Author Archives: Stephen Leuthold

Day-5 #TE14D5 is less than two weeks away!

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 As you might know, TechEd North America is just around the corner. It’s going to be a great event! How can we make a great event even better? By inviting Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals from all over the world to present complementary sessions on Day-5, May 16th. HASMUG and I are working with Maarten Goet and Cameron Fuller (System Center MVP’s) to organize a […]

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System Center News & Updates – 2014 M1

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“System Center News & Updates” is apart of an annual 4 part series of anything new & noteworthy in the System Center world. We publish it at the end of every HASMUG (Houston Area Systems Management User Group meeting). The publication has two placeholders: (ECM) Enterprise Client Management, and (CDM) Cloud and Datacenter Management. We […]

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Concerned about the merging of MMS with TechEd? Post your comments on Cameron Fuller’s blog!

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Are you an MMS original? Concerned about the merger of MMS and TechEd? You have someone that can champion your thoughts to the upper echelons of Microsoft’s System Center product groups, give your feedback on Cameron Fuller’s blog. http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/cfuller/archive/2013/10/30/mms-and-teched.aspx?id=607&List=52b49438-d7a8-4f25-91ea-392a6e92c57f&ItemID=607 Tweet

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Count of instances of specific software registered with Add or Remove Programs‏ – Wrong counts SCCM 2012

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The problem with the query is that there can be multiple ProdID’s for the same DisplayName0, Publisher0, Version0 returned. So it counts them all, skewing the expected result. I fixed this by changing Count(ProdID0) to Count(Distinct arp.ResourceID) in the dataset… SELECT DisplayName0, COUNT(DISTINCT arp.ResourceID) AS ‘Count’, Publisher0, Version0, @CollID AS CollectionID FROM fn_rbac_Add_Remove_Programs(@UserSIDs) arp JOIN […]

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System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (SCCM): Prevent automatic upgrade on deployment to device collection

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UPDATE 10/15/2013: Microsoft changed the connect bug I filed a few months back from closed to active. Guess there was a change of heart? 🙂 https://connect.microsoft.com/ConfigurationManagervnext/feedback/details/796927/automatically-upgrade-any-superseded-versions-of-this-application-grayed-out-for-device-collection-deployments UPDATE 10/14/2013: Rusty Ratliff, a member of our user group (HASMUG) has brought to my attention this also affects task sequences that reference an application that supersedes a discovered […]

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System Center 2012 R2 Preview Highlights

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This was announced at TechEd 2013 yesterday and they are anticipating a release by the end of the year. This release will be the successor to System Center 2012 SP1. System Center 2012 R2 Preview: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/system-center-2012-r2.aspx White Paper: http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/7/2/7721670F-DEF0-40D3-9771-43146DED5132/System_Center_2012%20R2_Overview_White_Paper.pdf System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/system-center-2012-r2-configuration-manager.aspx System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager Highlights: Support for […]

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Configuration Manager 2012: SQL XPATH Query for Deployment Type

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Below is an example of how to write a SQL XPATH query to extract details from a deployment type CI contained in an XML data type. In this query we are returning columns for deployment type Title, SDMPackageDigets (XML), Technology (MSI, Script, etc.), Content Location, and Install and Uninstall strings. I basically found an example […]

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Configuration Manager 2012: Query for the Application Owners and Support Contacts

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Below is an example of how to formulate a SQL query to obtain the “first” app owner and support contact on an Application.   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 WITH XMLNAMESPACES ( DEFAULT ‘http://schemas.microsoft.com/SystemCenterConfigurationManager/2009/AppMgmtDigest’ ) SELECT SDMPackageDigest.value('(/AppMgmtDigest/Application/Title)[1]’, ‘nvarchar(MAX)’) [Title], SDMPackageDigest.value('(/AppMgmtDigest/Application/Owners/User/@Id)[1]’, ‘nvarchar(MAX)’) [Owners], SDMPackageDigest.value('(/AppMgmtDigest/Application/Contacts/User/@Id)[1]’, ‘nvarchar(MAX)’) [Support Contact] FROM  CI_ConfigurationItems WHERE CIType_ID = 10 […]

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Add Adobe Acrobat XI and Reader XI catalogs to SCUP 2011

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Adobe Acrobat XI (11): http://armmf.adobe.com/arm-manifests/win/SCUP/Acrobat11_Catalog.cab AdobeReader XI (11): http://armmf.adobe.com/arm-manifests/win/SCUP/Reader11_Catalog.cab Tweet

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SCCM 2012 Poor Console Performance In Software Updates

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UPDATE 5/21/2013: Just heard from the MVP community that some folks are referencing this article to improve performance: http://ola.hallengren.com/sql-server-index-and-statistics-maintenance.html From within Microsoft SQL Management Studio, run the query below to check fragmentation: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 SELECT a.index_id, name, avg_fragmentation_in_percent FROM   sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats (NULL,NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL) AS a JOIN […]

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