Victorian London Fog by Harney and Sons...

As a huge fan of Harney & Sons Fine Teas I'm always checking out their site for new and interesting variations of my beloved camellia sinensis. I tend to lean more towards British notions when it comes to my teas, so when I came across a fairly new tea blend on their site with the name "Victorian London Fog" I was immediately intrigued. My interest was further piqued when I read the details section:

"This blend evokes the aroma of a London Fog, with hints of vanilla and lavender blended with bergamot"

So right off I'm thinking "this wil be a sweeter take on a traditional Earl Grey with a high probability of strong floral notes from the lavender". Conceptually that was something that really appealed to my personal tea palate. I picked up a 4 oz. tin (see below) and was not disappointed.

This is a very good tea. Flavor wise? When taken with some milk and a bit of raw sugar the taste is pretty similar to Earl Grey Macaroon cookies I've had in the past. If the idea of that appeals to you I recommend picking up a tin of this. Its very good!

Some long overdue spring cleaning...

All, Sorry I've been silent on the blog front for a while. Been really busy with a lot of projects and such. I've gone through and cleaned up a few things, fixed some broken links and enabled full HTTPS support (update your links). Also I've got a ton of great ideas for a new series of posts (geared around a number of new MDT, SCCM and Windows 10 initiatives I've been involved with recently) that I hope to begin writing up shortly. So much to discuss! More to come so stay tuned!

SCCM Current Branch: SCCM status icon reference...

Ever wonder what the status icons mean in SCCM? Boy I sure did, so I looked them up. Here you go:

Status icons for software updates:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh848254.aspx

Status icons for client states:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/core/clients/manage/monitor-clients

Enjoy!

How to get all components of a Hyper-V VM under a single directory when creating a new VM...

When creating a Hyper-V VM at the "Specify Name" stage make sure you check the box to "Store the virtual machine in a different location". Why? Well let's assume you are at this step, you have the box checked and you have entered the following for the "Name" and "Location" fields:

Name: "My VM Name 001"
Location: "C:\ClusterStorage\volume1\hyper-v\"

In the example above Hyper-V will create a single folder named "My VM Name 001" at location "C:\ClusterStorage\volume1\hyper-v\" and all components of that VM will be contained under that folder (as opposed to having some components at the root of "C:\ClusterStorage\volume1\hyper-v\" and some under a subdirectory named "My VM Name 001" which is the default behavior). This will make your VM's more self-contained and (therefore) easier to administer.

Using SysNative to redirect a SCCM Package to use 64-Bit stuff...

Everywhere you go it seems like all the "experts" say to use the Package model (not the Application model) when you want to deploy a script using SCCM. The problem is Packages seem to only be be cable of executing in 32 bit mode (even on 64_bit OSes) because the SCCM client is 32-Bit. Obviously this presents a problem if you ever need to have your script reference anything 64-bit. I did some googling and found a number of solutions out there but (ultimately) found them a bit clunky. So I grabbed the best bits I could found out of all of them and combined them into my own script:

@ECHO OFF & CLS :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :: SysNative Redirect :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :: Purpose: SysNative is a virtual folder visible to 32-Bit applications but not :: visible to 64-Bit applications. This script uses SysNative to redirect scripts :: to use native executables on when run on a 64-Bit Operating System. :: Version: 2.1 :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: REM Set script filename: SET "_MyScript=%~n0.ps1" REM OS Run architecture check and redirect if needed: If "%PROCESSOR_ARCHITEW6432%"=="" (GOTO :_STANDARD) ELSE (GOTO :_SYSNATIVE) :_SYSNATIVE %WINDIR%\sysnative\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy bypass -file "%~dp0%_MyScript%" REM %WINDIR%\sysnative\cscript.exe "%~dp0myscript.vbs" REM %WINDIR%\sysnative\cmd.exe "%~dp0myscript.cmd" GOTO :_END :_STANDARD powershell.exe -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy bypass -File "%~dp0%_MyScript%" REM cscript.exe "%~dp0myscript.vbs" REM cmd.exe "%~dp0myscript.cmd" GOTO :_END :_END REM Pause to view results: REM ECHO. REM ECHO Press any key to exit ... REM PAUSE > NUL

To use it just uncomment your script language of choice (while commenting out the ones you don't want), save it as a .CMD file in the same folder with the same name as the script you want to execute and specify the .CMD file as your Command Line. It should handle the rest for you.

Microsoft is changing how Windows Updates work...

This is a very interesting development, not sure how this will affect me yet as an SCCM admin but (on the surface) the idea of them back-porting the Cumulative Update model for Windows 10 to Windows 7/8.1 sounds fantastic. Personally? This time next year I hope to have all Windows 10 clients in my infrastructure anyway but if that doesn't happen then at least this should make supporting older clients much easier:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsitpro/2016/08/15/further-simplifying-servicing-model-for-windows-7-and-windows-8-1/

Does this mean my SUGs will shrink down to a single update per OS?!!! Almost certainly not but we shall see....

I'm still here!

Apologies for the recent lack of updates. My company is currently undergoing a big reorganization and I'm finding I don't have a lot of free time for new posts. I'm still heavily involved with SCCM administration though and am currently working to roll out Windows 10 v1607 and spinning up a brand new SCCM server to support it. Lots of lessons learned and tons of potential new post ideas are springing from these efforts. Hopefully I can get some new content here soon. In the meantime I have been and am more than happy to answer questions in the comments sections of other posts. Keep those coming guys! Love helping out my fellow admins!

SCCM: Logs to check when troubleshooting application deployment issues

Whenever you run into client side issues with application deployment in SCCM check the exemgr.log file on the client and the log generated by the application you are installing. I've found starting there is the best way to uncover issues with my deployments.