have 2 binaries, ccmsetup.exe and ccmsetup.msi (msi installations). When installing the new clients , some components needed by the client is also installed if they dont already exist. The components are listed below. The ccmsetup.exe is now also used for uninstallation. New to the client is that its bandwith aware thanks to BITS.

• BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) 2.0 , 2.5 and 3.0 ( 2000 platforms = BITS 2.0,  XP/2003 platforms = BITS 2.5 and Vista/Longhorn platforms = BITS 3.0) *Note BITS 2.0 requiers a reboot setup will not continue untill machine has been rebooted manually
• Windows Installer 3.1 v2 (KB893803)
• Windows Update agent (WUA)
• Core XML services (MSXML6.msi)
• MSRDC (Remote diffirential compression) This is used for branch office scenarios, and its not possible to install this on a w2k machine which means that w2k clients dont support branch office distribution points.
• Wimgapi.msi (Used in OSD scenarios)
• Client.msi ( The Conf Mgr 2007 client package, no longer possible to run this manually)

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Assignments, Registration and Approval

• ConfigMgr 2007 clients cannot be assigned to SMS 2003 or prior sites, though its possible to manage SMS 2003 clients with a ConfigMgr 2007 site.
• Clients also need to register to be able to send and retrive data to site systems.
• There are three different approval methods for clients in mixed mode, this is needed for the clients to be able to use the network access account. Clients in native environments are  automaticlly approved.
• No automatic approval, manuall approval needed
• Automatic approval for domain joined clients
• Automatic approval for all clients.

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System Roles used during deployment

• Site Server – Used when you use the client push scenario
• Management Point – Used for client and policy download
• Server Locator Point – If you dont extend your Active Directory you need SLP records for clients to work
• Distribution Point – Used in OSD and software upgrade scenarios
• Software Update Point – This is used when you deploy client with WSUS
• Fallback Status Point (FSP) – If you want clients can send deployment status messaged to the FSP
• PXE Boot – Can be used in OSD Bare metal scenarios
• State Migration Point -Can be used in machine replacement scenarios

Questions from TechNet Webcast: Deploying System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Clients (Level 300)

I am publishing some of the questions from the webcast I attendad.

Question: Will XP/2003 based clients require an upgrade to BITS 3.0, or will BITS 2.5 suffice?
Answer: BITS 2.5 is sufficient and will be installed by client install/upgrade.

Question: Is reboot on win2000 when installing BITS 2.0 forced or can wait until normal macheni restart
Answer: ccmsetup will wait until a normal restart has taken place

Question: Can the SMS 2003 client and the SCCM client coexist on the same workstation/server?
Answer: No, they are mutually exclusive, if you try to install Config Mgr 2007 client on an SMS 2003 client, it will be upgraded.

Question: Are the SCCM 2007 AD schema extentions compatible with the SMS 2003 AD schema extensions? i.e. can I extend the AD schema for SCCM before upgrading my SMS 2003 site?
Answer: Yes, we use some of the schema extensions that exist in 2003 for SCCM 07 as well. We do not decrement any of the SMS 2003 functionality when we update the schema for SCCM 07.

Question: Can a SMS2003 site and a separate SCCM 07 site coexist in the same AD domain?
Answer: Yes

Question: can you have your own internal certificate authority or does it need to be from external?
Answer: You can use your internal CA

Question: Why would you be in Mixed Mode if your site only contains ConfigMgr 2007 clients?
Answer: If your organization does not have a PKI infrastructure you would not be able to implement native mode.

Question: Is State Migration only used in an environment that only uses Vista?
Answer: If you are referring to User State Migration in OS Deployment: No. You can use State Migration via the User State Migration Toolkit to migrate user settings to/from other Windows Operating Systems, primarily Windows XP, but I believe migration from Windows 2000 Workstation is also supported.

Question: I noticed there was nothing about site boundaries as a prerequisite for client deployments or auto discovery. Is this correct and if so how do clients determine which site is in scope?
Answer: Good point. If you use SMSSITECODE=AUTO, you need to specify correct boundaries and make sure they’re published.

Question: Is the group policy template provided in SCCM 2007 Beta 2?…If not, will it be in RC1?
Answer: No, not provided in Beta 2, but will be in RC1.

Question: Could SUP be used in this manner to push other required software in the environment (i.e. firewall software)?
Answer: Via the Updates Publisher functionality, you could publish custom or 3rd party updates to WSUS, which we would then synch with and could deploy. Out of the box we can scan for and deploy everything published in Microsoft Updates, and push our CCMSETUP client bootstrap via the SUP Client Installation Method.

Question: How does SCCM 2007 integrate/share date/etc with SCOM 2007?
Answer: The main functionality is the ability to put the Operation Manager agent on managed computers into “maintenance mode” so that they’re not reported as down during a software installation or update.

You can read the full list of questions here.

Change sms client cache location with a script

If you would like to change the location of  the client cache on your client you can do this with the following scipt. Where D: is where you want to set the cache location. Change for your own usage.

On Error Resume Next
Set oUIResource = CreateObject(“UIResource.UIResourceMgr”)
Set objCacheInfo = oUIResource.GetCacheInfo
nValueToSet = “D:”
objCacheInfo.Location = nValueToSet

Note: It will create a folder ccmcache under the folder you select. The folder does not need to exist but the drive needs to exist. 

SP3 client collections

Today I had a customer who wanted new collections based on what service pack version the SMS clients had so I wrote them real quick for them. And I guess they are not the only once in need of this so ill post it here.

Clients pre SP3  

Select Name, ClientVersion
From SMS_R_System
Where ClientVersion < “2.50.4253.3000″

SP3  Clients

Select Name, ClientVersion
From SMS_R_System
Where ClientVersion = “2.50.4253.3000″