MMS 2010 Success

Well all the glitz and glamor of MMS 2010 is over. The MMS will be March 21st - 25th at Mandalay bay. At this last installment we learned about InTune, the cloud computing aspect of Configuration Manager. It will offer a slimmed down version of the popular patching and software distributed model. It will allow admins to pay MS to host the hardware and infrastructure. This is going to make it easy for firms that might be too spread out to leverage infrastructure or better yet, firms that small like 1o to 50 machines in which System Center Essentials is still a bit of an over kill. We saw the next Road Map for the System Center products (ConfigMgr V.Next will come out in H2 2011). Users in the lab were able to play and learn on the beta version of the application. With the quality expressed in the beta I know we have good product for the masses in the next year.

Last year we saw that V.Next will be all 64 bit. This year we learned about the hierarchy changes (the CAS) and other changes Role Based Access Control(RBAC) There are too many new things to discuss it here. I am grateful for MMS. The MVPs have been privy to some of the information for almost 2 years. I have never been on the side of Software Engineering at the Enterprise level as with Configuration Manager. We see the dedication of the product team and what decisions they must make. We saw many changes taken and some delayed. There are 1,000s of requirements and design changes and not everything can make it into the product at the intial release. That is why we must wait for Service Packs and Revisions. Speaking of which they debuted more information about Configuration Manager's R3 and the power management that it will introduce. We should hope to see some cost savings here.

Well my presenation went ok. I didn't have the change to practice as much as I usually do. The car wreck took time and work away from it. There were points I wanted to cover like Collection structure of small to large companies as well as some complex Collections. While many people enjoyed it there were the few that wished I would have slowed down a bit and the demo wasn't as polished as it should have been. To those I say, sorry. Jumping a hill at 70MPH and crashing into ground while unconscience doesn't put a dent into the prep of things. While that was bad some people where able to present or presented late due to the ash cloud so there were some surprises with MMS. Even the weather became so cold that the closing party was moved indoors. I think I will remember this MMS as the one that was a half bubble off plumb but stood the test of time.

MMS 2010 Full

It should come as no surprise that MMS is sold out. See the Microsoft note here about ways to still register.
http://www.mms-2010.com/public/registrationoverview.aspx

It will be a packed croud. I think my first time has close to 4,000 participants. Even with the large venue like the Venitian it can be cramped between sessions. I have been practicing my session. Let's hope it lives up to everything. With 3 kids, a bad car wreck, medication and just everything else happening I hope it comes out well.

MMS 2010

MMS 2010 is just around the corner. We expect to see the latest version of ConfigMgr, chat with community experts, attend too many sessions and maybe a few parties. In less than a week it will be in full swing. I am already on edge. My presentation is one of the first for the week. I will land and have about 5 hours to get settled, practice one time, do my tech check and present. I have several other community based chats that I will be involved it.

As a reminder it is always good to step outside your comfort zone so you can meet people and network. While I know many people now through the MVP program, myITforum, the Microsoft forums and simply attending these events I like to find a table that has maybe 1 to 3 people and strike up a conversation. Last year at lunch I sat at a table with 3 french men. Only 1 spoke excellent English so he translated most of the time. I always say "Howdy", I am from the south and graduate of Texas A&M University so it fits right in. Of course I also always wear cowboy boots (even got married in them). Well when you sit down and say Howdy you get some looks. They had a good time asking me about Texas and I had a good time asking them how they were doing. If your going to MMS 2010 hope to see you there.

MMS 2010:Expert Encounters

If you are familiar with MMS then you know that at the end of each day you can meet with the all the presenters in a round table, which is kinda cool to shoot out questions. A new idea is being added to MMS this year, Experts Encounters. It is a chance to have a mini chat with people from the Community as well as Microsoft Execs about given topics. Hopefully this is a chance to place a name with a face and such. My tenative time slot is set for Tuesday at 12:30 to 1pm. Come hear a little about collections queries and ask questions.

Check out the System Center Blog for more details:

http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2010/04/09/encounter-experts-in-the-mms-2010-community-lounge.aspx

Side note:My full length presentation will be on Monday at 3pm to 4:15pm

Always check your Bios Settings

The following errors were found in our TS logfile of a brand new out of the box machine.

In SSL, but with no client cert

unknown host (gethostbyname failed)

sending with winhttp failed; 80072ee7

Failed to get client identity (80004005)

As standard practice we boot the machine, modify the time, WOL settings and power settings of the laptop and get to imaging.

For this particular problem it wasn't the network drivers that needed to be updated in WinPE or anything with the network. The tech kept looking at the client and the image. The twin that came with the machine imaged at the same time with not problems and we have imaged this laptop model several times before. The orginal error was the a Policy couldn't be found for the Task Sequence. I checked the machine and asked the standard questions. Well I could jump to a command prompt and see the ip address and ping back and forth from the server. Hmmm what could be the issue. Well I was scrolling throught the log above and couldn't make out the problems. Upon checking the ipconfig /all data I saw that the lease expires on Dec 26, 2009.

Well that struck me as odd!!! Looked at the log...wrong date there. It just happened that the OSD Certificate (Native mode) was create on Dec 1, 2010. So since the date was before this certificate existed it couldn't be found. Rebooted, changed the date in the bios and we imaged the machine. The Tech's response, "That is why you're the MVP." Not I just looked at the one thing you assume is always correct.