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What do you guys feel would be the best way to get an accurate inventory of all computers and their installed Microsoft software for a company with a lot of computers off-network? I have MAP and cleaned up AD prior to running an inventory, however we have so many people out in the field that any sort of network-scan based inventory software is not going to paint an accurate picture. Is the only way to call every single employee and figure it out manually to be sure?
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Feb 4, 2014 19:49
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Do they ever contact the network? You need some sort of client side inventory software. SCCM or OCS Inventory are 2 that come to mind. You could email them the OCS client installer and have them install and report to a web facing endpoint.
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Feb 4, 2014 19:55
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Many access the network over the VPN, however a good chunk don't. There's a lot of computers that are used for very basic (Word, Email) uses. Many of which were old machines that were given to field guys that otherwise wouldn't have gotten a computer. It's easy to forget those types of guys. Unfortunately, my predecessor never had an inventory, and I stupidly didn't start keeping one. It's time. I have licensing for System Center Essentials, but having seen the dysfunctional installation that was here when I took over, I decided to blow it away and implement WSUS to keep it simple. All machines that matter would be accessing the internet regularly. OCS looks interesting, I'll read into it.
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Feb 4, 2014 20:08
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SCCM 2012 question for you all. I set up a lab environment in the same VMWare Datacenter as our production environment. The SCCM lab was completely segregated (separate domain) except for a secondary NIC on the SCCM server that was on the same subnet as our prod environment, 10.10.10.x I have network discovery turned on, but limited to the following subnet 192.168.0.0 None of the prod machines were on this subnet, but were discovered by SMS_NETWORK_DISCOVERY Client push didn't happen since they're on separate domains, but does anyone have any idea why it would have been able to discover machines outside of the network discovery boundary?
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Feb 4, 2014 22:37
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Have you had a chance to check the netdisc log? Is it verbose enough to gather anything useful?
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Feb 5, 2014 06:04
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What's the best way to do a migration from MS SQL 2008 R2 on a 32-bit system, to a 64-bit system?
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Feb 6, 2014 15:30
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Bob Morales posted:What's the best way to do a migration from MS SQL 2008 R2 on a 32-bit system, to a 64-bit system?  You can't, easily. http://social.technet.microsoft.com...serverMigration
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Feb 6, 2014 15:45
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We're planning to deploy the Chrome msi at our site because we love our users and want them to be happy. I'm having trouble figuring out the Chrome master_preferences file as expained here - http://www.chromium.org/administrators/configuring-other-preferences I'm using GPO to push out the installer. Where exactly do I place the preferences file to have it picked up by the installer?
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Feb 7, 2014 02:20
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Swink posted:We're planning to deploy the Chrome msi at our site because we love our users and want them to be happy. From my understanding.. - Install Chrome on a "test" system through the .msi installer not the chrome setup.exe - Configure Chrome the way you want on that test system - Locate the master file here " C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\master_preferences" - Open it in notepad, double check it and make any nescessary changes - Create a new folder, drop the master_preferences file and chrome.msi in there - Setup GPO to deploy the msi (msiexec.exe /i chrome.msi /qn /norestart) And that should be it? Chrome should of detected the master_preferences file in the same directory as the installer and use that when installing it on the system.
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Feb 7, 2014 02:33
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It looks like the MSI isntaller creates the master_preference file next to the chrome.exe, but I have to overwrite it with my own preference file before the user runs Chrome for the first time. I'm not sure if this is better or worse than just creating an .mst It feels worse. Edit - and doesnt seem to work at all anyway. Swink fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Feb 7, 2014 |
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Feb 7, 2014 03:17
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Maybe this will help: http://www.nsa.gov/ia/_files/app/Deploying_and_Securing_Google_Chrome_in_a_Windows_Enterprise.pdf
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Feb 7, 2014 19:03
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Swink posted:We're planning to deploy the Chrome msi at our site because we love our users and want them to be happy. I've been packaging and deploying Chrome for enterprise deployment lately, so I should probably give some input. If you're already using GP to deploy it, you should probably use GP to configure it. Google makes an official GP template. If you can get the morons who run your domain to load it, then you can just use GPs for most of what's in that file. And it works great - much better than IE10's GP template, which is disappointing. https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/187202?hl=en About the master_preferences file - It can set initial settings for all users, but if I'm not mistaken, it will only affect new users of Chrome, or new profiles. So if you deploy the file on a PC where users have already logged-in and used chrome, it probably won't do anything for them. You'd have to wipe out Chrome's folder in their appdata folders. That means it's really only good for PCs that have never had chrome installed, or new deploys. But these settings aren't locked anyway, and GP overrides them. You have to put it in the same dir as chrome.exe, then it just works. firefox kind of works the same way with it's autoconfig file, except it makes much less sense. That's what I'm struggling with right now. There's no supported GPs for that. Of the 3 browsers I have to deal with, I'm surprised that Chrome is the most cooperative in this area.
