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I would consider separating out the 'remote assistance' feature. There are a number of tools that do this really well, and it allows you to choose your management server based on the other criteria. Are you running AD? Inventory is relatively easy to make happen with a standalone product as well, although I particularly like being able to use inventory data in SCCM to control software deployment etc. How is your scripting? Remote shutdown is pretty easy to perform (psshutdown).
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Mar 9, 2011 23:35
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Yup, Server 2003 R2 at the moment but the schema has been upgraded to Server 2008 R2. I'm just waiting till I have time to demote the Server 2003 R2 domain controllers that I have left. Good on scripting, I can do it that way but it was nice to have that feature. Also can you script wake on lan? Do you have any recommendations on what to use for my remote assistance needs?
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Mar 10, 2011 00:16
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Teamviewer seems to be popular. We're in the process of rolling out Bomgar. Windows has 'Remote Assistance' built in. I'm sure others could answer better than I (and in one of the 'ticket came in' or 'poo poo that pisses you off' there was very recently a discussion about it). There's plenty of WoL tools, but I can't say I have dug into them much. If you find something good, please post back. I do know that SCCM has WoL features built in (although I don't use them at the moment). Don't get me wrong, I love SCCM, but it has a relatively steep learning curve, and if you don't need a lot of what it offers, other solutions may work better.
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Mar 10, 2011 02:29
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TheRife posted:We might actually, I had no idea it was that cheap. SCCM has remote control capabilities and inventory as well. A lot of people in this thread seem to use SCCM for deployment and package management, but I'd be interested to know how many people are using the software metering/remote control/inventory control features.
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Mar 10, 2011 02:57
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Noob WDS Question: Do you have to use Enterprise Win 7 licensing with WDS? Employer keeps buying OEM Dell laptops that have Windows pre-installed. Currently I am forced to install a pre-configured image I've built that contains their custom apps and some other settings. The problem right now is that it is fairly hardware dependent. Currently if the partition on the machine that needs imaging doesn't match what the imaged machine had, the imaging process fails. I really want to learn WDS/WAIK but I can't seem to find an answer to the licensing question...
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Mar 10, 2011 03:37
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quackquackquack posted:Teamviewer seems to be popular. We're in the process of rolling out Bomgar. Windows has 'Remote Assistance' built in. I'm sure others could answer better than I (and in one of the 'ticket came in' or 'poo poo that pisses you off' there was very recently a discussion about it). Nomex posted:SCCM has remote control capabilities and inventory as well. A lot of people in this thread seem to use SCCM for deployment and package management, but I'd be interested to know how many people are using the software metering/remote control/inventory control features. Can you elaborate on its remote control capabilities? If my organization went with SCCM (which is becoming increasingly likely) I would definitely learn it and use every inch of its capabilities. I really want something that will let me easily see the users active session (sorry for harping on this) because i have many users who couldn't be talked through starting remote assistance.
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Mar 10, 2011 03:44
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quote:Can you elaborate on its remote control capabilities? If my organization went with SCCM (which is becoming increasingly likely) I would definitely learn it and use every inch of its capabilities. I really want something that will let me easily see the users active session (sorry for harping on this) because i have many users who couldn't be talked through starting remote assistance. It uses the remote assistance engine, but is completely admin driven. The request comes through the SCCM client on the machine, and they can get an acceptance prompt, or not. The user is notified that someone is connected. There's little to no user interaction required for the session to take place with the correct settings. The most intensive interaction would be accepting the connection, which should be easy. The only caveat is that the SCCM server has to be able to see and communicate with the client.
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Mar 10, 2011 06:07
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Nomex posted:SCCM has remote control capabilities and inventory as well. A lot of people in this thread seem to use SCCM for deployment and package management, but I'd be interested to know how many people are using the software metering/remote control/inventory control features. I use the remote control tools as much as possible (remote assistance.) Since I always have the SCCM console open on my machine. If I need to connect to another machine, I just search the machine in the all systems collection -> right click on record -> start -> remote assistance The end user gets a popup on their machine saying "blah blah whats to help you - yes or no" then afterwards you can chat and request control. My company also uses teamviewer but to be honest.. for one it's a extra service running and extra money if you're running it on every machine. I still use teamviewer for remote users.. but I mean if the users in the same building as me but 2 floors down.. it would be a bit nuts for me to tell them to start a teamviewer session and send me the pass/id cause I'm too lazy to get up and walk a couple floors. But as I mentioned a couple posts ago.. the remote assistance seems to be broken with windows 7. At least I haven't had luck using it. I also look at reports once in awhile to see who has installed what on their machines. (ie. utorrent, azereus etc.)
