The D-Spot (The Deployment Spot)

During the analysis phase of a windows 7 x64 migration I have been using the MAP, ACT and OMPM tools.

After handing over all the lists on the application and current client side infrastructure, the first question that came is: “ok I see a lot of applications listed that are only installed on one machine, can you give us the machinenames?”.

ehm well, it should be possible…

in the ACT GUI you can find the computername if you click on the application, but I had to find a way to automate this

So I installed the SQL management studio express and dived into the ACT database.

Here is the SQL query to give you all applications installed on only 1 machine:

SELECT DISTINCT
Application_Computer_Count.computerCount,
Application_Computers_Query.machineName,
Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppName,
Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppID

FROM         Application_Computer_Count INNER JOIN
Application_Report_Complete_vw ON Application_Computer_Count.appID = Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppID INNER JOIN
Application_Computers_Query ON Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppID =Application_Computers_Query.appID

WHERE     (Application_Computer_Count.computerCount= 1)

ORDER BY
Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppName

What is more interesting is the following query, which will give you all applications installed on 1 pc marked with 1 or more issues:

SELECT DISTINCT

App_Issue_Counts.appID,
App_Issue_Counts.activeIssuesCount, Application_Computer_Count.computerCount,
Application_Computers_Query.machineName,Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppName

FROM         App_Issue_Counts INNER JOIN

Application_Computer_Count ON App_Issue_Counts.appID =Application_Computer_Count.appID INNER JOIN

Application_Computers_Query ON App_Issue_Counts.appID =Application_Computers_Query.appID INNER JOIN

Application_Report_Complete_vw ON App_Issue_Counts.appID =Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppID

WHERE     (App_Issue_Counts.activeIssuesCount >=’1′) AND (Application_Computer_Count.computerCount = 1)

ORDER BY
Application_Report_Complete_vw.AppName

another thing with ACT 5.6, was that it did not seem clear to me why none of the 16 bit applications were listed in the collected data

Luckily there is a way to find them with another SQL query, checkout (and credits to): http://www.theexperienceblog.com/2011/04/14/how-to-find-16-bit-applications-in-your-act-inventory

The last thing for now on ACT is that the collector is not capable yet to work with windows 7 sp1.

you need to import a sql script to make this possible

Here is the content of this script (the import can be done via osql.exe -E -i<thenameofthesqlscript> -S”<sqlserver\instance>” -d<dbname> :

INSERT INTO.[dbo].[OS]
([osID]
,[osName]
,[majorVersion]
,[minorVersion]
,[buildNumber]
,[servicePackName]
,[servicePackMajor]
,[servicePackMinor]
,[csdVersion]
,[productType]
,[suite]
,[publishedDate])
VALUES
(N’6.1.1′
,N’Windows 7 SP1′
,6
,1
,0
,N’Service Pack 1′
,1
,0
,N’Service Pack 1′
,0
,0
,’2011-02-22′)
GO

Also remember, the infliction point to test applications during a migration is:

COST of failure X PROBABILITY of failure > COST of testing

The deployment wizard was not showing any Task Sequences after an upgrade from MDT 2010 U1 to MDT 2012 beta2.

Of course I updated my Deployment Share after the upgrade. Updating a second time, and completely regenerate the boot images got my attention that I didn’t reimported the boot images into WDS.

After reimporting the new generated boot images with MDT 2012 my Task Sequences showed up and I was able to start deploying again!

So don’t forget to reimport your WinPE boot images after upgrading to MDT 2012!

I was deploying Windows ThinPC using MDT with a customer, and received this error:

Windows could not parse or process unattend answer file [C:\MININT\unattend.xml] for pass [windowsPE]. A component or setting specified in the answer file does not exist.

According to the MS forums this should be solved in MDT 2012 beta 1. So we upgraded to MDT 2012 beta 2, but unfortunately the error remains.

Deleting the <UpgradeData> node from the unattend.xml, like Michael mentioned, fixed the issue. Windows ThinPC deployed successful when this node was removed.

As of this writing, the SQL Server installed within the PoC Jumpstart Kit 2.0 is expired. While the new version 3.0 isn’t available yet.

This can be solved by disabling the time synchronization between the host, set the date to one in the past, and restart de SQL services afterwards.

net stop vmictimesync
date 24/2/2011
net start mssql$pocserver
net start mssql$microsoftscm
net start mssql$maps
net start vmictimesync

source: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpropoc/thread/6ccb11d4-e2cf-4af3-8df1-d2fdfb294d33

Edit: Proof of Concept Jumpstart Kit v3.0 was released, start your download managers!