Chris's Blog - Just weedin around Microsoft
Configuration Manager 2012: Package Conversion Manager 2.0 Released
The System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 released today and widely available. With this release,...
Date: 01/15/2013
ConfigMgr 2012 PCM: Walking through PCM Plug-In capabilities
In the complicated and dynamic world of applications, Enterprises continued to find unique and...
Date: 09/12/2012
Introducing Package Conversion Manager (PCM) 2.0 Beta: ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 Support
As I’ve outlined in the past, System Center Configuration Manager 2012 and Package Conversion...
Date: 09/11/2012
Introducing User-Driven Install (UDI) for MDT 2012 Update 1
Our engineering team has had an amazing journey this past year with two key releases to help our...
Date: 08/21/2012
Disaster: Sector “0” Blanked for Cluster CSV, VMM Incomplete Configuration
Earlier this week, I had the privilege of living through a living hell whereby I was wondering what...
Date: 08/06/2012
Extending User-Driven Installation (UDI) in MDT 2012
A key pillar in our rebuilt User-driven installation for MDT 2012 was to remove the monolithic...
Date: 08/03/2012
Learning MDT 2012’s User-Driven Installation (UDI)
After spending a lot of time talking to customers after we integrated code-name “Modena” into the...
Date: 07/26/2012
MDT 2012 User Driven Installation (UDI) Drill-down at MMS 2012
I’ve arrived. The wheels are down here in Las Vegas and I’m getting pretty excited. I’m...
Date: 04/16/2012
MMS 2012: 1 Session & 100’s of Customers Conversations
It’s that time of the year! The Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) has moved back to its...
Date: 03/13/2012
Upgrading to Windows 8 Consumer Preview Just Got Easier–Using VHD Tools to P2V
As you already know, Windows 8 Consumer Preview hit the market just over a week ago. The 1...
Date: 03/12/2012
Introducing Package Conversion Manager (PCM) Scheduled Package Analyzer
In Package Conversion Manager (PCM) RC2, we added a feature called Scheduled Package Analyzer (SPA)...
Date: 01/19/2012
Provisioning your Private Cloud in VMM 2012–Getting Started 101
In our group, we have several highly-available sets of clusters that service various needs. We...
Date: 01/16/2012
VMM 2012: How I got EMC Clariion AX4-5 Working with VMM Storage Mgmt Service
As I’ve started exploring System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012, the first task I took as...
Date: 11/20/2011
Using Package Conversion Manager (PCMs) Fix & Convert–Moving Manual Readiness Packages
In today’s post, I wanted to take some time to outline to ConfigMgr administrators how to...
Date: 11/16/2011
MDT 2012 Beta 2–User-Driven Installation (UDI) Version 2
Since the release of MDT 2010 Update 1, our User-Driven Installation (UDI) engineering team has...
Date: 11/14/2011
ConfigMgr 2012: Package Conversion Manager (PCM) & Readiness State
In today’s post, I wanted to take a little bit of time to build a bit deeper on the underlying...
Date: 11/09/2011
ConfigMgr 2012: Introducing Package Conversion Manager (PCM) for Seamless Migration to AppModel
For the past 15 months, our engineering team has spent a great deal of time partnering with the...
Date: 11/07/2011
TFS 2010 RTM: Builds Fail with Library Mismatch - Windows Update Breaks TFS Build Services
We recently ran into a problem whereby all of our build definitions started failing, mysteriously....
Date: 10/10/2011
Changing Hyper-V Cluster Virtual IP Address (VIP) After Layer 3 Changes
We recently had a change take place in our engineering lab that included a large set of layer 3...
Date: 09/16/2011
VhdCapture & VhdPrep: Using these tools to P2V your physical server to USB, Network Share
In today’s post, I want to spend some time sharing how to use the virtualization tools that...
Date: 09/09/2011
Using WinPE Creator to Create Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) of your physical server
In the past two posts, I’ve focused on the first two capabilities provided in the Configuration...
Date: 09/01/2011
Creating Stand-alone Media to Deploy Windows Server 2008 that Captures Physical Host
The entire goal of the Configuration Manager Physical-to-Virtual Migration Toolkit is to, as I...
