MiSCUG – Using Power BI to Report OS Deployment Stats

On 11 January 2019 I had the privilege to speak at the Michigan System Center Users Group meeting on the topic of using Power BI to report your OSD build stats.  This is a companion post to that presentation.

This is an update to my original post ( here ) on how to gather and present statistics on your build sequences.  I’ve taken what I’ve learned since that original post and have expanded the process to handle not only an OSD “build” but also a WaaS CompatScan or In-Place Upgrade, or any other Task Sequence.

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Nested Task Sequence Mapper

I’ve been looking for a simple way to identify and map out the nested task sequences.  This is the first part of a project that I’m working on.  The goal of the overall project is to duplicate an entire task sequence “suite” of the parent and all nested sequences, and then update all the nested references.

Automating Windows 10 Servicing

[6-Jul-2018: Updated Script to v 1.2 – New .NET 3.5.1 install command (per Mike Horton @mikeh36)]

After attending MMS one of the items that I put on my “Post-MMS To Do” list was to patch my OS Upgrade package source the proper way.  I don’t want to do it manually, nobody does, so I set out to learn exactly how to do it right and script it.

That where Mike Terrill and Johan Arwidmark come in.

So your boss is going to want stats for your OSD sequence? [Part 1 – Data Gathering]

How to provide hard statistics on your build sequences.

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A while back my boss gave me two goals for our OS deployments; 1) he set a target for 90% successful builds and 2) build times as close to 1 hour as possible.  Okay, getting there is one thing, but how do I report on that?

Enabling BranchCache with Configuration Manager

Last week I wrote a post about setting up Windows PE Peer Caching.  One of the limitations of that feature is that it only works within the Windows PE portion of a build task sequence.  Once in the full OS or for deployments to established clients Peer Caching is unavailable.

Phil Wilcock, co-founder of 2Pint Software, commented and pointed out that you could use Peer Caching for getting the OS deployed and then use BranchCache within the full OS.

Now, I’ll be honest here.  I understand the “textbook” when it comes to BranchCache but I had never actually set it up.  It always seemed to fall under the, “One day I’m going to have to give that a try.”  Well that day is today.  This post will get BranchCache working with Configuration Manager.  Once that is done my next step will be getting 2Pint’s BranchCache for OSD up and running.

“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

ConfigMgr Current Branch–Windows PE Peer Caching

What is Windows PE Peer Caching?

Windows PE Peer Caching was a feature added in Configuration Manager Technical Preview 2.  During an OS deployment, it allows a machine being built to pull content from other systems on the local subnet (its peers) as opposed to going across a potentially slow WAN connection.  It is quite simply a peer-to-peer network of content providers.  This is similar functionality to 1E’s NomadBranch and 2Pint’s BranchCache for OSD Toolkit.

Creating Your Own Personal Hydration Solution – Part 4: Configuration Manager Infrastructure

Part 0 Introduction
Part 1 Setting Up
Part 2 First VM – Windows Router
Part 3 Domain Controller
Part 4 Configuration Manager Infrastructure

Configuration Manager 1511

After completing the first three parts of this series you would have a virtual lab with 4 separate network segments all connected to and routed through a Windows 2012 R2 server (RTR01) acting as the router. This server will also provide Internet access to any virtual machines that are connected to the 4 network segments.  You also would have an Active Directory domain controller (DC01) that provides DHCP and DNS services to the lab.

In Part 4 we are going to build out a Configuration Manager 1511 infrastructure.  This will include a Primary site server (CM16) and 2 Distribution Points (DP16a & DP16b).

Creating Your Own Personal Hydration Solution – Part 1: Setting Up

Part 0	Introduction
Part 1	Setting Up
Part 2	First VM – Windows Router
Part 3	Domain Controller
Part 4	Configuration  Manager Infrastructure

In this first installment we’ll work on getting the foundation set for building up the lab.  We’ll configure the virtual networks, the host networking and get our MDT environment installed and configured.  We are going to use a number of tricks that I’ve learned from others.

[This is going to be a long one.]

Creating Your Own Personal Hydration Solution: Introduction

Setting up a lab can be a pretty time consuming project.  A number of people, myself included, have created various hydration kits in an attempt to make it easier.  One thing that they many have in common is that they use the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) to generate a large build ISO to be used for building each virtual machine.

Using an MDT build ISO has both advantages and disadvantages.  It is portable.  It is simple. But it takes massive amounts of disk space and changes are very time consuming.

PowerShell – Archive all Task Sequences to XML with Index

We’ve amassed a very large number of task sequences since migrating to Configuration Manager 2012 and it got me thinking about ways to archive off older sequences so that we can clean house.  So I came up with this script.

The script will first collect all of the task sequences in your site.  Next it will enumerate through them, write the sequence to an XML named after the task sequence ID and finally create a CSV index of the TSID, task sequence name, the last modified date of the sequence and when the sequence was backed up.