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Ian BartlettMatt ShadboltGeorge Smpyrakis
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I’ve recently spent some time with a customer deploying a large amount of Distribution Points in their ConfigMgr 2012 R2 hierarchy. They were finding themselves running into bottlenecks during the deployment, and with the help of the ConfigMgr Product Group, a new Site Control File property modification is now being supported.
The DPUpgradeThreadLimit property by default is set to five. The property should be carefully increased in environments where many Distribution Points are being installed/upgraded in parallel.
As the property is not visible by default, we need to create and set the new property. This will add the property and set it to the $newValue value across all of your Sites.
This script is provided as-is and provides no warranties. Please thoroughly test in a lab environment, and see the Configuration Manager SDK for more information.
When I have a little downtime (which isn’t often!), I like to sit around and think of cool things I can automate using PowerShell. I have a .txt file that I put all these ideas into and every now and then have a crack at solving one.
Just recently I was playing around with Office 365 and Windows InTune and this idea struck me.
With the licensing model of Office 365 being user based, people are syncing their mail to more and more devices. They’ll have Outlook on their work laptop, email syncing on their Windows Phone, and probably syncing on their Apple and/or Android tablet as well. The problem with having so many devices is IT tracking and managing their corporate data. Of course, InTune is the obvious tool to manage these devices.
Getting your users to enrol their devices into InTune is one of the main challenges. As the registration has to happen from the end users side, I thought I’d write a script to help pester your users into registering their iPads, iPhones, Androids and WPs into your InTune MDM.
The idea is for this script to be run as a scheduled task. It will connect to your o365 tenant subscription and discover all those users who have synced their device with o365 since the last scheduled task ran. It will then send that user an email reminding them to enrol their device to InTune.
The email to your users can obviously be customized, but here’s a look at what I’ve given you by default
I’ve also added a testing mode switch, so you don’t spam your o365 users while doing your dev and test.
Here’s the script.
Matt Shadbolt
Hi All,
I had a need at a customer to write a script that would identify any active package distributions at a primary site via WMI. Although DPJobMgr will also give you more information and control this script returns a quicker result and in the case I was dealing with when you have a large number of active package distributions this can come in handy. Hopefully you'll find it useful.
The script is based on the SMS_DistributionJob Server WMI Class
(UPDATE. Matt just provided me with the following code that will give you your Primary site code automatically from WMI. thanks Matty.
##################################################
$providerLocation = gcim -ComputerName $siteServerName -Namespace root\sms SMS_ProviderLocation -filter "ProviderForLocalSite='True'"
$sitecode = $providerLocation.SiteCode
$providerNamespace = "root\sms\site_" + $sitecode
###################################################
Updated script below
)
####################################################################################################################################
##Check the content distribution queue on a primary
$providerLocation = gcim -ComputerName $siteServerName -Namespace root\sms SMS_ProviderLocation -filter "ProviderForLocalSite='True'"$sitecode = $providerLocation.SiteCode$providerNamespace = "root\sms\site_" + $sitecode
$count = (Get-WmiObject -Namespace $providerNamespace -Class SMS_DistributionJob).count
$Activethreadcount = (Get-WmiObject -Namespace "root\SMS\Site_$($SiteCode)" -Class SMS_DistributionJob | Where {$_.Starttime -ne $null}).Count
$Activethreads = Get-WmiObject -Namespace "root\SMS\Site_$($SiteCode)" -Class SMS_DistributionJob | Where {$_.Starttime -ne $null} | Format-List -Property Starttime, RemainingSize
Write-Output "Total Current Active Distributions $($count)"
Write-Output "Total Active Threads Count $($Activethreadcount)"
Write-Output "Current Threads" $Activethreads
Feel free to post any updates or even scripts that you've written in the comments below.
If you want to look at other classes that could provide you with more information just check out the following MSDN reference
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh948405.aspx
On the 7th of November 1994, a little product called Systems Management Server (SMS) 1.0 was released. Since that date, there have been four major revisions (SMS 2.0, SMS 2003, ConfigMgr 2007 and ConfigMgr 2012), three Service Packs (ConfigMgr 2007 SP1 & SP2, ConfigMgr 2012 SP1), three Rx releases (ConfigMgr 2007 R2 & R3, ConfigMgr 2012 R2) and countless Release Candidates/Betas, Cumulative Updates (CU’s) and Hotfixes!