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Feb 9, 2014 04:06
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Also, a generated M_P file is OK, but it will have some unintentional settings. I preferred to open that file notepad, delete everything I don't recognize, and add some interesting strings. Like the ones detailed here: http://www.chromium.org/administrators/configuring-other-preferences http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/first-run-customizations
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Feb 9, 2014 04:21
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Demie posted:firefox kind of works the same way with it's autoconfig file, except it makes much less sense. That's what I'm struggling with right now. There's no supported GPs for that. I've gotten settings locked with Firefox, remind me again on Monday and when I'm at work I can post some words about it.
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Feb 9, 2014 06:06
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I've got my head around the Chrome deployment. 1. Install Chrome 2. Use Script\GPO to place M_P file next to chrome.exe binary to set default settings for users 3. Use Chrome GPOs to set mandatory policies (like proxy info) The only issue I have is there is no way to prevent the .msi installer from creating shortcuts in the AllUsers folder. I have to manually remove them with a script. (The M_P file only prevents taskbar and start menu shortcuts being created per-user post-install).
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Feb 10, 2014 00:04
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FISHMANPET posted:I've gotten settings locked with Firefox, remind me again on Monday and when I'm at work I can post some words about it. That would be really cool. Let me know if you're doing something differently, or if I'm a bit off. Right now I have written an autoconfig file with lockpref(); functions, which is loaded by \defaults\prefs\MyDefaultPref.js. Contents are like this: //first line is commented-out pref('general.config.obscure_value', 0); // turn off cipehering pref('general.config.filename', 'MyAutoConfig.cfg'); // load autoconfig file Autoconfig file has lines that look like this: lockPref('network.proxy.type', 0); When I move the autoconfig, it pops an error so I know it's in the right place. But none of my lines do anything. It doesn't help that I'm new to javascript. (edit: I got it working mostly, now I'm just trying to debug my programming structures, which is hard because there's no output or logging) Swink posted:The only issue I have is there is no way to prevent the .msi installer from creating shortcuts in the AllUsers folder. I have to manually remove them with a script. (The M_P file only prevents taskbar and start menu shortcuts being created per-user post-install). You should try and fool around with ALLUSERS in the MSI properties, but I usually end up setting icons with install scripts that copy or delete icons between the start menu and the desktop. Demie fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Feb 19, 2014 |
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Feb 10, 2014 15:37
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I need a way to limit a folder to a single file... Without using scripting. Aaaaand go! Shares rule are acceptable, it's a ws2012 machine. Two users can't drop the same file in the same folder in less than 5 minutes. Boss has decreed the method in the first paragraph is the best solution... Not sure if that's possible though.
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Feb 11, 2014 02:44
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Hi, I'm having some problems with Internet Based Client Management in SCCM 2012 R2. I have a single SCCM server in the LAN. I've set up PKI and traffic seems to go on https on intranet clients. Next step is to get clients on the internet to talk to the server. I have forwarded https in the firewall and added a public DNS entry the internet based management point FQDN points to in the client. On a test client it says "Connection type: Currently Internet" with the correct site code, but there doesn't seem to be alot of communication going on. In ClientLocation I don't really see any error messages, but stuff like: code:code:
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Feb 11, 2014 11:34
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Oops, I mistook this for the enterprise storage thread.
