HP takes the next step and provides ready-made driver packages for MDT and SCCM for the business models of notebooks, desktops and workstations. The packages can be obtained via SoftPaq Download Manager (SDM) or from the HP support website. It appears they are primarily for the current generation of products.
To get the download manager, navigate to the HP manageability website: www.hp.com/go/easydeploy or directly to www.hp.com/go/sdm
Here are screenshots from the new packages in SoftPaq Download Manager and from the HP support website.

When you’re optimizing your VDI machines, one of the challanges are the Windows Themes. The Windows Themes are generating a lot of IOPS, so maybe you want to prevent users to change the Windows Theme.

You can use the following command to disable the Windows Themes Service:

Powershell Set-Service ‘Themes’ -startuptype “disabled”

You can also create a script that runs at computer startup.

Microsoft has published a FREE ebook of Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012.

You can download the ebook here.

Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012 includes 10 chapters:

PART I   DATABASE ADMINISTRATION (by Ross Mistry)

1. SQL Server 2012 Editions and Engine Enhancements
2. High-Availability and Disaster-Recovery Enhancements
3. Performance and Scalability
4. Security Enhancements
5. Programmability and Beyond-Relational Enhancements

PART II   BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE DEVELOPMENT (by Stacia Misner)

6. Integration Service
7.   Data Quality Services
8.   Master Data Services
9.   Analysis Services and PowerPivot  1
10.   Reporting Services

This poster shows each workload in Microsoft Lync Server 2010 communications software, describing relationships, dependencies, flow of information, and certificate requirements.

You can download the Microsoft Lync 2010 poster here

Microsoft has released the new Windows Server “8” Beta Hyper-V Component Architecture Poster.

You can download the full poster here. A must have for the real Hyper-V guys

When you’re deploying Windows 7 or Windows XP with ConfigMgr 2012 in VMware Workstation, you also need to install the VMware Tools. All the packages are installing silent/unattended, so we want to install the VMware Tools unattended to. Let’s do this…

1.) First of all create a new package. Navigate to Software Library, Packages
2.) Right-click and select Create Package
3.) Give the new package a name and select the Source Folder (this must be an UNC path)
4.) Choose the Standard program
5.) Give the new program a name and enter the Command line.
For 64 bits installation: setup64.exe /S /v” /qn REBOOT=R”
For 32 bits installation: setup.exe /S /v” /qn REBOOT=R”
6.) Optionally you can specify some requirements
7.) The next step is to deploy the package to the distribution point(s). This is a crucial step!!
8.) Richt-click on the package and select Distribute Content
9.) Select Add, Distribution Point or Distribution Point Group if you’re using more then one Distribution Point
10.) Select the your Distribution Point
11.) In the right corner you can see the content status. Wait until the content status is Success: 1
You can watch the logfile Distmgr.log to see the progres of the content distribution to your Distribution Point(s).
12.) The next step is to add the package to your Task Sequence or Deploy the package to your workstations.
13.) As you can see, the package is installed succesfully installed on my Windows 7 client whitout user interaction!!

A new feature within ConfigMgr 2012 is the PXE support on the Distribution Point Role. Yes, the PXE Service Point role is no more present within ConfigMgr 2012. The Windows Server Role Windows Deployment Services, also called WDS is still needed! Just install this role, do NOT configure the WDS server!

After enabling the PXE support on de Distribution Point server, the client should get the required PXE boot files. I received an error after the PXE boot “PXE-E3B: TFTP Error – File Not found”.

When I browse to the boot directory on my ConfigMgr 2012 server, all the folders were empty. The folders D:\SMSboot\x64 and x86 should be filled with the right PXE boot files. I forgot one critical step :S ….a new option in the properties of the boot images in ConfigMgr 2012 is “Deploy this boot image from the PXE service point”, located on the Data Source tab of the properties of the boot files.

After applying this changes on both boot files, the required PXE boot files were available in the right folders. My client are now able to PXE boot.

Today I had to install the reporing functionality within Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 (ConfigMgr 2012). First of all I’ve installed the SQL reporting services on the existing SQL server. Everything looks fine so far. After installing the Reporting Service Point from the ConfigMgr 2012 Management Console, there wasn’t any report!

The first you’ll need to watch, is the Component Status unther the Monitoring tab. There were several errors.
“The report server service is not running on Reporting Service Point server “SCCM-SQL01.SCCMLAB.local; start the service to enable reporting.”

This is really strange, because the SQL Reporting Webservice is running fine. I could browse to the default SQL reporting website and also the management website. The current version of my SQL environment was SQL Server 2008 R2 (10.50.1600)

After applying Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2008 R2, everything works fine! The new version was 10.50.2500. I’ve downloaded Service pack 1 from the following URL: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26727

Don’t forget to configure the right permissions to the Reporting Service User within de SQL Reporing Server.

1.) Open Internet Explorer
2.) Browse to the following URL: http://SQLSERVERNAME/Reports
3.) Select your ConfigMgr site
4.) On the drop-down list, select Security
5.) Select New Role Assigment
6.) Select the user name and configure the following roles:
- Browser
- ConfigMgr Report Administrators
- ConfigMgr Report Users
- Content Manager
- My Reports
- Publisher
- Report Builder
7.) Go back to your ConfigMgr 2012 server
8.) Select Monitoring, Reporting, Reports
9.) The reports are loaded now
10.) Select a report and hit Run