Build and Capture TS with DFS
I learned this a while back, but never blogged it. I was building a Build and Capture Task Sequence in SCCM. At the end when it started the capture, I wanted it to upload the WIM to my DSL which happens to be on a Distributed File System share. It failed. I can’t remember the error that it gave, but eventually I determined that it simply couldn’t copy to the DFS share. I pointed it to a regular share (that went to the same folder as the DFS share), and it worked fine.
I use the DFS share as the source to all of my programs without any problems. But for the Build and Capture, I have to reference a plain server share instead.
SCCM Reinstall – Take 3
At the risk of sounding a bit schizophrenic, I’ve changed my mind again…I’m going to reinstall SCCM on Server 2008. Several reasons behind the change of plans. This will also serve as a bit of a response to Brian Mason’s comment on my previous SCCM post.
First, I had forgotten how much tweaking I had to do in the OS on Server 2003 to get certain things to work. In particular, there were several things I had to tweak to get patching working. WSUS and SCCM weren’t playing well together. After installing Server 2003 on Friday and following my notes for what fixed the issue last time, and checking several things over the weekend…patching still isn’t working. Feeling the need to get patching working was my main reason for wanting to not wait on SP1. But then I thought some more and realized reasons 2 and 3 below. (And with the issues I was experiencing, I’m not convinced that I could get it completely working before SP1 hits…and I really don’t want to go through this process twice.)
Second, I don’t have that many users on SCCM right now (approximately 100). This need for a rebuild happened before I moved my entire environment to it, so it makes it possible to put a pause on SCCM until SP1 is released this month.
Third, a combination of not that many new patches in May and not having that many machines on SCCM. I can set a few GPO settings to point those machines to Microsoft Update for this month’s patches…then get them back on SCCM after the reinstall.
Fourth, I’m hoping that SP1 will be released sooner (this week) rather than later (end of the month…next week). We shall see.
So, tomorrow I go back in and drive our VM guy crazy again. I need those RDM disks added to a Server 2008 VM instead of the Server 2003 VM that they are currently on…yes…the same Server 2008 machine that he just moved them off of. Sorry Cesar!
SCCM Reinstall – change of plans
It took a really long time to get the VM set up correctly for my reinstall of the SCCM server. Finally got it around 2pm yesterday and proceeded to install Server 2008. After starting that process and being really impressed with my first look at Server 2008, I started looking into the process for installing SCCM. Then I came across several posts about SCCM not being supported on Server 2008 til SP1. The firmest one I found was here. In it Wally Mead states (emphasis added), “SP1 is the only release that does support Windows Server 2008 for any site system role other than the System Health Validator. So yes, you do have to wait, there is no workaround.” That would be a pretty firm statement. And with some of the issues I was running into…it wasn’t worth the chaos…especially not when I really need to get this box back up and running ASAP.
Now the bummer is that SP1 will be released by the end of the month…heck, it might be released next week. But I can’t wait that long to get this machine running again. I will probably be doing another migration to Server 2008 within a month of the release of SP1, but I just can’t do it now.
That stinks.
Bible Memorization
Over the years I have done a lot of Bible memorization. Mostly a verse here and there…dealing with specific issues that I wanted/needed to improve in my life. At one point in college, I listened to a sermon from a pastor in Texas named Tom Nelson (link and link). Tom was talking about Scripture memorization, and related how after college he memorized a huge section of the New Testament…basically Romans through Jude. Just looking at the Bible on my co-worker’s desk…that is approximately 170 pages. If you quoted him a verse, he could paraphrase the verse before it and the verse after it. Wow.
So, I set up a challenge for myself in college…to memorize a book of the Bible. I choose the book of Philippians…partly because I had already memorized several verses in it, and to memorize the book I would just need to learn the connecting sections. It took me about three months, but I eventually nailed it.
Many people have commented that they would like to memorize Bible verses, but it’s hard and they struggle to do it. Over the last year, I have been memorizing Bible verses with my five year old. She memorized one verse a week for each week of last year. You can read more about that on the Bible Memory Page.
Here is the process I have gone through with her. It should be easily transferable to you. Heck…if my five year old can do it…so can you. But then again…my five year old can also deploy Vista, Office 2007, Acrobat, etc to seven computers in 30 seconds. :-)
- We break the verse up into five sections that we memorize one at a time over five days.
