Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's view in any way, including those of my employer.
© Copyright 2009
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's view in any way, including those of my employer.
© Copyright 2009
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
© 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
© Anthony Clendenen
This is a 1E customer who not only uses our NightWatchman software to save electricity and subsequently reduce their own carbon footprint in doing so but they are also saw a return on investment of of less than three months on a project that also included our user self service product Shopping and services to design and implement SMS. In the long run they are going to reduce the amount of carbon emitted into the environment by 1 metric tonne annually and their head count is only 4,500 employees. Other benefits they will realize are faster and easier application delivery to the end users, and less IT staff costs by implementing SMS and Shopping, all along side NightWatchman.
I was not involved in this project personally, but I can tell you that with all of my customers who use NightWatchman they are not only saving millions of dollars on electricity each year and saving the planet at the same time but when they add our other software solutions like 1E WakeUp with our custom Wake-on-LAN solution and the much imitated Client Health patching of computers is much faster and reaching a patch level of 100% compliant is not only possible but now the expectation, add in our branch distribution software Nomad Enterprise and the fear of sending a package over a link and hoping it doesn’t saturate the pipe is gone, no longer can the Network admin’s point their finders at the SMS or ConfigMgr if their traffic shaping doesn’t quite work, Nomad has dynamic true bandwidth throttling built in that handles any change in network traffic, oh the stories I could tell. And then when you add Shopping in and you never have to worry again about getting those frantic phone calls from your manager or director telling you to stop what you were working on “…because the department head of X is leaving for the airport in 45 minutes and has to have the latest version of Visio and PowerPoint installed on their laptop before they go, and I mean right now! Create the package and ad thing you do. No, I have no idea what their computer name is why? Oh, and make sure they have the right service pack and all the patches installed with those too! We can’t have them getting infected.” Because with Shopping that department head could sit in their chair open up their browser, select Visio and PowerPoint from the list of application on the Shopping portal and in just a few minutes it would all be installed while they were checking online to make sure they had the best seat for their return flight next week, all without ever contacting IT!
My customers scale, as far as client numbers, are almost always in excess of 100k so I get to design and test some very interesting solutions. Hierarchies are very large and complicated, not to mention the sheer size of the IT operations and the risk associated with making changes to the computing environment and processes. But when the design is complete, and we have checked every box indicating that all of the PoC tests are a success, and all requirements have been met, and I produce a report telling them how much they are going to reduce their carbon footprint and save on electricity, that they no longer have to worry about traffic shaping to make sure an SMS distribution doesn’t cause a network outage, that we meet and exceed application delivery to the end users where service level agreements are measured in seconds not days, and they are finally going to get the client fixed on all those computers where it hasn’t worked for no one knows how long, all they can do is smile in disbelief and ask me why they didn’t call sooner! 
So I can attest to this case study being factual even though I didn’t work on the project because I have seen it all with my own customers using the 1E products and services.
Regards,
Anthony
Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E
Microsoft MVP System Center Configuration Manager
© Anthony Clendenen
This is from the 1E site, but down towards the bottom you can see the schedule for demos at the 1E stand. I will be presenting at least a couple times. Brian Tucker and Neil Kimberly will also be presenting at the stand on other topics. If you think I know SMS/ConfigMgr then you haven’t spent much time talking to Brian and Neil these guys are AMZAZING!
1E will be exhibiting as a Gold Sponsor at the Microsoft Management Summit at the Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas from April 28 to May 2, 2008.
With a focus on System Center Success and ‘green’ IT, we will be highlighting:
Sumir Karayi, CEO 1E, will be speaking following Bill Anderson’s “ConfigMgr – State of the Nation” session. Sumir will talk about System Center and PC power management customer success stories.
1E has been providing robust integrated Windows systems management solutions for over 10 years. Come and listen to Sumir talk about real-world experiences of System Center success and PC power management implementations in large, complex, distributed environments. In this session you will learn how to address universal time and cost-saving initiatives such as:
MMS provides us with a great opportunity to see friends – old and new. Please drop by the 1E stand to say hello, collect ‘green’ giveaways, enter our competition to win a Nintendo Wii, and attend ‘live’ technical demo sessions.
Tuesday April 29
1:10 – 1:30 PM PC Power Management: Go Green Overview Presentation Simon Francis
2:00 – 2:20 PM Self-Service Provisioning and License Control Anthony Clendenen
3:30 – 3:50 PM Fully Automated OS Deployment/Migrations Neil Kimberley
Wednesday April 30
1:10 – 1:30 PM PC Power Management, WOL and Client Health Brian Tucker
2:00 – 2:20 PM Fully Automated OS Deployment/Migrations Neil Kimberley
3:00 – 3:20 PM Self-Service Provisioning and License Control Anthony Clendenen
3:30 – 3:50 PM Bandwidth Optimization for Complex/Branch Environments Brian Tucker
Thursday May 1
1:10 – 1:30 PM Bandwidth Optimization for Complex/Branch Environments Brian Tucker
2:00 – 2:20 PM PC Power Management & Energy Usage Reporting Brian Tucker
Regards,
Anthony
Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E
© Anthony Clendenen
Carol posted this over the the TechNet blogs site a couple of hours ago. I commented that I didn’t think it was a huge 
change because the odds are pretty low that this would really happen in today. Essentially the rule that an SMS or ConfigMgr client will use first bound NIC for auto assignment is no longer true. If you think this is a significant technical change leave a comment and let her know.