Date: 08/30/2011
Using ConfigMgr Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) Migration Toolkit’s “Action Pad” to build Task Sequence
As I’ve previously discussed on my blog, our engineering team has partnered with two System...
Date: 07/31/2011
Making Agile Work for You in TFS 2010–MSDN Magazine June 2011
“Get an inside peek into internal Microsoft development practices as Chris Adams documents his...
Date: 06/11/2011
Enabling Hyper-V Role Successfully via Operating System Deployment Task Sequence
During a ask-the-experts at Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2011 in Las Vegas, a customer asked a...
Date: 05/01/2011
Soup to Nuts–Bare Metal Build-out of Cluster using EMC SAN, Brocade Fibre Switch, & Dell R610/R710’s
As is usual for many of my posts, I like to document things that become somewhat as a “reference”...
Date: 04/30/2011
MMS 2011: 2 Sessions, 1 State of the Union, and 100’s of Customers Conversations
I’ve landed. My bags didn’t arrive so the first evening in Vegas was one of no relaxing. ...
Date: 03/20/2011
TaskList, TaskKill, Remote Machine, Spinning Process, and killing that runaway process! 2-steps!
I’ve been dealing with a “application” these days that is absolutely driving me...
Date: 02/16/2011
TFS 2010: MSF Agile vs. Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 Smackdown -- Planning w/ Agile (Part III)
In this final post for this series, I wanted to outline how Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 is alike and...
Date: 02/13/2011
TFS 2010: MSF Agile vs. Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 Smackdown– Planning w/ Agile (Part II)
In my earlier post, I focused on bringing to light that MSF Agile v5.0 vs. Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0...
Date: 02/10/2011
TFS 2010: MSF Agile vs. Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 Smackdown
With the introduction of the new Microsoft Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 template, software development...
Date: 02/06/2011
VMM 2008 R2: Hyper-V Host is in Perpetual “Pending” State & VMM Service Crashes
Recently, I was doing some Hyper-V physical hosts moving and I found that one Hyper-V host getting...
Date: 12/11/2010
TFS 2010 Burndown, Completed Work, and Remaining Work–“Zero” is the Magic Number
As the leader of your agile project, you’ve been tasked by management to keep your project running...
Date: 12/06/2010
TFS Work Item Manager Breaks when changing Iteration Dates when storing in settings in TFS
We recently ran into an issue when we were trying to add iterations, or change existing dates for an...
Date: 11/18/2010
TFS 2010: Scoping Assigned To field in Work Item Definition for a Project
If you are like us, we have a huge investment in Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 that includes...
Date: 10/20/2010
Error: VMM 2008 R2 Service Account Changes Not Supported without Uninstall
We recently did a slight shakeup of all our service accounts as our engineering lab that we use to...
Date: 08/28/2010
Deploying Windows 7 to Microsoft – Using User-driven install Whitepaper Released
The IT Showcase team at Microsoft who aims at sharing how Microsoft uses their own technology to...
Date: 08/17/2010
TFS 2010: Service Account Password Changes Breaks Excel Web Services, SSS, AppPools in MOSS
It’s ending summer here in the US and the heat is raging in the Pacific Northwest and with that...
Date: 08/16/2010
Using Telerik’s TFS Work Item Manager & Dashboard for Snapshot Views into Progress
As you know, our team spends a lot of time running software development projects such as the MDT...
Date: 08/13/2010
Soup to Nuts – TFS 2010 Agile Iteration Backlog Workbook utilized in the Real World
It seems that many people will get the first iteration backlog workbook working and then they will...
Date: 07/28/2010
TFS 2010 Dashboard Permissions when running in SharePoint Server 2010 – Layers & Layers of Security
As you may know, my engineering team migrated off of the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and over...
Date: 07/27/2010
TFS Dashboards in MOSS 2010 Return Access Denied for TfsOlapReport to End-Users
If you’ve decided to integrate your TFS 2010 infrastructure with Microsoft’s enterprise-ready...
Date: 07/21/2010
Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) – Extending a Volume
There are often times where you have a need to expand a LUN when running enterprise systems. ...
Date: 07/15/2010