Exciting times! ConfigMgr TP 1903 was just released and so the very first public beta of Delivery Optimization In-Network Cache (DOINC), nicely integrated with ConfigMgr. Here is a link to the documentation for ConfigMgr TP 1903: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/core/get-started/2019/technical-preview-1903

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In my personal labs, and in our classroom labs, we’ve been using Samsung NVMe SSD Pro and Evo disks (950/960/070) for many years with good result. But when Amazon announced a dang good deal, moneywise, just before Christmas, on Crucial NVMe SSD’s (the CT1000P1SSD8 – Crucial P1 1TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD), I could not stop myself and asked my manager to order 15 of them, so we could upgrade the remaining classroom hosts from 512 GB to 1 TB. Shiny idea, right?

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One of the new features in MDT 8456 (Lite Touch) is the support for nested task sequences. That’s very useful when you have multiple task sequences using a common block of actions, such us a BIOS configuration block, drivers configuration block, applications block etc..

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In this post you learn to upgrade an existing MDT 8450 environment, with or without ConfigMgr integration, to MDT 8456. The guide is divided in two parts:

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Here are the links referenced in the Advanced System Center Configuration Manager Troubleshooting class I presented in New York in January 2019.

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ConfigMgr TP 1901 was released yesterday, and among the many new features, there was an improved task sequence error dialog box. Had to be tested… 🙂

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Yet another ConfigMgr consulting day, yet another interesting find 🙂

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Here is a step-by-step quick guide on building the perfect Windows 10 v1809 reference image using MDT 8450, Windows ADK 10 v1809, and WinPE Addon for Windows ADK 10 v1809. If you are looking for a Windows 7 version of this guide, check this post: https://deploymentresearch.com/521/Back-to-Basics-Building-a-Windows-7-SP1-Reference-Image-using-MDT-2013-Update-2 

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Starting with Windows ADK 10 v1809, WinPE is now a separate install (Addon) to Windows ADK 10. As with previous Windows ADK 10 releases you find the setup files on the Microsoft Hardware Dev Center: http://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/get-started/adk-install

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Wow, last week at Microsoft Ignite 2018 was pretty intense to say the least. Six days (including pre-day) with 1000+ sessions available. Below you find a listing of the shiniest Windows 10 Deployment session from Microsoft Ignite 2018:

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LEDBAT, or Windows LEDBAT as the Microsoft implementation of it is called, is yet another option to reduce the impact Windows 10, and other software distribution, will have on your network. This feature is currently available on Windows Server, version 1709 or later, and requires Windows 10 v1607 or later on the client side. Hopefully the feature will be backported to Windows Server 2016 too (it’s technically already there, but disabled, and in the need of a bug fix).

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Starting with Windows 10 v1607, OEMs like Dell, HP, Lenovo etc. are required to support TPM 2.0 for new machines certified for Windows 10. Exceptions apply for special purpose commercial systems, as well as custom orders, or machines delivered with a custom image from the customer, but anyway.

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When doing Windows 10 Servicing, meaning going from one Windows 10 version to the next, it makes absolute sense to do that upgrade using an already updated image. In this post you find a script that does exactly that. This image can obviously also be used for the image you use if upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 (for the few orgs that does).

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Here is a quick guide on setting up Delivery Optimization (DO) for a ConfigMgr environment.

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Here is a guide on how to add Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) to a ConfigMgr boot image so it starts first in the boot process, making it possible to remote into WinPE as soon as the boot image has loaded, even before the PXE password and ConfigMgr prestart commands.

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This is a quick follow-up to my Beyond ZIP Part II – Data DeDuplication Archives for all Windows versions via ZPAQ post, showing some new benchmarking info.

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Every know and then the discussion about using offline servicing vs. build and capture for your reference images comes up, so I figured it was about time to write a post about it.

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This is a guest post graciously provided by Adam Gross (@AdamGrossTX). Thanks Adam!

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last week, you have learned that the version of the Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser components can be the difference of your WSUS/SUP being hammered with network traffic or not. Luckily, it’s very easy to check.

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This week started pretty harsh, a ton of customers reaching out to our team having WSUS issues. Everything from the “traditional” CPU and Memory spikes, to severe network traffic over port 8530 to the WSUS/SUP server. Basically Clients downloading massive amount of info, some customers reporting up to 700 MB per endpoint.

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