SmartDeploy Enterprise provides a simple yet robust solution to OS deployment. This second of two articles covers the last three steps in the SmartDeploy process: driver packaging, PE media creation, and image deployment.

SmartDeploy is raffling off 50 end-point licenses with 1 year of basic support (value $1610 USD). The deadline for this contest is June 1, 2012. If you want a chance at winning this license, please fill out this form.

SmartDeploy Enterprise is a powerfully simple deployment suite. In fact, it is so simple that the entire process can be summed up in five steps, with steps 1 and 2 being covered in the previous post. In short, the steps are:

1. Building the image
2. Capturing the image
3. Packaging the drivers
4. Creating the PE media
5. Deploying the image

We have already built and captured our image. Now we face a humongous hurdle with driver management. In nearly every organization, model sprawl reigns. Even in organizations where machines are regularly replaced, some department will buy a make and model that wasn’t previously supported. This is the area where SmartDeploy Enterprise really shines.

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One of the great additions to Windows 8 is Hyper-V 3.0, also known as Client Hyper-V, allowing full 64-bit testing from your desktop. In this post I’ll talk a little bit about it and tell you how to enable it in Windows 8.

Remember that first time you tried to fire up a virtual test machine in Windows 7 Virtual PC only to discover that 64-bit operating systems were not supported? How disappointing!

Enable Hyper-V in Windows 8

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Folder Redirection in Group Policy allows a systems administrator to redirect certain folders from a user’s profile to a file server. In the last part of this series, I’ll discuss things that I’ve learned in implementing Folder Redirection and things you’ll need to consider before you implement.

After implementing this in several organizations, I’ve discovered several issues that may be of interest if you’re planning on implementing Folder Redirection.

Test, test, test

If you’ve read other Group Policy articles I’ve read, I harp on testing. Sorry, but way too many people make a change in a production environment before trying it out on test systems first.

Communicate to end users

If Folder Redirection is new for your users, make sure they know the change is coming. Most users will never notice until they accidentally delete a file or have a machine die and you become their hero. (more…)

In this final part of our overview of Orchestrator 2012 we’ll cover extending it with Integration Packs as well as look at Orchestrator as the hub of the System Center 2012 suite and the benefits the new web service brings, along with a list of resources for further learning.

Extending Orchestrator 2012

When the standard activities aren’t enough to accomplish the automation you need, the next step is to turn to Integration Packs (IP). Currently there are IPs available from Microsoft for the System Center 2012 suite as well as for earlier SC versions, there is also IPs for HP iLO hardware and HP Operations and Service Manager; IBM Tivoli and VMware vSphere. There are also community IPs available on TechNet Gallery and Codeplex for various tasks (see resources). Configuration management tools such as Remedy and CA are also slated to have integration packs. Today there are also community IPs for SharePoint and VMware’s vSphere but I would expect more IPs, from Microsoft, third parties and the community to be published as SC 2012 gains market share.

Extending Orchestrator with IPs involves several steps: download the IP(s), register them using the Deployment Manager and then deploy them to the relevant Runbook servers. Finally they need to be configured using the Runbook Designer.

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SmartDeploy Enterprise provides a simple yet robust solution to OS deployment. Their five-step solution makes image management a breeze. In this first part, I will cover image building and image capture.

SmartDeploy is raffling off 50 end-point licenses with 1 year of basic support (value $1610 USD). The deadline for this contest is June 1, 2012. If you want a chance at winning this license, please fill out this form.

SmartDeploy Enterprise Architecture

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Folder Redirection in Group Policy allows a systems administrator to redirect certain folders from a user’s profile to a file server. In part 4 of this series, I’ll discuss configuring Folder Redirection and the available configuration options in Group Policy.

Now that we have a server with a share configured, we’re ready to set up the Folder Redirection in Group Policy. Folder Redirection is User configuration. Because of that, you’ll need to either create a new Group Policy Object (GPO) or edit an existing GPO that is linked to an OU for your users. Go to User Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Folder Redirection.

GPMC in Windows 7 Showing Folder Redirection

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In the last part in this overview of Orchestrator 2012 we looked at creating runbooks, in part four we’ll investigate how to make good, robust, secure runbooks.

Considerations for creating a good runbook include knowing when and how often it’s going to run, which steps to include, how it’s going to start, what data is passed along from activity to activity and what’s the end result as well as how you are going to report on the results? Good design includes handling failures and warnings of activities, clear naming conventions, using link colors wisely and splitting long and complex runbooks into parent and child tasks that pass data to each other. Establishing a good naming convention and an agreed upon folder structure will minimize confusion and exporting your runbooks regularly for backup purposes is prudent.

Permissions can be set at the individual runbook level or you can group runbooks together and control security at the folder level. Read permissions let a user run and view runbooks, write makes changing possible and with full control users can alter the permissions. Security can also be controlled at the IP level, for instance you could have three different configurations for connecting to a ticketing system to match permissions for level 1, 2 and 3 help desk staff. Orchestrator provides simple version control; once a particular user has checked out a runbook for editing, no one else can alter it until it’s checked in again.

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Folder Redirection in Group Policy allows a systems administrator to redirect certain folders from a user’s profile to a file server. In part 3 of this series, I’ll discuss the folder permissions we set on the file server along with justifications for those settings and alternatives.

At this point, you may have noticed that we didn’t give our users very many permissions on the Users folder. First and foremost, we made sure that one user can’t see inside of another user’s folder. It’s also pretty obvious that we don’t want to give users the ability to do things like take ownership, delete files/folders, or change permissions, but a few of the other missing permissions take a little more explanation.

First off, you don’t want users to have Create files/write data permissions or they can save files into the root of the shared folder. Since we’re redirecting folders, we only want the users to be able to create folders in the root Users folder, but not individual files. Once the user creates a folder named %username%, the CREATOR OWNER permission will take over (since it is a sub-folder of Users) and will give the account full control over the %username% folder and everything inside of it.

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System Center 2012 is here and Microsoft recently held its annual MMS 2102 conference focusing on this expanding product suite. I’ll give you an overview of what was covered, and resources you can use to start evaluating this massive release.

I recently attended the Microsoft Management Summit in Last Vegas with 5,000 fellow admins and engineers who specialize in the System Center product line. In its 14th year, MMS is still a unique Microsoft conference for sysadmins in that it’s focused exclusively on systems management using a pure Microsoft stack.

Good News! If you missed MMS, nearly all the sessions and keynotes are free online at the Digital MMS site (over 150 hours worth!). If you want to take the videos offline, someone’s written a PowerShell script to download them. Common topics beyond System Center 2012 include Hyper-V, PowerShell, Windows 7 deployment, MDT, and many more.

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I think most of us who have worked with VMware’s VSphere have to come realize that it’s a great product, but it still leaves us yearning for more robust real-time VM monitoring, documentation, and management reporting for our virtual environments. That is where a product like Veeam ONE Free Edition can be a key player in your environment. It has no restrictions on the number of vCenter servers and ESX(i) host you can mange, and best of all it’s free.

VMware vCenter and ESX(i) monitoring – Veeam ONE Free Edition

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