Greetings from Redmond! Are you interested in FIM? Been working with FIM for some time? I encourage you to take exam 70-158: Forefront Identity Manager 2010, Configuring. I felt this was a good assessment of real world situations, a few of which I had run into over the past month. Even though there are no authorized FIM 2010 books to help you study for the exam that are listed on the website, you do get a book if you take an in person FIM 2010 Workshop. You can use the book to continue practicing in your lab environment, study and take the exam and then apply that learning to your business. Premier Field Engineers like me teach this workshop as well as other instructors in authorized training centers. If you are a Premier customer you can reach out to your Technical Account Manager to schedule a FIM 2010 Workshop.
If you're unable to take in person training a good second best is working through the FIM Ramp Up training. The online virtual lab gives you 2 hours for each module and has videos and instructions leading you along.
Have fun!
Greetings from Redmond!
Over the past several months I have been listening to customer feedback around learning and understanding FIM 2010. As I collected the feedback and talked with customers it is evident that the steep learning curve is not due to the technology as much as it is the language we use. We use a lot of new words in the product that seem academic at first but turn out to be incredibly important when it comes to operating and troubleshooting FIM 2010. We have the FIM 2010 Terminology and Glossary however this page does not include terminology we used in the previous versions of the product. As such, I feel there is an opportunity for us to produce a comprehensive document containing all FIM 2010 terminology. The file attached is the first attempt at building a comprehensive FIM 2010 terminology document. The ZIP file contains a WORD document and a PDF file. The WORD and PDF files contain the same information.
I hope you find the document useful. Please feel free to send me email if you like it as well as any suggestions for improvement. I like email and I also like feedback. Feedback is one step towards helping us make things better and is directly related to our company values.
Best,
Jeff Ingalls
Our Values
"As a company, and as individuals, we value integrity, honesty, openness, personal excellence, constructive self-criticism, continual self-improvement, and mutual respect. We are committed to our customers and partners and have a passion for technology. We take on big challenges, and pride ourselves on seeing them through. We hold ourselves accountable to our customers, shareholders, partners, and employees by honoring our commitments, providing results, and striving for the highest quality."
Welcome to this edition of FIM Q&A. This week I am going to focus on Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). WMI is critical for FIM to function from running/stopping run profiles to syncing passwords. Let's get right to it...
Q1: My WMI is broke! How did it get this way?
A1: According to some trusted Microsoft support guys, the top cause is not flushing to disk before shutdown (or what we call in the biz, a dirty shutdown). Next would be 3rd party application causing some problems.
Q2: What can I do to determine the problem?
A2: WMIDiag is a tool we released a few months ago to help determine WMI problems. The Ask Perf team has a good blog on it here.
Q3: What can I do to prevent the problem?
A3: I like how you think. There are a few WMI hotfixes out there that will prevent future problems as well as improve performance. The hotfixes are post Windows 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows 7 SP1. You will not get these fixes through Windows Update and will need to download them manually. Test in your lab, go through testing and get them on your machines.
Find the list of WMI hotfixes post Windows 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows 7 SP1 here. The list is maintained by one of our PFEs, Yong Rhee. If you are running a different version you can search his blog for "WMI" and find the list of hotfixes for your OS version.
Q4. Where can I get more information on the WMI in regards to FIM?
A4. The FIM 2010 Developer Reference discusses the FIM WMI classes and how to work with them.
Q5. Can I use PowerShell?
A5. You bet. Good starting articles are Accessing WMI from PowerShell and PowerShell Scriptomatic
That's all for now. Have a great week!