If you want to control the location of your packages instead of SCCM using the drive with the most available disk space, resulting in your packages being spread around several drives there are two options:
- Use a server share site system to host the distribution role. This however does not prevent the folder SMSPKGC$ from being created and his some disadvantages… (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb892801.aspx)
- Another option is to create an ‘no_sms_on_drive.sms’ file on all drives where you don’t want any packages located. It’s a bit simplistic but it does the trick…
Thought I’d share this since I just used this method for the first time…
Grtz,
Steve.
The System Center Configuration Manager team would like to announce that the following has been released and available for immediate download:
Configuration Manager 2007 R3 Release Candidate (RC)
The official Release Candidate for Configuration Manager 2007 R3 can be downloaded by navigating to http://connect.microsoft.com downloads section of the Configuration Manager 2007 Open Beta program. Please read the release notes, they are separate from the build and also located in the download section.
Support and Feedback:
- All registered Open Beta users can submit bugs and make product suggestions using the Feedback tools provided on Microsoft Connect. This feedback is triaged daily by members of the Product Group. It is your feedback that helps drive feature changes and improvements. See the help link on the ConfigMgr MSConnect homepage for more instructions.
- Newsgroups for ConfigMgr07 R3 can be accessed on Microsoft Connect, they are a great way to post questions and receive general support for specific R3 related questions and answers.
ConfigMgr07 R3 was announced at the 2010 Microsoft Management Summit by Brad Anderson during his keynote. Power management is at the core of the R3 release, it addresses the need that many organizations have to monitor and reduce the power consumption of their computers. ConfigMgr07 R3 Power Management leverages the power management features built into Windows to apply relevant and consistent settings to computers in the organization. There are three major components to power management in ConfigMgr07 R3:
1. Monitoring and Planning: Power Management collects information about computer usage and power settings for computers in the origination. Reports are provided to allow the administrator to analyze this data and determine optimal power management settings for computers.
2. Enforcement: Power management allows the administrator to create power plans which can be applied to collections of computers. These power plans configure Windows power management settings on computers, and different power plans can be configured for peak and non-peak working hours.
3. Compliance: After applying power plans to computers in the organization, the administrator can run reports to validate that power settings were correctly applied and to calculate power and carbon footprint savings across collections of computers.
In addition to power management, ConfigMgr07 R3 will provide customers with enhanced scale and performance support (scale to 300K managed clients per hierarchy, Active Directory delta discovery, dynamic collection updates), as well as enablement of further capabilities for operating system deployment. A full list of the R3 features can be found on Microsoft Connect at the “What’s new in R3” post.
Navigate to Microsoft Connect today and download the ConfigMgr07 R3 Release Candidate (RC) product. Please review the Release Notes before performing any installation and the help (chm) file for specific deployment and supportability guidance.
If you experience any issues with the download or the ConfigMgr Microsoft Connect site please contact, sccmtap@microsoft.com
Regards,
The Configuration Manager Customer Team
RTM is scheduled to be released in December 2010
Recently I had a problem with my Windows 7 clients (built with my new and freshly created image) where they would not get activated by the KMS server. After some research I noticed that the KMS counter was not updated with new client and so my KMS server would never reach the point where it would actually start activating my clients (25 clients).
The reason for the KMS server not updating it’s counter was the fact that all my clients where reporting to the KMS server with the same Client Machine ID (CMID) which I noticed trough the events it reported in the Key Management Service event log of my KMS server.
If you ‘Bing’ on this one you will get lot’s of posts where this is due to the sysprep command which is not ran with the /generalize parameter. This parameter removes all hardware dependencies and when building a new client, it will create a new CMID.
However I did use the /generalize parameter so why do I get the same behavior. The solution is simple but it did take me some time to notice that I seemed to have missed the <skiprearm> setting in my xml answer file. This setting should be removed before using the image in a production environment! If not you’ll end up rebuilding your image like me…
More info: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929829
Grtz,
Steve.
