We have just been working on a niggly problem. We were trying to connect a spare nic in a Server 2008 server to a development network. The development network is currently just a switch with nothing else connected.
As soon as the second nic was plugged in, we lost all connectivity to the server from the main nic, and even lost ability to ping the server.
After a bit of head scratching we realised that although Windows Firewall was turned off, as soon as the second nic was plugged in the Firewall turned itself back on.... thus blocking pings and RDP.
Simple solution was obviously to plug in the connection, and then disable firewall.
We have noticed that when Self Service Portal users are trying to alter the properties of one of their VMs, they have an option to mount an ISO. Down at the bottom of the options is a tick box which says "SHARE" rather than copy.
Normally if you mount an ISO, the ISO file will be copied into a subfolder of the VM before it is mounted. For a 4Gb ISO files (such as SuseLinux) this can take several minutes. So the obvious advantage of using the SHARE option is that it just uses the original ISO rather than creating a copy.
However....there is a catch. The option isnt available if your host if a Hyper-V server. I have logged this with MS via Technet; http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/showpost.aspx?postid=4167342&siteid=17
It seems to be a known issue, but as yet they havent given a resolution date.
Normally if you mount an ISO, the ISO file will be copied into a subfolder of the VM before it is mounted. For a 4Gb ISO files (such as SuseLinux) this can take several minutes. So the obvious advantage of using the SHARE option is that it just uses the original ISO rather than creating a copy.
However....there is a catch. The option isnt available if your host if a Hyper-V server. I have logged this with MS via Technet; http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/showpost.aspx?postid=4167342&siteid=17
It seems to be a known issue, but as yet they havent given a resolution date.
We have been having a serious issue with our latest Dell 755s. These PCs come with a built in 4 slot card reader. The A: drive is reserved for a floppy, C: is the local HDD, D: is taken by the DVD drive, leaving E, F, G & H for the card reader. I imagine 90% of network admins have set the users home area to default to H: which obviously causes a major problem when the user tries to log-in to a machine with a card reader. As a short term fix we have used a MS tool called devcon, which can disable devices from the command line. Ill post an update when we find a more long term solution.
Monday
Following on from a previous post on this topic, I have finally (after around 6 weeks of trying) been able to find a resolution to the issue I previous posted about here.
It turns out this this was not actually an issue with VMM being slow installing VM Components. VMM was actually being slow at reading the drives on the host server. thankfully someone from Microsoft jumped onboard (thanks Hector Linares), and was able to confirm that VMM2008 does have this issue if any of the following conditions are met;
VIRTUAL MEDIA: If the host server has any virtual media such as a Dell DRAC or Virtual Floppy.
GPT DISK: If any drives in the host server are using GPT Partition table rather than MBR
UNINITIALIZED DISK: If any of the disks are not initialized.
OTHER MOUNTED VHDs: If a VHD has mounted incorrectly or not dismounted correctly.
In our situation the problem was actually related to GPT. The server has 3 drives, 2 set up as MBR and one set up as GPT. Converting the one GPT disk to MBR instantly fixed the problem, and VMM now creates VMs in under 10 seconds.
As a side note, GPT drives was introduced by MS in Server 2003 SP1, but is really being pushed with server 2008. See this article by MS.
Hopefully MS will have a fix soon, but as of Nov 2008 there is no way of converting an MBR disk to GPT without loosing the data.
If you have installed and configured a Dell Poweredge Server, you may have noticed a "utility" partition which exists on the system drive....in our our case on the RAID 1 mirror which is our system drive.
For reasons I wont go into, it was suggested that we remove the dell system partition. The Server is a 2008 build, where the partition simply shows up in Storage Management, but you are unable to edit or delete it from there.
Dell's solution was to rebuild the entire server including OS. Great....
