Config Manager

 Kevin is right, this has already been talked about, but he does a nice job of explaining the two types of multicasting.  Two drawbacks to this however…First you cannot multicast across subnets, well you can but if your network supports this you are wide open to a SQL Slammer type of attack where one laptop brings your network to its knees.  Second, you have to have Server 2008 to make this work.

A simple, less costly solution, that you can utilize now is to use the 1E OSD Plus Pack, or SMSNomad Branch to accomplish this – now.

One of the gazillion new and improved features of the soon to be released Windows Server 2008 is that we now have the ability to perform enhanced multicasting when deploying OS images right out of the box.  The new Windows Deployment Services (WDS) will now support an enhanced multicast feature which will allow you to multicast out your Windows OS’s from Windows Server 2008.  This is not ‘new’ news as I believe we have documented that this will be a feature for quite some time, but one that I feel is overlooked given all of the other many features of the new product. 

There will be two types of multicast supported:

• Scheduled-Cast:  This is your traditional multicast scenario where you can specify a time or certain number of clients requesting an image before a session begins for all at the same time.  You can also start the session manually once all clients are in the ‘waiting’ state and ready to go.
• Auto-Cast:  As soon as an allowed client requests an image, a multicast transmission begins.  Other clients can then join this same session in progress and can ‘make up’ what they missed earlier by dropping back to a unicast session at the end.  To me, this is a pretty cool feature as it allows one to set up an ‘always on’ multicast session to your environment that can be invoked at any time and by multiple different folks pulling down the same image.  This gives you maximum flexibility and efficient use of bandwidth.  Below is a screen shot from my lab that show two machines on the same multicast session – note the different session times and % complete:

I know that this has been a huge ask from my HED and K12 customers responsible for installing entire labs of machines on a regular basis.  Now we have a solution ‘in-the-box’ with W08 to address this.  Now all that is left to do is to integrate this multicast functionality with SCCM’s OS deployment features – don’t worry, this is already being worked on!!!

Kevinsul’s Management Blog : Multicast OS Deployments – At Last (and in-the-box with Windows Server 2008)

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E Inc.

http://configmgr.com

© 2007 Anthony Clendenen

In larger environments this new tool to identify GP configuration and dependency problems should be a great time saver and really help with the administration of GPO’s.  As a Solutions Engineer that works with customers who have workstations all over the globe and seats that number in the six figures I have seen some really complicated GP configurations.  Logon times that are calculated in minutes sometimes.  This is not exclusive to large environments however, the worst group policy settings I have helped to cleanup was only about 3,000 seats.

Links to download the tools are below.

Overview

The Microsoft Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer (GPDBPA) for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 is designed to help you identify Group Policy configuration errors or other dependency failures that may prevent settings or features from functioning as expected.

Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer for Windows Server 2003

Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer for Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition

Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer for Windows XP

Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer for Windows XP x64 Edition

For my US readers enjoy your long weekend!

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E Inc.

http://configmgr.com

© 2007 Anthony Clendenen

What is the status?

Windows Server 2008, formerly Longhorn, will be delayed until Q1 of 2008 but will be available to SA and MSDN subscribers prior to RTM.  SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 are scheduled to be released with Server 2008 so I can only assume they will be delayed as well. 

Vista SP1 also suffers from the same fate, delayed until Q1 of 08.  The BETA of Vista SP1 will be  available to participants in about two weeks however.  And SP3 for XP is moving along with its BETA also being out in a couple weeks and should be released in the first half of next year, a little later than the other two thankfully. 

Why should I care?

Without Server 2008 you cannot make use of the NAP functionality built into ConfigMgr so this may delay some implementations of ConfigMgr, and will certainly delay the implementation of NAP.  You will also need XP SP3 for NAP to work with your XP clients, but Vista is set already.

What will be in Vista SP1?

Included in Vista SP1 is all the updates so far for Vista plus improvements in three areas, performance, security, and reliability. 

Under reliability there is:

• Greater compatibility with a larger number of printer drivers
• Greater reliability AND performance when resuming and entering sleep
• Improvements to the reliability in networking configuration scenarios
• Greater reliability with connecting to external displays when you are using a laptop
• Greater reliability and compatibility with newer graphics cards

Performance improvements:

• Improved speed when you copy or extract files
• Improved battery life by lowering the number of screen redraws on some computers
• Improved performance when browsing network shares
• Improved logon times by removing the 10 second delay after you hit crtl-alt-del sometimes
• Faster JavaScript in IE7

Under security there are a number of things including improvements to BitLocker.

More on Vista SP1 here.

Regards,
Anthony

Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E Inc.

http://configmgr.com

© 2007 Anthony Clendenen