SMS, SCCM, MECM, MEM, MCM & other fun acronyms

 in SCCM we have ‘get’ behavior for DCM baselines.  So, we can tell what machines are (or are not) compliant for a baseline and then use a query-based collection to find computers that are compliant (or not) and take action on them.  As an FYI SCCM V.Next will include ‘set’ behavior so we’ll have the ability to auto-remedate non-compliant machines.  

One little-discussed feature in R3 is that we can select a baseline in the console and have that query-based collection built for us.  So, it can automatically create a compliant or non-compliant query for the baseline that we selected and therefore saves us some steps in building the query manually.   

 

 

Another question that comes up alot.  Beta1 is out now but is not meant to be deployed in a production environment.  Expect R3 to be released in the second half of 2010.

Digging a bit deeper into R3 and will be posting some stuff.   I already talked about what happens if a computer is in two collection with different power policy settings.  In summary, SCCM will utilze the least impactful setting.  But what if the computer is one collection that has the power management setting enabled but is set to ‘never apply power management…’ and in another collection that has power settings configured? 

What you will see reflected in the pwrmgmt.log on the computer is an entry “This machine has been opted-out from any Power Policy changes by policy”.  So, because the least impactful setting is to not apply power settings, that is what the client does.  If you disable the power management setting on the collection that was set to never apply, the computer is then able to get the other power policy as expected.

Also remember that the power reports will use SRS ONLY!  So, this is a great time to implement SRS on your SCCM site and get familiar with it. 

Also, there are some questions around if you need to install R2 before you install R3.  The answer is no.  You DO need to install SP2, but you can install R3 directly and it will install and enable the R2 features as part of the R3 install.  Also don’t forget to deploy the client hotfix and don’t forget to review the MOF changes that are made so you can get an idea of what is in there.

 

Had a short outage while they cut everything over but I am back!

wise is now dead.  love live adminstudio.

read this:  http://blogs.technet.com/manageabilityguys/archive/2009/11/19/client-network-traffic-tests.aspx

If you have defined different power management settings on different collections, and if a computer is in multiple collections that have different power management settings established, which power setting configuration will the client use?

 

SCCM will use the power setting that has the longest timeout.  So, basically the setting that is least impactful to the user.  Thanks to Josh and Wally for the info.

 

This questions comes up periodically, usually when customers want to run separate SCCM hierarchies in the same network or AD environment.  There are issues with client assignment based on this scenario, but what about software distribution?  Will the client think it’s in a “fast” or “slow” boundary?  Turns out that the client will always assume it’s in a slow boundary if no site boundaries are defined.  And, remember what the default action in the advertisement properties is for clients that are in a slow boundary?  Do not run the program. So, be careful.  

Service Manager doesn’t like the default collation method (SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS).  If your SCSM SQL server is running with that collation mode you will get a warning when you install SCSM.  

Caution

If you continue Setup using the default collation (SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS), you will not be able to support multiple languages in Service Manager. In the future, if you decide you want to support multiple languages, you will have to re-install SQL Server.

The collations in the following table represent the approved collations that were tested.

 

Windows Locale	LCID	Collation
English	0x409	Latin1_General_100_CI_AS
Chinese_Taiwan	0x404	Chinese_Traditional_Stroke_Count_100_CI_AS
Chinese_PRC	0x804	Chinese_Simplifies_Pinyin_100_CI_AS
French	0x40C	French_100_CI_AS
German_Standard	0x407	Latin1_General_100_CI_AS
Italian_Standard	0x410	Latin1_General_100_CI_AS
Japanese	0x411	Japanese_XJIS_100_CI_AS
Korean	0x412	Korean_100_CI_AS
Portuguese_Brazilian	0x416	Latin1_General_100_CI_AS
Russian	0x419	Cyrillic_General_100_CI_AS
Spanish_Modern_Sort	0xC0A	Modern_Spanish_100_CI_AS

 

Getting this error when trying to publish updates from SCUP?  “Exception occurred during publishing: Verification of file signature failed for file”

You need to do this:  http://blogs.technet.com/sus/archive/2009/02/05/unable-to-publish-updates-using-scup-exception-occurred-during-publishing.aspx