I decided there must be a quicker way so had a little expriment with DISKPART. Diskpart is a command line tool which allows you to foricbly remove a partition. As long as you are not trying to force remove a partition within a dynamic disk, this is a fairly straight forward process and is supposed to leave the rest of the drive (or mirror) in tact.
To cut a long store short....dont use DISKPART to force remove a DELL utility partition, it doesnt work, and it will leave you having to rebuild all the data contained on the same drive. Considering the Dell Utility Partition only contains data which is on a normal Dell boot CD, I really cant see the point in it.
For reasons I wont go into, it was suggested that we remove the dell system partition. The Server is a 2008 build, where the partition simply shows up in Storage Management, but you are unable to edit or delete it from there.
Dell's solution was to rebuild the entire server including OS. Great....
I decided there must be a quicker way so had a little expriment with DISKPART. Diskpart is a command line tool which allows you to foricbly remove a partition. As long as you are not trying to force remove a partition within a dynamic disk, this is a fairly straight forward process and is supposed to leave the rest of the drive (or mirror) in tact.
To cut a long store short....dont use DISKPART to force remove a DELL utility partition, it doesnt work, and it will leave you having to rebuild all the data contained on the same drive. Considering the Dell Utility Partition only contains data which is on a normal Dell boot CD, I really cant see the point in it.
Friday
We have recently introduced DFS paths onto the network, which offers some significant advantages over standard UNC paths. For those who dont know about DFS;
Click Here
In short.... DFS introduces virtual paths for AD users. Rather than have users going to a path such as "\\ServerName\\volume\file.doc", your users will go to a path such as "\\domain.com\storage\file.doc". The advantage to be gained certainly isnt in path lengths, but in the administration of the paths.
For example, lets say everyones home area points to "\\london\home\userid", and for whatever reason the server "london" is removed from the network. Not only do the files have to be restored to a new location, but everyones paths are going to have to point to the new locations. This includes their home area path, their profile path, and more importantly any links the users has in documents, spreadsheets or databases.
With DFS paths everyones home area can be directed to "\\domain.com\home\userid", and the same with their profile and any Group Policy directed folders. The user is still effecticvely pointing to a serevr, but as this is now being done dynamically if the server goes offline or the data ius migrated, all that needs changing is the DFS pointer. Brilliant.
There are some other advantages such as syncronisation and high-availablity, and I plan to look into these in the near future.
I should also point out another handy tool from Doverstones, which is AD-Find & Replace. This works in the same way as notepad's find & replace for example, but on Active Directory objects. So, if you need to change home area paths for thousands of users, this tool can do it in seconds;
Click Here
Wednesday
We recently decided to upgrade our 2003 Schema to support 2008. We already have a number of 2008 Servers in place, but the schema upgrade gives us the obvious advantage of being able to designate the 2008 servers as domain controllers. All our new builds are 2008, so this is starting to be a priority.
"Upgrading The Schema" is slightly worrying, no matter how many back-ups you have, and no matter how well you follow instructions.
We did have issue on our student network, and ended up having to log a call with MS, who were able to fix the problem via some manual changes to Active Directory. This only affected the schema upgrade enabling read only domain controller functionality. I'm not sure we will ever use a read only DC, but perhaps its something to consider for an off campus office.
Anyway, the steps for upgrading your 2003 Schema to 2008 are;
adprep.exe /forestprep Schema Master once per forest
adprep.exe /domainprep Infrastructure Master twice (once per domain)
adprep.exe /domainprep /gpprep Infrastructure Master twice (once per domain)
adprep.exe /rodcprep * Domain Naming Master once per forest
* Optional when you want to deploy Read Only Domain Controllers
The adprep tools are contained on the server 2008 DVD.... I'd suggest copying this to your DC's rather than running from the DVD drive. I'd also suggest checking your schema backups, and making sure that servers are running on a UPS.....you never know.
As a side note, I'll give a small plug for some software we have recently used by Doverstones;
http://www.dovestones.com/
FSMO Role: Ideal for the above situation if you dont know which servers hold roles.