- I read the nightly portion of the verse (starting with the reference) to my daughter five times, and then have her quote it to me until she gets every word perfect.
- Once she has it perfect, I have her quote it perfect five times. We repeat that every night, and by the end of the five days, she can nail it easily.
- The other two days of the week we spend reviewing the verse of the week as well as a lot of the other verses that she has memorized.
When the belly button pops…
Julie saw a shirt recently that read “When the belly button pops, you’re done!” I was highly amused.
Anyway, last night as we were going to bed, I reached over and had my hand on Julie’s belly…she has a little “bump” which is how I’ve been referring to the baby…”bump”. It just so happened that the way my hand was positioned, the tip of my middle finger was on her belly button. Then she coughed…and I felt the belly button pop out. She coughed again, and it popped out again. I started laughing, but she had no idea why. Once I told her, we both were dying laughing. We laughed so hard that we both ended up going into coughing fits after a few minutes.
It was so nice being able to laugh with her. That is the first time we have laughed together in the last couple of months because of the morning sickness. It was fun seeing her laughing and enjoying something related to this pregnancy!
Pregnancy Turnaround
For all those who have prayed for Julie’s morning-sickness, thank you. It appears to have broken on Saturday. We were talking that morning, and Julie mentioned that she really wasn’t sure if the anti-nausea medication that she was on was really doing any good. Matter of fact, there were times that she felt more sick after taking it, so she stopped taking it on Saturday. That evening she ate a full meal, and asked for dessert, and did NOT feel sick afterwards. First time in two months that has happened.
Sunday was an okay day. Then came Monday. I walked in the house after work and immediately went “Wow”. Did we hire a maid that I didn’t know about? Julie had a phenomenal day and had cleaned the entire house. This from the woman who just the week before was getting sick moving from the bed to the couch and back. She has been feeling really good all week. It has been so nice seeing some life in her eyes and hearing some spark in her voice.
SCCM reinstall on Server 2008
What a difference a couple of days makes. Last week my plan was to migrate the other 90% of our headquarters off of SMS 2003 and over to SCCM. Before doing that I wanted to fix a disk issue. Basically when the guy who set up the VM for my SCCM server did so, he set it up wrong…he set it up to use VHDs instead of Raw Device Mapping for the drives. Basically I got slower disks…and SMS/SCCM really needs fast disks. Not a problem in my initial setup…only had 10% of our environment on it. But before migrating the rest, I wanted fast disk.
So…our virtual server guy started the process of moving the four drives from VMDK to RDM. He was running into a lot of problems and finally (as I understand it) figured out that he can’t do what he was trying to do. In the process though, the C: drive (OS installation drive) got corrupted. Because of misunderstandings on both sides, I didn’t have a backup of the OS drive or the VM file. I do have a successful SCCM/SQL backup though.
Time to test that disaster recovery plan!
I’m also taking this opportunity (I’ll call it that) to do another switch. I had originally installed on Server 2003 x64. My new install will be Server 2008 32bit. I’m waiting on the VM guy to finish the OS install so that I can do the other pieces. The nice thing is that I did keep very good notes about all of the configuration that I had done on the original server, so I should be able to rebuild it fairly quickly.
There are reasons for the double switch (2003/2008 and 32/64). The 32/64 issue is related to my friend Tim’s post. The 2008 switch is to be ready to utilize OSD Multicast when SCCM R2 ships.
Restore User State failed – 00004005
I’ve been troubleshooting an issue with Computer Associations in SCCM. The issue that I have seen multiple times is that the state capture appears to run successfully…there is a USMT file of the size that I expect in the State Migration Point folder. However when I run the state restore, it fails very early in the process. As it is requesting the state store, it fails out with a message that states:
Task Sequence: Restore User State has failed with the error code (0x00004005). Please contact your system administrator or helpdesk operator.
Well…I am my system administrator, and this error is bothering me!
Once I dig into the smsts.log file, I see these errors:
SMP request to “SCCM.fqdn” failed with error: E_SMPERROR_RESTORING_CLIENTID_NOT_FOUND (207)
Request to SMP ‘SCCM.fqdn’ failed with error (Code 0x80004005). Trying next SMP.
