The D-Spot (The Deployment Spot)

I want to draw your attention to this creative approach Microsoft Belux has launched in order to throw a retirement party for our beloved friend, Windows XP. 

checkout http://www.xpmetpensioen.be for full details (including competition rules) on this matter!

In fact by writing down your name on the goodbye card for XP, your company can win one of three real farewell parties.  so make some fuzz and write this on your billboards next monday, the company with the most registered signatures is a good candidate to win one of the parties.  There is even more, the 10 most original signatures  are likely to win a legit copy of Windows 7 Ultimate (5 x) or Office 2010 Professional (5 x) !

This farewell card will be closed after the 25th of June.

And even though your workspace is more than just an OS, you should really get yourself acquainted with Windows 7, the perfect employee for your company !

Cheers!

Late last week, the Office engineering team announced that Office 2010 RTM has been released.

As it seems, the public beta was already downloaded by 7.5 million people, this latest Office release is going to be a success.

If you want to read more on the new features in this release, or are just curious, checkout here

The Final build number is 14.0.4763.1000.

Downloads for msdn/technet people should be available on April 22th, for existing Volume Licensing customers with SA the date is April 27th.

Retail boxes should be available from June on

A Virtual Launch event is also planned on May 12 : http://www.the2010event.com

Enjoy!

Today at 5 PM a webinar about Desktop Virtualization is scheduled on http://www.desktopvirtualizationhour.com

apparantly a lot of rumors exist about the content of this event, will Microsoft make an important announcement? maybe news on the Calista front? or updated licensing information for VECD?

who knows?

I’d say, check out the webcast!

>all info is published in the following press-release : http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2010/mar10/03-18DesktopVirtPR.mspx

I guess this message is not new for all of you out there, but it was for me…

The thing is that I was creating a collection with two queries in, where one is based on the file version, when I got the message:

To override the default setting of 2000 results, you must create a new dword value called ValueLimit in the registry under HKLM\software\microsoft\configmgr\adminUI\Queryprocessors and specify a number that will meet your needs.

Do this on the machine(s) where you have the SCCM admin console installed

Well, I just lost an hour figuring out why I could not connect to the SCCM db this morning while other co-workers have no problem at all, so I thought to share the troubleshooting steps…

the exact error is: The ConfigMgr console could not connect to the ConfigMgr site database. Verify that this computer has network connectivity to the SMS Provider computer and that your user account has Remote Activation permissions on both the ConfigMgr site server and SMS Provider computers. 
 

-logon to a site server and open the admin console with the same account : no problem

-logon to another client with the admin console installed (same account): no problem

-launch dcomcnfg and verify that “enable distributed com on this computer”  is checked (you can find that when you open the properties of your computer) : ok

-launch wbemtest and try to connect to \\siteserver\root\sms (modify the siteserver with your servername) : nok

-launch wmidiag and verify if all is well : nok

-check the smsadminui.log on your client

what do we find here:

[9][3/12/2009 9:38:36] :Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.ManagementProvider.SmsConnectionException\r\nThe ConfigMgr Administrator console could not connect to the ConfigMgr site database. Verify your user has read permissions to the ConfigMgr site and then try to connect again.
\r\n   at Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.AdminConsole.SmsSiteConnectionNode.GetConnectionManagerInstance(String connectionManagerInstance)
   at Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.AdminConsole.SmsSiteConnectionNode.BuildTreeWorker()\r\nAccess is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))
\r\nSystem.UnauthorizedAccessException\r\nAccess is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))\r\n   at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ThrowExceptionForHRInternal(Int32 errorCode, IntPtr errorInfo)

-last step: delete the profile under which you are attempting to launch the admin console

this did the trick for me!

This morning I came across the Office 2010 deployment kit for APPV, so I figured why not give this  a go…

I had already downloaded the office 2010 beta and have an appv client and sequencer running in 4.6 RC for a while already in my 4.5 SP1 environment.

The thing is, I do not really get the purpose of this deployment kit so far; You have to install it on your sequencer machine before creating the 2010 package AND on the client.  I did find that it installs a licensing service which can be configured with the included OSPP.vbs script.

On with the preparation part, First of all I created a transform file for Office 2010.  this can still be done with the command line setup /admin (hurray for that !).  While comparing the OCT from office 2010 with the one in Office 2007, I noticed some new things in there.  Fortunately they did not change the majority that was already there…

The first thing I noticed is that you can configure your KMS host for office 2010 licensing from within the OCT wizard:

Under the Modify User Settings part of the wizard I noticed an entry Disable Items in User Interface where you can choose to disable commands or shortcut keys for a certain office application.  Configuration of the Outlook Cached Exchange mode is now brought under the Exchange part instead of elsewhere like in office 2007, good one!

