Hi everyone, for those of you that do not know I am moving on and leaving my role in System Center as a Sr Technical Product Manager for Configuration Manager. My 10 years in Microsoft have been absolutely amazing, first in the UK as an MCS Consultant...

Interested in how Microsoft is using Opalis? Join this IT Showcase webcast live to hear from two folks on this team that are using Opalis to automate some of the patching process on the client side and in the datacenter. Charlie Satterfield & Jim...

Ever wonder how Microsoft patches the 280k desktops in Microsoft? Join this webcast for more information - https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032487347&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US Patrick...

Let’s say you want to get the GUID of an enumeration.  You could query the database EnumType table for it by following instructions in this blog post or you could use SMLets . Here is how you do it using SMLets: Hopefully you already know the non...

Let’s say you have a workflow that you want to behave differently based on the selection in a checkbox on a form. If it is checked you want to do one thing. If it is not checked you want it to do another thing. To do this you want to use the If...

Sometimes you just want to hide a console task don’t you? Take for example the useless ‘Request Input From User’ task. Especially if you are using the SendEmail solution from the Exchange connector the ‘Request Input from End User’...

It’s hard to believe that it has been more than a year ago that I originally released the CodePlex solution for basic incident SLA management for SCSM.  The solution was originally intended to be primarily an example of how to create custom Windows...

This is a question I get every now and then and since I didn’t see it spelled out anywhere I thought I’d go ahead and answer it here.  The question is whether or not Opalis 6.3 supports clustering of the Integration or Management server, and if so...

We just published this Hotfix and KB article so if you’re seeing issues with the Active Directory Connector when DCs switch over or a DC is restored from backup then this one’s for you: This article describes a hotfix package that resolves an issue in...

We just published this one today so you’ll want to check this out if you’re seeing errors sharing an ISO in SCVMM: ===== Symptoms When using the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2 console to share an ISO file during new virtual machine...

We just published this one today so if you’re seeing empty Service Level Tracking Summary Reports in System Center Operations Manager 2007 then you’ll want to check this one out: ===== Symptoms If you run a Service Level Tracking Summary Report in System...

If you’ve been waiting for the official, authoritative guide for the deployment of Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization 2.0 (MED-V v2) then wait no more, for Microsoft’s own Tim Crabb , David Trupkin , and Jeff Gilbert just published one of the...

A common question we get is “Do you have an Integration Pack for <insert a product/solution here>?” Charles even wrote a blog post on this back in the Opalis days! I wanted to ensure that everyone understood the powerful activities that come Out...

A common question we get is “Do you have an Integration Pack for <insert a product/solution here>?” Charles even wrote...( read more ) ...read more

Well the Orchestrator CEP is about to ramp up in a big way, we’ve had the introduction meeting and set the scene and the first product team meeting is next week !  You still have time to sign up and be part of the program … we have over 500 other...

  I have a quick update on the Schedule Maintenance Mode RESKIT Tool, also some information \ best practices. Best Practices: Do not go beyond 20 Jobs scheduled.  Anything over this will start to place too much load on your Root Management Server...

Sometimes you may find that System Center Configuration Manager 2007 discovers more computers than expected when employing Active Directory System Discovery. This happens primarily due to the leftover computer accounts and DNS entries of those machines...

Hello, Today we published the June Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page . We fielded fifteen questions on various topics during the webcast, including bulletins released and the Malicious Software Removal Tool. There were two questions...

When we originally released the portal source code back in March it only contained the English display strings.  We have now added the resource files for all the other 20 languages to the download package now.  The build/deployment guide also...

Hi everyone With the launch of System Center Orchestrator 2012 Beta today, all attention will shift to this next generation of Process Automation and Runbook execution. With that in mind, this is the final post for the Opalis Blog. We invite and encourage...

Following the Orchestrator 2012 Beta announcement and the previously posted What to Expect in the Beta below is a list of articles that will answer the majority of the questions that you will ask . We will be creating and posting a lot of documentation...

Some customers have asked how they can hide the Urgency drop down on the self-service portal request form: This is really easy to do provided the source code . You just need to open the CreateRequest.cs file in Visual Studio and add these two...

The Orchestrator 2012 Beta is barely “out of the oven” and I have some fun PowerShell stuff for you to play with using the new REST-based web service. Working with web services from PowerShell is rather new to me, but I was surprised how easy it was to...

Our colleague Zhenhua Yao has done it again! Another great blog can be found on his Blog , this time helping you troubleshoot...( read more ) ...read more

The steps below demonstrate how to remove a node from a cluster that is managed by System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM).  In my example I have used a cluster named CLU224544 and I have 2 nodes.  Both are physical boxes with Windows...