As the System Center brand has strengthened in recent months with the release of Operations Manager, Configuration Manager , Data Protection Manager and Virtual Machine Manager, I’ve made a decision to return my professional blogging activities about these technologies to my systemcenterguide.com blog.

This change will allow me to keep the System Center-focused enteries on a more applicable site and free up my mcalynn.com website for post of a more personal nature.

Please subscribe to the new blog feed at: http://www.systemcenterguide.com.

Thank you!

Duncan McAlynn

Note: All system center post from mcalynn.com have been transferred to systemcenterguide.com. While there may be some formatting issues (i.e. character substitution) with the posts imported through XML, the general content is still there.

Desired Configuration Management (DCM) is a feature in System Center Configuration Manager. With DCM, utilize Microsoft and third party best practice configuration knowledge to improve configuration definition and maintenance. Find the software you need to define configurations for your Microsoft and third party applications with Configuration Manager 2007.

At time of posting, there are 31 Configuration Packs available for download from the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Configuration Pack Catalog on Microsoft’s website.

Importing a Configuration Pack
You can import this Configuration Pack module using the Configuration Manager 2007 console and following these steps:

1. In the Configuration Manager console, navigate to System Center Configuration Manager / Site Database / Computer Management / Desired Configuration Management.
2. Right-click Configuration Items, Import Configuration Data to load the Import Configuration Data Wizard.
3. Click Add, browse to the location of the configuration data .cab file, and then click Open.
4. Follow the wizard instructions.

Assigning a configuration baseline to a collection

1. In the Configuration Manager console, navigate to System Center Configuration Manager / Site Database / Computer Management / Desired Configuration Management / Configuration Baselines.
2. Right-click the configuration role you’d like to have the baseline assigned to, and then click Assign to a Collection to assign your baseline to a collection.

Several months back I posted the availability of System Center Configuration Manager 2007 virtual labs on Microsoft’s website. However, after recently revisiting the site I noticed that the product groups have been very busy preparing additional labs for the entire System Center suite. In addition to a slew of labs available for SMS 2003, there are a few others available for Configuration Manager 2007, plus three for Operations Manager 2007, two for Softgrid and one each for Capacity Planner and Essentials.

Check out the full array of offerings at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb539977.aspx

I received this today from a colleague at Dell. Please forward to any mid-sized companies that you may know.

Hi All – 

The enterprise design and usability group at Dell is looking to get out and learn more about systems management in medium-sized IT shops (around 100-500 employees or 20-250 servers) It doesn’t matter if you a Dell customer or not and this isn’t related to sales or marketing in any way.   

Our goal is learn more about the key scenarios and pain points that sys admins in medium sized IT shops have, how they juggle roles, what tools they use, how we can make their lives easier, etc. 

We’re looking for groups that will let about 2 usability guys come out on site, meet some people, and see what it’s like. 

If you think your group would be interested, please contact ryan_west (@) dell (dot) com.