All posts by MikeL

Configuration Manager 2012, Reporting, Troubleshooting

CM 2012 – Troubleshooting – Console Reports

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I have recently rebuilt my lab at home and had yet to test much functionality because of my current work load.  Because of a client’s request, I needed to check how certain collections would be reflected in various reports.  After setting up the test collections I chose the appropriate report within the console and nothing would happen.  Knowing that there is a handy log located at “%[Configuration Manager Installation Location]\AdminConsole\AdminUILog\SMSAdminUI.log”, I began reviewing the entries and came across this”

Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.ReportViewer.WinForms, …..

I hadn’t encountered this before so I started searching around and came across this great article on this very subject, written by Niall Brady.  I must give credit where credit is due – great job Niall!

http://www.niallbrady.com/2013/09/11/what-to-do-if-nothing-happens-when-trying-to-run-reports-in-system-center-2012-configuration-manager/

Application Catalog, Application Management, Configuration, Graphics Tools

CM 2012 – Application Catalog – Color Themes

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For this article, I decided to write about something a little lighter… color choices within the CM 2012 Application Catalog.  If your company likes to have a specific color dominant within corporate websites, perhaps you can preemptively change the color theme of your Application Catalog to match this color before you are asked to do so.

If you navigate to the properties page of the Application Catalog website point and then select the Customization tab, you will see a line labeled “Website theme:” followed by a box showing a blue square and the word “Blue.”  (I’ve cut out a lot of the blank space in the picture below.) Blue is the default color of the Application Catalog.

Customization Tab

This box is a drop-down selector for other default colors, plus a color palatte for creating a custom color theme.  Click on the box and the drop-down selections shown below will appear.  If you wish to create a custom color, click on “More colors…” at the bottom of the list.  After you have completed selecting a color, click the “Apply” button and then click okay.  The Application Catalog will reflect the selected color upon next being loaded by a client.  (I discuss more about custom colors as well as a useful tool that can be used for that the end of the article.)

Color Palette

Here are the colors in order of selection from the above drop-down menu.

Blue:

Blue

Magenta:

Magenta

Purple:

Purple

Teal:

Teal

Lime:

Lime

Brown:

Brown

Pink:

Pink

Orange:

Orange

Red:

Red

Green:

Green

Customizing colors for the Application Catalog utilizes a standard color palette with which you should be familiar.  After selecting “More colors…” from the Website theme drop-down selector, a standard color palette will appear.

Alternative Colors

If none of these alternate colors closely match what you need, clicking on the “Define Custom Colors” button at the bottom will bring up a custom color palette, again, which should be familiar.

Alternative Colors 2

The tool I prefer to use for discovering RGB numbers for corporate colors is a free tool named Instant Eyedropper available from SpiceBrains.  Here is the site for the Instant Eyedropper tool itself.  The download link is in the upper right-hand corner.  After installing this tool, an icon will appear in the system tray (Windows 7 is shown in these examples) as a small color wheel.  I’ve put a red square around the icon in the picture below.

System Tray

Right-clicking the icon brings up color type selections and options.  For using color palettes as shown above, select the RGB color type.

Instant Eyedropper 01

Now that the color type is selected, go back to the system tray, left-click-hold the left mouse button and a color point measurer will appear.  Continue to hold the left mouse button and drag the color point measurer over the color you want to read.  The RGB colors numbers will show and you can then copy these into your custom color palette!

Instant Eyedropper 02

Honestly, this is one of the coolest free tools for graphics that I’ve seen in a long time.  One thing to note – if you have multiple monitors, you must use monitor one.  Dragging the color point measurer to any monitor but monitor one will yield a color of 255 255 255 (black) – not sure why, but it does, so avoid that.  Enjoy!

Adaptiva OneSite, Client Settings, Content Distribution, Third Party Applications

Adaptiva OneSite – Configuration – Setting Preferred Clients

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I’m sure that at one point in most technical careers, people have run into those networks which are similar to a spider’s web, spun by a drunk black widow. The illustration below is tame compared to what I’ve encountered, but it will serve a purpose for this article. The Main Office symbol represents a Configuration Manager Primary Site, the Office ### symbols represent locations housing Distribution Points, and the lettered symbols represent smaller sites and branch offices.

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When designing a Configuration Manager infrastructure, the network topology is very important in determining where to put additional Primary Sites, Secondary Sites, and Distribution Points, based on network layout, link speeds, endpoint populations, and other factors. You can leverage your Configuration Manager infrastructure for OneSite and using preferred client settings is a way to achieve a certain amount of network traffic isolation with respect to content pre-staging and downloads. Referring to the diagram above, the Office ### sites have been made parent sites to those smaller down-line sites for the purposes of this exercise.

Keep in mind that OneSite content download requests may flow up a topology but stop at the top of the hierarchy (Central Office). A OneSite preferred client is one that will handle all content requests from down-line clients, provided the content is present, prior to the request being sent to the Central Office site. That being said, looking at the diagram below (which is a portion of the first diagram presented), a case could be made for setting the preferred client key on Office 003 and Office 004 for their child sites.