Its simple and free!
"Upgrading The Schema" is slightly worrying, no matter how many back-ups you have, and no matter how well you follow instructions.
We did have issue on our student network, and ended up having to log a call with MS, who were able to fix the problem via some manual changes to Active Directory. This only affected the schema upgrade enabling read only domain controller functionality. I'm not sure we will ever use a read only DC, but perhaps its something to consider for an off campus office.
Anyway, the steps for upgrading your 2003 Schema to 2008 are;
adprep.exe /forestprep Schema Master once per forest
adprep.exe /domainprep Infrastructure Master twice (once per domain)
adprep.exe /domainprep /gpprep Infrastructure Master twice (once per domain)
adprep.exe /rodcprep * Domain Naming Master once per forest
* Optional when you want to deploy Read Only Domain Controllers
The adprep tools are contained on the server 2008 DVD.... I'd suggest copying this to your DC's rather than running from the DVD drive. I'd also suggest checking your schema backups, and making sure that servers are running on a UPS.....you never know.
As a side note, I'll give a small plug for some software we have recently used by Doverstones;
http://www.dovestones.com/
FSMO Role: Ideal for the above situation if you dont know which servers hold roles.
Its simple and free!
I appear to have a few people at Microsoft scratching their heads with an issue we are experiencing....and I dont think I'm the only one; When we create VMs (no matter how), VMM insists on a step called "installing VM components". This is when creating a VM on the Hyper-V host. It is my understanding that VMM should not carry out this step, if for example you are creating a machine with a blank HDD, or with a non supported OS such as Linux. However, this step runs every single time a VM is created. I will add that eventually it times out (15 minutes or so), and the VM does function perfectly. This might not seem an issue generally, but in a classroom where students may wish to create a VM from the portal, it becomes a problem. Firstly students tend to be a little inpatient....and secondly they cannot see the job list in the same way an administrator can, and probably give up thinking that it isnt going to work. We have tried creating a VM from a template....same problem, with a blank small HDD, large HDD, a template with "noi customization required".....but every single time VMM does the step and the creation hangs. Interestingly the error log says;
----------------------------- Warning (13226) Virtual hard disk W:\test907am\Blank Disk - Small.vhd cannot be mounted on host trent.students.blackburn.local because it conflicts with other disks. Recommended Action Wait a few moments and then try the operation again. -----------------------------
You can see my full report on Technet here; http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4088882&SiteID=17
----------------------------- Warning (13226) Virtual hard disk W:\test907am\Blank Disk - Small.vhd cannot be mounted on host trent.students.blackburn.local because it conflicts with other disks. Recommended Action Wait a few moments and then try the operation again. -----------------------------
You can see my full report on Technet here; http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4088882&SiteID=17
I now got around to upgrading the Beta of Virtual Machine Manager 2008, to the RTM version. MS have made quite a few changes....improvments.... and introduced one or two bugs (see my next post).
The splash screen for VMM Admin Console has changed significantly, and previous bugs which existed in relation to the storage of ISO's in a VMM Library have been corrected.
The porcess of Physical To Virtual Conversion on Windows 2000 machines has been introduced. More specifically Microsoft have enabled a feature called Offline Conversion. This basically installs a Windows PE images onto the source, boots it up into Windows PE to do the conversion, then creates it as a VM..... works a charm, although in testing we experienced downtime of around 1 hour as it was an old PC.
Another thing MS have fixed significantly is the web portal, which no longer takes 20 minutes to log in to. You can now give users the ability to create their own BLANK VMs, something which wasnt possible in the Beta, but will be ideal in a classroom scenario.
If you are upgrading from VMM2008 Beta to live, a word of warning. The agent on all your hosts will also require upgrading. This was very smooth for our test 2003 host, but became extreamly complex for a server 2008 hyper-v host. To cut a long story short... we had to manually remove the VMM agent from the host, uninstall hyper V, upgrade to the latest version of Hyper-v, then re-install the VMM agent. It worked, but there was a period of panic when we lost control, and ability to control any of the VMs on the HyperV host.
