Any SCCM Desktop Build Managers\Software Deployment Managers here?

Ev0 · 25 Sep 2012 at 22:57

Gilly said:
Security Architect or something? Or more process/red tape driven?

First one, don't mind you. Second one you're the bane of my life

Lol bit of both at the moment it seems, more the former the majority of the time

Phate said:
I originally used SMS2003 (had a course on it when I was 18) and as I was getting to grips with it got made redundant. I'm now 'the' SCCM guy at work, we are on 2007 R3 and looking to move to 2012 soon.

Difficult when you have 25 secondary sites to handle as well

Ah well, all good fun!

My first IT job we had around 100odd secondaries, give or take.

I did the sccm 2007 exam, was a bit of a joke to be honest was in and out in under 10 minutes.

Phate · 25 Sep 2012 at 23:01

Ev0 said:
My first IT job we had around 100odd secondaries, give or take.

This isn't a competition

Currently I'm juggling SCCM along with SD and PM work as well. Although its becoming quickly apparent over the past 2 months as I've taken ownership of SCCM that the Service Desk work is just getting in the way.

Ev0 · 25 Sep 2012 at 23:04

Well if you enjoy it and 'get' it, as not everyone does, I'd say its worthwhile pursuing it as a bit of a specialism.

Gilly · 25 Sep 2012 at 23:08

Definitely. There's a continuing trend that way and into virtualisation that isn't going to stop.

Phate · 25 Sep 2012 at 23:09

Ev0 said:
Well if you enjoy it and 'get' it, as not everyone does, I'd say its worthwhile pursuing it as a bit of a specialism.

I do enjoy the challenge, and it's quite rewarding seeing something appear on peoples machines as you walk round the office knowing that everything you do is pretty high impact and the business benefits from it. I plan on pursuing it

Deleted member 77746 · 25 Sep 2012 at 23:28

SCCM deployments is a doddle. Bundle it with App-V n you are laughing!

Halfmad said:
SCCM isn't purely about deployment, although it is very powerful at doing it if configured and tested properly.

People overlook the auditing side too easily, mine even reports HDD bad blocks on clients to a report so we can replace drives before they fail etc. AD problems so they can be resolved before they become a problem and of course hardware changes so we can see if anyone is nicking kit! Think I've got about 600 reports available to me at the moment on 2007R2.

This only works if you have a team ready for problems. Not good cutting a team by 50% n expecting 3/4 more work.

Phate · 25 Sep 2012 at 23:50

Right-Click Tools is also very handy!

Ev0 · 26 Sep 2012 at 00:06

Phate said:
Right-Click Tools is also very handy!

Very much so, extremely handy

And yeah it is satisfying sometimes, coming in on a morning the night after a scheduled rollout to check your ad status and see everything ran fine, whatever product was upgraded or replaced and the users don't even notice

I miss it lol

Phate · 26 Sep 2012 at 07:51

Ev0 said:
Very much so, extremely handy

And yeah it is satisfying sometimes, coming in on a morning the night after a scheduled rollout to check your ad status and see everything ran fine, whatever product was upgraded or replaced and the users don't even notice

I miss it lol

Aww but yes I know the feeling

Ev0 · 26 Sep 2012 at 11:17

Or sneakily swapping versions of Project as a previous contractor installed the incorrect, and thus unlicensed, version across estate

Phate · 26 Sep 2012 at 11:21

Ev0 said:
Or sneakily swapping versions of Project as a previous contractor installed the incorrect, and thus unlicensed, version across estate

I did this for Visio.

We had 200 and something copies of Visio Premium installed when we only had licenses for Standard and Professional.

Got lots of brownie points for sorting that one out, zero user impact ftw.

Side note...right now I'm trying to resolve an issue with windows updates that have been pushed out, on the report it says ' Detection state unknown ' for 245 machines. Any ideas chaps?

plasmahal · 26 Sep 2012 at 12:16

Phate said:
Right-Click Tools is also very handy!

That and the client centre tool are essential.

Pestilence · 26 Sep 2012 at 13:05

plasmahal said:
That and the client centre tool are essential.

Absolutely. Would feel positively hobbled without them!

Pestilence · 26 Sep 2012 at 13:08

Phate said:
Side note...right now I'm trying to resolve an issue with windows updates that have been pushed out, on the report it says ' Detection state unknown ' for 245 machines. Any ideas chaps?

Check wuauhandler.log on one of the affected clients. Might be some revealing info there.

Gilly · 26 Sep 2012 at 13:24

Pestilence said:
Check wuauhandler.log on one of the affected clients. Might be some revealing info there.

That's wuahandler.log

Do you have automatic windows updates switched on?

Pestilence · 26 Sep 2012 at 13:45

Gilly said:
That's wuahandler.log

Whoops!

I actually have a rather strange one here myself. Trying to deploy a package to a particular machine (system resource targeting) for one of our users and while the reports for that package state it was "Accepted" (Program received) a few days ago by the correct machine/user combination, there's been no movement since.

The user has seen no prompts, and if I check the received Advertisements using Client Center, I don't see the one pertaining to that package/collection. Reapplying policies on the client doesn't help either. Of course, since there doesn't appear to be a relevant Advertisement reaching the client, running RAP shows nothing either. :confused:

Any ideas on that one?

Phate · 26 Sep 2012 at 13:58

Pestilence said:
Whoops!

I actually have a rather strange one here myself. Trying to deploy a package to a particular machine (system resource targeting) for one of our users and while the reports for that package state it was "Accepted" (Program received) a few days ago by the correct machine/user combination, there's been no movement since.

The user has seen no prompts, and if I check the received Advertisements using Client Center, I don't see the one pertaining to that package/collection. Reapplying policies on the client doesn't help either. Of course, since there doesn't appear to be a relevant Advertisement reaching the client, running RAP shows nothing either.

Any ideas on that one?

Are program suppressions turned off?

I find with that normally the command for the program isn't correct and its waiting on something. Turn off the program notification suppression then re-run. See what happens!

Gilly said:
That's wuahandler.log

Do you have automatic windows updates switched on?

Cool, will grab it and report back. Thanks!

Pestilence · 26 Sep 2012 at 15:03

Figured it. Suppressions were already off, but it turns out the user ignored the initial prompts (or "didn't see it", as they say) and since it's user resource based it didn't list against his computer's specific advertisements.

Removed/replaced his membership and got it via RAP then while guiding him through.

Ev0 · 26 Sep 2012 at 15:36

Another handy util which is good not just for SCCM but viewing other log files is the Trace32 app, just presents logs in a nicer way when trawling through them.