philipnet

This is something I often want to do. Whilst it’s great being able to see the results for all systems, but when it comes to putting my point across to management about a particular group of machines you want a report to match. 

To that end here is quick How To on how to take a SQL web report and limit it to a collection whilst utilising user friendly collection names :-) .

• Join in the table of SMS Collections which is called v_FullCollectionMembership:
  join v_FullCollectionMembership fcm on <table name>.ResourceID=fcm.ResourceID
• And then the key bit, which is to limit the results return to the specified collection:
  AND fcm.CollectionID = (Select C.CollectionID from v_Collection C where C.Name = @col)
• Lastly, you need to add a prompt that allows the user to specify what collection they are interested in:
  Name: col
  Prompt text: Collection
  Allow an empty value: <unticked>
  Provide a SQL statement:
  begin
   if (@__filterwildcard = '')
    select Name from v_Collection order by Name
   else
    select Name from v_Collection
    WHERE Name like @__filterwildcard
    order by Name
  end

  All being OK you will then be able to limit any reports to a specified collection. But don’t forget to to change the variables and table aliases as required.

  Happy reporting!

When setting up a guest machine under VS, “Virtual Machine Additions” is a recommended addition. Simply put, installing VMAdditions will give you greater integration between the guest OS and the host you are running on as well as provide monitoring information to the host OS. To install VMAdditions, log on to the Virtual Server administration website, pull up the configuration page for the particular guest OS and click on “install Virtual Machine Additions”. You’ll be taken to a new page and check the check box for “Install Virtual Machine Additions” and click on OK. As long as the Guest OS is running, then the system will think that the Virtual Machine Additions CD Rom has just been inserted and will automatically run the install .

If, like some people, you want to run a Domain Controller under VS, then take heed of this point: http://www.mcse.ms/message1187251.html . In the General Properties of the server, you need to specify a user account for the guest OS to run under and then check “Automatically turn on virtual machine if it was running when Virtual Server was stopped”. However, you can only make these changes if the guest OS has been turned off.

Hmm, it seems that permission issues rear their ugly head here. If you have, like I have, created a domain account for VS to run under, you want it to have the least permissions possible -i.e. for it just to be a member of Domain Users. For that to work, navigate your way to
  C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents
(or wherever you have Virtual Server store it’s settings) and give that user modify permissions on the Shared Virtual Machines folder.

And I do like the integrated mouse – Oh yes, I won’t forget to install VMAdditions that from now on!

I’ve finally got a couple of systems up and running which allow me to try out Active Directory (2003) and SMS 2003 from scratch.

Firstly, you need to ensure that you have installed all the appropriate windows components in order for SMS to fully function. What you want is all hidden inside the “Application Server” section. Go into IIS and ensure BITS is enabled, and then into WWW Service and enable ASP, WebDAV and WWW Service.
If you’re going to install AdminStudio, find your way back to “Application Server” and enable ASP.NET .

Then when you get around to installing SMS, do ensure that you are a member of Domain Admins, or else you will have to extend the schema by running extadsch. And then you have to create the System Management container in AD. There are more details on what how to do this in the Active Directory Schema Modification and Publishing for Systems Management Server 2003 white paper.

I’m not quite sure what got the IP address of my AD server – it was either Network Discovery or AD System Discovery. But, as recommended, I set a subnet for the AD site in AD Site and Services —> Sites —> Subnets.

Ah, I found that I had set the site boundaries to be an IP address range. I’ve just changed to use AD rather than IP, so it should start ignoring the Linux boxes .

Continuing on with my software distribution escapades, I tried rolling out the Browse Control client to a classroom full of PCs.

Having done it manually twice already I didn’t fancy doing it again. And besides, as we have a site licence for it, it is going to be pushed to all the classrooms and I would like to see if I can get SMS to start doing some of the leg work  .

So, to that end, I copied the client setup program into a folder on our SMS server, modified the configuration to point to the appropriate teacher machine, packaged it up, distributed it and advertised it.

And so I opened up the Status Message Viewer for the appropriate advert and watched the systems all get the advert. This was about 14:30. Several hours later the package had not been run on the systems and I was getting concerned. I can’t remember exactly what I did – I’m positive that I just re-advertised the program – but I when I arrived this morning the Status Message Viewer was showing that all the clients had installed the program sometime after 17:00 yesterday.

Now to package up the Console .

Well, this week I took the plunge and tried to distribute the MSI of Firefox I had previously created.

Firstly I checked out the ever useful MyITForms and found an article on Distributing MSI Applications with SMS which started me off on the right track. I could then combined that with pages 440–445 and 449–459 of Systems Management Server 2003 Administrator's Companion. Now some of that section isn’t appropriate to distributing MSI files, but it’s worth glancing over – the first time I didn’t read all the way to p.459 so I missed the Windows Installer tab bit!

So far I’ve done the process a couple of times since with various degrees of success. Here are my handy hints for distributing MSI files:

• Run the SMS Administrators console from the same machine where the package is going to be sourced from. It makes it a lot easier if you can work with local paths and the Console will help you by putting you in the right folder when appropriate.
• You need to create an Administrative Installation of the MSI file, so run
    msiexec /a <full path of msi file>
  and it will pop up a GUI frontend to storing it somewhere.
• SMS 2003 (with SP1?) allows folders to be created in Packages and Advertisements, so use them to structure your software deployment packages.
• When creating the program don’t forget to import the MSI file into the Windows Installer tab.
  (N.B. You can import multiple MSI files per package – but only one file instance of a file per package)
• You can easily uninstall MSIs as well as install them – so why not create an uninstall program?
  (BTW, it’s
    msiexec /i <full path of msi file> /q
  for a quite installation and
    msiexec /x <full path of msi file> /q
  for a quiet uninstallation).
• After creating the programs don’t forget to distribute the programs to the distribution points.
  If you do forget, then re-advertise the program after distribution has completed.
• Organise and name the adverts the same as the package you’ve just created – it makes it a lot easier to keep track of what advert is for which package this way.
• Where I work we generally have installation programs run when users aren’t logged in. I therefore set the program to download and then run, rather than have (loads of) clients all hit our network bandwidth for the brief few minutes between class changes.
• On that note, do set the Legacy Client Software Installation Account (Component Configuration —> Software Distribution Properties). Just ignore the “Legacy Client” bit in the text – you need that account set if you want to install software without any users logged on!

Just wondering if anyone was going to the SMS Alliance briefing at Reading/Thames Valley Park on Feb 8th: http://www.sms-alliance.com/flash/events.html ?

I'm kind-of curious to know who else is/might be going as well as what to expect.
I don't have any control over any budget, but I guess it might be useful to come away with a few ideas.

If anyone can come up with a way to justify this to management, that would be useful as well, otherwise I'll have the day off as holiday.