Planting seeds of knowledge so your brain can grow.
Have you ever published a blog post on some cool technology only to have that technology change the very next day?
I have! My original blog post was titled “Do You Project Honolulu”. Two days later Project Honolulu became Windows Admin Center.
This is my life. I somehow deal with it!
So…..an updated more current post.
Continue reading “Do you Windows Admin Center? (Formerly Known As ‘Do You Project Honolulu?’)”
Remember that movie with the one ring that the Ewoks had while trying to convince Dr. Theopolis that Spock was still alive and aboard the TARDIS? I can’t remember what kind of Chewbacca ended up rescuing him. Don’t you dare ruin it for me!
Having a go to query to use as a base for your ConfigMgr reports is pretty handy, and that is what this post will cover
Everyone has their own lab environment or playground. Everyone?! Well, the cool kids do.
I’ll provide some insight into what’s in my lab environment Continue reading “What’s in your lab environment?”
*Note: I did not verify that statement!
There are many articles about optimizing the ConfigMgr database. There are separate articles about backing it up. Other articles about other things to backup. So, let’s put them all together and create a maintenance plan that does it all.
The goal is to clean WSUS, run integrity checks on the databases, optimize indexes on the databases, copy the CD.Latest folder, and backup the databases.
Continue reading “The very best ConfigMgr database maintenance plan in the entire world*”
How important is it to you and your company to have a highly available ConfigMgr solution? The answer to that is: it depends. It certainly does. I’ll leave that decisions to you.
So, what do we need to get ConfigMgr and SQL AlwaysOn to work? Continue reading “ConfigMgr and SQL AlwaysOn”
So, you have a PKI or access to certificates and want to encrypt SQL connections. Easy! Continue reading “SQL Server – Fun with certificates”
Does your company have a lot of PowerShell scripts? Do they all follow the same template? No? You are not alone.
In my experience, troubleshooting scripts is much easier if all the scripts have the same look.
This script not only uses logging for errors, but can also be run in verbose mode so that the errors display in the PS session. Continue reading “PowerShell Template–Because we all want some sort of consistency!”
In previous versions of SCCM extending the size of the log files was as easy as open SCCM Service Manager, selecting the component, and increase the log file.
That doesn’t work in SCCM CB. My friend Garth Jones @GarthMJ has a great post on how to get more out of your log files.
http://www.enhansoft.com/blog/how-to-increase-the-size-of-sccm-2012-site-server-log-files
The other day I noticed that my SCCM Site Server’s C drive was almost full. After some searching, I found that the directory C:\Inetpub\Logs\Logfiles was consuming all of the drive space.
Now, I don’t recall ever being told to clean IIS Log Files, but all of my peers seem to know about it!! Thus, that makes me…uh…..well….late to the game at the very least!!
Here is a great document on IIS Log File Cleaning. Don’t be like Matthew. Clean your log files!
Last week I noticed that a colleague of mine had upgraded their SCCM environment to 1706. This person manages well over 100,000 endpoints, so I figured 1706 was good to go. Nope!
First, a bit of information regarding fast ring and regular ring. Fast Ring for ConfigMgr is technically beta. This means that even though you can put it in your production environment, you might want to wait. Just like Windows 10 servicing, the Fast Ring will go production four months after the release. In between……well, therein lies the problem. You will most definitely get hotfixes every now and then while on Fast Ring, but you may also run into this:
“This update is available in the Updates and Servicing node of the Configuration Manager console for environments that were installed by using first wave (Fast Ring) builds of version 1706 downloaded between August 8 and August 11, 2017.” According to the product team, only about 50 SCCM infrastructures were affected. Guess who was part of the 50!
I installed SCCM 1706 on Friday August 11th. Thus, I fell into one of the 50 that needed the hotfix. Until today we were not able to install applications from the Software Center or OSD. That, as you can imaging, was bad!
Lesson learned: Perhaps don’t install SCCM Fast Ring unless you really really really need it and even then, be prepared for some issues from time to time until the release is full production.