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Mar 10, 2011 06:33
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lol internet. posted:But as I mentioned a couple posts ago.. the remote assistance seems to be broken with windows 7. At least I haven't had luck using it. It works fine for me. SCCM R3 and Windows 7 Enterprise. The only downside is it will change their aero theme down to the basic theme until you disconnect.
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Mar 10, 2011 07:00
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Nitr0 posted:It works fine for me. SCCM R3 and Windows 7 Enterprise. The only downside is it will change their aero theme down to the basic theme until you disconnect. Ok gotcha. I'm on R2. Did you run into any issues post R3 upgrade?
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Mar 10, 2011 07:35
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lol internet. posted:Ok gotcha. I'm on R2. Did you run into any issues post R3 upgrade? No. R3 also gives you power management and reporting. Make sure you have sql reporting setup. I still think there's something wrong with your setup though because Win7 and remote tools worked fine in R2 too.
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Mar 10, 2011 07:53
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TheRife posted:I remember doing a demo of Bomgar for its remote support service, like logmein rescue. Actually, I should look into logmein.. Either way, let me know how you like Bomgar. How much are you paying per client? We have more money than sense sometimes, hence the Bomgar. It's very, very slick, but compete overkill for what we need (which seems very similar to your needs). I'm a report whore in SCCM. There's the useful built-in ones (Software in Add/Remove on a specific computer, instances of a specific file on all computers, etc), and then some fun custom things I've done (created a report to pull the specific data I want for all of our computers, hostname, serial, model, OS, memory, MAC, warranty, blah, blah). Reports are also very useful to win arguments with management. "Our users are competent, they're updating their own software" - (report says less than 25% of people have at least one of reader/flash/java up to date).
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Mar 10, 2011 15:40
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Thats awesome. I'm definitely sold on SCCM, now I just have to wait for the quotes to roll in.
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Mar 10, 2011 16:50
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SCCM is not something to lightly jump into. The learning curve is tough, the interface sucks, there's 50,000 logs, and you have to make sure you're looking in the right one, etc. There's a fully functioning trial (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=5AAE62E8-4B7F-4AF7-BE01-AEFAA4BF059A&displaylang=en), I recommend playing with it in a test environment before jumping in. And make sure to leave yourself enough time to implement.
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Mar 10, 2011 19:57
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quackquackquack posted:SCCM is not something to lightly jump into. The learning curve is tough, the interface sucks, there's 50,000 logs, and you have to make sure you're looking in the right one, etc. I was thinking about playing with this after seeing all the talk about it. I downloaded the 2012 beta though.
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Mar 10, 2011 23:42
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I ran away screaming from the SCCM install. The pain of configuring it wasn't worth it in a small (300 cloned computer) environment. I'd definitely go with it if I had user groups with various PC images, things of that nature.
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Mar 11, 2011 17:24
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If you're just using it for OS deployment then no, it's not worth it. But SCCM is quite a powerful tool if you use all of it. Here's what you can use it for: Operating system deployment Application deployment/maintenance License control Inventory control Update control Version control Remote administration Reporting The reporting is incredibly robust too. You can report on drat near anything in your environment. If WMI or the SCCM client can access an atribute, you can report on it. Need to know how many PCs in your environment have a certain processor type? Or what software is installed? How many licenses of a specific product are in use? Versions? You can look like a star to management with that much information readily available.
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Mar 11, 2011 17:51
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This might be out of the realm of this thread, but how well does SCCM work in a mixed OS environment, if at all? The place I'm at has about 50% Windows and 50% OSX. We currently use Absolute Manage for license, inventory, and remote management.
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Mar 11, 2011 20:34
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Those of you who didn't like SCCM have you looked at System Center Essentials? We're rolling out SCE2010 to 225 clients and 45 servers shortly it doesn't support Zero Touch Installations like SCCM but it rolls most of SCCM, SCOM and SCVMM into one interface. The only caveat I have is that we have an existing SCVMM 2008 R2 infrastructure and the SCVMM and SCE administration consoles can't exist on the same machine [or i'm retarded and can't seem to make them work]
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Mar 11, 2011 22:16
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I found SCE was missing a lot of the software deployment options I would want when I looked (SCE2007, iirc).
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Mar 11, 2011 23:00
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quackquackquack posted:I found SCE was missing a lot of the software deployment options I would want when I looked (SCE2007, iirc). I could see that, it's pretty basic. Deploy .msi or .exe, add switches, record success/fail/notneeded, uninstall, record same.
