Config Manager

Do you know ConfigMgr and OpsMgr?  Microsoft is hiring.

Premier Field Engineers at Microsoft

We are looking for a SCOM/SCCM PFE and a SPS Dev PFE in New York, NY as well as a Platforms PFE in Bentonville, AR and Dearborn, MI.. Know anyone interested, please ping Dana Whitley (dminshew@microsoft.com)

You can bet the PFE in AR is going to be working at Wal-Mart.

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E

Microsoft MVP System Center Configuration Manager

erbium doped fiberhttp://configmgr.com

© Anthony Clendenen

ConfigMgr SP2 beta is now publicly available for download. 

They have added support for the following operating systems:

• Windows 7
• Vista SP2
• Server 2008 SP2 & R2

Also part of SP2 is more support for x64 including

• OpsMgr 2007 client agent
• Remote control for x64 XP and Server 2003
• Updated Management Pack for 64 bit OSes

Other changes include

• Asset Intelligence no longer requires a certificate to sync online
• Faster policy processing
• Faster execution of advertisements configured to run at logon
• Branch cache support for Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7
• Intel AMT version 2

The download is available on Connect.

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E

Microsoft MVP System Center Configuration Manager

http://configmgr.com

© Anthony Clendenen

MMS 2009 – Live Keynote Webcasts

This year the MMS 2009 Keynotes on Tuesday and Wednesday are being webcast live on the Internet. The keynotes may be viewed live at 8:30am PDT each day via this page: IT Infrastructure Software Spotlight.

These presentations may also be viewed offline at a later time via the same page.

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E

Microsoft MVP System Center Configuration Manager

http://configmgr.com

© Anthony Clendenen

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1E released a new white paper written by Ian Godfrey last week entitled Remote Management of BIOS Configuration, which is centered around configuring Wake-on-LAN but the concepts and tools can be used to manipulate other BIOS settings as well. 

This paper covers a number of different hardware vendors and how to remotely configure the BIOS, something that is not standard across the hardware vendors.  It includes links to different tools, ConfigMgr integration, scripts, tips, troubleshooting, and a very in depth explanation of WOL.  If you are having trouble getting some computers to wake up when they are sent a magic packet or you need to learn how to remote administer the BIOS without touching each computer this is a must read.

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E

Microsoft MVP System Center Configuration Manager

http://configmgr.com

© Anthony Clendenen

1E released a new white paper written by Ian Godfrey last week entitled Remote Management of BIOS Configuration, which is centered around configuring Wake-on-LAN but the concepts and tools can be used to manipulate other BIOS settings as well. 

This paper covers a number of different hardware vendors and how to remotely configure the BIOS, something that is not standard across the hardware vendors.  It includes links to different tools, ConfigMgr integration, scripts, tips, troubleshooting, and a very in depth explanation of WOL.  If you are having trouble getting some computers to wake up when they are sent a magic packet or you need to learn how to remote administer the BIOS without touching each computer this is a must read.

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E

Microsoft MVP System Center Configuration Manager

http://configmgr.com

© Anthony Clendenen

Right before Christmas 1E released not only the free tool Service Window that I mentioned in my last post but also new versions of NightWatchman now version 5.5, 1E WakeUp version 5.5, Nomad Enterprise 3.2 and our first version of the NightWatchman console.  Over the last 18 months I had been working with AT&T® to prove out the 1E Power and Patch Management Pack, which is a combination of 1E WakeUp and NightWatchman.  July 31st the deal with AT&T closed and in late October we did a joint press release with AT&T about the savings.  In the end they are going to save about $1 million a month or $60 million dollars over 5 years, and those are pretty modest figures, and I know they are because I actually wrote the report for them based on the pilot data from their AFR server.  They are also going to save 135 million kWh’s of electricity each year while eliminating 124,000 tons of CO2 emissions.  It was a great project and now one of our consultants Richard Fellows has been working with them on the implementation across their 310,000 PC’s.  As is usually the case our customers dictate the new features included in our products and I all of the Solution Engineers at 1E are also now aligned with a single product so we are involved in the entire development cycle, at least as much as we can since we travel a fair amount of time.  But NightWatchman 5.5 is the product I typically spend the most time with also the reporting server as well AFR.