All in all this release is looking really good, and offers the obvious advantage of well supported management of Server 2008 HyperV Hosts. Sadly still no support from USB devices on a host/server (dongles etc), and no support for non domain member servers.....but you cant have it all.
The splash screen for VMM Admin Console has changed significantly, and previous bugs which existed in relation to the storage of ISO's in a VMM Library have been corrected.
The porcess of Physical To Virtual Conversion on Windows 2000 machines has been introduced. More specifically Microsoft have enabled a feature called Offline Conversion. This basically installs a Windows PE images onto the source, boots it up into Windows PE to do the conversion, then creates it as a VM..... works a charm, although in testing we experienced downtime of around 1 hour as it was an old PC.
Another thing MS have fixed significantly is the web portal, which no longer takes 20 minutes to log in to. You can now give users the ability to create their own BLANK VMs, something which wasnt possible in the Beta, but will be ideal in a classroom scenario.
If you are upgrading from VMM2008 Beta to live, a word of warning. The agent on all your hosts will also require upgrading. This was very smooth for our test 2003 host, but became extreamly complex for a server 2008 hyper-v host. To cut a long story short... we had to manually remove the VMM agent from the host, uninstall hyper V, upgrade to the latest version of Hyper-v, then re-install the VMM agent. It worked, but there was a period of panic when we lost control, and ability to control any of the VMs on the HyperV host.
All in all this release is looking really good, and offers the obvious advantage of well supported management of Server 2008 HyperV Hosts. Sadly still no support from USB devices on a host/server (dongles etc), and no support for non domain member servers.....but you cant have it all.
Well it seems that windows search 4.0 in a server 2003/xp environment just doesn't work. I have logged the problem with technet, and had no reply.
The scenario most people want, is that your server indexes your main file store, then all your clients reference the central index.... rather than having hundreds of clients creating their own local index and hammering the server.
We have installed index 4.0 on server 2003....it works a treat, and has indexed 1,000000+ files. Searching from the server produces fast and reliable results.
However, try to search a shared drive on the said sever from an xp client, and the results are rather less impressive. "no results found". My hunch would be that the clients don't have any reference to or access to the index, but MS give no documentation on what is supposed to be a supported situation.
Couple this with the fact that we have our user archives stored on a shared drive (another great non-supported but no solution scenario), and you'll appreciate how highly unimpressed I am with Microsoft's efforts at producing a working index and search feature.
The scenario most people want, is that your server indexes your main file store, then all your clients reference the central index.... rather than having hundreds of clients creating their own local index and hammering the server.
We have installed index 4.0 on server 2003....it works a treat, and has indexed 1,000000+ files. Searching from the server produces fast and reliable results.
However, try to search a shared drive on the said sever from an xp client, and the results are rather less impressive. "no results found". My hunch would be that the clients don't have any reference to or access to the index, but MS give no documentation on what is supposed to be a supported situation.
Couple this with the fact that we have our user archives stored on a shared drive (another great non-supported but no solution scenario), and you'll appreciate how highly unimpressed I am with Microsoft's efforts at producing a working index and search feature.
Tuesday
A policy which we have recently employed is to shut down staff and student PCs every night. The impact of this has been massive, and based on around 1,500 PCs we have estimated it to be saving us £10k per year in power consumption alone.... with rising energy prices and without taking into account wear & tear this is something which have never regretted.
Right... basically you need to dedicate one of your servers to manage the PC shutdown, obviously if you decide to shutdown all your workstations at 11pm, the server needs to be available at 11pm each night.
Once that's decided, you need to create a text file containing a list of every PC name in your Forrest or domain. This is very easy to obtain by using the MMC 'Active Directory - Users & Computers'snap-in. You should have a sections underneath ADU&C called 'saved queries'. Right click it, and create a "new query".