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Mar 12, 2011 00:12
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Nitr0 posted:No. R3 also gives you power management and reporting. Make sure you have sql reporting setup. I still think there's something wrong with your setup though because Win7 and remote tools worked fine in R2 too. I looked into this. Apparently in Win7 you need to have the users added into the Remote Assitance Group Nebulis01 posted:I could see that, it's pretty basic. How is this different from SCCM lol?
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Mar 12, 2011 02:12
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lol internet. posted:How is this different from SCCM lol? Doesn't do version tracking? I was under the impression you could version track in full blown SCCM, might be wrong though. Doesn't allow for different steps (forget what SCCM calls them) during configuration, it's just install/uninstall. Also doesn't deploy the OS in any form.
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Mar 12, 2011 20:58
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TheRife posted:bombgar We have it at a university level so I can use it for free. It really is slick for dealing with issues at our branches that would be ~10min walk in North Dakota winter. It also lets you help users who are not part of your active directory environment(off campus students). lol internet. posted:I looked into this. Apparently in Win7 you need to have the users added into the Remote Assitance Group Herp. So that is the issue. 
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Mar 15, 2011 18:36
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Nebulis01 posted:Doesn't do version tracking? Nomex posted:If you're just using it for OS deployment then no, it's not worth it. But SCCM is quite a powerful tool if you use all of it. Here's what you can use it for: This is totally off topic, but does anyone know how I'll be able to pull part numbers from HP laptops? (Elitebook series.) I'm able to pull model/serial through WMI but having issues with part number. I need this so I can do warranty checks on the whole company inventory.
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Mar 16, 2011 15:58
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lol internet. posted:This is totally off topic, but does anyone know how I'll be able to pull part numbers from HP laptops? (Elitebook series.) I'm able to pull model/serial through WMI but having issues with part number. I need this so I can do warranty checks on the whole company inventory. Here's a snippet of what I use: strComputer = "." Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\hp\InstrumentedBIOS") Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery( _ "select * from HP_BIOSString",,48) For Each objItem in colItems if objItem.Name="SKU Number" then strProductNumber = objItem.Value End If next
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Mar 16, 2011 18:36
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Kullrock posted:Here's a snippet of what I use: lolinternet - does HP have a mass serial/model/product # upload to check serials or are you doing it all manually?
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Mar 16, 2011 19:51
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Yeah, took a while to figure that one out. I have a script for checking the warrenty online, but it's pretty soiled in CapaInstaller scripting library functions. (I haven't made it my self) I do have a version for Dell and Lenovo that I've made my self.
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Mar 16, 2011 20:11
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TheRife posted:Holy crap, thank you - when I get SCCM up and running I am going to use this. I ran a build in report on SCCM. (Software Serials Report.) for some reason it returned the HP Serials. I just exported it to CSV, cleaned it up a bit and sent the list of Model\Serial to the vendor. He ended up saying it's okay to leave out the product number. The vendor will talk to the HP rep who will take care of it all and I'll just get a quote back. My problem basically is we have 225 HP laptops. Some covered with 3 year warranty, 1 year warranty, no accidental damage. What I would like is all laptops to have 3 year warranty + accidental damage from the date of purchase.
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Mar 17, 2011 03:23
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TheRife posted:Do you have any recommendations on what to use for my remote assistance needs? I can chime in from the "poor school district" angle for remote support. Here is something that I have worked up that is shockingly simple and has been really effective for our needs: Option 1: UltraVNC Single Click (SC) I took an hour one day and followed the UltraVNC Single Click instructions to customize a remote help application for our district: http://www.uvnc.com/addons/singleclick.html Called it remotehelp.exe. Put this out in a common mapped drive that all of our staff and faculty have on their machines. The only kicker is that you have to set a static address on the workstations that will provide the remote help and it only works on the internal network. But you just list all your "technicians" in the UltraVNC config file and then the end user can connect to whomever they are speaking with. Once you get all your files together you zip it and run it through this site to get your finished exe file: http://www.uvnc.com/pchelpware/sc/creator.html Then it is invite only (the user has to run remotehelp.exe) and we have direct access to their pc, plus have file transfer abilities and can lock the mouse/keyboard/screen while we are working so we aren't wrestling the cursor away the whole time. Option 2: Deploy UltraVNC to all workstations Just the opposite, however with UltraVNC you can have it check against your Active Directory so you can limit who can connect in. When the user calls and has a problem, we ask them to hover over their eyeball (VNC icon) so we can get the machine name or IP address. Pretty easy. And the price is right to match. I have used Kaseya and Logmein and they are awesome products but I really don't miss too much of their functionality compared to this solution. I'm just referring to the remote support functionality, not software updates, etc johnnyonetime fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Mar 17, 2011 |
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Mar 17, 2011 03:41
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Thanks so much guys. I just setup an evaluation of SCCM07R2 on Tuesday and want to try it out tomorrow, I'll report back with how it works for me.