I thought it would be really cool to check out the Wayback Machine for the TechNet page for the day that SMS 1.0 was released, but back then TechNet.com wasn’t even around! (how did we ever find our supportability numbers!)
The first mention of SMS on the Wayback Machine TechNet is in mid 2000 and talked about deploying SMS 2.0, administering Inventory and Software Metering, as well as the standard Server Sizing advice we all so heavily rely on. (in their Contoso sizing example, the Central Site with 14k clients required a server with a whopping 300-MHz processor and 256 MB of RAM!)
http://web.archive.org/web/20000817202621/http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sms/
(I love that the comments and suggestions hyper-link is a mailto:technet@microsoft.com)
I was fortunate enough to not have really dealt with SMS, starting my Systems Management journey with Configuration Manager 2007 but some of my colleagues remember those days well.
Sebastian Baboolal, Senior PFE at Microsoft
I started with SMS 2.0. SP5 back around 2004. I was working for Microsoft support back then. We had one week of training and we were put on the phones.Classic trial by fire. My first call was a critsit for a customer. They had a large environment at the time > 100K clients being managed. They had a top-level SMS site. Then sites under that with lots of other primary sites under those. One of the 2nd tier primaries went belly up. Had to do a DR on that site. We didn’t cover DR at all in the training (just my luck). Back then you had to go thru like 20 pages of stuff to get the site back up. I was on that call for 14 hrs. Did not leave my desk. We got it fixed but then I was thinking what in the world did I get myself into. Glad we’ve moved on from CAPs and smsclitoken accounts but did like die_evil_bug_die and dial_me_in_baby
George Smpyrakis, Senior PFE at Microsoft
I started with SMS 1.2 back in 1997. I had just started in IT straight out of Uni and helped setup these Site Servers that seemed to take an entire day to complete. I took these boxes out to a couple of remote sites and got them up and running then started the long and arduous procedure of attempting to install the client on the workstations. At the time we used it as a Remote control tool for the workstations and In the end it only lasted a couple of months before we removed it and that was a monumental effort in itself as the client seemed to never go away. A few years later a lovely virus called Nimda came along and brought the company I was working for to a halt. We literally had to go around the State of Victoria with floppy disks (Look it up for those under 30.) to patch each workstation so we could bring Internet access back. That’s when my Manager came up to me and said I want you to run with SMS so we never have to do that again. So I then Implemented and starting using SMS 2.0 and have never looked back…
Anthony Watherston, PFE at Microsoft
I started with SCCM 2007 implementing it because I had nothing better to do and looking to expand my horizons – some of my favourite memories.
Through all this though it is one of the most complex systems management products and only limited by your imagination as to what you can do!
Russell Stevens, Senior PFE at Microsoft
I started with SMS (slow moving software) version 2.0 RTM in a distributed environment at a UK government department that may have had something to with mail in 2000…
Highlights include:
It has been a great ride with some ups and downs, and has delivered some outstanding results over the 20 years, loved it.
So here’s to ConfigMgr! May our next 20 years be full of smooth CU upgrades, clear of inbox backlogs and void of all accidental deployments!
Many customers are still configuring collection structures similar to 2007 and using collections to control the validity of who should receive which applications.
Where possible we should be changing how we now manage application deployments and move the validity processing of the application back to the client by using our Global Conditions (state based) to manage Requirement Rules. This works well for many Off The Shelf (OTS) applications that do not have specific procurement constraints as we can safely deploy this category of applications to ALL USERS and if needed implement an Application Approval workflow. Where I am increasingly seeing customers still reverting back to specific targeted of applications, normally based of an AD Security Group, is for APP-V application deployments.
I continue to see a large uptake of APP-V in many customer sites as we move towards a user-centric mobile environment, which is great, however I am seeing a lot of customers experiencing poor publishing times of virtual applications which is often a result of poor administrative processes.
