Omar's Blog on Systems Management: 2007年12月

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12月26日

Microsoft starts survey for SMS V5 feature set

The Microsoft SMS V5 design team has started a survey to establish a feature prioritization list for SMS V5 (SCCM 2009?). During MMS 2006 there were already some informal chats about SMS v5 with members of the v4 design team, but for all I know, this is the first official communication to selected customers and partners about SCCM 2009 content. The survey contains items that span the current operational fuctionality that SCCM provides. Some of these features feel so 'natural' in extending current fuctionality, it almost feels like these are 'left-overs' that did not make it for the SCCM 2007 release.

More remarkable are tems that can only be described as an practical approach to easily integrate management processes like Change and Release management (ITIL) or even Risk Management. Wow..!

19:50 | 添加评论 | 固定链接 | 写入日志 | System Center News, Development

12月18日

SCCM: multiple PXE Service Point deployment considerations

It is quite likely that your current network infrastructure has been designed to keep all intensive network data within the LAN (e.g. your distribution points @ office locations). If you are considering the same for OS deployment, you might want to plan a PXE Service Point (PXE SP) on each office location and prevent running the boot-image over the WAN. Ease of implementation will depend on the way you have deployed your DHCP services.

The PXE PS depends on the Windows Deployment Service (WDS) that is in general responsible for the answering to PXE requests and hosting boot /OS images. Within the Microsoft DHCP service, these requests are part of the DHCP broadcast of a DHCP client for an authorized DHCP server to offer a IP address. So ease of deployment will be depending on your Infra Architecture.

In general there are two types of DHCP implementations: a central DHCP service that services all sites, or a multiple DHCP servers that service designated sites / locations. If you are using the decentralised DHCP service model and you are not going to install the PXE SP on the same server that hosts the DHCP service, you are quickly done. After running the PSP role wizard the PSP will use parts of the underlying WDS service to listen to DHCP broadcasts with TFTP service requests. After receiving a IP-address you can hit [F12] (or run that advertised task using WOL - really cool) and start OS deployment.

If you are using a central DHCP service, you probably use the IP helper table of your routers to pointcast the DHCP broadcast to the Central DHCP. To successfully resolve PXE requests to the 'remote PXE SP' you have to add IP helpers that will simultaniously pointcast DHCP broadcasts to the 'remote PXE SP'.

The use of IP Helpers is Microsoft's preferred way to route DHCP broadcasts in stead of using DHCP options. For more information on how to manage PXE requests and DHCP, check the WDS white paper, Chapter 5.

Just for the record: Don't configure WDS using any interface. SCCM will take care of that.

12月6日

Fix for SMS_OFFER_STATUS_SUMMARIZER error in SCCM coming...

from Rod Trent's blog @ MyITforum.com:

Good evening all,

Please don't light up the phones to support quite yet, but the hotfix for this issue has been built and tested.

This is a long note but I wanted to cover the details for you all.

KB945898 is the article to reference, it is not quite live yet as we're finishing review, but I'll cover the highlights below.

Within the next 1-2 hours (should be no later than ~9:30PM EST tonight) the fix will be available via a call to support to have them send you the hotfix.

Simultaneously we're releasing this to the download center, but that could take another 24 hours. If that release estimate changes in either direction I will again let you all know.

SCCM: No advertisement status / SMS_Offer_Status_Summerizer does not start / No Component Status

Since the beginning of this month I noticed that the SCCM advertisement status is not being revised or visible for certain advertisements. Futher more when checking the SCCM offersum.log, there is a strange error message containing:

>> Tally 00011280001F2000. New Start Time: 12/01/2007 00:00:00, New Expire Time: 12/08/2007 00:00:00

>> An exception was raised: Unspecified error

Other syptoms:

- Offer status is no longer processed and .SVF files begin to backlog in the \inboxes\offersum.box folder on a site server.

- Advertisement Status node does not show newly added advertisements

- Component Status thread State is stopped and no updates on errors, warnings and information take place.

- Symptoms mentioned occur after december 1st, 2007

Microsoft is aware of the situation and I found this post with a reaction of Wally Mead:

Microsoft is aware of the offer status issue affecting System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (SCCM) customers.

The typical symptom is that offer status is no longer processed and .SVF files begin to backlog in the \inboxes\offersum.box folder on a site server.

Offersum.log shows entries similar to the following are noted:

---

---->: Tally 00011280001F2000. New Start Time: 12/01/2007 00:00:00, New Expire Time: 12/08/2007 00:00:00

---->: An exception was raised: Unspecified error

Warn>: Could not initialize the summarizers properties.

---

This issue came about starting December 1, 2007 due to an incorrect date calculation in the Offer Status Summarizer component and will affect all SCCM sites (both evaluation and licensed RTM version).

There are currently no supported workarounds to this issue.

Some customers have reported modification of the Site Control file have made the issue appear to go away, but this is not supported and the long term ramifications currently unknown.

A hotfix for this issue is under development at the highest priority.

The current plan of record is that once built and tested, the fix will be made available via the hotfix self-service portal so that a call to CSS will not be required to obtain it.

Further information, including the KB article number, how to obtain the fix, and all relevant detail, will be sent back out to the community when ready.

Any changes to the release plan and any schedule updates will be communicated as well.

*********************************************************

I have nothing else I can add to this. I do NOT know when the hotfix will be available. And as you see above, there is NO workaround for this. You just have to live with it until we get a hotfix available.

Please do not create additional posts on this issue, it will only make more posts we have to respond to with the same answer. AS SOON AS THE HOTFIX IS AVAILABLE, I'LL UPDATE THIS POST.

Thanks,

Wally