Check out the new blog series regarding SCCM 2012!
Offcourse ‘the-d-spot’ remains a good resource to check out as well

http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2011/10/04/system-center-configuration-manager-2012-blog-series-kick-off.aspx

Regards,

• Windows 7 SP1
• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

Hotfix can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2489044/en-us

You can find all archived webcasts of the past months for your review…

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=1b23c540-9b9f-4d41-a05d-d4b216061957

Seems like my error (the issue due to Windows Media Player sharing being enabled) and many other known issues are discussed in this article.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd349350(WS.10).aspx

hope it helps you out…

• 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

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.

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:

1. I first selected the two bottom options where you decline certain updates
2. Then the first option, deleting unused updates and update revisions
3. 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.

Kim Oppalfens, who is a SCCM MVP, has released a neat utility called SccmAutoDoc. SccmAutoDoc is a command line utility that automatically documents an SCCM site into a human-readable form with minimal user input. Only the useful information is included, as opposed to items that are largely used internally. SccmAutoDoc’s requirements are spelled out on its site:

SCCMAutoDoc requires a machine with Word 2007 installed and access to the ConfigMgr site server and ConfigMgr Sms Provider. Word 2007 does NOT need to be installed on the Site server/SQL server or Sms Provider computer. The program can work from a remote machine running Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7.

Word 2007 does need to have the primary interop assemblies installed, but these are part of a default word 2007 install. If you don’t have the primary interop assemblies for office 2007 installed, you can always download them at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=59DAEBAA-BED4-4282-A28C-B864D8BFA513&displaylang=en.

…

SccmAutoDoc requires a user with Read permissions on the site object of the Configuration Manager site to be documented. The commandline allows you to optionally pass a username and password as arguments to perform the documentation. If you don’t specify a username and password than the currently logged in credentials are used.

SccmAutoDoc can be downloaded from http://scug.be/media/g/sccmautodoc/default.aspx.

SccmAutoDoc is currently available as a free beta, but its site notes that it may become a paid tool in the future.