System Management

Johan Arwidmark, Setup & Deployment MVP, just finished working on his Version 2.0 Deployment CD. It contains the following Step-by-step guides and Video Tutorials:

MDT 2010 Lite Touch Deployments (deployment without ConfigMgr 2007 SP2 R2, just the free tools)

• LTI01 – Installing the server for MDT 2010 Lite Touch
• LTI02 – Creating a Windows 7 reference image using Lite Touch
• LTI03 – Deploying a Windows 7 image using Lite Touch
• LTI04 – Dynamic Settings, creating and using the deployment database

MDT 2010 Zero Touch Deployments (deployment with ConfigMgr 2007 SP2 R2)

• ZTI01 – Installing the server for MDT 2010 Zero Touch and ConfigMgr 2007 SP2
• ZTI02 – Creating a Windows 7 reference image using ConfigMgr 2007 SP2
• ZTI03 – Deploying a Windows 7 image using ConfigMgr 2007 SP2
• ZTI04 – Dynamic Settings, creating and using the deployment database

Additional Presentations

• E01 – New features in MDT 2010
• E02 – Upgrading MDT 2008 to MDT 2010
• E03 – Migrating Windows XP to Windows 7

And guess what? He’s offering the CD for free to everybody who need and want it. You can register for a free download at www.deploymentcd.com.

Some time ago I used Admin Tools and RSAT for Vista and it saved my time from using remote desktop to log on to several servers. Now it is available (RTM, not RC or something…) for Windows 7 x86/x64.

Using RSAT for Win7, you can manage the following roles and features from Windows Server 2008 R2, 2008 and 2003:

After installing it, you can enable the roles and features you want to manage, by doing the following steps:

1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Programs.
2. In the Programs and Features area, click Turn Windows features on or off.
3. If you are prompted by User Account Control to enable the Windows Features dialog box to open, click Continue.
4. In the Windows Features dialog box, expand Remote Server Administration Tools.
5. Select the remote management tools that you want to install.
6. Click OK.

Now you’ll find the tools in Administrative Tools menu.
 

I don’t do this usually, but this time this is really interesting.

I want to recommend a very good blog post written by Kenneth Van Surksum about troubleshooting Task Sequences in Configuration Manager. Find it here http://www.techlog.org/archive/2009/03/01/troubleshooting_task_sequences.

He talks about the smsts.log file, where to find it during installation and what tool you can use to read the logs easily. Also, at the end, he wrote a list of helpful links to get you start troubleshooting.

Definitely I will add his feed to my “SCCM blogs I read” list.