Another useful entry in there is the File Block Settings where you can configure whether users can open, view or edit office application files for a large number of different versions:

Time to save my customizations into an MSP file

On with the sequencing part (after installing the Office deployment kit on the sequencer machine)

If you haven’t been able to try out the slightly revamped sequencer of APPV 4.6, it acts similar but yet more user-friendly.  For instance, it doesn’t minimize any longer on the point where you have to start the actual installation:

The rest of the steps are quite similar as any other application sequencing, so I’m not going to describe them (fyi: I haven’t activated Office 2010 yet).

Saved the Sequence and imported it into my APPV console.

On my 4.6 test client, the Office 2010 sequence launched really well.  But oops, haven’t installed the deployment kit on that client yet…  Strangely enough Office did not complain, but shows unlicensed version in the titlebar.  After installing the Office 2010 deployment kit for Appv on my test system with appv 4.6 rc I imported my license with the following command: cscript ospp.vbs -inpkey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX (note: you must replace the X’s).  Right before this Office 2010 asked for the license, copy-paste didn’t work ??  So now the license is present, but Office 2010 is still not activated…

I guess the option to insert the Office 2010 licence into our KMS server will be the best one, less work and no fiddling around.  The Office 2010 deployment kit for APPV might come in handy in some cases, but will need some documentation first…

Yesterday I have installed SP2 on my Lab system, no problem there. 

It just got me thinking about this:  if today you would need to install a new SCCM system, there are already a couple of installs to do, by preference start with a ‘SCCM 2007 with SP1′ disc, then install SP2, then install R2 if you need those features also.

The R2 and coming R3 are feature packs (or addons if you want) which are not part of the basic SCCM product, so they will always have to be installed separately if you need those features.  That is the difference with SP2, which is a service pack for the basic product (and applies to the site, clients and admin consoles)

As it seems during next month a new ‘SCCM 2007 with SP2′ disc will be released, so that is one setup less to do…

at Teched 2009 (currently in Berlin) Microsoft announced that the follow up version of SCCM 2007 will be branded as ConfigMgr 2011 (instead of v.Next that appeared on the MMS slides earlier this year).

Release is likely to happen near MMS 2011.

as soon as we have more official intel about Configmgr 2011, we will keep you updated on it.

err… no it’s not a typo ! it’s not a bird, it’s not an aeroplane: it’s Windows 8 !

Even though Windows 7 has just been born, it’s not a secret that Microsoft is already working on its successor, let’s call it Windows 8 for the time being.

It’s too early off course to have official information on this, but what do we know already?

• - release date is somewhere in 2012 ( following a new major Server release )
• - near the end of 2010 the first public beta (including a nearly definitive feature list) should be available
• - stop 32 bit support, but introducing 128 bit support ?
• - thanks to a new API, hibernate/resume will be even more faster than today
• - better multimonitor support ( rumors about three or more monitors are spreading… )
• - changes in network security, authentication and encryption are very probable
• …

to be continued !

Most of us consider the use of Task Sequences in SCCM to be meant only for the OSD part of SCCM.

to some extent, they are right !  but, there are more scenarios when this can be used, such as: managing the order how software will be installed and even handling required reboots between those installs.

In the following example, I have described the steps to upgrade from RTM OCS client to OCS R2 client:

- all required packages that will be run in the task sequence must be created first

- prepare a collection to target the advertisement on

- Create a new Task Sequence under the OSD tree (go for the create a new custom task sequence option)

- provide the task sequence with a clear and descriptive name

- open the task sequence editor for the newly created task sequence

- insert as many install software lines into the task sequence as the number of applications that will be installed

TS editor

- for each install software line you have to specify the package and program to be used

- In the Options section where you have to be careful with the continue on error field, you can specify some conditions if you want to do some more advanced manipulation.

- once the editing of the task sequence is complete, you can create an advertisement out of it by simply rightclicking on it.  Most of the options you see will not be new, in the distribution points and interaction part of the wizard you will encounter a few items that you might not have seen already.  Continue on with the advertisement as you would do otherwise.

- Most of the work is done already.  In the advertisements node, you will now see the difference between a standard program and your task sequence based one:

advertisements

Note: on the client itself you will see that the advertisement ID that corresponds to your task sequence will be there a couple of times (in fact once for every program that you entered in it)