Here is a short list of the new features in version 5.5 of NightWatchman and I will explain most them in more depth below as well as how to configure and use them.

• Sleepless Client Detection – NightWatchman can now achieve even greater power savings by detecting PCs which do not go to sleep when they should. The Administrator is made aware of what is keeping the machine awake and given the opportunity to allow or disallow this from happening in future.
• NightWatchman Console – You can now manage your NightWatchman clients from a centralized secure administration console, providing the simplest mechanism and most control over your NightWatchman installation. Existing methods to manage NightWatchman clients (such as Microsoft Configuration Manager or Group Policy) still work and can be used with or without this new console.
• Maintenance Windows and Alarm Clock – You can now configure PCs to power up according to a schedule which suits both your users and administration needs. With Maintenance Windows your PCs will wake up and remain powered for a length of time before returning to a low power state when scheduled maintenance tasks are complete.
• Keep Active – Extend PC Power Management to PC users, allowing them to ensure their PC remains available to execute tasks while they’re away.
• Active Directory Import Tool – Simplifies and speeds up the task of mapping an existing directory of PCs to the NightWatchman configuration and reporting structure. This wizard based tool deals with conflict detection and resolution and the included import scripts can be modified to best suit your environment.

Keep Active

I will start with the Keep Active feature, it is probably the easiest of the new features to explain.  This is an option that allows the user to decide if they want to keep their PC from being put into a low power state.  This includes a scheduled shutdown as well as the power scheme settings so the computer will not go into any low power states during the Keep Active period.  This is not something you would like your employees to use every day because they could defeat the energy savings program for their computer.  There is going to be some changes in the next version of NightWatchman about how much control you turn back over to the employee.

Usage Scenarios

One example of how someone might use this feature is let’s say Paul Thomsen and I are working late in his office in Redmond and we want to run some automated tests on some of his lab computers but we also don’t want the machines to go into a low power state or shutdown at the scheduled time of 7 PM because we need these tests to complete while we are eating at Azteca we are not sure how long we are going to be over there so we set Keep Active on the lab computers to 2 hours.  That gives us a little time to walk over there eat and get back without our tests being interrupted by the computers going into a low power state from the power scheme settings or the scheduled shutdown time.

How to configure Keep Active

They do this simply by right clicking on the NightWatchman icon in the system tray and selecting “Keep Active”.

Then after they click Keep Active from the context menu it will open a dialog box with a drop down box allowing them to select the amount of time they want to set their computer to keep active. During the Keep Active period the NightWatchman tray icon also changes so the user can turn it back off if they want to.

Maintenance Windows and Alarm Clocks

Maintenance windows and alarm clocks have some similarity to them.  They are both a scheduled wakeup for the NightWatchman client but the alarm clock function is for end users and maintenance windows are for administrators.  The end result is the same for both however, to schedule the computer to come out of a low power state at a certain time on a specific day.

Usage Scenarios

For the Alarm Clock feature this can be used by the employee to schedule when their computer is going to be turned on in the morning so that all (startup) group policies have run or if there are things that happen to the computer that make the boot time in double digits.  Since you can configure the time and for each day if the employee only works 4 – 10’s, then they could schedule their computer to only come on 10 minutes before their start time on those four days of the week so it doesn’t come on the other three days of the week.

The Maintenance Window feature is for the IT staff to be able to schedule a computer or group of computer, to come out a low power state at a scheduled time and then after a your maintenance is completed return the computer back to the low power state it was in for the remainder of the night or weekend.  This is useful for things that you need to do outside of ConfigMgr, say anti-virus scans or updates.

How to Configure Alarm Clocks and Maintenance Windows

The Alarm Clock settings are configured in the NightWatchman console (which I cover below), the Maintenance Window settings are also configured in the NightWatchman console.

You can see this tab is displaying the Maintenance Window, one option is to turn the monitor on when the computer is brought out a low power state for the Maintenance Window.  Usually you would want the monitor to stay off assuming that you schedule your Maintenance Windows for off hours.  As you can see you can schedule or not schedule the Maintenance Window start time for each day separately, how long the computer will remain on, essentially setting the duration of the Maintenance Window.  And then at the end of the Maintenance Window what low power state do you want the computer to go into.  In this first version the low power options are standby and hibernate, off will be coming soon.

