James Bannan - Learn System Center Configuration Manager in a Month of Lunches

For online information and ordering of this and other Manning books, please visit www.manning.com. The publisher offers discounts on this book when ordered in quantity. For more information, please contact

Special Sales Department Manning Publications Co. 20 Baldwin Road PO Box 761 Shelter Island, NY 11964 Email: orders@manning.com

2016 by Manning Publications Co. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in the book, and Manning Publications was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial caps or all caps.

Recognizing the importance of preserving what has been written, it is Mannings policy to have the books we publish printed on acid-free paper, and we exert our best efforts to that end. Recognizing also our responsibility to conserve the resources of our planet, Manning books are printed on paper that is at least 15 percent recycled and processed without the use of elemental chlorine.

Manning Publications Co.20 Baldwin RoadPO Box 761Shelter Island, NY 11964

Development editor: Helen StergiusTechnical development editor: Deepak VohraCopyeditor: Sharon WilkeyProofreader: Katie TennantTechnical proofreader: Richard SiddawayTypesetter: Dottie MarsicoCover designer: Leslie Haimes

ISBN 9781617291685

Printed in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 EBM 21 20 19 18 17 16

When I was approached to write this book, I wanted to create a resource that ConfigMgr administrators could use to quickly get up to speed with what is, under the hood, a complicated product. This was driven by many years experience in consulting, where I saw frustrated ConfigMgr admins struggling with the product due to a simple lack of knowledge about how the product hangs together and where to go to extract critical information about whats happening and what might be going wrong.

In essence, I wanted to write the sort of book on ConfigMgr that I would have liked to have on hand when I installed the product for the first time, with my manager and colleagues looking on saying, Well? Does it work yet? When can we deploy Windows?

The book doesnt focus on the underlying architecture of ConfigMgrat least, no more than is strictly necessary. While its important for any ConfigMgr administrator to understand whats happening behind the scenes, installing new distribution points or deploying new primary site servers arent exactly everyday occurrences, whereas patching, software distribution, and reporting definitely are. So this book provides a detailed look at a core set of fundamental tasks that every ConfigMgr administrator will tackle on a regular basis, broken into easily consumed chunks so you can boost your productivity quickly and effectively.

If youre new to ConfigMgr (or relatively inexperienced), this is absolutely the book to get you started. If you already have some ConfigMgr experience, then this book will give you practical examples and in-depth analyses of tasks that you probably already undertake, and will serve to consolidate and strengthen what you already know, while providing some additional knowledge, tips, and tricks to make your everyday job even easier.

Enjoy the book, and happy deploying.

Writing a book is a massive undertaking, which simply wouldnt be possible without support. My biggest thanks go to my wife Alice for all her love and assistance throughout the writing process, always ensuring that I had space and time to work and encouraging me when a finished product seemed a very long way off. I would also like to thank Richard Siddaway for his excellent technical critique of the content, and the editors and proofreaders at Manning and everyone else who worked behind the scenesthey were unfailingly helpful and encouraging to me as a first-time author.

In addition, Id like to thank the many reviewers who read drafts of this book in the months leading up to publication, including Terry Rickman, Nasir Naeem, Dave Corun, Jan Vinterberg, Joseph Moody, David Moravec, Nicholas Selpa, Chad McAuley, Alain Couniot, Diana Scheffler, Francis Setash, Mike Taylor, Douglas Duncan, and Allan Miller. Their contributions were invaluable.

covers most of what youll need to know about this book, but there are a few extra points worth covering ahead of time.

While there are a couple of chapters that are theoretical in nature, the majority of content in the book is designed to be hands-on. To this end, covers setting up a fully functional, self-contained lab environment. I strongly recommend that you take the time to get your lab up and running, as the content makes much more sense if youre implementing it in a live environment. If you dont have a system with enough resources to run the lab environment, ask your boss nicely!

The content is designed to be consumed in order, as the labs in each chapter are built on those in the previous chapters. You might be really interested in application deployment, but resist the temptation to jump straight to that chapter (or any other chapter), as the labs are likely not to work if you havent completed the foundation tasks.

The content has been written for the latest version of Configuration Manager (Build 1511 at the time of writing) and for Windows 10 as the managed client (also Build 1511), but the information and labs will work on previous versions of Configuration Manager 2012, as well as on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1, with little or no modification.

Many of the resources referenced throughout the book, such as the MDT-based lab environment, as well as PowerShell scripts, are available for download on GitHub at https://github.com/jamesbannan/configmgr-month-of-lunches. You can select to download the entire repository as a ZIP file, or clone the repository. (I use Atlassian SourceTree, which is a free utility for Windows and Mac.) All the code has been tested and retested, but if you find something that doesnt work (or something you think could be done better), then please make any changes you see fit and submit a pull request, or let me know via my blog at http://www.jamesbannanit.com.

The purchase of Learn System Center Configuration Manager in a Month of Lunches includes access to a private forum run by Manning Publications where you can make comments about the book, ask technical questions, and receive help from the author and other users. To access and subscribe to the forum, point your browser to www.manning.com/books/learn-system-center-configuration-manager-in-a-month-of-lunches and click the Author Online link. This page provides information on how to get on the forum once youre registered, what kind of help is available, and the rules of conduct in the forum.

Mannings commitment to our readers is to provide a venue where a meaningful dialogue between individual readers and between readers and the author can take place. Its not a commitment to any specific amount of participation on the part of the author, whose contribution to the books forum remains voluntary (and unpaid). We suggest you try asking him some challenging questions, lest his interest stray!