Your query will be dependant on which PCs you want to shutdown, but we included all PCs in the query, and all sub-containers....so our query looked like;
(&(objectCategory=computer)(name=*))
When you give the query a name and run the query you should end up with a list of all your workstations. Then just right click on the query and select "export list". This will generate you a list of all your workstations in a tab delimited text file.
All you now need to do is tweak the text file, and rename it to .bat so it looks something like this;
-------------------------------------------------------------------
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\F110-01
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\F110-02
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\F128-01
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\FH4-06
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\FH9-01
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\FH9-02
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\FH9-03
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\FH9-04
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\G09-01
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\H109B-01
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\H111-11
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\CE102-02
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\LIB-05
REM ** These Pings Are To Allow a Delay And Let The Last Set Of Shutdown Windows ping thames
ping thames
ping thames
ping thames
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\H404B-02
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\H404B-01
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\H301-01
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\H301-02
start /realtime shutdown /s /f /m \\h403a-01
-------------------------------------------------------------------
the start /realtime option ensures that the batch file doesn't wait for the last command to complete before running the next one, as the shutdown command does take a good few seconds to respond. The ping is in there just to slow things down a little, and ensure you don't run out of memory space by running x thousand of shutdowns at the same time. I generally have 4 pings in there after every dozen shutdown commands or so.
For 1,000 workstations, using the above system takes around 15 minutes to run. Incidentally the shutdown command format used above is for server 2003, so will need tweaking if you are using a different server os. The switches I'm using force the PCs to shutdown, regardless of whats running. As for converting your basic txt file to the above batch file, it can be done easily using wordpad or notepad and a few FIND&REPLACE commands.
My tip of the day for anyone wanting to do a large scall domain rollout of xp or vista.....turn off the firewall on your workstations before you start to deploy software.
I have run in to numerous problems when imaging workstations with system centre config manager, thanks to the xp firewall. It stop our AV definitions updating, it stopped remote control client from working, it sopped windows updates running internally etc etc
We have a firewall protecting our external traffic, so an internal firewall would literally become an adminitrative nightmare.
I've just spent 2 hours wondering why Symantec AV definitions were not updating on our newly imaged PCs. Thanks Microsoft.....
Monday
Running commands from a task sequence is easy enough, although for the last couple of days I've been wrestling with an issue of a task command which just doesnt want to run;
copy \\server\file.txt c:\folder\destination\
Strangly enough bringing the console up (F8) and running the command manually it works fine.
After much searching and some help from the MS Technet guys, there is a simple solution.
If you want to run any windows inbuilt command line from a task sequence you must insert "cmd /c" at the start of the statement. So;
copy \\server\file.txt c:\folder\destination\
becomes;
cmd /c copy \\server\file.txt c:\folder\destination\
So this includes functions such as copy, move, rename....basically anything which doesnt have an exe file. As an alternative, you could download a free command line for the appropriate action.... for example there are lots of free command line copy utilities out there which could be used as an alternative to the cmd /c copy command, in the form of an exe.
Its worth pointing out that each time you run cmd /c its running in its own memory space....so dont expect to be able to register variables or anything fancy as you will run into problems!
copy \\server\file.txt c:\folder\destination\
Strangly enough bringing the console up (F8) and running the command manually it works fine.
After much searching and some help from the MS Technet guys, there is a simple solution.
If you want to run any windows inbuilt command line from a task sequence you must insert "cmd /c" at the start of the statement. So;
copy \\server\file.txt c:\folder\destination\
becomes;
cmd /c copy \\server\file.txt c:\folder\destination\
So this includes functions such as copy, move, rename....basically anything which doesnt have an exe file. As an alternative, you could download a free command line for the appropriate action.... for example there are lots of free command line copy utilities out there which could be used as an alternative to the cmd /c copy command, in the form of an exe.
