I have exciting news to share! We have a Service Manager Test Drive preview of Beta 2 available to try out now.  It’s on hosted VMs, so all you need to do is log in with your Windows Live ID and start playing with it. The VMs have all of the same sample data we used in our demonstrations at the...

System Center Configuration Manager 2007(SCCM) has introduced a valuable feature, Desired Configuration Management (DCM), that enables assessment of client configuration compliance with specified configuration baselines.  With Service Manager Beta 1, we have introduced integration with DCM where...

Early feedback on Service Manager Beta 1 has highlighted that many folks would like more information around administration of connectors, especially on how to track the progress of a connector. TASKS First, I would like to point out some of the tasks available for Service Manager Beta 1 for a connector...

In Service Manager Beta 1, you can create a Connector to a System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 database. The SCCM Connector brings Configuration Item data about computers managed by SCCM, including Hardware & Software Inventory, Software Updates, and Desired Configuration Management (DCM...

We just released a whitepaper around servicing offline VMs using SCVMM and SCCM. Download details are here: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c5abb19e-15b1-4692-b465-393584c592a0&displaylang=en Direct Download file from here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/1/0/d10ecad6...

I am pleased to announce that we have just published a whitepaper that provides guidance for customers transitioning from SMS 2003 Patch Management to System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Software Updates Management. You can download the paper from here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/8...

In SCCM 2007, we added a neat feature similar to one provided by Automatic Updates that gives managed clients the ability to install updates prior to deadline.  End users can configure this by clicking the "Schedule Installation" as shown below or by going to directly to the Configuration...

This is a very fundamental question for Admins trying to raise the level of software update compliance at their company. Traditionally using SMS 2003, the normal practice was to look at a sample of client logs and use that as a basis for guessing what the top problems were for non-compliance. In SCCM...

It's been a while since I added a post.  Let's start up again with a quick one. I was recently asked when do SCCM clients download updates and when would they show the notification balloon in the system tray - here is the answer: 1.  SCCM clients download updates according to a deployment-specific...

Late on Friday, we declared SCCM 2007 RC1 ready for release to the web! It is now available on connect . For the Software Updates Management feature, RC1 brings a number of improvements, including new reports for overall per-machine compliance, scan errors, deployment errors; reorganized categorization...

Let's talk about maintenance windows in SCCM, a new feature for software distribution and software updates. Maintenance windows usually make sense in a server-based scenario where servers have defined service windows where they can be taken down for changes, including software updates. You can define...

One of the most useful new objects in System Center Configuration Manager 2007 is the Update List. An update list is, well, a list of software updates - that is, it is a fixed list of updates that can be created through a wizard (which also allows downloading of updates). Security rights can be assigned...

I thought I could put some thoughts down about the Software Update Point (SUP), which is a new site role within SCCM 2007. The job of the SUP is provide software update metadata to clients that are using the Windows Update Agent (WUA) to scan for missing updates. The underlying component of the SUP is...