SCU2013

I attended System Center Universe today for the first time. Incredible experience! The lineup of experts was awesome. Just wanted to thank them all for all they did and continue to do for the ever-growing system center community. You guys make it possible for guys like me to succeed.

Because I only work with ConfigMgr, Wally Meads presentation was by far my favorite with Dan Anderson's presentation on Windows Intune coming in a close second. So much information in such a short presentation.

Funny moment of the day: had lunch with Jason Sandys and had no idea! We talked, but not about SCCM, which of course now I regret because I could have picked his brain! Course, he didn't let that on so maybe he didn't want to haha.

I doubt I can go next year, but if the opportunity arises I will definitely try. Thanks to all, especially Catapult Systems for all their hard work and making the event a very real success.

Application Catalog Install

The application catalog is a new feature to ConfigMgr. Personally, I'm excited for this feature a lot, because it will help make my job easier, as well really glorifying the user-centric model that ConfigMgr 2012 is known for adopting.

The application catalog requires two roles on the site server to and requires some pre-reqs before they can be added. My first attempt to install the catalog, resulted in errors that stated ASP.NET was not installed. Well, I know for fact that ASP.NET was installed. I did it during my original go-round of installing the various roles and features on the server, during the IIS configuration, and it even said so when I went back to verify. After some quick Googling I realized I did not register ASP.NET. Had no idea I had to. So, back to Google, I learned the command to do so. I opened an elevated command prompt and entered:

"%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe" -i

When I attempted this I received the following message:

Ah. Doesn't' work that way with Server 2012. Great. Back to Google. Eventually I stumbled upon the PowerShell command to install ASP.NET. Figured I'd give it a try, knowing that if it is already installed, the command will do nothing and state it is already installed. 

Install-WindowsFeature web-asp-net

Install-WindowsFeature web-asp-net45

Low and behold the first asp net command did install missing asp as it was not installed, and additionally registered it! So, I attempted to reinstall web service point and website roles and to my surprise.....still no luck. New error. WCF is not activated. What is WCF? It stands for Windows Communication Foundation. I had to do some research and found it was definitely necessary. Check out the following article for more information, here. 

Going back into the Roles and Services of Server Manager, I went to .NET Framework and found that the HTTP Activation and Non-HTTP Activation check boxes were not checked - so I checked them.

I removed and reinstalled the roles one last time....and voila! Victory was mine. Simple fixes with pre-reqs on your server to makes sure everything will work fine once roles are installed may be a time saver and definitely more efficient, but sometimes, figuring it out on your own helps you learn. Today I learned many things about ASP.NET, .NET Framework, IIS, and ConfigMgr (and how they integrate and work together) as I spent the afternoon troubleshooting. Hope you find the above information helpful and can benefit from it!

As a side note: I'll be attending System Center Universe 2013 later this week in Dallas, TX! Getting excited for the event! If you haven't registered yet...what are you waiting for? Go register here! 

It's been awhile....

To be honest, I kinda forgot I was blogging about my adventure until the other day and have since just gotten around to it. It's a been a crazy ride, I'm not but even a quarter of the way through, and I've already learned a ton.

First things first...lets catch up. The last time I blogged was well before Christmas, and I was implementing my ConfigMgr 2012 beta into a lab environment. After Christmas break, we decided to start over, and do the real thing. So I wiped the servers, put Server 2012 back on, and began my journey again. This one is much more interesting.

To start off, let me just say I love SANs...and I hate them. Once the servers were wiped, our EMC agent had to be loaded back on for the drives to come through  Now, if only the EMC supported Server 2012 with their agent fully. But with Linda's help again, we got the drives back and I got them formatted to start over.

Of course I followed the law of the west, and configured the servers completely correct before installing ConfigMgr. Once I installed ConfigMgr, I took my trainer Kent Agerlund's advice with post-SQL install configurations. I needed his help as I was confused on the databases and how many additional ones I needed. Once I got the facts semi-straight (number of processors and cores and RAM in the server, and the number of clients in my environment), I had him confirm my thinking (which he corrected) in order to proceed. (Thanks again, Kent!) I created seven additional databases INSIDE SQL. Yep, first query I've ever run in full-blown-out SQL. And, I did it right the first time. I was proud. ;)

The past couple of days have been exciting as I continue on configuring ConfigMgr to best-practice standards. That's my goal. I want things to not only work now, but five years down the road. SQL is obviously a big one there.

I decided to blog again today because I wanted to share some valuable information I learned. So the next post will be on installing the application catalog. I'll try to keep up my postings as I continue on!