Auto-site assignment and multiple IP addresses
It happens to all of us. Just when you think you’ve comfortably nailed a certain aspect of the product – Kapow! – the rug is pulled from under your feet and you realize you’re not on the stable ground you thought you were. It’s all part and parcel of working with a complex product, but still disconcerting when it happens.
Well, I had one of those moments recently when a bug came in about multiple adapters and auto-site assignment. It has long been documented (way before I joined the team) that when a computer has multiple adapters (such as a wired adapter and a wireless adapter or modem), the adapter bound first will be used to determine the client’s boundary location during auto-site assignment.
This isn’t something that I’ve ever had to rely on myself – if a computer had multiple adapters I would always prefer to use a direct site assignment, and the docs say that in this scenario, auto-site assignment probably isn’t for you. But I’ve always trusted the “first bound adapter” information.
Now it turns out that this isn’t true. A customer reported that this didn’t seem to be the case with their SMS 2003 client – an adapter that was not bound first was being used for site assignment. The product team looked into it, and sure enough, this piece of information that I’ve always trusted was actually incorrect. When a computer has multiple adapters or multiple IP addresses, the ordering of the IP addresses was nondeterministic but consistent for a particular computer. The same number of adapters or IP addresses for another computer would usually result in a different but consistent ordering of the addresses.
Although the customer reported this with SMS 2003 and quoted the SMS 2003 Concepts, Planning and Deployment Guide as the source of their (mis)information, there are no plans to republish this documentation. However, I have corrected it for the Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 RC documentation, in the topic About Client Site Assignment in Configuration Manager.
Old text (incorrect)
Note:
If a Configuration Manager 2007 client has multiple network cards (possibly a LAN network card and a dial-up modem), and therefore has multiple IP addresses, the network card that is bound first is used for evaluating client site assignment.
New text (corrected)
Note:
If a Configuration Manager 2007 client has multiple network cards (possibly a LAN network card and a dial-up modem), and therefore has multiple IP addresses, the IP address used to evaluate client site assignment is nondeterministic.
This is undoubtedly a technical change to the topic, but it’s not noted in the What’s New in the Configuration Manager Documentation Library for March 2008 where we list new topics or significant technical changes. I deliberated whether this was a “significant technical change”, and taking into account that this has been incorrect in our documentation for nearly 5 years before anybody commented on it, I decided that it wasn’t. Then I remembered one of our product group’s mottos “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” and wondered if I had made the right decision.
Does anybody feel strongly that this constitutes a significant technical change? For example:
- Would knowing the correct behavior change an administrator’s decision about whether to use auto-site assignment when a computer has multiple addresses?
- Would this information provide the missing information about why auto-site assignment failed?
I suspect in practice that it’s one of those interesting pieces of information that you like to have clear in your mind, whether or not it’s actually of practical use. But if you think I made the wrong call and it qualifies as a significant technical change that should be called out in the change log topic, e-mail SMSDocs@Microsoft.com and I’ll see what I can do to retroactively list it.
And now, back to terra firma – until the next time!
- Carol Bailey
This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties and confers no rights.
Regards,
Anthony
Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E
© Anthony Clendenen
Hopefully you have heard by now that Vista SP1 and Server 2008 went RTM on Monday. But can you use these with OSD or MD? Well of course you can with the new version of WAIK.
Also it is being reported that Vista SP1 goes live on Feb 18th or 19th and Windows XP SP3 goes live on March 23rd or 24th.
Download details here direct download here (1.1 GB).
Overview
The Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) is designed to help corporate IT professionals customize and deploy the Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 family of operation systems. By using Windows AIK, you can perform unattended Windows installations, capture Windows images with ImageX, and create Windows PE images.
This update is provided to you and licensed under the Windows Vista License Terms.
Related links:
Windows Server 2008 Group Policy Settings Reference spreadsheet.
Windows Vista Group Policy Settings Reference spreadsheet.
Group policy administrative templates for Vista.
ADMX migrator for old group policies.
Regards,
Anthony
Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E
© Anthony Clendenen
I Recommend These Books!
SMS 2003 Administrator’s Reference: Systems Management Server 2003
And you can check out more books and gadgets at my Amazon store here.
Microsoft has released a Best Practices guide for Application Virtualization or SoftGrid v.4.2 app sequencing that was compiled from the MCS group. Here are some of the highlights in the first two sections followed be the TOC’s. There is far too much information to be effectively summarized here. Great work!
Get your pdf copy here and your xps copy here.
Here is the rest of the TOC so you can see what else this guide includes.