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Feb 14, 2014 19:24
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Background Info: My employer has recently started operating under a new brand name. Now that the dust has settled a bit from flipping everyone's email addresses to the new domain and the new website and the other big/high visibility technical and organizational changes that happened along with it, we're starting to go back through and update the lower priority/visibility systems to use the new branding. First up on my list is the user account pictures in Windows, so all the machines we image going forward will have the new branding. Of course, since I told my coworkers it would probably be an easy thing to update, it's proving to be a bigger headache than I expected. Our old logo (+ branding text) was more or less square, so I was able to easily fit it to the various sizes and formats the internet told me Windows needed and still have it look good. Our new logo (+ branding text) is most definitely rectangular. In some cases, the logo + text looks fine centered vertically in a white square, but in others (like the badge in the Start Menu/Start Screen), it's so small that anything besides just the logo looks ugly. Is there a "User Account Pictures for Dummies" type howto out there somewhere that lays what dimensions/formats they need to be in, what files are used where, etc. and covers Windows 7, Windows 8 (not as important, but would be nice for completeness), and Windows 8.1? I found this and this, which are for Win 8 and I would assume apply to 8.1 as well. But doing some quick testing: - Windows 8.1 seems to only use the 448x448 user.png image and scales it down as needed for the badge on the start screen or the user accounts control panel or wherever. - Windows 8 uses the 448x448 user.png everywhere except for the badge on the Start Screen, where it uses the 40x40 user-40.png - Windows 7 seems to only use a 128x128 user.bmp and scales it down as needed for the badge in the start menu/user accounts control panel. I'm not sure if that's expected behavior or not, but that's what I'm seeing. If it is, I'll most likely end up using just the logo without text everywhere. But if possible I'd like to have it so it uses logo + branding text where there's room and then just the logo where there isn't. Any help that can get me pointed in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.
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Feb 19, 2014 00:24
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What should I be looking at if I want a method to maintain a configuration across a shitload (relative) of server 2003 application servers in a Citrix farm? Essentially, I have around 60 Citrix application servers that need to be the same. I get them from someone else in a certain state (server installed and some other things). What I want to do is essentially use a master instance and have all the other servers conform to it. This would be file system, registry aside from areas that are unique to an installation (hostname etc.). I also would like to be able to update the master instance and have it cascade through the rest in some easy fashion. Is this something that can be addressed with puppet? Unfortunately, this is not a virtual environment, or I would just try to figure out a way to just spin up new servers and add them to the farm/application from a template when updates are needed. Resources I have available to me is a KACE box and potentially SCCM but I need to work that out. We essentially can use most any Microsoft software for free (well not free technically but we have a site license for almost anything). Demonachizer fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 19, 2014 20:25
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This is probably a dumb question: How do I get Windows 2012 R2 file shares to work with Windows XP and Server 2003? We've started upgrading to 2012 R2 for AD, and none of our XP/2003 systems can get to any file shares. SMB 1.0 / CIFS is installed (the default for 2012 R2). Do I need to change something to enable it? None of the systems have issues connecting to 2012 file shares, just 2012 R2 file shares.
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Feb 20, 2014 01:08
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Xenomorph posted:This is probably a dumb question: Open Powershell on the server where the share is and run Get-SmbConnection. This will let you verify what SMB version (under the "Dialect" column) the share is shared as. If it's 3.02, I had problems with XP machines and that as well. Never bothered resolving as it was just a test 2012 R2 machine and we're getting rid of our final XP boxes soon.