Now you can see that I have scheduled a window for Monday, Wednesday and Friday, they are for different durations and Friday I want the system to go back to hibernate.

NightWatchman Console

The NightWatchman console is a server side console to configure the NightWatchman clients.  You can group clients based on business unit and based on physical locations.  For example, what state they are in and what department they are in.  This helps with the reporting portion.  Also as I covered above the Alarm Clock and Maintenance Window settings are configured in the console.  But also the scheduled shutdown times and power scheme policies for the clients, which goes back to the grouping again. 

As you can see from these two images which are the power scheme settings (top) and power policies (bottom) there are a number of settings that you can configure along with each of these.  Traditionally this would have been done with ConfigMgr or group policy but with the NightWatchman console we add another option for administrators to configure the client settings.

Usage Scenarios

The NightWatchman console is targeted at customers who either do not have ConfigMgr or SMS but still need the Wake-on-LAN functionality of 1E WakeUp and for customers that have different groups that will manage NightWatchman and ConfigMgr. 

How To Configure The NightWatchman Console

Configuring the NightWatchman console is more about configuring the clients although there is a Security tab that will allow you to control which users and groups get to see or configure all the settings in the console.

Lets start with an overall of the console.

On the left of the console are the tabs NightWatchman Clients, Power Schemes, Power Policies, Power Consumption and Security. 

• NightWatchman Clients – This is where you can group clients, assign power schemes and power policies to your clients.  You can also see the tabs to display Location Groups and Organization Groups, these are the two types of groups I described above where you can assign clients based on their location and business unit.  Client default into the Unassigned Building for the location groups and into Unassigned Department for organization groups.
• Power Schemes – In this tab you can create, edit and delete power schemes.  Power scheme settings are the settings the control when the monitor goes into standby, the hard drive goes into standby, the computer goes into standby or hibernate and so on.  After you create the power schemes you then assign them to a group.  In this example I have a typical power scheme policy that I have named Accounting Department as it will be assigned to the Accounting departments computers but I could assign it to any other group as well that I wanted to use the same settings on.

• Power Policies – On the Power Policies tab you edit, create and delete policies that control when the group of clients will shutdown, what type of shutdown it is, when and how long the maintenance window is, if there is an alarm clock to wake the computers for the user, process exceptions and sleepless client detection settings amongst other settings.

The last two tabs are Power Consumption and Security.  The Power Consumption tab is used to configure what power figures are used by the different clients in the various states to ensure accurate power, carbon and costs are used in the reports.  This is a very important feature as the various hardware vendors and models use dramatically different amounts of power in all the different power states.  Not having this feature would be like assuming an 8 year old 21” CRT used the same amount of power as my daughters LCD on her Dell Mini.  And trying to figure power costs, consumption and CO2 emissions without these numbers is just a guess – at best.  On the Security tab you configure the security settings for the console, allowing users and groups different levels of rights on all the tabs and their settings.

I will save the last two new features for a future post, this one turned out to be much longer that I anticipated.

As always if you have any questions or comments let me know!

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E

Microsoft MVP System Center Configuration Manager

http://configmgr.com

© Anthony Clendenen

First install this patch MS08-067

Then use this to remove it from any infected computers Malicious Software Removal tool

History: Win32/Conficker.B

—————————————————————————

Background

Win32/Conficker.B exploits a vulnerability in the Windows Server service (SVCHOST.EXE) for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2008. While Microsoft addressed this issue in October with Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067, and Forefront antivirus and OneCare (as well as other vendor’s anit-virus products) helped protect against infections, many systems that have not been patched manually through Server Update Services and Microsoft/Windows Update or through Automatic Updates have recently come under attack by this worm.  Attacked systems may lock out users, disable our update services and block access to security-related Web sites:

In response to this threat, Microsoft has:

· Updated the January version of the MSFT to detect and remove variants of Win32/Conficker.B.  You can download this version from the MSRT from either the Microsoft Update site or through its associated Knowledge Base article.

