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April 2007 - Posts
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How do you take control of your infrastructure?
Start by taking a look inside your server room now—and make sure you have the right tools and technologies in place to leverage it in the future.
At the Future of the Server Room Tour ’07, you can get a sneak peek of what your server room will look like--and get an edge on your professional development.
Be among the first Canadian IT Professionals to see the next generation of Microsoft-based technologies...( read more) 
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System Center Essentials 2007 is a new management solution in the System Center family of IT systems management products specifically designed for small and midsized businesses. System Center Essentials 2007 provides a unified management solution that enables IT professionals in small to midsize organizations to proactively manage their IT environment with increased efficiency. Join us for a deep dive into System Center Essentials 2007 and learn how you can use this tool to get control of your...( read more) 
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Find the user history for a PC.
SELECT DISTINCT v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.Name0, v_HS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.TimeStamp, v_HS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.UserName0FROM v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM, v_HS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM v_HS_COMPUTER_SYSTEMWHERE v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.ResourceID = v_HS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.ResourceID AND v_HS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.UserName0 Is Not Null AND v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.Name0=<Computer Name>ORDER BY v_HS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.TimeStamp...( read more) 
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A while back I enabled a few attributes within the Win32_ComputerSystem Class
http://smsug.ca/blogs/garth_jones/archive/2007/03/14/215.aspx
Well it has been a few weeks and the following attributes have not returned any data to my SMS database.
InitialLoadInfo
InstallDate
LastLoadInfo
NameFormat
OEMLogoBitmap
PowerManagementCapabilities
PowerManagementSupported
PrimaryOwnerContact
SupportContactDescription
Most of the other attributes that I enabled did not return...( read more) 
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Every so often I get asked what is it like to run a user group. The answer is a lot of hard work and there can be a lot of time commitments as well.
After running the Ottawa Windows Server User Group (www.OWSUG.ca) for a few years now I am a STRONG believer that you don’t need to have one user group for every discipline or topic. I believe that each discipline or topic should become a Special Interest Group (SIG) of one larger user group.
In Ottawa there are several user groups...( read more) 
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I was asked the other day how I know what log files to look at within SMS when troubleshooting. Like many long time SMS Administrators, the answer is you just know and those that you don’t you lookup on your cheat sheet.
What is my cheat sheet?
A list of log files that are created in Systems Management Server 2003
Systems Management Server 2003 Troubleshooting Flowcharts
And of course no SMS Administrator would be caught without SMS Trace! It is the only tool to read SMS...( read more) 
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Chapter 8 is titled “The SMS Community”, and in this chapter Rod talks about Add-on Tools and Support groups.
The best quote from this chapter is the first line of this chapter. “… another reason why I think SMS 2003 is one of the best systems management products is the SMS community”. I couldn’t agree more! Try finding an active forum, Web site, or user group for any other systems management product; they are hard to come by and if you do find one it will always be controlled by the vendor!...( read more) 
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While writing a number of reports for a client, I came across this bug:
Titles within SMS Web report are incorrectly set and renamed to inappropriate column titles.
To demonstrate the issue I created a SMS web report using the following SQL statement:
Select v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.Name0 as 'Name',
v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.Domain0 as 'Domain',
...( read more) 
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Chapter 7 is titled “SMS Feature Packs”, and in this chapter Rod talks about OS, BDD, Device Management, Administrator feature packs.
This is another one of those chapters that is useful for everyone to read, particularly if you don’t already use Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) to image all of your workstations. This chapter focuses on OS feature pack and BDD and only lightly touches on the other two feature packs.
I’m a firm believer in BDD and this chapter gives you a...( read more) 
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Monday night I was out with a few Techies and the conversation got around to “how most ISP block port 25”, “hosting companies”, and “SPAM”.
During our discussions I mentioned that a while back my hosting company would get added on to one of the trigger happy Blacklist servers for 24 hours at a time. Needlessly to say I talked to tech support at my hosting company and they would do everything in their power to fix the situation. This included changing the IP address of the SMPT server...( read more) 
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While reviewing Rod’s book I was reminded of one of my pet peeves.
One of my pet peeves is when the package source is listed as a drive letter instead of as a UNC path. Why you ask? Have you every tried to troubleshoot why a package is not deploying to a distribution point (DP)?
