As an IT consultant I travel all over the UK wherever the work takes me. This means working when, how and where you can. Trains, planes and automobiles is the old adage and I can honestly say I’ve worked in or on each as well as the obligatory hotels, pubs, restaurants, coffee shops, car showrooms…
So it was announced late last week that the R2 wave Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 products is to be RTM on October 18th 2013. In parallel to these releases Microsoft is also going live with the long awaited Windows 8.1. This is surely the biggest date in Microsoft’s calendar this year, the…
I’ve been using powershell with Configuration Manager recently and I’ve been looking at security roles. If you’re looking to create your own security roles with powershell and you don’t already have a template, you’ll first need to copy one of the existing roles to get started. To do this you need to know the role…
As part of my work with the UK Windows Management User Group I recently carried out a few interviews with 3 well known Microsoft Enterprise Client Management Most Valuable Professionals whilst at TechEd Europe in Madrid. I interviewed: Niall Brady – Most famous for his guides on the http://www.windows-noob.com website Kent Agerlund – Configuration Manager…
I got bitten by this one for the second time today until I realised I’d seen it before. The symptoms are a failure to complete the installation of the Data Warehouse Configuration step during a System Center Operations Manager 2012 SP1 installation which causes a roll back of the whole install like so: The setup.log…
This is possibly one of best ‘minimum effort maximum gain’ jobs you can do in your Configuration Manager installation, it’s a real no-brainer. By integrating Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) with Configuration Manager you get the best of both worlds in your deployment scenarios as MDT can extend the functionality of Configuration Manager, pretty much the…
Having passed this exam a number of different Microsoft exams myself, I thought some people may find it useful to get some feedback and guidance from someone who’s been there and done it. Now obviously I’m not going to give away any answers or suggest what the questions may include due to the Non-Disclosure Agreement…
One of the great features of Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 is the ‘Pull distribution point’. This allows you to specify certain distribution points (DP’s) in your Configuration Manager environment to pull content from others. You can specify multiple source DP’s for your pull DP which will give you a little more control…
I’ve recently joined forces with the guys from the UK Windows Management User Group or WMUG for short. As I’m based in the North of England I complement the existing guys who are mainly based in the South of the country so hopefully we can arrange some events outside of London and Reading (MS HQ).…
As part of the Configuration Manager 2012 installation you need to download the latest Configuration Manager update files as a pre-requisite to the installation. If you don’t have internet access on your server this can be a problem. Luckily you can pre-download the files using a utility file found in the installation media. Use the…
More than patches 