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Mar 17, 2011 05:06
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I've run into an odd behavior that I'm not sure I can blame on SCCM. We use SCCM to patch our servers. We've got a few collections for this:code:To describe: the Maintenance Windows are assigned to the MW collections and patch deployments are assigned to the PM - Dev and then PM - Prod collections. We ignore the stuff in PM - Hold. Not all servers are in one of the MW collections, so some don't have any Maintenance Windows at all. The behavior I've seen is that normal packages don't deploy without a window because they just sit and wait, which makes sense. What doesn't make sense is patch deployment. I set the availability of the patches for about an hour before our maintenance window, and the deadline for the time I want stuff to install. This works on servers that have a maintenance window as expected. On servers without a window, the patches seem to install at a random time (which happens to be during the day every time - which sucks). It's happened a few times, and I might be able to chalk it up to error - maybe they were thrown into the wrong MW collection at some point, though I haven't seen this happen. I check the MW of the computers through the report and on the client side and they show no windows available. Has anyone seen this behavior with patches? I'm running 2007 R2 SP2. I've tried trolling through the CCM logs on the computers but have yet to find a reference to waiting for a window or similar. The computers with maintenance windows all mention it before executing patches. The other computers just up and install and reboot.
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Mar 22, 2011 21:36
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LoKout posted:It's happened a few times, and I might be able to chalk it up to error - maybe they were thrown into the wrong MW collection at some point, though I haven't seen this happen. I check the MW of the computers through the report and on the client side and they show no windows available. Has anyone seen this behavior with patches? I'm running 2007 R2 SP2. Check rsop.msc ? Verify its pointing at your SCCM server and that it's not set to "automatically install/automatically download" or any of those Install automatically options. Just a suggestion.
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Mar 24, 2011 01:47
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Altiris 7.1 is out. Hope you have maintenance contracts, suckas!
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Mar 24, 2011 02:09
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lol internet. posted:How do you use SCCM to manage licenses? Here's the Technet section that outlines how to do it: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc431362.aspx Essentially you plug the license details for any product into a template then import it. You can then control how many times each package is allowed to be installed.
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Mar 24, 2011 04:01
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lol internet. posted:Check rsop.msc ? Verify its pointing at your SCCM server and that it's not set to "automatically install/automatically download" or any of those Install automatically options. I'll check that stuff. I inherited the SCCM setup from someone else and never really thought to look at the GPO settings. I think it's all correct, but it won't hurt to verify.
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Mar 24, 2011 05:15
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LoKout posted:I'll check that stuff. I inherited the SCCM setup from someone else and never really thought to look at the GPO settings. I think it's all correct, but it won't hurt to verify. Make sure you run rsop on the machine in question. In general for me, we didn't have the group policy point at the SCCM server. Just didn't have that policy in effect, and the SCCM client overwritten the field on it's own.
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Mar 24, 2011 05:24
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lol internet. posted:Make sure you run rsop on the machine in question. That appears to be the case for me too. We've got a policy that tells it to auto download but prompt for install on the server in question. Still investigating why it rebooted.
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Mar 24, 2011 17:26
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Might want to consider also Windows Intune, it just got released yesterday.
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Mar 25, 2011 00:27
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I have a quick question for you windows guys. I'm a unix admin so I apologize if this is a simple question. We currently have a server 2003 machine (our only windows server, no AD, roaming profiles + domain controller is a freebsd machine running samba) and we are going to be replacing it with a server 2008 machine. It is used exclusively for terminal service logins. However, we're having an annoying issue that it takes far longer to log in to a domain user on the 2k8 machine than the 2k3 machine. Logging into a blank profile on 2k3 is practically instant, but on 2k8 it sits at "Waiting for the User Profile Service" for 15-30 seconds before anything happens. Google indicates that it's an issue with being multihomed (this machine only has one nic) or with dns (our dns is fine). The event viewer shows nothing interesting other than it whining about desktop compositing being unavailable. The samba logs show nothing interesting during a user login/logout even when set for very high verbosity. Is this behavior normal? If it matters, 2k8 is running in a virtualbox vm and 2k3 is an old pentium 4 machine. The vm performs great otherwise and it can pull gigabit speeds over the network, so I don't think it's vm-related.
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Mar 25, 2011 12:49
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