Example 1 ...( read more) 
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Chapter 6 is titled “SMS 2003 Patch Management”, and in this chapter Rod talks about using SMS 2003 to do patch management.
EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS CHAPTER.
No matter what your experience is with SMS you should read this chapter even if it is to reaffirm what you are already doing!
Since everyone is going to read this chapter there is little need for me to summarize it.. J
Ok, here are the key points
- ...( read more) 
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Monday night I was out with a few Techies and the conversation got around to “how most ISPs block port 25”, “hosting companies”, and “SPAM”.
Monday night I mentioned how there was another port that you could use to send email and about how to keep your site off blacklists. As many of you know I’m not an Exchange person but I agreed to Blog about it. Today I will talk about the alternate port that can be used with some hosting companies to send mail and not “relay” email via your ISP....( read more) 
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Chapter 5 is titled “SMS 2003 Software Delivery and Reporting”, and in this chapter Rod talks about Packages / Programs, Advertisements, Software Metering, Queries and Web Reports.
He talks about what each setting does and why it is there. He points out some of the less known and more
Package
One of my pet peeves is when package source is listed as a drive letter instead of as a UNC path. That its a topic for another blog but use UNC paths!
Programs
I flagged a few...( read more) 
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This query will list all Pacakges within SMS.
SELECT vPackage.PkgID AS 'SMSPKGID', vPackage.Name AS 'Name', vPackage.Version AS 'Version', vPackage.Language AS 'Language', vPackage.Manufacturer AS 'Manufacturer', vPackage.Description AS 'Description'FROM vPackage vPackageORDER By vPackage.PkgID...( read more) 
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Chapter 4 is titled “SMS 2003 Resource Management”, and in this chapter Rod talks about Site Assignment, Collections and Client Heath Reporting.
One of the most overlooked add-ons to SMS is the client health tool. This tool is used to help detect problem with your client, and point you in the right direction to resolving the issues.
The most important item in the chapter is the subset collection. Rod does not touch on this too much but it is one of the most often asked questions....( read more) 
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This SQL Query can be used to see how WQL is converted to SQL by SMS for collections.
SelectCollections.SiteID, Collections.CollectionName, Collection_Rules.QueryName, Collection_Rules_SQL.WQL, Collection_Rules_SQL.SQL From Collections,Collection_Rules, Collection_Rules_SQLWhere Collections.CollectionID = Collection_Rules.CollectionIDAND Collections.CollectionID = Collection_Rules_SQL.CollectionID...( read more) 
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SELECT v_GS_SOUND_DEVICE.ProductName0 AS 'Name', Count(v_GS_SOUND_DEVICE.ProductName0) AS 'Count'
FROM v_GS_SOUND_DEVICE v_GS_SOUND_DEVICE
GROUP BY v_GS_SOUND_DEVICE.ProductName0
ORDER BY v_GS_SOUND_DEVICE.ProductName0...( read more) 
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Opps, I already posted this Count of service account used for services before... So here is another one.
SELECT Case GS.PowerSupplyState0 when 1 then 'Other' when 2 then 'Unknown' when 3 then 'Safe' when 4 then 'Warning' when 5 then 'Critical' when 6 then 'Non-recoverable' else 'Not Defined' end AS 'Power Supply State', Count('Power Supply State') AS 'Count'FROM v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM GSGROUP BY GS.PowerSupplyState0Order by 'Power Supply State' ...( read more) 
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Use this query to help track down Service that are not running under an authorized Service account.
SELECT v_GS_SERVICE.StartName0 AS 'Service Account', Count(v_GS_SERVICE.StartName0) AS 'Count'
FROM v_GS_SERVICE v_GS_SERVICE
GROUP BY v_GS_SERVICE.StartName0
ORDER BY v_GS_SERVICE.StartName0...( read more) 
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Find all Service that are not running under \System32 or the \Windows directory. For you environment you might need to add a few more exclusion for service such as AV, Exchange, MOM, etc. However be careful not to exclude too much as you may miss a Trojan or Virus hiding as a service within one of those directories.
SELECT v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.Name0 AS 'PC Name',
v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.UserName0...( read more) 
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Use this query to find your overall hot fix compliancy rate.
