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Showing posts from July, 2006

sms: dcm - alpha tech solutions

a few folks have posted comments regarding training on dcm that's available from alpha tech solutions . i wasn't sure how seriously to take it since i'd never heard of it before ... but after talking to one of the dcm dev folks, i decided to look into it a little bit. i emailed their sales person and asked for an eval so that i could go through the training set and review it. to my surprise, they were more than willing. :) training is broken down into two parts. the first part covers the following: introduction installing the dcm authoring tool creating and customizing manifests customizing scenarios (part 1) check service state check file version verify automatic updates verify smtp default domain verify minimum password length the second section covers the following: customizing scenarios (part 2) verify if a hotfix is installed verify if a service exists check file existence number range firewall status deployment and execution reporting by the time you've gone

sms: start to finish guide to mof editing

i finished reading start to finish guide to mof editing: the definitive guide to systems management server hardware inventory customization last week but hadn't had a chance to write up my thoughts about it until now. i had decided to load up vista ... which is another story entirely. i met the author at a user group conference in atlanta (southeast management user group). if you know jeff gilbert, you know what a character he can be. i'll just ask you to keep that in mind as you read the book. i think his intent was to try to make the book as easy to read as possible. i mean, a book on mof editing, is not exactly exciting material. however, he does try to add a bit of humor to keep the reader interested. the examples he uses are also clever enough to help some of the providers make sense. i remember way back when michael schultz asked me to review and edit his original mof editing guide. around this time, the sms mailing list was pretty active with most of us trying

mom: memory processes

NOTE: this script is deprecated. feel free to use it, but you should refer to this post, which actually has a newer, cooler script. this is kind of a follow on to my earlier post regarding cpu processes . this time, it detects memory processes. anyway, the thing works pretty much the same way. the logic is a bit different in the way it returns information, only because i didn't want to figure out how to do a bubble sort in vbscript and finding a threshold marker ... wasn't too sure about that either. i don't profess to be a script guru. what i did was tally up the total process workingsetsize by the number of total processes. using that as a kind of median value, the script returns anything above that threshold line. workingsetsize divided by 1024 gives you the same thing as task manager, in case you were wondering about that. if you have better suggestions, please do rewrite or modify and let me know! :) it's posted to the usual places: momresources.org myitf

misc: atlanta smug coming up 9/20 8.5 - 3.00

hey folks, there's another southeast management user group coming up september 20, 2006. it'll run from about 8:30 to 3:00 at the sanctuary park facilities up here in alpharetta. if you remember, these run about every quarter or so. looks like a great lineup ... try to be there! the user group section on myitforum.com will be updated soon to reflect the new agenda. if you can't make it, as usual, the presentations will be posted to the site. look forward to seeing you all there. Agenda 8:30am - 9:00am Breakfast 9:00am - 10:15am Server and Desktop Deployment Methodologies with SMS 2003 Part 1 10:15am - 10:30am Break 10:30am - 11:00am SMS Admin Roundtable 11:00am - 12:00pm System Center Operation Manager Beta 2 via Webast in Atlanta 12:00 - 12:45pm Working Lunch Data Protection Manager Today and Beyond 12:45 - 2:00pm Server and Desktop Deployment Methodologies with SMS 2003 Part 2 2:00pm - 2:15pm Break 2:15pm - 3:00pm MOM and SMS Top 10 issues

sms: stopping errant package from sending to distribution points

not real sure how else to put it. this came up on the myitforum sms discussion list today. an administrator inadvertently created a very large patch package and replicated it to all of his distribution points. there's a few things to be aware of here: distribution points off of the site server are not governed by lan sender, hence have no bandwidth throttling distribution manager will attempt to complete the cycle before attempting to stop the cycle i'm not sure what his lan senders were set to ... but distribution manager sending this humongous package out to 20 or so distribution points (which only a few were local) was choking his wan links. how did he stop it? here's the steps: delete the package off the source site server execute stopjob.exe against all destination site servers

sms: itmu cannot start updates installation due to install window violation

don't inadvertently make this happen. it's pretty silly... inside the dsuw, you probably recall being presented with the option to force installations to comply to a window for advanced clients only. this setting is nearly useless if you're using dsuw the way it was intended (as in reoccurring schedules). it's also useless if you're forcing package download and execute instead of running from a remote distribution point. the window that is specified uses the advertisement start time as its beginning marker. this means if you set an early start time to make sure your clients downloaded this month's patches and then a mandatory execution 3 days later, your advertisement would fail. why? well, going on the default setting of 90 minutes, by the time the execution fires, you've already long lapsed that install window. you'll get an error in patchinstall.log that reads: cannot start updates installation due to install window violation.   if yo

mom: monitoring cpu spikes the right way

NOTE: this script is deprecated. feel free to use it, but you should refer to this post, which actually has a newer, cooler script. one of the things i can't stand about most monitoring systems nowadays is that they're not really designed to be viewed by an operator. i think we've diluted that term. we don't enable "operators" to really do much of anything. we give them a little console they can stare at and hope that if they see some alert pop up, they'll wake up and dial someone. how does that translate into a successful use of technology? i think we've all been around a phone long enough to know how to dial it. so ... why not take some baby steps and move forward? here's my baby step. i don't really do things out of my own volition because unless it's making my life easier, it's hard to be inspired. anyway, a fellow coworker received an alert on a cpu spike and asked the obvious question. what's making the condition occur?

os: kerberos maxtokensize giving you problems?

i experienced issues with this pretty quickly awhile back when we were rolling out windows 2000 so whenever i see something on maxtokensize, i wake up. anyway, again, one of the best sources of information, the activedir.org mailing list, carried a conversation on this which lead to a couple of great links: address problems due to access token limitation tokensz tool

sms: looking for the dcm manifest beta?

saikodi updated his blog recently with some further instructions on locating the dcm manifest beta. i tried to locate it again but couldn't find it. i tried all variations of names to locate it but had no success. know why? i was already signed up. once i switched to "my participation", it was there, hiding in plain sight. search for the word "manifest" in the available list. it should be under the "core infrastructure solutions" connection.