· Created the KB article 962007 “Virus alert about the Win32/Conficker.B worm” to provide public details on the symptoms and removal methods available to address this issue.

· Announced the release of the items and the virus threat itself on the Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog.

It is our hope that these resources can assist you in resolving issues with unpatched, infected systems and that you can apply MS08-067 to any other unpatched systems as soon as possible to avoid this threat.

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E

Microsoft MVP System Center Configuration Manager

http://configmgr.com

© Anthony Clendenen

Right before Christmas 1E released its first free tool for ConfigMgr admins in a while called Service Window.  This tool will allow you to edit, delete, add and view maintenance windows for ConfigMgr clients.  You can run the app on the client machine or by specifying the remote computer you want to examine. 

Here is the app running on my laptop where you can see there are currently no Maintenance Windows defined, so essentially my laptop will run an mandatory advertisement or task sequence at any time.

If I want to add a new maintenance window I click the button with the “+” key on it.

This opens another window to configure and set the maintenance window.

As you can see I can define the start and stop time of the maintenance window, the date it begins, if it reoccurs, what type of reoccurrence, and on which day it reoccurs.  There is also a checkbox at the bottom of the window that allows you specify that the maintenance window only applies to an OSD task sequence.

I am going to use the defaults just to create the window.  If you are following along you should be back in the main window with the new maintenance window defined like this.

If I select the maintenance window I get the two other options to view the selected maintenance window and edit it, and also the delete button which will delete the maintenance window selected.

At the bottom of the main window is also a view button that will open a window that displays the maintenance windows in a graphical format such as below.

You can switch the view to show a week at a time or just today as well.

One of the best options is the ability to delete a maintenance window, if you are testing a client this tool makes testing maintenance windows easy and extremely quick, you do not have to wait for you clients to get the policy to define, modify, add or delete a maintenance window.

1E has plans to develop a number of free tools for ConfigMgr moving forward, if you have any ideas for tools or have any feedback on this one send me an email.

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E

Microsoft MVP System Center Configuration Manager

http://configmgr.com

© Anthony Clendenen

This is a great opportunity for IT administrators who have experience with Windows Server to provide feedback and help improve the next version. You do not need to prepare anything for this. We want to learn from you, the experts. We highly value your feedback and will be offering you a gratuity option in appreciation of your time and participation.We are recruiting individuals who:

• Have experience managing 3-16 Windows Servers.

• Are available for a 2 hour study session during the week of August 22, 2008

• Can make it to Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond, Washington 

If you are interested or know someone who might be interested in participating, please email us at itusable@microsoft.com with Windows Server in the subject line. For information on other studies and to learn more about Microsoft’s User Research program, email us.

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E

Microsoft MVP System Center Configuration Manager

http://configmgr.com

© Anthony Clendenen

While they also updated several of their tools like Process Explorer, Handle, ZoomIt and SigCheck, the much more interesting news is that you don’t have to download the tools any longer and put them somewhere in %PATH% you can execute them directly from the website.  How cool is that?

From a command prompt or Run simply type \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\<tool name here>

And this site has all of their tools, check it out on their site at http://live.sysinternals.com

You can sill download the tools if you want to use them locally, go to the same link and click on the exe and/or the chm file to download them.

This is a quote from the About_This_Site.txt file.

“What is this?

This is a file share allowing access to all Sysinternals utilities. We have developed this to test an alternate distribution mechanism for our utilities.

This will allow you to run these tools from any computer connected to the Internet without having to navigate to a webpage, download and extract the zip file.

If you are unfamiliar with Microsoft Windows Sysinternals, it is highly recommended that you visit the website at http://technet.microsoft.com/sysinternals before using these tools.

If you have any questions or comments on this file share, please email syssite@microsoft.com

Regards,
The Microsoft Windows Sysinternals Team”

Sysinternals Site Discussion : Updates: Process Explorer v11.20, ZoomIt v2.0, Sigcheck v1.53, Handle v3.4 and introducing Sysinternals Live beta.

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E

Microsoft MVP System Center Configuration Manager

http://configmgr.com

© Anthony Clendenen