AD schema is not extended or SLP is not present. Cannot continue site assignment

You may received the error - "AD schema is not extended or SLP is not present. Cannot continue site assignment." log in LocationServices.log when the SCCM client is successfully installed on the machine, but the SCCM client failed to discover primary site.

If the above entry is log, there are few things you may need to look into before you proceed with further action:

1. Is the Management Point publish in Active Directory?
   
2. Is the Management Point publish in DNS?
3. If you are using WINS for name resolution, you may need SLP registered in WINS.

How if the above components are already in-place but the SCCM client is still failed to discover primary site?

Another simple trick, try to verify your network DNS & WINS settings, the SCCM client may failed to assign to primary site due to incorrect assignment of DNS & WINS address.

SCCM Client Push Installation failed

I believed most of you guys may facing this problem when try to push SCCM client to the workstations using Client Push Installation. When you failed to push the client from SCCM server, first thing come to your mind maybe is Windows Firewall blocking that. But somehow, after you enable necessary ports for SCCM Client Push Installation at Windows Firewall, it still doesnt work. After that you might try to stop the Windows Firewall service at the workstation, but still no luck...

Recently during we work on one large SCCM deployment, we found one interesting stuff. Here begin the story, we suspected one of the workstation is infected by virus, because the users is complaining the machine is slow and very difficult for the user to perform daily work. Unfortunately, that machine haven't installed with SCCM client yet. Therefore, we went down to the machine and perform a virus scan, we also tried to extract the local machine antivirus program logs file to understand the machine condition. After we gather all the necessary logs files, we found few interesting entries from the log:

C:\Windows\system32\ccmsetup.exe
Prevent remote creation/modification/deletion of anything in the Windows folder and subfolders. Action: Blocked

C:\Windows\SMSClientInstall
Prevent remote creation/modification/deletion of anything in the Windows folder and subfolders. Action: Blocked

I hope the above information can give you guys a hint when you hit such a problem in the future. Do share this with your customer if you facing this problem.

Happy New Year 2009

Dear System Center Fans,

Good day and thanks for the support in year 2008. Please continue to support us in year 2009.

Happy New Year 2009!!!

Poo, Paul and the rest of the team.

System Center Presentation Video

Guys, good day.

Just presented a session in System Center Solution Summit 2008 in Malaysia.

Attched the video file:

There are:

1) How to add ESX to SCVMM 2008
2) How to perform VMotion in SCVMM 2008
3) Powershell with SCVMM2008

http://cid-147d10eebd539097.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public/SCUG

Cheers

DPM 2007 SP1 - What you want to know to install it today

Its being a while, playing with DPM 2007. Knowing that this is a great product - yet still get some feedback about it, eg: Only be able to backup data within a forest.

Now, with DPM 2007 SP1 launch, not long ago. One of the features that impress me - be able to backup Windows servers that supported acorss different forest with a trust!

For sure in an environment, there are reasons for different forest - this is now, a solution.

Another that make me install immediately - you can also make DPM your file server! Yes, it is not recommended - but for branch offices, for sure it will lower down TCO. However, you will need to run some commands in the powershell to activate it.

Set-DPMGlobalProperty –AllowLocalDataProtection $true [-DPMServerName]

For Exchange, it is now be able to backup SCR! Do visit my Exchange blog for more information.

To know more before you install? visit this URL:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd347836.aspx

Just installed it and works smoothly. What are you waiting for?

Verify SQL connection from your machine

Everyone know System Center products are heavily rely on SQL server, we must prepare the SQL server first in order to proceed with the System Center products installation. Sometimes we would like to verify the connectivity between System Center servers and SQL servers, since we are not SQL server expert, how we gonna achieve that by using tools or is there any other primitive way (such as ping, or telnet command in command prompt) to troubleshoot that?

Here, I would like to share with everyone a good tip.

Create a blank text file on your desktop using Notepad, and then rename the text file extension from 'txt' to 'udl'. Double click the udl file, a Data Link Properties windows will prompt out. Here we go! Now we are able to test out the SQL connectivity by using this small interface! Is that cool?

Although this is not a big news, I doubt a lot of developers knew about this, and I got this tip from my best friend Koh Nyap Hong. He is a great developer and thanks for him to share this tip with me. Now, I would like to share this tool with all IT Professionals, this will be a very useful tool for you to troubleshoot some basic SQL errors.

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.2 RTM is now Available!

MAP 3.2 RTM is now available!! This RTM released has expanded its assessment capabilities to SQL Server 2008, ForeFront/NAP, Microsoft Online Services migration, as well as providing a Power Savings assessment.

MAP 3.2 assessment areas now include:

• SQL Server 2008 Migration Proposals and Reports (NEW)
• Forefront/NAP Readiness Proposals (NEW)
• Microsoft Online Services Migration Surveys, Proposals, and Reports (NEW)
• Power Savings Proposals (NEW)
• Server Migration Reports and Proposals (Windows Server 2008 and "virtualized guests by hosts" reporting) (NEW)
• Server Consolidation Reports and Proposals (Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Hyper-V)
• Desktop Security Assessment to determine if desktops have anti-virus and anti-malware programs installed and up-to-date, or if the Windows Firewall is turned on
• Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 Hardware Assessment Reports and Proposals

If you are interested to download or if you would like to know more about it, please visit the website below:
Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit