SCCM 2007 Setup on Windows 2003 R2 SP2

tliles — Fri, 04 May 2007 00:27:00 GMT

I was recently putting together a demo lab for the latest public release of SCCM 2007 (Beta 2) and could not get past the following;

• MS06-030: Vulnerability in Server Message Block could allow elevation of privilege (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=79239).

• Windows Server 2003 Post-Service Pack 1 COM+ 1.5 Hotfix Rollup Package 6. Information about this Hotfix Rollup is available at: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=79240.

I am running Windows Server 2003 SP2 which addressed both of these issues,however the prerequisite checker during setup does not "know" what to do with SP2, so I was stuck. I found some documentation on Setup Prerequisite Checks which includes good info on using the check in various senarios, but not how to get past it so I just tried the following Setup /noprereq and I could complete the installation.

Obviously using this in normal setup without verifying that you meet all the requirements could cause issues, but if you want to run WS2003 SP2 until the SCCM 2007 Beta 2 setup has been changed to reflect those fixes, this is an option.

Notes from MMS 2007

tliles — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 17:27:08 GMT

At the Microsoft Management Summit 2007 in San Diego there was some great technology displayed. It was evident that the System Center family of products is becoming very mature. The DSI model is becoming a reality and interoperability between SC products is key in driving the ability to move towards a more dynamic infrastructure. Below are just a few points that I picked up throughout the week.

"Service Desk" was officially named System Center Service Manager. Betas are reported to hit the public next month. Be sure to check Connect and signup. My favorite part of the Service Manager demo was the self service portal for application deployment. It allowed the user to go out to a portal and see the packaged applications available in the environment (housed in SMS/SCCM or Softgrid) and select which applications they would like to install with a few clicks.
Client monitoring with SCOM 2007 is not what I thought it would be. I was thinking along the lines of how a server is monitored and thought to myself "wow, that's overkill for a desktop." There are several ways you can monitor the desktop and they are covered in the following document. Agentless Crash Monitoring is a very interesting way that SCOM can collect the data that from the "Windows Error Reporting" service and allow admins to check and see if the issue(s) is a one-off or if it effects enough of the user community to address the issue.
Softgrid. You could not turn around without hearing someone talking about Softgrid. There is a lot of excitement around the product, which makes sense considering it takes everything you know about application compatibility, registry settings, DLL conflicts..etc.. and throws it all out the window.

Those were just some quick points that stuck out, there's still more to cover. Keep your eyes on the System Center landing page. A lot is going on with the System Center side of the house over the next year.

Mid-Market Mayhem : System Center

SCCM 2007 Setup on Windows 2003 R2 SP2

Notes from MMS 2007