Its worth pointing out that each time you run cmd /c its running in its own memory space....so dont expect to be able to register variables or anything fancy as you will run into problems!
We've been having problems getting NIC drivers working for a Dell Optiplex 755. We have a driver package for Dell 755s, and the NIC driver is within the package. When we image a 755 it doesn't pick up the driver.
We tried adding the driver to the task sequence...still didn't work.
The distribution point said it was ok, but just as a test we tried updating the distribution point..... and it worked.
It seems that when it comes to drivers there are a large number of people on technet having a very similar problem, so the point seems to be that if you add drivers....manually update your distribution points.
Incidentally, if you have this problem the error your likely to see in the error log is "failed to resolve driver".
We tried adding the driver to the task sequence...still didn't work.
The distribution point said it was ok, but just as a test we tried updating the distribution point..... and it worked.
It seems that when it comes to drivers there are a large number of people on technet having a very similar problem, so the point seems to be that if you add drivers....manually update your distribution points.
Incidentally, if you have this problem the error your likely to see in the error log is "failed to resolve driver".
Friday
Ok, since this is the most convoluted process ever, here is a step by step order in which you should do things;
1. Boot from Server 2008 DVD, and install.
2. Name server & join domain - reboot
3. Configure IP
4. Disable Firewall
5. Enable Remote Desktop (you'll need it)
6. Disable User Access Control (via control panel / users)
7. Add the following roles
Applications Server
WebServer
Add ALL features for IIs ASP
8. Add BITS feature
So now you should have a 2008 server up and running; Crucially you MUST install Operations Manager and SQL first;
1. Install SQL from the SQL Server 2005 x64 media (which is 2 discs, although you only use the first one). Ensure to install everything except the tools portion.
2. Enable scripts in IIs - go into your default site in IIS manager, double click 'Handler Mappings', edit Feature Permissions, tick Read, Scripts & Execute
3. Also within IIS Manager, you need to edit the 2 report server web sites which should have been created when you installed SQL. Make sure everything is ticked as with point 2 above.
Next test that reporting is working.... because if it isnt Operations Manager wont work. You can test by going to your 2 report sites in IIS manager and testing that they both will launch in a browser window.
The following may help for additional documentation;
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb839480.aspx
Next install SQL SP1... dont jump ahead and install any other SP....just SP1
Now from your Operations Manager DVD, run the pre-requisities checker. There is no doubt that it will fail on SQL and ask you to install some hotfixes. The hotfix is K918222 and there are 6 parts to it.
Once done, run the checker again...you should have no errors and be able to install Operations Manager 2007.
Now for Configuration Manager
1. Install WebDav (latest version downloadable from MS)
2. Double check that BITS is enabled
3. Install the remote-differential-compression feature
4. Run the pre-requisities checker.... hopefully everything is ok and you can run the install
5. Choose configure primary site from the installer
6. Custom Install
7. Enter a server name, and use the site server as service account
8. Setup webdav as per the article at technet
9. Give Site System service account (the servers) full rights to the system OU & all sub folders in AD. This should ensure that objects are created within System\System Management
10. Extend the scheme. You only do this if this is the first Config Manager 2007 server in your domain. You dont have to do it, but I'd suggest you do since you loose certain functionality without doing it....and you will manually have to point all your clients to a management point. However, I'm not going to give instructions on Extending your AD Schema, since I dont want blaming if you destroy your network. There are 2 ways of doing it...manually or automatically. The later worked fine for us, but do your homework before undertaking this step.
11. In configuration manager you should now remove and re-install the management point.
12. Ensure that in Site System Status there are no errors....if there are resolve them.
Thats it.....
1. Boot from Server 2008 DVD, and install.
2. Name server & join domain - reboot
3. Configure IP
4. Disable Firewall
5. Enable Remote Desktop (you'll need it)
6. Disable User Access Control (via control panel / users)
7. Add the following roles
Applications Server
WebServer
Add ALL features for IIs ASP
8. Add BITS feature
So now you should have a 2008 server up and running; Crucially you MUST install Operations Manager and SQL first;
1. Install SQL from the SQL Server 2005 x64 media (which is 2 discs, although you only use the first one). Ensure to install everything except the tools portion.