In SCCM 2007 we had the option to instruct the virtual application advertisement to auto remove the virtual application when the advertisement was no longer available to a client. Unfortunately this option is no longer available in 2012 and as a result many customers have gone searching for a solution by looking to the ConfigMgr Community forums. Unfortunately a lot of members of the community are simply recommending to use the general deployment rule that an INSTALL deployment takes precedence over an UNINSTALL deployment. As a result many of the community forums have been instructing customers to simply create an UNINSTALL deployment for each virtual application and target this to the ALL USERS or ALL SYSTEMS collections. Please DO NOT DO THIS as you will continue to experience slow publishing times for APP-V applications.
If you are already doing this approach, I strongly recommend you read this blog to understand why this is a BAD idea and be VERY CAUTIOUS in your approach to undo this setup. DO NOT do a BIG BANG approach and remove all of the current UNINSTALL deployments in one hit and create the new recommended workflow as this will cause a huge amount of deployment policy objects potentially causing significant issues in your environment. It would be very advisable that you slowly stage the changes in your environment over a few days to prevent a mass number of policy changes in one hit.
Only when you have specific LOB applications that require a REQUIRED Deployment.
When a client polls for new policy changes, a SPROC is run by the Management Point consuming SQL resources.
The more records in ResPolicyMap and DepPolicyAssignment, the more CPU time required to process the “GET” SPROC like
ResPolicyMap maps the resource ID and PADBID, (unique identifier for the policy). You can Query the count of ResPolicyMap objects to determine the number of policies being targeted to each user / system that must be processed.
DepPolicyAssignment links a policy object with its dependency polices and are provided to both users &/or machines when a policy request is initiated.
Examples:
Below are examples of the Collection Queries you can use to manage an auto un-publish workflow for App-V deployments based off an AD Security Group.
1. Create an AD Security group for the application you are deploying.
2. Create an INSTALL Collection for each Virtual Application with a dynamic query linked to the AD Security Group. Target the INSTALL Deployment for each APP-V Application to this Collection.
2. Create a specific UNINSTALL Collection for each Virtual Application with a dynamic query using the syntax below. Also add an explicit EXCLUDE Collection membership rule that excludes the INSTALL Collection for that application. Ensure the application name matches that listed in the ConfigMgr database.
select SMS_R_USER.ResourceID,SMS_R_USER.ResourceType,SMS_R_USER.Name,SMS_R_USER.UniqueUserName,SMS_R_USER.WindowsNTDomain from SMS_R_User inner join SMS_G_System_AppClientState on SMS_R_USER.UniqueUserName = SMS_G_System_AppClientState.UserName where SMS_G_System_AppClientState.AppName = "APPLICATIONNAME" and G_System_AppClientState.ComplianceState = 1
Create and Target the UNINSTALL deployment policy to the UNINSTALL Collection.
The result will be…. When a User is added to the AD Security Group the virtual application will be made available to the end user and install silently. When the user is removed from the AD Security group that has previously successfully published the APP-V application, they will be added to the UNINSTALL collection resulting in the virtual application being automatically removed from the client only then. This approach will minimise the ongoing policy objects that every user in the organisation will have to process.
Microsoft MVP and my Premier customer from last week, Tao Yang was telling me about his custom SCOM Management Pack used to monitor the health of your ConfigMgr clients.
Monitors include:
http://blog.tyang.org/2014/10/04/updated-configmgr-2012-r2-client-management-pack-version-1-2-0-0/
This is an invaluable resource, and such a good example of the very smart MVP’s doing great work that benefits all of the System Center community.
Nice work Tao!
Matt
with the release of R2 CU3 we now have the ability to restrict which Management points a client can talk to. This can be particularly useful in case you have a Remote MP or only certain MP’s a client can access.
All we simply need to do is
After restarting the SMS Agent Host we can see that our MP is being forced in the Locationservices.log
and we can confirm that we are talking to the correct MP in ClientLocation.log
keep in mind the following Note from the CU3 update
Note After this value is defined, there is no fallback or other method for clients to communicate with other MPs. This new entry is only intended for permanently located workstation and server clients and is not portable to devices such as mobile PCs or tablets.
Morning Gang,
Well, TechEd Australia 2014 is less than two weeks away, and Ian, George and I are furiously fine tuning our demos in time for our Wednesday session.
