About the author

Johan Arwidmark

Share

Creating a Pretty Good Installer Script for Microsoft Edge

By Johan Arwidmark / March 26, 2020

Here is a work in progress sample for a better installer script for Microsoft Edge. Any comments/feedback/ideas are more than welcome 🙂 Since the initial release I've removed the master_preferences section since its not support by Microsoft Edge (only for Google Chrome). ConfigMgr Native Script for Edge The native ConfigMgr script adds an update channel […]

Share

Benchmarking Peer Cache vs. BranchCache – Bare-metal OS Deployment

By Johan Arwidmark / February 28, 2020

With Windows 7 out of support, protecting your WAN links, and reducing the network impact Windows 10 will have on your environment has never been more important. In this post I wanted to compare Peer Cache and BranchCache in ConfigMgr for a specific scenario to see how they compared to each other. The scenario: I […]

Share

SQL Queries for finding Peer Cache Content

By Johan Arwidmark / February 21, 2020

Starting in ConfigMgr 1806, only machines that are online will be returned as a Peer Cache Source. During the process of finding the content for a peer asking for it, ConfigMgr runs the MP_GetSuperPeerContentLocations stored procedure to find the content. However, that stored procedure is a bit complicated to run just for figuring out where […]

Share

Measuring Hyper-V Lab Network Traffic with PowerShell

By Johan Arwidmark / February 18, 2020

In a recent project / study, I had the need to measure the individual, as well as combined, outbound network traffic from a fixed set of of servers. In this example, a domain controller (DC01), a ConfigMgr Management Point (CM01), and a ConfigMgr Distribution Point (DP01). What can I say, PowerShell to the rescue. The […]

Share

Tracking OS Deployment Milestones in ConfigMgr (PowerShell Edition)

By Johan Arwidmark / February 17, 2020

Lately I have been doing a lot of performance testing for ConfigMgr OSD. Basically I've deploying separate batches of machines, and I needed a quick way monitor certain milestones of their deployment, and filter out everything else. The various task sequence reports and monitors I found out there gave me a bit to much info, […]

Share

Pre-Caching Content for P2P in a ConfigMgr Environment

By Johan Arwidmark / February 13, 2020

ConfigMgr natively supports three different platforms for peer-to-peer (P2P) of content. It's Peer Cache, BranchCache, and Delivery Optimization (DO). To cover P2P of all types of content ConfigMgr supports you need to pick at least two of these. You always have to pick DO, because it's the only platform that can P2P native Windows 10 […]

Share

Speed Up Driver Package Downloads for ConfigMgr OSD

By Johan Arwidmark / February 10, 2020

In ConfigMgr, when doing OS Deployment from HTTPS enabled DPs, or via Peer Cache (uses HTTPS too), or via BranchCache (encrypted data + encrypted transfers), you will find that using traditional driver packages, with thousands of small files, is not going as fast as you would like. In fact, a single deployment can take a […]

Share

Configuring Wake-On-LAN for DELL machines with ConfigMgr

By Johan Arwidmark / February 2, 2020

Since ConfigMgr 1810, there is a new, and much improved way to wake up machines on your network. However, your hardware must be configured to allow it, and so does Windows 10. Good news, you can use ConfigMgr for that too. I typically use a Task Sequence for most hardware (BIOS) configurations, and a Configuration […]

Share

Debugging BSOD in WinPE

By Johan Arwidmark / January 27, 2020

When a driver is causing a crash in full Windows, its fairly easy to debug. You simply allow Windows to create the memory.dmp file, load it into you favorite debugger, and off you go. However, when you get an BSOD in WinPE, for example during OS deployment its quite different. For a start there is […]

Share

ConfigMgr, Delivery Optimization and Multiple Boundary Groups

By Johan Arwidmark / January 24, 2020

As a general rule of thumb, keeping your boundary groups configuration stupid simple is a good idea. That being said, I was today years old when I learned how multiple boundary groups, with different peer download settings, affect Delivery Optimization settings as well as Peer Cache downloads. TL;DR Configure your clients to be a member […]

Share

A Good ISO File is a Quiet ISO File

By Johan Arwidmark / January 11, 2020

Well, the topic is at least true when automating deployment tests in UEFI-based virtual machines. When spinning up multiple VMs, the last thing you want to do is having the connect to each one of them and "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD….." Well, that's not to hard to fix, simply replace […]

Share

Back to Basics – ConfigMgr Distribution Points and Boundaries

By Johan Arwidmark / December 20, 2019

Per request from a fellow tweep, here is crash course in ConfigMgr Distribution Points, Boundaries, and Boundary Groups. Distribution Points In ConfigMgr environments, the Distribution Points, or DPs, are simply there to store packages that client connects to for downloading software like applications, software updates, and OS deployment images etc.. To make sure clients are […]

Share

Using OSD Builder to Create a Multi-Language Windows 10 Image

By Johan Arwidmark / December 15, 2019

Here is a quick guide on how to use #OSDBuilder from David Segura (@SeguraOSD) to create a Windows 10 1909 reference image with two language packs (German and Swedish), as well as with .NET Framework enabled. This guide contains of the following steps: Installing OSD Builder Import OS Media, with Language Packs, and run the […]

Share

A Practical Guide to ConfigMgr Operations

By Johan Arwidmark / December 14, 2019

Here is a operations guide sysadmin or operations team can follow to maintain a ConfigMgr environment. The guide is divided in to daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly operation tasks. In general the tasks described in these documents should be implemented into whatever ticketing system that is being used, such as Service Now, Remedy or Zendesk. […]

Share

A Holistic Approach to ConfigMgr Client Health

By Johan Arwidmark / December 8, 2019

For ConfigMgr admins and operation teams the struggle for better ConfigMgr client health is very real. The harsh truth is that unless you are managing a small lab with like 50 clients, you are very likely to never reach 100 percent client health (sorry). There will always be machines that simply will not fully cooperate […]

Share

A Real-World Guide for Upgrading / Servicing ConfigMgr

By Johan Arwidmark / December 1, 2019

Since mid-2015, major ConfigMgr versions are released every for months, with usually a Hotfix Rollup (called HFRU) or two in between each major release. Anew ConfigMgr version is released into the early update ring first, and then after a few weeks, released broadly without you having to opt in for the update. Start upgrading your […]

Share

Hydration Kit For Windows Server 2019, SQL Server 2017 and ConfigMgr Current Branch

By Johan Arwidmark / October 20, 2019

This kit builds a complete ConfigMgr Current Branch 22203 infrastructure running on Windows Server 2019 and SQL Server 2017. This kit is tested on both Hyper-V and VMware virtual platforms, but should work fine on any virtualization platform that can boot from an ISO file. This kit now also adds and configuring SQL Server Reporting Services, and has been updated for Windows 11 support.

Share

Building the Perfect Windows Server 2019 Reference Image

By Johan Arwidmark / October 19, 2019

Here is a step-by-step quick guide on building the perfect Windows Server 2016 reference image. This guide is divided in two parts: The first part covers how to create a Windows Server 2016 reference image in just a few minutes using offline servicing. The quick-and-dirty method. The second part is about creating a Windows Server 2016 reference image using MDT 8443. The SHINY method.

1 4 5 6 7 8 26
Page 6 of 26
>