2. Enable scripts in IIs - go into your default site in IIS manager, double click 'Handler Mappings', edit Feature Permissions, tick Read, Scripts & Execute
3. Also within IIS Manager, you need to edit the 2 report server web sites which should have been created when you installed SQL. Make sure everything is ticked as with point 2 above.
Next test that reporting is working.... because if it isnt Operations Manager wont work. You can test by going to your 2 report sites in IIS manager and testing that they both will launch in a browser window.
The following may help for additional documentation;
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb839480.aspx
Next install SQL SP1... dont jump ahead and install any other SP....just SP1
Now from your Operations Manager DVD, run the pre-requisities checker. There is no doubt that it will fail on SQL and ask you to install some hotfixes. The hotfix is K918222 and there are 6 parts to it.
Once done, run the checker again...you should have no errors and be able to install Operations Manager 2007.
Now for Configuration Manager
1. Install WebDav (latest version downloadable from MS)
2. Double check that BITS is enabled
3. Install the remote-differential-compression feature
4. Run the pre-requisities checker.... hopefully everything is ok and you can run the install
5. Choose configure primary site from the installer
6. Custom Install
7. Enter a server name, and use the site server as service account
8. Setup webdav as per the article at technet
9. Give Site System service account (the servers) full rights to the system OU & all sub folders in AD. This should ensure that objects are created within System\System Management
10. Extend the scheme. You only do this if this is the first Config Manager 2007 server in your domain. You dont have to do it, but I'd suggest you do since you loose certain functionality without doing it....and you will manually have to point all your clients to a management point. However, I'm not going to give instructions on Extending your AD Schema, since I dont want blaming if you destroy your network. There are 2 ways of doing it...manually or automatically. The later worked fine for us, but do your homework before undertaking this step.
11. In configuration manager you should now remove and re-install the management point.
12. Ensure that in Site System Status there are no errors....if there are resolve them.
Thats it.....
Thursday
Just spotted this video....fantastic that you can now remote control workstations down to a hardware level using the Intel vPro chipset. Here's hoping our next delivery of Dell workstations includes this magic component;
Wednesday
We learnt an interesting fact today. MS official word on PST files is "Dont store them on network drives, as it isnt supported"....great. That means if your users want to have archives they should store them on a local drive..... 2 implications to that;
1. They wont be available if the user is roaming
2. They wont be backed up over night
Microsoft offer some work-arounds, for example copy the arhive pst from the local drive to their home drive when they log out, and visa versa when they log in. Great...as long as your users dont mind 20 minute login and logout times.
Another workaround is to backup the archive from the PC......also not such a great solution if your users shut their PCs down when your backup is scheduled, and if you dont have an infinite budget with which to buy backup agents for every PC in your infrastructure.
No-doubt we will be re-visiting this problem in the near future, as the official MS line is that Archives may become corrupt, and their may be overload on the server hosting the PST files.
1. They wont be available if the user is roaming
2. They wont be backed up over night
Microsoft offer some work-arounds, for example copy the arhive pst from the local drive to their home drive when they log out, and visa versa when they log in. Great...as long as your users dont mind 20 minute login and logout times.
Another workaround is to backup the archive from the PC......also not such a great solution if your users shut their PCs down when your backup is scheduled, and if you dont have an infinite budget with which to buy backup agents for every PC in your infrastructure.
No-doubt we will be re-visiting this problem in the near future, as the official MS line is that Archives may become corrupt, and their may be overload on the server hosting the PST files.
I'm currently looking at creating a Configuration Manager installation for Office 2007, ready to image our student PCs over summer. Since we created our Office 2007 installer Microsoft have released Office 2007 SP1, which obviously we want to install during the workstation imaging process.