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Setting a preferred client within OneSite will force down-line clients to look to the preferred client first before traversing up-line in the network topology when requesting content. Here is how to create a client setting which will set this variable within the environment.

From within Adaptiva Workbench, starting at the Home perspective, expand Workbench perspectives, expand Misc and then select the System Configuration Perspective from the result choices.

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After the System Configuration Perspective screen loads, create a new client settings policy by selecting “Create New Client Settings Policy.” The Custom Client Settings Policy Editor panel will load to the right.

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Within the Custom Client Settings Policy Editor, set an intuitive name for your new policy setting, provide a short description and priority, and set a settings override priority. To the right, click the Add Collection. A drop-down menu will appear, showing collections from your Configuration Manager environment. Select the collection in which you have placed those OneSite clients you wish to be set as preferred clients for specific down-line branches of your OneSite network topology. (This section is located in the top panel of the Policy Editor screen.)

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Within the System config settings panel (located at the bottom of the Policy Editor screen), expand SystemConfig, expand Contentsystem, then drag Client type from the left, into and over the SystemConfig setting in section labeled “Overridden client settings by this policy” until you see a “+” sign appear, then release the mouse button to add the attribute. Within the “Overridden client settings by this policy,” expand Contentsystem and select Client type. In the far right section, change the “New value” to 1. Click the Apply button at the top of this panel.

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Click the Save icon in the top left of the Custom Client Settings Policy Editor section and your policy will be saved and applied to the CM collection you designated earlier. In the future, if additional preferred clients are needed, simply add them to the same CM collection.

Project Management, Resource Planning

Project Management–Resource Allocation–Technology Teams and What You Need to Know, Part 2

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This is Part 2 of a multi-part article concerning resource planning in a technology-centric PMO. You may read part one of this series here:

Resource Allocation, Part 1

In today’s world of malicious hacking groups, vendors and organizations spend a great deal of time worrying about and dealing with security vulnerabilities. Many times, dedicated groups are assigned to deal with nothing but researching and dealing with these types of vulnerabilities across hardware platforms, operating systems, software applications, peripherals and majors devices. Unfortunately, most organizations cannot afford the additional staff, and thus, the research and policies are the responsibility of a one or two-person security team, while the “patching” tasks are added to various support teams. Patching can take many forms, including security updates, services packs, routine updates, and BIOS and firmware upgrades.

Security Updates

It is important that a project manager to be in tune with an organization’s security team, as they will know the established organizational release schedules for standard security updates. It is also important to note that most security update calendars are NOT adjusted for a typical project or task change, unless those changes have a direct effect upon the revenue stream. In mature technology organizations, security is far more important than project or task changes. Also, a project manager you realize that firmware upgrades, which are hardware-related, not software or operating system-related, are generally not tied to any set schedule, but are planned as part of a major change. Areas and types of changes involving various security updates are described below.

· Desktop – Probably the most visible of deployed security updates within any organization, endpoint security updates are typically released once per month with the release date determined by the vendors. The most well-known security updates are those by Microsoft, which are released on what has become known as “patch Tuesday,” the second Tuesday of each month. When you receive a notice stating something along the lines of, “Your Technology Department is installing important updates,” you are most likely receiving security updates. Security updates can be distributed to the desktop operating system or the COTs (commercial off-the-shelf) applications installed throughout the environment. Examples of COTs applications are Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word and WinZip. As a project manager, you must be aware that patch days will render all involved workstations virtually untouchable, as most security teams want to ensure that nothing interferes with patch day.

· Server – Another of the more visible events involving security updates are those affecting servers. The primary reason behind this is that most security updates require a restart, which will disrupt any application hosted on the affected server. Another reason is that many older applications can be rendered non-functional upon the installation of security updates which affect specific OS functionality or framework operations. For Microsoft server operating systems, in-band updates are also released on “patch Tuesday.” Server updates are typically applied over a weekend and occupy all members of the team. Additionally, server updates will require support from members of specific application teams (for those application servers being patched) and desktop teams which support those applications. Network team members may also be on-call to validate that any issues encountered are not network-related. Server patch day will pull the affected servers offline during the process and any servers which depend upon the functionality of those servers. (e.g. A web server connecting to an application server which is being patched.)

· Database – Quite frankly, one of the more complicated groups for security updates, in my opinion. With this team, you could have a combination of server updates and/or database engine updates which could occupy both the human and physical resources. Typically, the database team will favor performing database engine updates during the same weekend as general server patching, considering their team would be required to be on-hand for the server updates anyhow. Do not plan on reserving any database resources during a patch weekend. Any servers depending upon the database servers being patched will also be non-functional. (e.g. An application or web server connecting to a database server.)

· Network – Although not as well-known, network security updates are not uncommon, but are more rarely applied. Typically referred to as firmware upgrades, network security updates have the potential to bring down an entire network segment, and thus, are generally tested thoroughly, and then only installed if absolutely needed. Many network firmware upgrades are accompanied by a disclaimer that they should only be applied if the described issue is readily occurring. Needless to say, if a network firmware upgrade is occurring in your infrastructure, you will more than likely have no access to the network team during the outage. All devices connected to, or depending upon the network devices being upgraded will have no network connectivity, and thus will be not be accessible, unless you have direct console access.

