Articles

Articles: Hybrid User Group Meeting this Friday 3/5/10 ATLSMUG and SCVUG

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:57:49 GMT

The Atlanta Southeast Management User Group and System Center Virtual User Group invites you to attend the next SMUG meeting scheduled for March 5th, 2010 for a day of great presentations, discussions, and networking.

Because this is a hybrid user group meeting there are two ways to register.
1. If you would like to use Live Meeting to attend the meeting remotely, register here http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=146192
2. If you would like to go to the Alpharetta, GA Microsoft Campus to attend the meeting please register here, this will help us with planning for lunch requirements. https://www.usergroupsupportservices.com/UGEventView.ugss?EventID=8775

DATE & TIME
March 5, 2010
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM Eastern Time Zone

Lunch provided by Prowess http://www.prowesscorp.com

“At Prowess Consulting, we focus on providing technology marketing, technical writing, IT infrastructure, and managed services to Fortune 500 companies. We make businesses stronger by delivering the right information at the right time. We are trusted by the largest organizations to deliver results through innovative and customized solutions.”

THE AGENDA

9:45 AM 10:00 AM Opening and Introductions
10:05 AM 11:00 AM Prowess Presentation
11:05 AM 11:50 AM Introduction to Microsoft App-V and the Enterprise
11:55 AM 12:40 PM SCCM R3 Features and Benefits
12:45 PM 1:00 PM Break
1:05 PM 1:50 PM Ed Wilson Powershell Best Practices
1:55 PM 2:40 PM MP Authoring Resource Kit
2:45 PM 3:40 PM What is SCUP and How Do I Use It?
3:35 PM 4:00 PM Closing

PRESENTER BIOGRAPHIES

Steve Bucci
Steve is a Senior Support Engineer with Microsoft System Center Support in Charlotte, NC. He supports Application Virtualization (App-V), Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), and Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). He has worked for Microsoft for the past 8 years.

Brian Shaw
Brian has been with Microsoft the past 2.5 years and is currently holding the position of Senior Support Escalation Engineer supporting SMS, Configuration Manager (SCCM), and WSUS. Brian has been supporting SMS for well over 10 years, starting with SMS 1.2. Brian is currently the CSS Beta Engineer supporting the development and release of SCCM R3.

Ed Wilson
Ed is a senior consultant at Microsoft and a well-known scripting expert. He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer who delivers popular scripting, networking, and administration workshops to Microsoft employees and customers worldwide. He’s written several books on Windows scripting, including Microsoft Windows Powershell Scripting Guide, Microsoft Windows Scripting Self-Paced Learning Guide, and Microsoft VBScript Step by Step. Ed holds more than 20 industry certifications, including MCSE and CISSP.

Cory Delamarter
[Unavailable at this time.]

Jason Lewis
Jason is a Program Manager on the System Center Configuration Management SE Team at Microsoft. He’s been with the team for over 5 years working on products such as Systems Management Server 2003 SP2 and R2, including the Custom Updates Publishing Tool (CUPT), Inventory Tool for Custom Updates (ITCU), System Center Updates Publisher (SCUP), and Configuration Manager 2007 R2. Jason also authors a blog at http://blogs.technet.com/jasonlewis where he covers products that he’s working on including “FYI” and “How To” topics.

Thank you for your continued support!

Scott Moss
Microsoft MVP (Operations Manager)
Vice President Atlanta SMUG http://www.atlsmug.org
President System Center Virtual user Group http://systemcenterusergroup.org

Articles: Managing VMware Environments in Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:27:51 GMT

Full Article below:

Articles: SCVMM 2008 R2 w/ Windows Server 2008 R2 and LiveMigration

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:48:26 GMT

Presentation at AtlSMUG during our October 2009 meeting.

Articles: VMWorld Comments

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:31:55 GMT

Listening to a youtube video recap of day 3 at VMWorld was rather dissappointing (http://www.youtube.com/user/SystemCenterTeam). Instead of focusing on sharing Microsoft's vision of where hyper-v / SCVMM fits into the cloud, I listened to how in Microsoft's opinion VMWare didn't have a vision.

This to me reminds me of a dirty, mud slinging politican campaign technique. It would be nice to see vendors take the higher road and talk about what their own vision is and how it ties into the plans of the enterprise now and in the future as opposed to bashing their competitors.

Articles: Running High-Privileged application in a Low-Privileged environment

Tue, 26 May 2009 06:07:39 GMT

Running High-Privileged application in a Low-Privileged environment

As you all know, the new security issue that everyone is talking about is removing the users form the local administrators group.

The reasons to the users being in the admin group is mostly historical, maybe a former sys admin that did want to bothered with permission problems, or maybe a legacy application that need that.

The reason doesn’t really matter, but after you remove the users from the group you realize that you do need them there because you need to run things like a script with local admin rights, a legacy application that needs write permissions to “windows\temp” etc.

Method 1:

To solve it you may all went to the well known command “runas”. This command is very nice but you cannot save the password in a general way and you need to type it in the command when you execute it.

Method 2:

A second method that I found was using a free tool called ”Sanur”, the tool 'pipes' a password into the Windows 2000/XP/2003 Runas utility. The problem with it that the password is not encrypted and you need to write the password in a clear text in the script.
I found a way to help minimize the problem by writing the password in the parameters window in the GPO section of the running scripts. This way you can write the script with a %1 as you password.

Still the tool is very limited and fairly unsecure.

The tool can be found here: http://www.commandline.co.uk/sanur_unsupported/index.html

Method 3:

A third method is a tool called “lsrunase“ this tool is not freeware and gives you the ability to encrypt the password.

My only problem with this tool that when you get the encrypted password its good as the real one, you don’t have to know it – just use it.

Link to lsrunase : http://www.moernaut.com/default.aspx?item=lsrunase

Method 4:

My choice for this issue is a small freeware tool called RunAsGUI from SmartX.

This tool is the most secure and easy to use; first of all you can use it in a script or as a link to a legacy application (no more DOS screens before execution).

Second, it comes with a wizard to help you create the command line you need.

Most of all it is secured! If you decide to save an administrative account password to the RAG file (the propriety file type for the saved credentials) you need to provide a command to execute also, which means that only the command you want will be executed with the elevated account privileges.

The best thing, this tool is free.

Link to RunAsGUI: http://www.smart-x.com/?CategoryID=223&ArticleID=181

I just finished a distribution of an application upgrade on remote laptops when the laptops are not joined to the domain and the user is a very restricted. I did it with RunAsGUI...