Earlier this week I had the good fortune of visiting a customer which had developed their own custom frontend for the MDT database. It works pretty much like the MDT Web Frontend written by Maik Koster, but this one is updated for the MDT 2012 Update 1 database tables (Works with MDT 2012 Update 1 and ConfigMgr 2012 SP1). The last day I asked the customer, why don't you publish this tool to the community, because it's really great. Guess what, today, the author did J

The UI is fast to work with and it's very easy to add and modify computers, roles and settings. To get it going, just run the tool (and HTA, compiled into an .exe file), click connect, and of you go.

If you want to peek inside, the source code (HTA) is available for download as well.

More info and downloadhttp://mdtadmin.codeplex.com/

 



The MDT Admin interface.

 

Note:...

A once again, a fantastic MMS has ended… During MMS 2013 I presented 7 breakout sessions (plus one Birds of a Feather session).

One of the sessions was co-presented with the ConfigMgr MVP (now named Enterprise Client Management) brain trust: Kent Agerlund, Sherry Kissinger, Brian Mason, Kim Oppalfens, Greg Ramsey, Jason Sandys, and Steve Thompson, and three sessions were presented together with deployment guru Mikael Nystrom.

The session recordings are all available for download on channel9.msdn.com. Here are the sessions (and links).

 



Configuration Manager 2012: MVP Experts PanelSpeakers: Kent Agerlund, Johan Arwidmark, Sherry Kissinger, Brian Mason, Kim Oppalfens, Greg Ramsey, Jason Sandys, and Steve Thompson

ConfigMgr MVP Solution...

In ConfigMgr 2012 SP1, one of the many new OSD features is that you can now configure the task sequence to download and apply the operating system image directly from the distribution point.

This was possible in ConfigMgr 2007, removed in ConfigMgr 2012, and sort-of, added back in ConfigMgr 2012 SP1.

The new feature would have been welcome, since it would have decreased the deployment time on fast networks, but unfortunately because of a bug, it actually make things worse. Let me explain:

Change in behavior

The normal flow for a deployment is that the task sequence does the following:

Formats the local drive Downloads the operating system image from the DP to the local drive Applies the operating system image from the local drive The WinPE Pass of deploying a 3 GB Windows 7 image was 16 minutes. After enabling the new feature the flow changes to:

Formats the local drive Applies the operating system image from the DP (without downloading first) Now the odd part –...

Here are the slides from the #scugse event in stockholm. January 22, 2013

Slide download (PDF)

/ Johan

Today is a good day for all MDT 2010/2012 admins. CMTrace.exe is included in ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 Toolkit.

You don't need to get the full ConfigMgr 2012 software to find a new log viewer for the MDT log files (of course good old Trace32.exe still works, but does not exist publicly in x64 version)

After installing ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 Toolkit, CMTrace.exe is found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Configmgr 2012 Toolkit SP1\ClientTools

Download link to ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 Toolkit



The ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 Toolkit installation folder.

 

However For some odd reason, Microsoft only included the x86 executable (which extracts the x64 version when running on full Windows).

This will of course fail in x64 WinPE, in which cannot start the x86 extractor, and CMTrace.exe fails to start. This is not a problem if...

Here is a download for deploying a complete ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 infrastructure running on Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012 in either Hyper-V or VMware: One Domain Controller and one ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 member server – Including pre-requisites like .Net Framework, SQL Server 2012 CU2 (or higher, this kit is using SQL Server 2012 CU3) and IIS - all fully automated.

Once configured, the total build time for the full ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 lab environment is about 3 hours (on my laptop).

Download the Hydration Kit for ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 (132 kb).

   

Overview

To build the lab there are three steps you need to do

Download the necessary software Prepare the Hydration Environment Deploy the virtual machines Detailed instructions are further down this page... see the Step-by-Step Guide section

   

...

When build lab and proof-of-concept solutions in a virtual environment it's very useful to also have a virtual router to enable multiple networks to connect, and to simulate a larger environments.

Depending on virtualization platform you can use built-in network configurations to route, and bandwidth-limit network traffic. In this article you learn about creating a virtual router that works with all modern virtual platforms. You have two different options in this article:

Option 1 is using a Windows Server 2012 based router. Option 2 is using a Linux (Vyatta) based router. Scenario

The step-by-step guides in this article configure a virtual router for the fictive ViaMonstra network. For a full IP plan for ViaMonstra network, see http://viamonstra.com/?page_id=25

ViaMonstra has the following three local networks:

New York: 192.168.1.0/24Stockholm: 192.168.2.0/24 Liverpool: 192.168.3.0/24

In addition ViaMonstra also have Internet access. In a real world (physical) network you would have many routers, but in a virtual environment where all virtual machines are running on the same host you only need one router. This also means that in this guide there are three internal virtual networks (virtual switches in Hyper-V), and one external. In the step-by-step guides I assume you have created the following virtual networks:...

When integrating MDT 2012 Update 1 with ConfigMgr 2007/2012 the Computer Replace scenario is unfortunately badly broken. How the test team could miss testing one of the core three deployment scenarios I don't know, but I know how to fix the bug.

Uberbug info When using the Computer Replace scenario in ConfigMgr, unlike the Computer Refresh scenario, the state migration point is being used. To access content in the state migration store, the Request State Store action is used. In the standard client task sequence in MDT 2012 Update 1, that action is missing, leading to that the backup from the old computer is never restored.

In the smsts.log file you find the line: The action (Restore User State) has been skipped because the condition is evaluated to be false. Here is a sample smsts.log file.



The reason for the above is that the OSDStateStorePath property is never set (by the Request State Store action)....

This article was contributed by Mats Olsson, fellow deployment geek from Sweden:

Download the sample script

Ever needed a Certificate on your machine for 802.1X or a Certificate protected wireless network? Are you using ConfigMgr 2007/2012 for OSD?

In my case the answer was yes to both questions.

Back in the Windows XP SP2 days it was just a matter of two registry keys. For Windows XP SP3 or newer you need to configure it through XML files.

With MDT you can do a simple GPUpdate /force to auto-enroll a certificate (your PKI-setup must allow this). ConfigMgr however blocks GPO processing during OSD (see: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/configmgrosd/thread/5715b7a1-c6d1-4c81-a980-7dbb8a3a9ff7/ ).

In theory you can install the system first, wait for the GPO:s to apply after installation and...

When integrating MDT 2012 Update 1 with ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 Beta (which you should, Capish!) you can enable its monitoring capabilities also for ConfigMgr 2012 OS Deployment. If you have access to DaRT 8 you can remote into WinPE when deploying the machines, great for troubleshooting.

Enable Monitoring in Deployment Workbench

To install the web service and database used for monitoring ConfigMgr 2012 you use Deployment Workbench. In this example my site server is named CM04.

On CM01, using the Deployment Workbench, right-click Deployment Shares and select New Deployment Share. Use the following settings for the New Deployment Share Wizard.

Deployment share path: D:\MDTProduction Share name: MDTProduction$ Deployment share description: MDT Production Options: Right-click the new MDT Production Deployment Share and select Properties. In the Monitoring tab, select the Enable monitoring for this deployment share check box, and then click OK.

Note: It will...