MS haven't released a DVD/CD install disc yet which includes SP1, although I was pleased to learn a nifty little trick you can use to integrate the SP into your existing install files (slipstream).
Presuming you already have gone through the process of creating an Office 2007 auto installation set, you should have a folder structure something resembling drive:\Office2007\Updates The UPDATES folder is the crucial one.... any updates you stick in there will be applied at the time of install.
So...just download the stand-alone SP1 file office2007sp1-kb936982-fullfile-en-us.exe from MS...just google it. Then run it with the following switch;
office2007sp1-kb936982-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:drive:\Office2007\Updates\
You should end up with around 8 new files in your updates folder, which represent the core of SP1. These will be applied during the Office 2007 installation. :)
MS haven't released a DVD/CD install disc yet which includes SP1, although I was pleased to learn a nifty little trick you can use to integrate the SP into your existing install files (slipstream).
Presuming you already have gone through the process of creating an Office 2007 auto installation set, you should have a folder structure something resembling drive:\Office2007\Updates The UPDATES folder is the crucial one.... any updates you stick in there will be applied at the time of install.
So...just download the stand-alone SP1 file office2007sp1-kb936982-fullfile-en-us.exe from MS...just google it. Then run it with the following switch;
office2007sp1-kb936982-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:drive:\Office2007\Updates\
You should end up with around 8 new files in your updates folder, which represent the core of SP1. These will be applied during the Office 2007 installation. :)
Yes, we have undertaken the project of getting the complete suite of Systems Centre Tools all running from the same box. Whats more we have decided to do this using Server 2008. I have not been able to find a single documented case of anyone else unfortunate enough to venture into the scenario.....the install of all these systems alone (without any configuration) has taken around 4 weeks.
You would expect Microsoft would fully support all these "2007" labeled products on the flagship server product "Server 2008".....but no, we have continiously encountered the classic Microsoft banner "non supported scenario". Not one to let something as trivial as compatibility get in the way, and owing to the fact that we want to move forward with Server 2008, we decided to plod on with the project, using 2008 as the base.
I'm pleased to say that IT CAN BE DONE. However, as I mentioned it took several weeks to make it work, but I will be posting full documentation. The problems mainly arise because Ops Manager wont install on a fully updated and service packed version of SQL server, and Config Manager 2007 wont install on a non service packed version of SQL server. This coupled with the fact that there are compatibility issues between version of SQL Server on 64 bit Server 2008, means that the install needs to be done in an exact order, updating at the correct point in the sequence, and making sure that the new IIS7 is backward compatible....or thinks it is!!
Anyway, full instructions on installing these products on Serer 2008 will follow shortly...
I've decided to create this blog owing to countless hundreds of I.T projects which I now look back on thinking "where did I put the documentation for that"! Well I might as well document projects online for myself to reference in future, and also in the hope they might come in handy to others.
I'll try to back-track on some past projects when/if time allows..... but I'll basically update this blog when I get time with information on current projects, and future plans.
For some background, I work in a small systems team at Blackburn College in Lancashire UK. Our I.T network is Microsoft based (currently server 2003), with around 10,000 students users and 1,100 staff users.
Technologies we currently use include Virtual Machine Manager, Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, Server 2003, Server 2008, Exchange 2003, Symantec Anti-Virus......starting to wish I hadnt started this list as its never ending......
I'll try to back-track on some past projects when/if time allows..... but I'll basically update this blog when I get time with information on current projects, and future plans.
For some background, I work in a small systems team at Blackburn College in Lancashire UK. Our I.T network is Microsoft based (currently server 2003), with around 10,000 students users and 1,100 staff users.
Technologies we currently use include Virtual Machine Manager, Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, Server 2003, Server 2008, Exchange 2003, Symantec Anti-Virus......starting to wish I hadnt started this list as its never ending......
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