As a special treat for the first 100 people into our session, we’re giving away some very cool looking ConfigMgrDogs badges!
We’ll also have a t-shirt give-away for one lucky person who tweets a picture of themselves wearing their badge, hash tagging #ConfigMgrDogs.
Looking forward to seeing you all in Melbourne!
Hey ConfigMgrDogers!
The TechEd 2014 Australia schedule has been announced, and confirmed ConfigMgrDogs will be presenting at Melbourne only. Unfortunately, George, Ian and myself won’t make it to the Sydney TechEd, however our session will be recorded and posted on the ConfigMgrDogs blog. Please add the session to your schedule (we want the big room) and retweet to those you know attending.
See you all there!
Matt, Ian & George.
For those attending, here are all the relevant links:
Public Information : http://techedmelbourne.azurewebsites.net/SessionDetail.aspx?id=19005
Add to My Schedule : http://techedmelbourne.hubb.me/Sessions/Details/19005
Tweet about our session: https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?&hashtags=ConfigMgrDogs,ConfigMgrDogsAtTechEd,DCIM.004
If you’re trying to get the Wake On LAN Proxy feature of ConfigMgr 2012 SP1+ working, there’s a lot of steps required. Here’s a simple list of “have you’s?” to make sure you haven’t missed any requirements. For a more detailed guide, check out Muhammad Adil’s blog post.
1. Have you enabled Wake On LAN on the Site?
For traditional Wake On LAN (broadcast based), select the Subnet-directed broadcasts option. If you want to use the Wake On LAN Proxy feature, you must select the Unicast method.
2. Have you enabled the Wake On LAN features in your clients Power Management policy settings?
3. Have you ensured that Wake On LAN ports are being allowed through firewalls? Both hardware and software?
4. Have you got Hardware Inventory enabled?
5. Have you ensured the Hardware Inventory information correct?
The WOL features use the IP Address provided by the Hardware Inventory scan as the target addresses. If you’re running Hardware Inventory every 7 days, these addresses may be stale and obviously unusable/.
6. Have you confirmed your switches forward UDP packets?
Confirm with your networking team that UDP packet forwarding has been configured across every network switch between your ConfigMgr servers and the target clients. Don’t forget those $99 switches under someone's desk!
7.Have you ensured your BIOS hardware support wake-up packets? Is the feature turned on in BIOS? Is it enabled on the NIC?
(Note: this is a screen cap of my wireless network adapter as my laptop doesn’t have a physical NIC. We do not support Wake On LAN via the Wireless network adapter)
8. Have you checked that your network settings are not effecting supportability?
802.1X port authentication, MAC address binding on switches and MAC flapping being blocked will all cause unicast Wake On LAN to fail.
A bit about me first :- my name is Anthony Watherston and I’m a Premier Field Engineer in Melbourne. Currently working with Configuration Manager and Orchestrator – plus I try to do everything I can with Powershell!
Last week I had a need for accessing the Configuration Manager client on a remote system. As this was developing an automated solution I didn’t have the option to use the Control Panel applet or the Configuration Manager console to trigger actions on the client. What I needed to find was a way to trigger actions remotely using Powershell – the answer lies in the methods associated with WMI classes.
As WMI is a class based system, each object has associated properties and many of these have methods as well. Below are some examples of how to call some of the built in WMI methods which are part of the Configuration Manager Client namespace. A detailed description of the client and its classes can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj874139.aspx
Determine if a system has a reboot pending
The Configuration Manager client has a class called CCM_ClientUtilities – in Wbemtest I can access it by connecting to root\ccm\clientsdk. In the diagram below we can see the methods associated with this class.
So how do I trigger these methods using Powershell – the Invoke-WMIMethod cmdlet.
To get a list of associated methods I can use the command below: -
Get-WmiObject -Namespace root\ccm\clientsdk -Class CCM_ClientUtilities -List | select -ExpandProperty Methods
This gives me the list of methods below:-
Now if I want to trigger one of these methods I can use my Invoke-WMIMethod cmdlet and supply the method name.