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Feb 20, 2014 01:30
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I have the following situation: When booted on the domain I want to disable the wireless card of laptops and tablets. How can i figure out during booting that I am on the domain? I have a script that disables the network card now I just need a surefire way to tell I am on the domain. Windows 8 has the awesome getnetworkprofile or something that tells you that you are domain authenticated. The problem is that this needs to work on 7 also. Any ideas? Mr Shiny Pants fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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Feb 20, 2014 15:15
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CLAM DOWN posted:Anyone on SCOM 2012 or 2012 R2? I'm curious how you have it set up, VM vs physical, SAN vs local disks, etc. I'd be looking at monitoring 600+ servers. At 600 servers I would probably go with a separate SQL server with the typical best practices there for making a good fast SQL box. A decent setup on the management server is highly recommended. At 600 servers, depending on how many console users you'll have I would suggest a second Management Server for balancing the agent load across. There is an excel spreadsheet for SCOM Sizing that is a pretty darn good resource for getting into the right ballpark. RAM is king, load up on as much ram as the budget will allow for on both the SQL and Management Server side of things. I would definitely go R2 over 2012. A word of warning for your install, SCOM is a product that needs a but of time to bake. Get it installed, get a couple agents pushed out and get the Core OS MPs loaded. Lets those discover amd make sure you're getting data back, then start pushing more agents. Don;t add any more MPs until you're happy with the noise level of the Core OS MPs. When you start adding MPs, do it one MP at a time and read the MP Guide first.
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Feb 20, 2014 18:31
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CLAM DOWN posted:Open Powershell on the server where the share is and run Get-SmbConnection. This will let you verify what SMB version (under the "Dialect" column) the share is shared as. If it's 3.02, I had problems with XP machines and that as well. Never bothered resolving as it was just a test 2012 R2 machine and we're getting rid of our final XP boxes soon. Yeah, 3.02 was listed for one share. 3.00 was listed for another share opened by a 2012 server. I noticed this registry key was missing: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\srv srv.sys handles SMB1, srv2.sys handles SMB2/3. I did this: * Removed "SMB 1.0 / CIFS" from Roles and Features * Rebooted * Reinstalled "SMB 1.0 / CIFS" from Roles and Features * Rebooted The registry key is now there, and SMB works from XP/2003/2003R2 clients. This was a new, clean install of Server 2012 R2. I don't know why that registry key was missing.
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Feb 20, 2014 19:21
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I've been put in charge of developing a more standardized and secure desktop environment for our company. I currently have a standard Windows 7 image in place using MDT 2012, but I'll obviously need more for overall system management. I'd like to use SCCM but it doesn't really make sense for only 100-150 users. Ideally, we'd be using software that's a one-stop shop, but I'm fine with using different software for different admin functions. Here's what I'd like to use so far, any suggestions would be helpful. At this point I'm looking for things on the cheaper side. code:
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Feb 21, 2014 20:17
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TheDestructinator posted:I've been put in charge of developing a more standardized and secure desktop environment for our company. I currently have a standard Windows 7 image in place using MDT 2012, but I'll obviously need more for overall system management. Have you considered System Center Essentials? It's pretty much a limited version of System Center. I'm not sure how far up it scales, but should provide a really nice transition to a full System Center deployment once that makes more sense.
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Feb 21, 2014 20:19
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System Center Essentials was an SCCM 2007 thing, it has since been replaced by Windows Intune, which is essentially a web interface cloud SCCM. It does updates, software installations and inventory but won't do imaging. It also annoyingly tries to push you towards Windows 8 through licensing deals. It's not terrible but doesn't compare too well to real deployment solutions, personally I would only recommend it for supersmall offices (like <20 PCs).
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Feb 21, 2014 20:30
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peak debt posted:System Center Essentials was an SCCM 2007 thing, it has since been replaced by Windows Intune, which is essentially a web interface cloud SCCM. It does updates, software installations and inventory but won't do imaging. It also annoyingly tries to push you towards Windows 8 through licensing deals. It's not terrible but doesn't compare too well to real deployment solutions, personally I would only recommend it for supersmall offices (like <20 PCs). Good to know. I do System Center implementations on a daily basis but haven't had the opportunity to play with SCE in the past. That brings it back to SCCM if you can make it make sense from a licensing perspective. Remember with SC2012 you get Endpoint Protection for free which makes it start to make a LOT more sense financially when you start adding up the Per-Endpoint costs of all of the utilities.
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Feb 21, 2014 20:42
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Mr Shiny Pants posted:I have the following situation: Not exactly the same thing. But in the BIOS I set the LAN/WLAN Switching option to on. This disables the wireless whenever a LAN connection exists.