Anyone using SCCM and Forefront Client Security? If so, then you probably have an auto-approve rule in WSUS for your definition files and therefore have these files automatically downloaded to your server. Seen the amount of definition files that are released, you could notice that these files begin to consume a significant amount of disk space and, as in my case, could run into disk space problems if not adequately monitored. Therefore I needed to get these files cleaned up to free up some disk space.
Cleaning up these definition files and freeing up disk space can be done trough the ‘Cleanup Wizard’ in your WSUS console. Normally you would manage your updates trough the SCCM console but the difference is that, by creating this auto-approve rule for definition files, these ‘updates’ are managed by your underlying WSUS infrastructure and not your SCCM infrastructure which you would use for other updates (Windows updates, etc.)
The first time I ran the Cleanup Wizard, this would appear to go in a state of not responding and finally freeze up. These was because it was the first time I ran the wizard and has selected all different tasks…
It is better to perform these tasks individually and in certain order, the first time you run the cleanup wizard. I performed them in the following order:
- I first selected the two bottom options where you decline certain updates
- Then the first option, deleting unused updates and update revisions
- To end with the third option where unnneeded updates are deleted
If like me, you want to schedule this cleanup to run every month or so, you can do this by using the following tool: http://wsus.codeplex.com/releases/view/17612. The tool provides you with an executable, help file and an sql file. Considering the arguments you pass in your command, you can perform the several cleanup tasks as you find in the cleanup wizard of WSUS and perform a database maintenance. All arguments and command line option can be found in the help file, I found it very useful.
Grtz,
Steve.
In the case I’m not the last one in the world to know this site, appdeploy.com provides useful info and tips & tricks about packaging common applications…
This must be the shorted post ‘till now 
When deploying several packages trough SCCM, I ran into this one particular package which would stop downloading without any clear reason. When checking the log files, these would not display an error, just the download process would show that it suddenly stopped downloading… The SCCM Client center tool showed a ‘WaitingContent’ status.
After some searching I found this article from Matthew Boyd which pointed me to the fact that this was an IIS problem and not a SCCM problem. The IIS logfile showed an ‘404.8 – hidden namespace’ error. The cause for this error was the Request Filtering feature for the Web Server which contains a <HiddenSegments> portion in the ‘applicationHost.config’ file. Since my package contained a bin folder, I had to remove the line: <add segment="bin" />. The ApplicationHost.config file can be found here: “%windir%\System32\inetsrv\config\”
So finally I would be able to deploy my package… or not?
Next error I bumped into was again an IIS error, now giving me a ‘404.7 – File extension denied’ error. This is due to the same Reguest Filtering feature where in the same ‘applicationHost.config’ file there is a fileExtensions portion. For each file extension of which files exist in the package, I changed the line to allowed=”true”. This is something that is pointed out in the prerequisite steps by Microsoft but since I had no idea of which packages would get distributed at the time of installation…
And still I could not get my package deployed…
Now I received the error in the SCCM log file that the hash verification failed. To solve this problem I had to verify that no files were marked hidden in the package. Once these files were no longer marked as hidden, and did a refresh (not an update!) of the DP, the package finally installed correctly…
For some days I’ve been searching for a problem I came across when deploying XP machines with SCCM. The problem was that my driver would not get installed as part of the task sequence. A problem that never occured when deploying Vista/Windows 7 machines.
After some searching around I came across this post: http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jsandys/archive/2009/03/12/old-dog-new-tricks.aspx
As mentioned in the post, I also tried adding/removing the drivers, recreating my TS, etc without result untill I added a command line at the end of my task sequence:
rundll32.exe Syssetup.dll, UpdatePnpDeviceDrivers
This reinitiates the Windows Hardware detection and all drivers were installed without a problem…
While deploying my first Windows 7 client with SCCM 2007 R2 SP2 I would receive a failure when the sysprep task would start. However the cause for this error was not due to my sysprep package but my SCCM client package. I had forgotten to create a new SCCM client package to use in my task sequence after installing SP2:
New package from definition -> select “Configuration Manager Client Upgrade”