Invoke-WmiMethod -Namespace root\ccm\clientsdk -Class CCM_ClientUtilities -Name DetermineIfRebootPending
There is a lot of information in these results, I only want to know the value of the RebootPending flag. I can wrap my command in parentheses and specify the property name after a dot to only return that value.
(Invoke-WmiMethod -ComputerName $remoteMachine -Namespace root\ccm\clientsdk -Class CCM_ClientUtilities -Name DetermineIfRebootPending).RebootPending
Now that I have this information I could force the machine to reboot if the result is true using one of the other methods in this class – RestartComputer.
$rebootPending = (Invoke-WmiMethod -Namespace root\ccm\clientsdk -Class CCM_ClientUtilities -Name DetermineIfRebootPending).RebootPending
if ($rebootPending) { Invoke-WmiMethod -Namespace root\ccm\clientsdk -Class CCM_ClientUtilities -Name RestartComputer }
Of course if I wanted to perform this on a remote machine I can use the WMIObject computername parameter and specify a remote machine.
$remoteMachine = "AW-SVR01"
$rebootPending = (Invoke-WmiMethod -ComputerName $remoteMachine -Namespace root\ccm\clientsdk -Class CCM_ClientUtilities -Name DetermineIfRebootPending).RebootPending
if ($rebootPending) { Invoke-WmiMethod -ComputerName $remoteMachine -Namespace root\ccm\clientsdk -Class CCM_ClientUtilities -Name RestartComputer }
Trigger a client action
I can use the same theory in order to trigger policy retrieval on a machine. Each action is specified by a schedule value, supplying these to the TriggerSchedule method will force the client to perform an action. For instance the script below will trigger a Machine Policy Retrieval & Evaluation cycle on a client.
$trigger = "{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000021}"
Invoke-WmiMethod -Namespace root\ccm -Class sms_client -Name TriggerSchedule $trigger
As with the other script I can supply a computer name parameter to the command to have it execute on a remote machine.
Determine assigned site
The last method is one which will allow you to determine a client’s assigned site. I can use the GetAssignedSite method to retrieve the site code.
(Invoke-WMIMethod –Namespace root\ccm –Class SMS_Client –Name GetAssignedSiteCode).sSiteCode
There are many more methods available to use within WMI – stay tuned for more.
The ConfigMgrDogs boys will be getting together to deliver at TechEd Australia 2014!
George, Ian and I will be delivering the ConfigMgrDogs Troubleshoot ConfigMgr 2012 (Level 400) session at both Melbourne and Sydney. We’ve got some exciting demos planned, and a surprise or two to be announced via the blog and Twitter. Subscribe to the blogs RSS here, or follow us on Twitter.
Details haven’t formally been released, so stay tuned for more information!
To wet your appetite, check out our previous TechEd sessions.
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Australia/2012/WCL312
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Australia/2012/SIM424
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Australia/2013/WCL416
I went searching for some nice looking ConfigMgr Visio Stencils this morning and found the most amazing set created by Ryan Boud.
You can download the stencils here (http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Modern-Style-Visio-da5a7470) and visit his blog (http://hmmconfused.wordpress.com/)
Generic
Servers
Specialised
Thanks Ryan for such great work!
one of the most useful tips I've learnt on the job is to use WBEMTEST on your Primary Site Server to test your Collection WQL queries. This is useful for doing things like testing the time it takes to run that query. This is especially useful when you get collections that take a very long time to run potentially causing backlogs and delays in collections updating. Using these tools can help you quickly test the queries for timing outside of Configuration Manager.
WBEMTEST
Log onto your Site Server or from your tools machine you can connect remotely. Ill show you both methods.
Start up WBEMTEST from a command line
Click Connect
In Namespace type in the following
root\SMS\SITE_XXX
replace XXX with your SiteCode
If your connecting remotely
\\Computername\root\SMS\SITE_XXX
then click Connect
Click the Query button
Enter your WQL query and click Apply
If you have a valid query you should see a result
PowerShell
You could also run a similar query using PowerShell (Thanks to my fellow PFE’s Ryan Hall and Anthony Watherston for this.)
just replace the value in the $WQL variable quotes with your query and of course PRI with your SiteCode.