FALSE, HRESULT=80004005 (e:\nts_sms_fre\sms\client\osdeployment\osdsmpclient\smpclient.cpp,1698)
Failed to find an SMP that can serve request after trying 4 attempts.
pClientRequestToSMP->Execute(migInfoFromMP.saSMPs), HRESULT=80004005 …
ExecuteRestoreRequestToSMP failed (0x80004005).
ExecuteRestoreRequest(), HRESULT=80004005 (e:\nts_sms_fre\sms\client\osdeployment\osdsmpclient\main.cpp,80)
OSDSMPClient finished: 0x00004005
Process completed with exit code 16389
I’m taking a wild guess here…and I could be wrong…I’ll be posting on Technet and updating this post when I find out more. My guess is that this is tied to when I created the computer association linking the old computer with the new one. This is a side-by-side migration…replacing a user’s old computer with a new one. I ran the capture TS on her old computer. The errors above are on her new one. I am wondering if it matters when the computer association linking the old to the new is created. I forgot to create that association until after the capture TS had already run on her old computer. That capture TS created an “in-place” association for her old computer. After the capture was complete, I created a side-by-side association. Both of these are tied to the same state location.
I may be completely wrong here (certainly wouldn’t be the first time), but is there anything that the State Capture TS puts into what it uploads that restricts what it will restore to? I.E. does the side-by-side association need to exist before running the Capture TS for it to be able to restore to the new computer?
Another possibility that will be determined when I get the smsts.log off of the old computer (laptop…user has it off site today) is if it fits into the discussion of this thread…where the status message is not received by the site server that the capture process is complete…so the state is not recorded as completed.
[Update: I got the log file from the user this morning. It does fit that thread above. I’m posting to TechNet to see if I can get an answer as to how to automatically resolve this issue. I’ve seen it happen way too frequently.]
Just tell me it will be fun someday
I know that eventually this pregnancy will be fun. I know that I will love this child more than my own life. I know that I will cry at his/her birth and be amazed at each new little thing that happens with this baby.
Eventually.
Right now this pregnancy just isn’t very fun at all. Julie is in the midst of another “bad day” (morning sickness). Some days are good. She is functional on those days. Some days she is almost normal. This is not one of those days. She is sick. She barely feels like moving at all. Taking care of our five year old involves moving. Thankfully I am able to work from home, which I am doing today. But then…if you read yesterday’s post, I’m not feeling all that great myself.
But really…how I feel is nothing compared to how bad Julie is feeling. We would still very much appreciate your prayers.
MMS "Hangover"
No…the hangover does not refer to alcohol…didn’t have even one alcoholic beverage at MMS. It refers to a whole combination of things that adds up to my body simply being spent from last week.
Some of it is the really busy schedule. Some of it is my lack of discipline in actually going to bed at a reasonable time. Some of it is the jet lag of going from Florida time to Nevada time and back. Some of it is from getting dehydrated in the desert. Some of it is the significant jump in my caffeine intake last week…coffee and Diet Coke were nearly essential to keeping me alert for some sessions. But now my body is going through caffeine withdrawal.
What it all adds up to is that I’m just all over shot today. The tank is empty. I’m done. And I think my body has worn down enough that I’m going to get sick…I think I have a sinus infection coming on. I would appreciate your prayers for my health.
I’m going home early today.
MMS Bible Study
The Bible Study at MMS was really good. We spent four mornings going through the book of Philemon. We met in Rod and Megan Trent’s suite at the Venetian. It was a really good time to start the day off with a song or two, a bit of prayer, and some time in the Bible before heading into the crazy MMS schedule. Over the course of the four days we had about fifteen different people in the study. There was a core group that was there every morning. Some people flew out early or were unable to come on certain mornings. It was really neat to be able to connect with people on a personal/spiritual level in the midst of a massive IT conference in the midst of “Sin City”. The picture below was taken Thursday morning. As a group we agreed that this was the “First Annual MMS Bible Study”. Very cool.
From left to right…the “Redfly Guy” (don’t know his name), Brian Leary, Tim Benjamin, Matt Dewell, Joey Gleason, me, John Nelson, John Hendricks, Rod Trent, and Megan Trent. Someone gave Megan the nickname of “myITforum Den Mother”.