Keep in mind that there are a few things that will affect this rate, for example:
- Delete Aged Inventory History setting
- Delete Obsolete Client Discovery Data setting
Set Nocount OFF
Declare @Installed as int
Declare @Total as int
Declare @Per as Float
set @Installed = (SELECT SUM(CASE WHEN patch.Status0...( read more) 
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Use this query to help find the top user for a PC. This isn’t fool proof but it should work.
SELECT Distinct top 1
v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.Name0 as 'PC Name',
isnull(v_HS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.UserName0,v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.UserName0) as 'User Name',
Count(isnull(v_HS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.UserName0,v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.UserName0))...( read more) 
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SELECT GS.Name0 as 'PC Name',
GSS.DisplayName0 as 'Service',
GSS.StartMode0 as 'Startup',
GSS.State0 as 'State'
FROM v_GS_SERVICE GSS, v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM GS
Where GSS.StartMode0...( read more) 
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This query will give you a count of services.
SELECT GSS.DisplayName0 AS 'Service Name', Count(GSS.DisplayName0) AS 'Count'
FROM v_GS_SERVICE GSS
GROUP BY GSS.DisplayName0
ORDER BY GSS.DisplayName0...( read more) 
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Today I was reading the newsgroups and I was telling people that you should not run report against SQL tables but instead follow best practice and run reports against the views. To proved some examples on how this person can do what he wanted I send the link to Software Metering Console View – Part 6.
However in this series no where do I going into creating a view for the table that was created in Software Metering Console View – Part 5! Now is the time to remedy that!
MICROSOFT...( read more) 
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This query will can be use to proactively find all workstation that have less than 10% free space.
SELECT v_GS_LOGICAL_DISK.SystemName0 as 'PC Name',
v_GS_LOGICAL_DISK.DeviceID0 'Drive Letter',
v_GS_LOGICAL_DISK.FreeSpace0 as 'Free Space',
...( read more) 
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In order for this to work you must enable the “BiosCharacteristics” within the PC Bios class. http://smsug.ca/blogs/garth_jones/archive/2007/03/30/228.aspx
SELECT CS.Name0, CS.UserName0
FROM v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM CS, v_GS_PC_BIOS BIOS
WHERE BIOS.ResourceID = CS.ResourceID AND (BIOS.BiosCharacteristics0 Like '% 15,%')ORDER BY CS.Name0...( read more) 
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This query will give you a count of PC Bios Status, the available options are:
"OK""Error""Degraded""Unknown""Pred Fail""Starting""Stopping""Service" "Stressed""NonRecover""No Contact""Lost Comm"
SELECT v_GS_PC_BIOS.Status0 as 'Status',
Count(v_GS_PC_BIOS.Status0) AS 'Count'
FROM v_GS_PC_BIOS...( read more) 
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Since I missed blogging yesterday here is a bonus post for today. This query will show you all PCs who DDR is less that 7 days old.
SELECT
R.Netbios_Name0,
R.User_Name0,
R.Creation_Date0
FROM v_R_System R
where Datediff(DD,R.Creation_Date0,Getdate()) < 30...( read more) 
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Use this query to find all PCs installed within the last week.
SELECT CS.Name0, CS.UserName0, OS.InstallDate0FROM v_GS_COMPUTER_SYSTEM CS, v_GS_OPERATING_SYSTEM OSWHERE CS.ResourceID = OS.ResourceID and datediff(DD,OS.InstallDate0,Getdate())< 7ORDER BY CS.Name0
...( read more) 
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New myITForum.com site, What do you think?
http://www.myITforum.com/newsite
11 years
While at MMS I found out that one of the MVPs is in his 11th year! I will let you figure out who it is, I would never have guess it myself only because they are so quite about their MVP status.
Pictures
http://fotolog.buit.org/displayimage.php?album=3&pos=1
http://mcalynn.com/photos/folio.html?album=29&photo=1&playslideshow=yes
http://mcalynn.com/photos/folio.html?album=30&photo=1&playslideshow=yes...( read more) 
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I am happy to announce that Microsoft has presented me with the 2007 Microsoft MVP award for SMS. This is the third time for me, and I'm very excited about it.
I'm also working on some pretty cool stuff for SMS/SCCM that will be presented right on this site, so definitely keep coming back to see what's new.
Also, don't forget that we're here to help out with any SMS/SCCM related questions in the forums, so take advantage! 
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I was looking over my résumé the other day and I notice that as of today I have been working with SMS for over 11 years! How many more years will it take before I know this product? ...( read more) 
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