SCCM 2012 SP1 CU3

Are you’re running System Center Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 and you need to now support Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 clients? Or, do you want to utilize new Server 2012 R2 machines as Configuration Manager site systems? You’ll need to download and install SCCM 2012 SP1 Cumulative Update 3. Here is an example of…

RDS 2012 Session Host Licensing and you

This past week, our managed services team at OrcsWeb ran into an issue with Remote Desktop Services 2012. We had a client setup request for RDS on their Windows Server 2012 machine. We were to install the Session Host, Web, and Service Broker roles. This server was to point to our existing 2008 R2 RDS Licensed server. This 2008 R2 server’s only job is to provide central point of management for RDS CALs.

A Windows Server 2012 box cannot point to anything but another Windows Server 2012 box for licensing. This was not an issue, we just stood up a Server 2012 box to replace our 2008 R2 RDS box, where its only role would be a license server.

Once the new server was up and running, RDS licensing role installed, configured and validated with CALs for our server versions, including Server 2012 RDS, we attempted to point our RDS session host installation to the new licensing server.

To do this, I launched Server Manager, selected Remote Deaktop Services from the left panel, in the Role section I selected Overview, then selected the tasks drop down in Deployment Overview and selected Edit Deployment Properties.

RDS screenshot

I then went to the RD Licensing section to add my license server. I added my licensing server via FQDN, and was promptly greeted with an error message.

“The license server specified is not valid. Verify the server name and specify a valid server name before saving the settings.”

RDS Lic Error Msg

MS TechEd 2013

This year I was given the opportunity to attend and experience TechEd North America in New Orleans June 2-6. This was my first time attending and I was not quite sure what to expect. Could the assembling of so many nerds in one city be a good idea? As it turns out, this is an awesome idea.

 

The trip didn’t get off to the smoothest start. On Sunday I was set to take a flight from Charlotte > Houston > New Orleans. Unfortunately the flight departing Charlotte was delayed for 30 minutes and ended up being about two hours delayed in total. When you’ve got a connecting flight, the last thing you want is a delay of your first flight; however, during this time I started making conversation with the only other person headed to New Orleans, who was also heading to TechEd. I was chatting with Brien Posey. I didn’t know it at the time, but he is a 10-time MVP and freelance technical writer. We had a nice conversation, he’s a great guy, and after looking around a bit I’ve read some of his articles I just didn’t place the name with the articles when we were talking.

 

The flight from Houston > New Orleans was also delayed, but when we landed I only had 20 minutes to catch the flight, no time for lunch! Once aboard I jumped in on a conversation between Brien and a Duke Energy employee, turns out the Duke Employee knows a good friend of mine who also works at Duke in Charlotte on the Active Directory team. It’s a small world. Before I knew it I was in New Orleans and getting dropped off at the Renaissance Pere Marquette.

MDT VBScript Runtime Error 13

I ran into an issue the other day while deploying a new VM in our Server 2012 development Hyper-V environment. I went through the new VM creation wizard, setting my folder paths, NIC, default memory at 512MB. I also specified that I wanted to install my OS via network installation in the wizard as I…

ARR Removes querystring

Today we had a client that is using an IIS webfarm for Application Request Routing (ARR) that points to several backend IIS web nodes for load balancing their website. They encountered an issue where it appeared the querystring was being stripped from all of their URLs. For example: http://mywebsite.com/MyIco.ashx?c=xxxxxxxx=xxxxxxxx=1 was being presented as: http://mywebsite.com/MyIco.ashx If…

SCCM 2012 Part VII: Client Initialization, Reporting, and Closing Thoughts

This will be the last post in my System Center Configuration Manager 2012 series. Here in Part VII, we will be pushing the client to servers, showing what the Endpoint Protection client looks like on the servers, configuring custom Reports, and then closing out the series. Here is a summary of what we’ll be making…

SCCM 2012: Part VI – Endpoint Protection Manager Agent and Configuration Manager Agent Setup

Now that our hierarchy is configured and we have successfully installed and validated all of the Configuration Manager roles we will need, its time for us to configure the Agent and Endpoint Protection Policies. We’ll configure the Endpoint Protection default Policy settings first. Navigate to Assets and Compliance > Endpoint Protection > Antimalware Policies. Right-click…

SCCM 2012: Part V – System Configuration – Security and Roles

Here in Part V we’ll be performing more configuration of our SCCM 2012 environment. We’ll pick back up where we left off in Part IV, on the Administration tab of the SCCM console. Before we continue with the configuration of the site and adding new roles, we need to configure the Security section. By default,…