$WQL = 'select * from SMS_R_SYSTEM'
$WMI = Get-WmiObject -Namespace Root\SMS\Site_PRI -Query $WQL
$WMI
and if I want to measure that command for approximate timing
Measure-Command -Expression {Get-WmiObject -Namespace Root\SMS\Site_PRI -Query 'select * from SMS_R_SYSTEM' }
Hi everybody,
In a recent Workshop that I was teaching I got asked how to list all of the security updates in a software update group. So I wrote a quick PowerShell script to do exactly that.
Here is the code I used while on R2 CU1
############################################################################################
$modulelocation = 'F:\Program Files\Microsoft Configuration Manager\AdminConsole\bin\configurationmanager.psd1'$SUG = 'Security Updates'
Import-Module $modulelocationCD PRI:
$SoftwareUpdates = (get-cmsoftwareupdategroup | Where {$_.LocalizedDisplayN -eq $SUG}).UpdatesForeach ($SoftwareUpdate in $SoftwareUpdates){(Get-CMSoftwareUpdate -Id $SoftwareUpdate).LocalizedDisplayName
}
UPDATE
After going to R2 CU2 The cmdlets changed slightly.
Found a simpler command below
(Get-CMSoftwareUpdate -UpdateGroupName $SUG).LocalizedDisplayName
You will just need to change the two initial variables
$Modulelocation to where your psd1 sits. See Matts blog for details on this.
$SUG to the name of your Software Update Group.
This will simply list all of the updates so you can paste it into any Change Request you need to create for Software Updates.
Hopefully you find this useful but more than that hopefully this gets you started with some PowerShell. A fantastic free course that I always recommend to my students if you not sure where to begin is this MVA course run by Jeffrey Snover and Jason Helmick.
Feel free to comment with your own useful PowerShell script or even a new improved version of mine below…
We’ve finally got an official ConfigMgrDogs Twitter account!
https://twitter.com/ConfigMgrDogs
Please follow us for all blog posts and news from the ConfigMgrDogs team!
Follow @ConfigMgrDogs
This post will step you through the process of creating custom reports in ConfigMgr 2012 R2 that will enforce your Role Based Access Control (RBAC) policies. Configuration Manager reports are now fully enabled for role-based administration. The data for all reports included with Configuration Manager is filtered based on the permissions of the administrative user who runs the report. Administrative users with specific roles can only view information defined for their roles. TechNet reference
Using SQL Management Studio, confirm your SQL query against the new fn_rbac table views passing through the ('disabled') parameter to bypass the requirement of passing through a user SID
Confirm you can see Dataset values and select the type of Report you want to create
Create a New Dataset
NOTE: If you do not see the REFERENCES option, try and run your report, it will fail however will present the References parameters
ALL DONE..
To test I have granted an admin account "sccm2012r2\Ian" that is limited only to the collection called "Ian's Collection"
Launch the ConfigMgr console using SCCM2012R2\Ian
The application could not be installed. The most common reason is that software does not support the version of Windows currently installed on your computer. You can try starting the application installation from the Application Catalog again. If the problem continues, contact your network administrator
In the ConfigMgrSoftwareCatalog.log Silverlight log file (found at "C:\Users\mattsha\AppData\LocalLow\Microsoft\Silverlight\is\j2mecbot.hwg\v2uabsdl.022\1\s\s5i52ebhc445n0s2jyvmx5askg5zbspajpmi3e4bvujwll1luiaaaeda\f\ConfigMgrLogs\ConfigMgrSoftwareCatalog.log"), the following three lines were found.
[1][06/23/2014 17:46:43] :ApplicationDetailViewModel.RequestPolicyAssingmentForInstallCallback-Error:The policy information is empty or an error ocurred!
