Infrastructure Optimization

By way of Brian Tucker’s excellent blog, Brian’s found a guy who knows a guy who has built some really cool right-click extensions for SCCM. These were a real cottage industry for SMS 2003, and administrators who were in the know never traveled anywhere without a USB key chock full of these little gems. Well, we’ve moved on, and now it’s all SCCM 2007 all the time (or at least, it is in my happy dreamworld!) and slowly, yet surely, the extensions to the SCCM interface are coming back. Brian’s article is a short one, but the pictures tell the whole story:

SCCM Custom Tools Now Available!

Just took a look over at Rick Houchins blog and his first post has what I have been attempting to do in my spare time. Great Job! I loaded it into my test environment and it works great on both collections and a single system. Looks like the backbone of the tools were written by some of the great folks over at www.myITforum.com too.

GET THE TOOLS!

Just listened to an MP3, er, uh boss - I was working on the word doc you wanted me to update and was multi-tasking. Ya, that’s it. I was working and learning at the same time.

Technet Radio has a soup-to-nuts coverage of SoftGrid and AppVirt and it’s best practice application for where it fits best for what kinds of apps sequence best and which apps should be core to the OS. If you didn’t know SoftGrid as a name is used to differentiate between 4.2 and lower while AppVirt is used for 4.5 and higher.

“How Microsoft IT Approached the Deployment of Microsoft Application Virtualization v4.5″ covers Microsoft’s directive internally to virtualize just about everything that isn’t nailed down or doesn’t meet best practice – they are “eating their own dog food.” The MP3 covered applications and processes that can’t be sequenced, talked about 32 bit SoftGrid and the path to 64 bit version of AppVirt as well as Microsoft’s path to not install the SoftGrid streaming server and to fully embrace SCCM distribution of AppVirt enabled packages.

Worth a listen to - while you’re multi-tasking, of course.

Seen on The Deployment Guys: An excellent video containing a walkthrough on how to set up SCCM 2007 OS Deployment and integrating Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008.

Download Video Here (51.28 MB)

Great kick-start for those of you just getting into this.

From the Awesome Ideas Department, Brian Tucker has raised the idea of an SCCM Ranger training event that would encourage a team-based deep-dive into the management software, and would do so in a casual setting - a house on a beach, for example, rather than YACRIAMH (yet another conference room in a mediocre hotel.)

While this might conjure visions of a ServerNerd reality show, the less-sarcastic part of me loves this idea. Get a bunch of smart people together, and discuss advanced scenarios for SCCM configuration and real world applications for complex architectures. Do it with pizza, beer and s’mores. Provide a Microsoft “title” - “SCCM Ranger” or something less evocative of a merit badge, and make the training pass/fail.

What do you think? Is this a good idea? Does it sound better than sitting in a training room looking at another PowerPoint deck? I sure think it does.

Brian Tucker’s SCCM 2007 Ranger Training Class poll

And yes, Brian, 249 of us are probably lazy or busy, but I still think your idea rocks!

I certainly hope this is the last of the name thrashing on this product for awhile. For those of you just getting used to the name change from Business Desktop Deployment Solution Accelerator to Microsoft Deployment, the folks in Redmond have changed the name of this product again, and it’s now being referred to as the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2008. Some official verbiage:

Microsoft® Deployment Toolkit 2008—Unified Tools and Guidance for Desktop and Server Deployment Automation. Download it today!

We are pleased to announce that Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2008 has been released! This is an update to Microsoft Deployment, released in November 2007.

MDT 2008 extends existing functionality to deploy Windows Vista® SP1 and Windows Server® 2008 for both Lite Touch and Zero Touch deployments using Systems Management Server 2003* and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. This release of MDT supports Windows AIK 1.1 and configuration of Active Directory® directory service, DNS, and DHCP server roles. To learn more and download the latest content, go to http://www.microsoft.com/deployment.

As of this posting, the MS Deployment site had not been updated with the name change, but expect that very soon. Start downloading today - this product has only gotten better and better, and I expect that this version will not disappoint. Of course, now that I’ve said that…

We’ll be watching this one very closely, as it’s our bread and butter.