My touch with "fame"
It was truly amazing the number of people who came up to me last week as a result of the video at MMS. All week I had people recognizing me from the video. Some just stopped me to say they liked the video. Quite a few wanted to pick my brain about what I had done with OSD in SCCM. Honestly…it was a lot of fun to be able to meet so many people and to hopefully help out a few.
One of the funniest comments came from Brian Mason. I had met him last year at MMS when I tracked him down to ask for input on deploying patches with ITMU in SMS 2003. Every time he saw me in the hallways after the video he called me a “rock star”. He had me laughing. I really enjoyed a couple of the conversations I had with Brian between/during sessions…the one that we had while skipping the last keynote was exceptionally helpful. Thanks Brian!
I also had a series of funny run-ins on the way home from MMS. As I was in the Southwest Airlines check-in line in Las Vegas, the guy in line behind me was flying to Nashville. He recognized me from the video and made a comment about it. Later, after landing in Orlando, the guy sitting directly in front of me on the plane also mentioned seeing the video. Then…while standing in the baggage claim area waiting on my luggage to come through, I had another guy from the conference come up to me saying something about the video. It was really wild.
To everyone who came up to me throughout the week…thanks for the encouragement. I hope I helped a couple of you. Keep checking back to this site. I will continue to post about the SCCM things that I am working through. Hopefully it will help some of you.
MMS Video
It was cool seeing the video on the screen at the State of the Nation session at MMS. Here are a couple of pics I took during the session. That is Bill Anderson from Microsoft on the stage. I like the title of the slide he used to intro the video…”Kindergarten MCSE”. The second shot shows a portion of the video where Marybeth is clicking to deploy a computer using SCCM’s OSD.
SCCM OSD Video
This is the video that I posted about yesterday that was shown during the “State of the Nation” session at MMS this morning. It features me talking about how we are using SCCM OSD, and concludes with my five year old daughter using SCCM to deploy seven computers. Enjoy!
My SCCM OSD Video
A few weeks ago I got an email from Rod Trent about MMS. He said that Microsoft was looking for “face of the customer” videos to show during various sessions at MMS this year. I was already planning to put together a video to use at a technology meeting that we have at the office every month, so I figured I’d send it in. The original video plan was to take the OSD process and condense it to five minutes so that I could present it at that technology meeting.
As I got to thinking about the video, the concept for the video changed a bit. I still wanted it to communicate what I’ve done with SCCM and OSD, but I wanted it to be funny also. I talked to a friend at the office who is a director/videographer, and he did a quick video shoot and processed the video for me. A really big thanks to John Boggs for doing that. Thanks bud!
Anyway, I sent in the video, and the guys at Microsoft loved it. I got an email from Bill Anderson who is the Lead Program Manager for SCCM. He said their whole team was laughing hysterically at it, and they want to use it during the “State of the Nation” session at MMS. This is the largest session at MMS outside of the keynotes! There will probably be 2000 people at that session. Very cool!
Now…with that said…I personally feel like I look like a dork. It was my first time in front of a camera…and it shows. The second half of the video makes up for it though. I’m going to post the video on my blog after the session (tomorrow at 10:15am Pacific). Come back to take a look at it. I have it scheduled to post at 11:00am Pacific.
Bible Study at MMS
Thanks to all of you who responded that you are interested in the Bible study that I will be leading at MMS. There are currently ten of us that I know about. I’ve heard possibilities of others who are interested, but they haven’t let me know. If you know of others who are interested, and especially if you know of others who are planning to come, please let me know who they are. I need to make sure that we have a place big enough to meet.
The Bible study plan is to meet in the morning before breakfast for a max of a half hour. I know the schedule is busy…especially for one of the presenters who is hoping to come to the study. I will hold us to ending on time. We will meet Tuesday-Friday mornings from 7:00-7:30.
Where will we meet? Rod and Megan Trent have graciously offered the living room of their suite at the Venetian for us to meet in. I’m not posting their room number on the blog…if you want to come, you need to contact me!