[1][06/23/2014 17:46:43] :ApplicationDetailViewModel.UpdatePageView:PageViewMode changed to:FastInstallError
[1][06/23/2014 17:46:43] :FastInstallPageView:Create Page View FastInstallError
Also in the ServicePortalWebSite.log (found "F:\Program Files\SMS_CCM\CMApplicationCatalog\Logs\ServicePortalWebSite.log") the following two errors
[28, PID:6060][06/23/2014 17:59:54] :The web method threw a fault exception - System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[Microsoft.ConfigurationManager.SoftwareCatalog.Service.Faults5000.ServiceError]: Invalid parameter
[28, PID:6060][06/23/2014 17:59:54] :System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[[Microsoft.ConfigurationManager.SoftwareCatalog.Service.Faults5000.ServiceError, Microsoft.ConfigurationManager.SoftwareCatalog.Website.PortalClasses, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35]]: Invalid parameter
I spent agestrying to troubleshoot this issue without success, and gave up for a short time while I did other things.
A week later I was testing the Collection Evaluator Viewer program that comes with the R2 toolset and found that it was unable to connect directly to the database with a very similar error
A connection was successfully established with the server, then then an error occurred during the login process. (provider: SSL Provider, error:0 – The certificate chain was issued by an authority that is not trusted)
So now I can kind of tell that the issue is actually with the SQL db side, not necessarily ConfigMgr or the App Catalog site server roles.
Next, I checked to make sure SQL is not forcing an encrypted connection using SQL Service Manager.
All good there, however under the certificate tab I noticed we’ve got a self-signed certificate
And low-and-behold the certificate is having problems
I opened the IIS console to view the self-signed certificate
Exported the certificate
Import it into the Trusted Root Authorities
After the import, I attempted again to connect using the Collection Evaluation Viewer, this time it was successful as SQL now trusts the certificate
Back to the Application Catalog, and everything is now working nicely!
Hi Gang!
So I provided this information to one of my customers recently, and Georgy said it would be quite helpful for you dedicated ConfigMgrDogs readers too, so here it is.
This is a high-level view of the Windows Update process from a ConfigMgr clients view utilizing a SUP (Software Update Point).
The Software Update process from the ConfigMgr client
Following the flow
After refreshing machine policy, kick off the Software Update Scan. We can then see the Software Update Scan Cycle has started via the WUAHandler.log (C:\Windows\CCM\Logs\WUAHandler.log)
The Windows Update Handler initiates the Windows Update service against the ConfigMgr SUP. (C:\Windows\WindowsUpdate.log)
After the scan is completed, we then run the Software Update Deployment Evaluation Cycle. Use the UpdatesDeployment.log to view this process (C:\Windows\CCM\Logs\UpdatesDeployment.log)
The Content Access Service finds the content on the CMPRI-MATTSLABS Distribution Point and downloads it
Update Deployment attempts to install updates, Service Window Manager blocks the installation (C:\Windows\CCM\Logs\UpdatesDeployment.log)
Service Window Manager blocking the installation (C:\Windows\CCM\Logs\ServiceWindowManager.log)
And when the window opens, the updates should install. Check the UpdatesDeployment.log
Also, the WindowsUpdate.log success
And reboot if required (and scheduled)
Update: An ex-colleague reached out to me to add some extra info around the process for the SCEP update trigger. As my SCEP knowledge isn't the greatest, it's something I'll be sure to remember and very helpful for the community.
The key difference that I can see is that the SCEP definition update initiates from the AntiMalware Policy configuration, not from the EndPoint client settings where I expected to see it, or the from Software Updates Schedule client setting. As opposed of course to Software Update scanning and installation as per your post. Also triggering a manual SCEP definition update is only done from the SCEP client and not the SCCM client actions from what I've seen so far.
Thanks David!
Hi all,
as requested I’ve just listed all the ConfigMgr 2012 Released versions in a table below. We will do our best to keep this up to date as new updates are released. Note that the Client and Console versions will be exactly the same as the Release/Update version.
To see how to view the version see Matt’s earlier blog here. If you want to confirm a CU update see Neil’s blog here.
Release/Update
Version
Build
If you’ve started playing with Orchestrator I have detailed the areas where you can look for issues with your Runbooks and other components.
Firstly you can look at the Log tab while you’re Runbook is executing
Or after it is complete you can check the Log History tab
Double Click on the entry you want to review and then check the status for each Activity.
To control the level of Detail available you need to go to the properties of each individual Runbook and select Store Activity-specific Published Data and or Store Common Published Data. NOTE This is only recommended in Dev and Test not production as these may significantly increase the size of your database (See the following TechNet reference for details. Database Sizing and Performance )
Do not have these turned on in Production unless you are troubleshooting.
