In-depth guides for Microsoft System Center products including SCCM/ConfigMgr, SCOM, SCVMM, and Orchestrator. Written for IT professionals.
We recently came across issues where our Configuration Manager Operating System Deployments (OSD) where running extremely slowly and we could not figure out why. After some investigation, we found out that one of our remote Distribution Points (DP) was not working correctly and that rebuilds on one of the sites where actually pulling the image … Read more
When running or trying to create a large report in SSRS, you may come across an error stating the below: Error 2: There was an exception running the extensions specified in the config file. Maximum request length exceeded. It took us a while to figure this one out but it is actually very simple. After … Read more
If you are a Configuration Manager administrator, the chances are that you are using the Application Catalog to allow users to install their own software.A great feature of this is that you can put in specialist or licensed software and add a “Request” button. This means that your end users will only get the software … Read more
In Configuration Manager 2012, there is a section under the Monitoring ribbon called Distribution Status. This will give you a lot of information about your distributions and your distribution points. If you look at Distribution Point Configuration Status, this gives you a good understanding of whether your drivers, packages, applications and images have deployed correctly … Read more
If you want to report on machines that have Outlook archive (PST’s) on them, where they are and how big they are, then you can use this guide to create a report that will do this for you using Configuration Manager. First of all, you will need to tell your Software Inventory to look for … Read more
We have had a report that one of our WQL queries has not been working correctly, this is the one for devices that have Configuration Manager client installed but do not have System Center Endpoint Protection installed on them. The original post is here: WQL Query for Devices without Endpoint Installed So, we have looked … Read more
We have recently had problems with our global distribution points in ConfigMgr after the monthly content validation has happened. On some of our distribution points (not all) we are getting and error stating: “Failed to validate content hash” With our monitoring on the Distribution Point Configuration Status looking like this (click the thumbnails for the … Read more
If you want to report on the servers that have not had a reboot in the last week within your Configuration Manager environment then you can run this query directly on your SQL database or you can use it to create a report within SSRS. How to create a Configuration Manager Report using SSRS SQL … Read more
If you want to report on the versions of your ConfigMgr clients that you have within your Configuration Manager environment then you can run this query directly on your SQL database or you can use it to create a report within SSRS. How to create a Configuration Manager Report using SSRS The query is below … Read more
Sorry about the recent lack of updates on our site but we have been incredibly busy fixing “real world” IT issues! Its also the silly season for holidays so over the next month updates may be a little sparse but we will try our best! We recently came across a really good blog post by Daniel … Read more
We recently came across this excellent blog post about the configuration of distribution settings for Configuration Manager. We highly recommend that you read it if you have multiple remote distribution points as this may help to speed up the process of pushing out the packages. Controlling Concurrent Package Distribution
We had reports from a customer this week about strange issues with their Configuration Manager OSD Task Sequences failing. The OSD seemed to work on most machines but a new batch of refurbished laptops would PXE boot but then would fail after the task sequence had been selected with a generic Microsoft error (you know … Read more