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Feb 21, 2014 21:25
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PDQ inventory good enough for inventory?
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Feb 22, 2014 10:05
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Swink posted:PDQ inventory good enough for inventory? Yes, I purchased it last week even though we have SCCM. Way easier to get info out of. Try the free ver, it has everything but scheduled updates.
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Feb 22, 2014 14:49
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GreenNight posted:Yes, I purchased it last week even though we have SCCM. Way easier to get info out of. Try the free ver, it has everything but scheduled updates. Paid version also gets you product keys for installed software, remote uninstalls, and some other things that I forgot about.
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Feb 23, 2014 05:59
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Mully Clown posted:Not exactly the same thing. But in the BIOS I set the LAN/WLAN Switching option to on. This disables the wireless whenever a LAN connection exists. Whoa, that is handy. I'll probably go a head and write something for it because we also use a proxy which needs to be disabled on the Wlan but it is good to know something like this exists. Thanks.
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Feb 23, 2014 10:08
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I have a bit of an issue that I'm not sure how to debug. I've got two applications that run on Windows Server. We've got a bunch of servers that run Application A or Application B (not both). The two applications need to talk to one another, and maintain communication over two separate ports (a ping channel and a service channel). The way the servers and applications are set up is such that every server running Application A will talk to every server running Application B. We're seeing intermittent problems going from A to B. Periodically, the ping channel going to a server running B will time out over and over. Application A tries and fails to open a connection and gets a socket exception: timeout. It tries over and over, and eventually manages to connect, maybe a day later. It's weird and intermittent and seems to fix itself eventually, but it's a problem we need to solve. I have access to the code that opens these connections, but not access to the environment these servers are in (I have to work with another guy). I'm not really sure how to approach figuring out what's going on (server networking isn't really my field). Any ideas? Is there a good way to compare what the difference between servers that can connect and those that can't?
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Feb 24, 2014 22:44
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You might want to set up wireshark on the different servers and sniff some traffic to see if you can notice a difference.
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Feb 26, 2014 17:58
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We have an issue with two pieces of software conflicting with each other. The first piece of software is Microsoft Lync 2013, the second is an old telnet program from 1998 that unfortunately we are still stuck using for a couple years. If Lync 2013 is open, the telnet program can't open and just hangs indefinitely on the flash screen on startup. However, if you close Lync and open the telnet program, it works fine. And then Lync can be opened after the telnet program and all is good. This has caused a massive amount of help desk tickets and sending out an email to all users saying close lync and reopen it after you open the telnet program has proven futile. I've tried using procmon.exe to figure out what is going on but I can't figure it out. Anyone have any ideas?
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Feb 26, 2014 18:00
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Anyone have any info on storage sizing for a server 2008 R2 print server that has to handle at most 100 printers today and probable growth of maybe 50 in the next 5 years? I can get info on everything else but this. I am trying to decide if I can wedge it into a vSphere environment that is semi space limited or if I need to wait for an upcoming environment. I am hoping that I won't run into any issues sizing it at around 100gb per instance with two instances total. This is kind of a learning experience because in the past we just assigned IP printers through a janky GPO.
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Feb 26, 2014 20:40
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demonachizer posted:Anyone have any info on storage sizing for a server 2008 R2 print server that has to handle at most 100 printers today and probable growth of maybe 50 in the next 5 years? I can get info on everything else but this. I am trying to decide if I can wedge it into a vSphere environment that is semi space limited or if I need to wait for an upcoming environment. It's going to depend on the size of job that you're sending to it. If you're a professional print shop sending huge PDF's to digital presses, then... well, you probably have a dedicated server running a RIP anyway. But general office printing etc, you just need to accommodate spool space for how much will be concurrently printing. I'm running about 50 printers from a 60GB VM and that's got the 2008 R2 install on it too. You could cut down on the Windows install by running a Core installation, so no GUI, then just managing all the printers via the Print Management MMC. The only issue you'll run into is unsigned drivers, but you can get around that by starting the printer management .cpl from the cmd prompt on the Core RDP session.
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Feb 26, 2014 20:58
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