We can also get some useful information from the Events tab
Another area is the component logs for Debug Logging.
Thankyou to Jeffrey Fanjoy who is a senior support escalation engineer based out of the US for this information.
if you go to the following Registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\SystemCenter2012\Orchestrator\TraceLogger
on a box with the Runbook Designer or Runbook Server you will see that for each component there is a LogFolder and LogLevel key. The LogFolder shows you where the actual log sits and the LogLevel is the actual Verbosity level. (NOTE You may need to restart services/ the server before this will take affect.)
Log Level
Just keep in mind that the higher the verbosity the more information that will get put into the log so it should only be used for troubleshooting purposes and should not be left on by default.
Hi Gang.
Over the long weekend last week, I thought I’d have a crack at writing, submitting and publishing a Windows 8 app. It’s a very simple countdown to Windows XP’s End Of Life on April 8th (we are all very excited to see the end of XP).
http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-au/app/windows-xp-end-of-life-countdown/08bd1136-13f0-47bb-a574-c8f3626a9227
As I said, it’s very simple but functional, with a countdown screen and live tile that updates daily.
Please download and rate it in the store.
Hi Everyone,
just a very quick note to let you know that the Configuration Manager 2012 R2 Toolkit is available and is definitely worth a look.
some of the new tools include
CEViewer.exe for viewing collection update stats
and
DPJobManager a tool to help you monitor, suspend, cancel package distributions to Distribution Points
download link below
System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager Toolkit
ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 introduced APP-V Virtual Environments (VE). APP-V VE’s work differently to APP-V 5.0 Connection Groups in a “Full Infrastructure Model” (ie Publishing Server) so we need to do some application mapping before implementing APP-V Virtual Environments. You can think of ConfigMgr VE’s as a “Rule Set” that the ConfigMgr client evaluates when doing an application evaluation cycle. Once a client evaluates true to a VE “Policy”, the connection group is then created, The deviate in ConfigMgr is that an APP-V application can only be a member of one VE at anyone time. This blog aims to explain the reasons why this is the case and why application mapping is vital if your virtual application catalogue has a large number of applications that are highly dependant on other applications.
Let’s say I have a three Applications I need to configure in a Connection Groups, in Full Infra I could easily create three separate connection groups and use the Priority to determine which VFS wins in a conflict.
Full Infra Example (Firefox , Flash & Reader)
Connection Group 1 = Firefox and Flash, priority = 1
Connection Group 2 = Firefox and Reader, priority = 2
Connection Group 3 = Firefox and Flash and Reader, priority = 3
If I do not set my priorities correctly than as you know we get the following error
However in ConfigMgr we need to use a single Virtual Environment Rule Set per application that we need to manage a Connection group for, and set Logical operators to determine the priorities. By Default the Connection Group priority in a ConfigMgr integrated environment is always set to “4294967294” (ie, the priority in traditional terms is not used in ConfigMgr). This is the underlining reason why a ConfigMgr virtual application can only ever be a member of one VE at any one time. ConfigMgr manages the creation of the Connection Group XML that gets created and processed by the client when the Client meets the rules set defined in the Virtual Environment.
If I tried to setup the ConfigMgr Virtual Environment in the same way as I do in Full Infra, illustration below, This WILL NOT WORK! And we will end up with the same error as above
Misconfigured Example below
As I evaluate to True for both Virtual Environment Rule Set I configure both connection Groups but of course get the same ERROR
To configure this in ConfigMgr I need to use my Logical operators inside the VE to achieve the same result I would get if doing it in a Full Infrastructure environment
Client 1: Has Firefox and Reader installed, ie No Flash. This meets the Virtual Environment rule configured so the “Firefox connection Group is created for Firefox and Reader.
Client 2: Has Firefox, Flash and Reader installed. This also meets the Virtual Environment however as I have all three applications, the Flash VFS will take precedence over the Reader VFS as we have set Flash with a high ‘Order” in the Virtual Environment’.
Hope this helps clear up some miss understandings on how APP-V VE’s work in ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 +..
For full details, download the following file