August, 2014

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.

Microsoft Application Virtualization 5.0: Introduction (TechEd 2012)

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Australia/2012/WCL312

Implementing Security Compliance Manager for Compliance in SCCM 2012 (TechEd 2012)

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Australia/2012/SIM424

PowerShell for ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 (TechEd 2013)

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!

Matt

Hi All,

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 $modulelocation
CD PRI:

$SoftwareUpdates = (get-cmsoftwareupdategroup | Where {$_.LocalizedDisplayN -eq $SUG}).Updates
Foreach ($SoftwareUpdate in $SoftwareUpdates){
(Get-CMSoftwareUpdate -Id $SoftwareUpdate).LocalizedDisplayName

}

############################################################################################

UPDATE

After going to R2 CU2 The cmdlets changed slightly.

Found a simpler command below

############################################################################################

$modulelocation = 'F:\Program Files\Microsoft Configuration Manager\AdminConsole\bin\configurationmanager.psd1'
$SUG = 'Security Updates'

Import-Module $modulelocation
CD PRI:

(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.

Getting Started with PowerShell 3.0 Jump Start

Feel free to comment with your own useful PowerShell script or even a new improved version of mine below…

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