philipnet

Virtual Server 2005

We've installed MS's Virtual Server at work which I'm using a build up a small virtual SMS test lab. It's not too bad, and I only have two issues with it:

1. If a virtual host POSTS but doesn't find and then load an OS, it won't idle on the processor time and MSVS will let it use a good proportion of the whole systems CPU time just sitting there, waiting.
2. MSVS will kick off my remote connections to the virtual hosts if the host is doing a fair bit of network activity. It did this whilst installing AdminStudio (SMS Edition) and it was so bad during the installation of WUS that I copied it to the local HDD of the virtual host.

We are going to have to see how it plays during normal use.

A handy hint for those using Window 2000 and Virtual Server 2005

If you try to install MSVS on Windows 2000 it will complain and fail to install stating that the OS is not supported. But if you just want the remote connection software then the program you need is
  C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Server\VMRC Client\vmrc.exe
just run it or copy it to your local PC from an XP or 2003 Server machine and create a desktop shortcut Easy as pie.

Windows Update Services

I'm also exploring WUS on this test virtual lab. It's main advantage over SMS is the supposedly easy deployment of driver updates. Whether this is as easy as it seems remains to be determined. Either way, I think that there is scope for both SMS and WUS in a production environment - whenever WUS is deemed stable enough.

Network discovery

It seems  that you do need to configure network discovery —> subnet to be searching your network subnets and you need the site boundaries also to be configured correctly. SMS2003 (SP1) will do that all automatically, you just have to enable network discovery and get it to run.

SMS won't assign clients to any site if you try to use Active Directory alone  .

Installing and configuring SUS

It's a cinch to get SUS up and running. The requirement is that you have at least one machine assigned to a site which has the client installed. This is because when installing SUS it asks for the name of a machine to go in a Test Collection collection, which must meet the above criteria. I always use the name of the SMS server. I now delete the Test collection as it's superfluous to the running of SUS/SMS.

Patching IE/MSXML/MDAC etc.

I try to/would like to get the systems up to the latest SP versions of the aforementioned software packages/components before rolling out subsequent patches. It doesn't work like that so I select all applicable patches when rolling them out.

New Toolkit

MS have a released version 2 of the SMS Toolkit: http://www.microsoft.com/smserver/downloads/2003/ tools/toolkit.asp . Cheers to the mssms list for pointing this out.

As a bit of a break from SMS, I've been looking at MSI files the last few days.

It was prompted by a colleague reminding me that the next big thing will be package deployment through SMS - something we haven't even looked at yet.

To help me on my way I've found AdminStudio SMS Edition: http://www.microsoft.com/smserver/downloads/2003/featurepacks/adminstudio/default.asp which had no problems generating an MSI of Firefox 1.0: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/  .

I then tried to generate a MSI of MS Photo Editor, but I need to play with InstallShield Tuner to get it to install a fully functioning piece of software - the file associations are screwed up .

I'll try deploying Firefox tomorrow - wish me luck!

As I missed it on Monday, I'm doing a round up and the end of the week!

It was SMS's 10th birthday this week. Here's the link everyone seems to be posting: http://myitforum.techtarget.com/inc/arts/10061SMSBirthdayBA.htm . It's from a guy called Bill Anderson ;-) .

On my day off (Thursday) our SMS server at work had Windows 2003 installed on it (by a colleague) and SMS put back on - consequently our SMS installation was reset back to square one. I wasn't that surprise that it had occurred, the guy had hinted that he wasn't happy with the current SMS setup. Still, it would be nice to be told what's going on - even after the event.

Oh, and I found a SMS mailing list: http://lists.listleague.com/mailman/listinfo/mssms/ which seems to be a really cool place to hang out  .

Yes, unfortunately I've managed to bork my test SMS2003 SP1 setup .

I was trying to upgrade SQL Server 2000 to SP3a but the damn thing wouldn't install!
Every time I tried I could authenticate my Windows account with the server and thus couldn't upgrade it.

So I though f*** - it! ;-) Reinstall SQL.!
No luck. You can't just re-install it, you have to uninstall it first and then reinstall it, and then I screwed up where the data was located.

I would like to reinstall (sorry, uninstall and then re-install!) SMS2003 and then upgrade to SP1, losing all my data in the process. by the SMS install process can't connect to the SQL server  .

Reinstall Windows 2000 Server here I come!

So this will be the forth time I've started from scratch with SMS. I wonder if I can lay to rest one of my burning initial configuration issues with it?

Hi Steve,

You're not the only one in this boat!

All my SMS training has been on the job - fuelled by necessity and curiosity.

Unfortunately I've had to split my time between SMS and the other helpdesk duties that are my job spec. This has meant that SMS can go untouched for weeks .

At the moment I'm trying to finalise our patch management policy. I've found it easier to download all the possible relevant patches and then target a particular collection. I'm creating one program/advert per MS bulletin as MS have a tendancy to withdraw/replace certain patches wither newer one.

With SP1, SMS lists all software updates that have been released in the last month as well as it's old pre-SP1 behaviour of only listing patches that have been requested. To create packages/adverts for old patches just setup a couple of machines that match your varied baseline (i.e. clean install of OS and earliest version of applications, get SMS to inventory them and they should start requesting the packages.

Is that you can't sort software updates by Requested or Compliant.

Now of course we keep our systems here fully patched ;-) but when first deploying SMS I felt it was prudent to issue patches affecting the majority of our machines.

Now that's not to say that SMS2003 was perfect in this regard as it treated the numerical values as strings - it listed 9 above 109 - but at least you could then visually filter the results and deploy patches as I saw fit.