System Center 2012 SP1 BITS are available
If you have a TechNet or MSDN subscription you can officially download the bits for System Center 2012 SP1.
Exclude Logical disk on a Particular Drive on All Servers
I wanted to provide my client with a way to exclude a particular drive from their servers from scanning the logical disk monitor. This drive is set for the paging file only and is a very small partition size. This was generating lots of alerts in SCOM due to the number of servers being monitored. The process below is what I came up with to disable this alert for all drives labeled “D:” while still continuing to monitor free space on all other drives.
First I created a group named Windows 2008 Logical Disk Drive D:
This group does not need explicit members. Configure the dynamic members as follows:
There are no Exclusions or subgroups needed. Finish the wizard.
Now go into monitoring and create an override for the group and this monitor:
That’s it. You now have an override for this drive on all servers. All other drives will continue to report free space issues.
Enable Proxy Agent SCOM 2012 For All Systems
As SCOM agents begin to rollout it can be tricky to keep track of which agents you have enabled the proxy agent on and which agents need to have it enabled. This post will help you enable the SCOM proxy agent for all systems that need it enabled.
First open notepad and copy the following lines into notepad:
##Enables Agent Proxy for All agents where Agent Proxy is disabled
Get-SCOMAgent | where {$_.ProxyingEnabled.Value -eq $False} | Enable-SCOMAgentProxy -Confirm
Save the file. Example ProxyEnabled.ps1
Open the OperationsManager PowerShell
Run the command
The agents will now have the Proxy Agent enabled.
Moving SCOM 2012 from (Eval) to (Retail)
I ran into an issue where I noticed the installed version of SCOM 2012 said it was an evaluation edition. This post will show how to move the SCOM 2012 install from evaluation to retail.
This can be accomplished through the following steps.
- First to find out how much time is left on the evaluation version open the Operations Manager Shell and run the following command:
Get-SCOMManagementGroup : ft skuforlicense. Version, timeofexpiration -a
- Open the Operations Manager PowerShell
Type in the following command: Set-SCOMLicense –ProductId <your product id: XXXXX-XXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX>.
Click “Y”
***Note*** I put this error in here in case you experience this. Make sure your account has rights to the registry. If you still receive the error there is a workaround below.
(Workaround)
- A work around for this would be to Open the Windows PowerShell Command and run the following command:
Import-Module OperationsManager
Set-SCOMLicense –ProductID XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
The command will only take a few seconds to complete.
Finally restart the following services:
System Center Management
System Center Management Configuration
System Center Data Access Service
- Now open SCOM 2012 go to help and about. You should now see Retail.
MDT 2012 with Server 2012 PowerShell – Initialization Error
While attempting to install the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 on Server 2012 I ran into an issue where it does not recognize PowerShell is installed. By default PowerShell v3 is installed with Server 2012.
The reason I was seeing this was because of the following validation exception:
File H:\Program Files\Microsoft Deployment Toolkit\bin\Microsoft.BDD.PSSnapIn.Types.ps1xml cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. For more information, see about_Execution_Policies at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=135170..
To help resolve this I first ran a Get-ExecutionPolicy
Next I ran a get-ExecutionPolicy – list
Finally I ran a set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned –Scope CurrentUser
Re-launch the Deployment Workbench
SCCM 2012 Debug Mode
There is a hidden feature that is built into the SCCM 2012 product. This will help aid in your troubleshooting steps.
First create a shortcut on your desktop for the ConfigMgr 2012 application.
Open the properties of the shortcut.
At the end of the line add SMS:DebugView
Launch the application and you will now notice a new “Tools” on the WonderBar.
Click on Tools and you will have additional troubleshooting options. You will be able to select a class, ref patch and a type of query to troubleshoot.
How to virtualize an application for SCCM
As companies are continuing to rollout Windows 7 and move away from Windows XP, there may be some applications that only run under Windows XP that are holding back the rollout. This post will show how to virtualize an application so that it can run in a Windows 7 environment.
First you will need to start the Microsoft Application Virtualization Sequencer.
Fill in the package information then Click Next.
At this point the wizard is ready to begin to monitor any changes to the environment during the installation. When ready Click Begin Monitoring.
The monitoring will take a few moments to prepare.
A wizard will appear asking to point to the source location of the installation file (i.e.: exe). Launch the installation and point the directory to install to where to install the files. In this case my installation will occur in C:\Citrix10.001\.
Walk through the rest of your installation wizard installing the components you want and putting in the licensing information you need.
When the installation finishes, close out of the application you just installed but not the sequencer itself.
Click on stop monitoring.
At this point the monitoring process has finished. Click Next.
In this package no additional files are needed. Click next.
The shortcuts can be configured for the applications that are part of the installation. In this example the shortcuts will be added to the desktop.
After configuring the applications it is recommended to launch the applications to ensure that they are optimized for application streaming.
Click next to sequence the package.
Once the sequenced file is saved in the installation folder, you can now copy the contents of this folder to your location where you share out applications to your SCCM server.
From your SCCM Server, browse to Software> Software Distribution> Packages> Virtual Applications then click New > Virtual Application Package from the action menu on the right.
The following wizard will pop up, point to the location of the application manifest. This file resides in the folder that you sequenced the package in the previous steps. Click Next.
Fill in the package information. Click Next.
Provide a data destination directory for the package.
Note: this is different than the source directory. It just needs to be a blank folder that is shared. The wizard will place the package source files in this folder.
Click Next
The security page will appear. Adjust any Security settings you need to adjust. Click Next.
Add to your distribution points to where this package should be placed.
Advertising a Virtual Application
Browse to your advertisements and from the actions pane select New > Advertisement > Advertisement. Fill in the information and select the virtual app you wish to advertise. Click Next.
Schedule the advertisement as desired.
In this example the Application will be streamed from the distribution point. Click Next.
Configure the Interaction as desired. Click Next.
Your client will see the advertisement available (when the window is open) and when the client check in. to force a client to check in and grab the advertisement ASAP, initiate a “machine policy evaluation and update cycle” . If the Virtual application has been configured to place shortcuts on the desktop, they will appear there and the users then can launch the virtualized application.