· App / Dev – In my experience, I have yet to see an application team ever address a security vulnerability affecting an internally-developed application. From the perspective of applications built upon frameworks and customized for the organization, updates are generally rolled up as part of major system upgrades and performed only when needed for access to additional functionality or remediation for specific issues. Typically, during major upgrades all aspects of an application and its connecting systems will be offline and those application engineers responsible for the application will be unavailable. Additionally, server and database team members assigned to the application and database servers affected by the upgrade will be unavailable during the change window.

In Part 3 of this series, I will discuss non-security activities requiring change requests.

Project Management, Resource Planning

Project Management – Resource Planning – Technology Teams and What You Need to Know

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This is Part 1 of a multi-part article series concerning resource planning in a technology-centric PMO.

With the complexities present in today’s organizations, PMOs face many obstacles, pitfalls and challenges. In my opinion, one of the biggest challenges which PMOs face, is resource allocation. Specifically, the planning and allocation of resources while dealing with conflicting projects or job duties which require the same resources. Although human resources are those which are most frequently cited for these types of issues, physical resources must be considered as well. As far as physical resources, we are speaking of systems, networks, storage devices, etc.; those infrastructure pieces which are necessary to complete a particular portion of a project, which may be unavailable during the project task timeline due to conflicts.

Interacting with Teams

As a technical project manager, you need to be keenly familiar with each distinct area of your organization’s technical infrastructure. In Part 1 of this article, I will go over the technical areas of which a project manager will need to be aware when planning for resource allocation, their order of awareness (based on my experience in the field), and potential “gotchas.” This certainly does not contain everything involved with the teams and the tasks, but does grab the essential item descriptions a project manager will need to get themselves injected into the correct processes.

Organizational Areas of Technical Infrastructure (listed in order of awareness):

· App / Dev – Commonly known as the “development teams,” this group deals primarily in the development and maintenance of either internally-developed applications or framework applications which have internally maintained customizations. In most organizations, this is the most visible group and the group around which most projects and activities revolve. Many projects and changes start with this group and move outward as it is discovered that other groups are needed in order for a project or change to be successful. Projects and changes coming out of this group can require any or all of the remaining groups. Careful requirements gathering and planning is required for anything coming out of this group. Remember that most development teams are very focused on their own areas and will generally depend on other teams to let them know what they need for an implementation to be successful.

· Database – Database teams have complicated jobs in many instances, being a combination of server administrators, database engineers/administrators and database programmers. In many instances, database teams are also part of certain development efforts when it comes to actual database programming, such as SQL. They are called upon to validate code, be available for troubleshooting, and other tasks related to development change efforts. Additionally, database teams are traditionally pretty thinly staffed, which means there are few people, pulled in many different directions. That, coupled with their day-to-day duties, makes this team’s members very difficult to reserve.

· Server – Server teams are sometimes divided into two teams, operations and engineering. If this is the case in your organization, the operations team will most likely be needed for assistance with projects involving server changes, while the engineering team will be called upon for new server builds and/or refreshes. Typically, this team is responsible for up/down and operating system functionality, as well as monitoring and alerting with respect to the server infrastructure. Additionally, this team is usually responsible not only for Active Directory (and everything that entails), DNS (depending upon the technology used), and DHCP, but also virtualization technologies such as Citrix, VMWare and Hyper-V. This would place them in the mix for anything related to hosted applications, VDI or virtual server tasks. Much like database teams, the server team is generally thinly staffed, so plan accordingly.

· Network – The easiest way to describe a network to the uninitiated is to equate it to the spinal cord of your body. The network IS, in my opinion, the single most important piece of an organization’s infrastructure. Without a functioning network, there is not much that will work in today’s world of distributed technology systems. Here is a short list of things you will need the network team for with respect to your projects: IP address assignment, VLAN creation, switch port assignment and configuration, network cabling, and new site build-outs. Unfortunately, the network team is typically the second-to-last team to be notified of a change which needs their assistance and this usually occurs when the server has arrived, has been racked, and the person performing the server build-out asks when they will have network connectivity. My advice to all technical project managers is to engage the network team first, if there is any chance that you will need network connectivity – and that is most likely, always.

· Desktop – Desktop teams can be divided into two separate teams, depending upon the level of technical expertise present in the organization. Sometimes, this team consists of “Desktop Support,” which is made up of level 1 (help desk) and level 2 (field service) support and “Desktop Infrastructure,” which could be a support level in between field service personnel and vendor support. This level will typically exist in organizations which have mature technology departments and is usually responsible for desktop management systems, such as Configuration Manager and virus protection projects as they relate to the desktop infrastructure. The Desktop teams are generally the last teams to know about any change except their own. Regardless of the change occurring, it will almost always need the assistance of the Desktop teams so it is important to involve them early in the planning process to determine if they are needed and define their roles.

In Part 2 of this article, I will discuss the various activities routinely handled by the teams mentioned above and what types of scheduling conflicts you can expect as a project manager.