Gauging Applications for Sequencing…………………………………………………………………………………. 20
Sequencing Limitations …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 21
Sample Sequencing ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 22
Package Configuration……………………………………………………………………………………………. 22
Application Wizard …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 23
Saving the Package …………………………………………………………………………………………. 25
Application Package Upgrade………………………………………………………………………………….. 25
Compression of the SFT …………………………………………………………………………………………. 27
Advanced OSD Scripting ………………………………………………………………………………………… 27
Advanced Sequencing Techniques …………………………………………………………………………………….. 34
Sequencing Applications That Cannot Install to Q:\ …………………………………………………….. 34
Sequencing Web Based Applications ……………………………………………………………………….. 35
Sequencing for an OS other than the one required by the application. ………………………….. 35
Sequencing applications that require access to local devices and or resources ……………… 36
Sequencer Log Files ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 36
Finding Additional Information …………………………………………………………………………………………… 36
Error Codes and the Microsoft Knowledge Base ………………………………………………………… 36
SoftGrid Team Blog ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 37
SoftGrid Product Documentation ……………………………………………………………………………… 37
SoftGrid Related Technical Discussion Forums and Web Sites ……………………………………. 37
Related links:
App-V version 4.5 from the Connect site.
Regards,
Anthony
Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E
© Anthony Clendenen
This is only for SMS 2003 SP3 not ConfigMgr, ConfigMgr will be updated when SP1 is released in the not too distant future. 
Brief Description
This package will update the Asset Intelligence catalog and bring the knowledge base to the level of SCCM 2007 RTM. It contains additional software titles and several additional updates that make the content more accurate and relevant.
Overview
Asset Intelligence enhances the inventory capabilities of SMS 2003 SP3 by extending hardware and software inventory. Many inventory classes improve the breadth of information gathered about hardware and software assets. This update, which is mentioned in the SMS 2003 SP3 help file, is the first periodic update to the Asset Intelligence Knowledge Base tables, containing newly released software information. Please note that this will update the SMS 2003 SP3 Asset Intelligence knowledge base and bring it to the same content level as SCCM 2007 RTM. This update is not intended for SCCM and is limited to SMS 2003 SP3. An update for SCCM 2007 will be provided with SCCM 2007 SP1.
Instructions
This update can be installed directly on the SQL server or from a remote machine. Please note that installation instructions differ from local to remote installation.
IMPORTANT:
Bulk Copy Program (BCP) must be installed on the system you are running the AICU.msi on.This can be the client or server on which you are executing this update MSI. You can check this by running “bcp ?” from command prompt If you see error stating that “bcp is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file”, then bcp is NOT installed and you can’t proceed.
You can install BCP as part of the SQL client tools If you opt to run this update package (i.e. AICU.msi) on a remote machine then you will need to supply 2 parameters:Name of the SQLServer and Name of the SMS Site DB. DO NOT use quotes or braces around the SQL server name or the DB name in parameters.
HOW TO USE:
On a remote machine:Verify BCP is installed Copy the update MSI and verify you have administrator rights on the SQL server hosting the SMS DB Run the following command (again, the client you are running this on, must have bcp): AICU.msi SQLSERVER=[Sql Server Name] SITEDB=[DB Name]
On the local SMS SQL Server (i.e. if you are running the MSI on the Site Server)You do not need to specify any parameters. Run the MSI update package
In both cases, a single log file will be generatedSee C:\AI\BCP_OSQL_LOGS says: 207189 rows affected. Look for the phrase ‘Install success!!’
Regards,
Anthony
Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E
© Anthony Clendenen
How often do you defrag your hard drives? Do you think it is often enough? Defragging your drives can make a substantial difference in
performance, seek times as well as the health of your drive can be improved if you defrag your drives on a regular basis. Keep in mind that hard drives are mechanical devices and eventually one of those moving parts is going to fail and you can extend the life of your drives by making them work less when you try to get a file. Don’t believe me? How about ExtremeTech.com? This link is to a portion of an article they wrote regarding optimizing performance and this piece is specifically about defragging your hard drive, including the Master File Table (MFT), and your Page File.
There are a ton of products out there some free, some pay, and the old standard that is included with the operating system. Below is a list of available software for defragging your beloved hard drives. If you find that you like one that does not have a scheduler then use either ConfigMgr to schedule a reoccurring ad to start the defrag or use task scheduler.
How-To Create Your Own System Restore Partition!
Regards,
Anthony
Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E
© 2007 Anthony Clendenen
I Recommend These Books!
SMS 2003 Administrator’s Reference: Systems Management Server 2003
And you can check out more books and gadgets at my Amazon store here.
This is a whole list of Systems Management WebCasts that go back as far as 2000 with some SMS 2.0 stuff, here is some newer SMS 2003 
WebCasts, and here is a search string for ConfigMgr WebCasts, I couldn’t find a page that just listed all of them.
Past Support WebCasts
Regards,
Anthony
Anthony Clendenen | Solutions Engineer | 1E
© 2007 Anthony Clendenen
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