The plan is to spend four half-hour sessions on the book of Philemon. It’s a book that I taught through in the LIFE group that I lead at my church. It’s a short little book…only 25 verses, so it is very doable to cover this book very well in that timeframe. I will be taking an “onion” approach to the book. Each day, we will peel back another layer. You will learn something deeper about the book each day.
What can you do to prep? Read Philemon a couple of times. It only takes about five minutes to read it. Get a feel for the book. If you are like most people, you’ve never read it. If you wanted to refer to some of the material that I’ve gone through with my class, you could look at this page, but it is not required at all.
Looking forward to meeting you folks face to face. It’s going to be a fun time.
MMS – Benefits
I’m at MMS this week in Las Vegas. Great conference with some of the best training in the world on everything in the Microsoft management space. Hands down…the people who know the most about this stuff are at the conference.
One of the side benefits is not just the training from the speakers, but the interaction with other attendees. After I arrived last night, I caught up with my friend Joey who I met at MMS last year. Over dinner at Chipotle, we were talking about what we had been doing with SCCM. I mentioned one issue I had been having (getting an OSD Build and Capture Task Sequence to apply software updates…since the machine is in a workgroup instead of a domain at that point). He had run into the same issue, and was able to tell me the answer to it. (It’s a WINS settings mode that needs to be set.)
I had only been in town one hour. I hadn’t even gone through registration yet. I’ve already chalked up my first benefit of the conference. I’m keeping a list of the benefits that I can specifically point to this year. It will help me when budget time rolls around again.
MRI – Follow Up
We went into today with a bit of apprehension. Marybeth was most concerned about getting the IV put in for the sedation. Julie and I were concerned because they were putting our little girl under.
I have never been more impressed with a doctor experience. The people at Florida Hospital that we interacted with were outstanding. The nurses were really cheerful and put Marybeth at ease. It certainly didn’t hurt that we found out that we misunderstood about the IV. They put her out with a breathing thing…and then put the IV in.
One thing that they did that was really neat. We were in the pediatric waiting room, and in this room is a gigantic bear…probably four feet tall. When the nurse comes in, he asks my daughter if she likes the bear. Then he asked her, “Would you like to take the bear home with you?” My guard immediately went up…dude, don’t tell her something that you can’t follow through on. Then he reached under his lab coat and pulled out a small version of the same bear. And then a coloring book. And crayons. Then he pulled out the same items to give to Laurel (our eight year old). They really did do everything possible to make it a pleasant experience.
MRI for My Five Year Old
We would appreciate your prayers tomorrow. Around 1pm Eastern Time on Friday, Marybeth will be going in for an MRI of her spine. Being that there is no way my wiggly little girl will be able to be still for 45 minutes or more, she will need to be sedated. There’s more than a little apprehension in our house.
This is all stemming from battles with encopresis. (Follow that link only if you really want to know.) Our pediatrician finally referred us to a pediatric gastroenterologist. We’ve already been for a couple of abdominal X-Rays. The doctors have had her on medicine for a long time now. It’s not working.
From what I understand, the next step is the MRI. Apparently there is a spinal condition that can cause this. I honestly don’t know what they are looking for. I also don’t know whether to hope they find what they are looking for and see how to treat it, or if it would be better to rule out this possibility and move on to the next thing on the list.
Our Baby’s Heartbeat
Julie had an OB visit today. While there we got to hear our baby’s heartbeat for the first time…right around 160 beats a minute. I took my MP3 player in and recorded it. I was going to link to it in this post, but my hosting provider doesn’t allow uploads of audio/video files unless you pay $20 for an upgrade. The only reason I would need the upgrade would be to add that file. I’m cheap enough that it’s not going to happen. :-)
One cool thing that happened today is that Julie and I both started to feel more of a connection with the baby. This has been much slower in coming with this baby than our two daughters. I think it is mainly because this one was such a surprise to both of us. It was cool seeing that connection take place with Julie today. With as sick as she has been lately, it was nice to see her getting some enjoyment from the pregnancy.
[Update: I figured out how to get the heartbeat on the blog. I used MovieMaker in Vista to combine the soundfile I had from the MP3 player with a picture of Julie and my daughters to create a movie file. Uploaded it to YouTube. Pretty simple. Should have thought of it sooner.]
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The Realm of the Verbal Processor 