Chris's Blog - Just weedin around Microsoft

Configuration Manager 2012: Package Conversion Manager 2.0 Released

The System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 released today and widely available.  With this release,...

Author: ChrAd Date: 01/15/2013

ConfigMgr 2012 PCM: Walking through PCM Plug-In capabilities

In the complicated and dynamic world of applications, Enterprises continued to find unique and...

Author: ChrAd Date: 09/12/2012

Introducing Package Conversion Manager (PCM) 2.0 Beta: ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 Support

As I’ve outlined in the past, System Center Configuration Manager 2012 and Package Conversion...

Author: ChrAd Date: 09/11/2012

Introducing User-Driven Install (UDI) for MDT 2012 Update 1

Our engineering team has had an amazing journey this past year with two key releases to help our...

Author: ChrAd Date: 08/21/2012

Disaster: Sector “0” Blanked for Cluster CSV, VMM Incomplete Configuration

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of living through a living hell whereby I was wondering what...

Author: ChrAd Date: 08/06/2012

Extending User-Driven Installation (UDI) in MDT 2012

A key pillar in our rebuilt User-driven installation for MDT 2012 was to remove the monolithic...

Author: ChrAd Date: 08/03/2012

Learning MDT 2012’s User-Driven Installation (UDI)

After spending a lot of time talking to customers after we integrated code-name “Modena” into the...

Author: ChrAd Date: 07/26/2012

MDT 2012 User Driven Installation (UDI) Drill-down at MMS 2012

I’ve arrived.  The wheels are down here in Las Vegas and I’m getting pretty excited.  I’m...

Author: ChrAd Date: 04/16/2012

MMS 2012: 1 Session & 100’s of Customers Conversations

It’s that time of the year!  The Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) has moved back to its...

Author: ChrAd Date: 03/13/2012

Upgrading to Windows 8 Consumer Preview Just Got Easier–Using VHD Tools to P2V

As you already know, Windows 8 Consumer Preview hit the market just over a week ago.  The 1...

Author: ChrAd Date: 03/12/2012

Introducing Package Conversion Manager (PCM) Scheduled Package Analyzer

In Package Conversion Manager (PCM) RC2, we added a feature called Scheduled Package Analyzer (SPA)...

Author: ChrAd Date: 01/19/2012

Provisioning your Private Cloud in VMM 2012–Getting Started 101

In our group, we have several highly-available sets of clusters that service various needs.  We...

Author: ChrAd Date: 01/16/2012

VMM 2012: How I got EMC Clariion AX4-5 Working with VMM Storage Mgmt Service

As I’ve started exploring System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012, the first task I took as...

Author: ChrAd Date: 11/20/2011

Using Package Conversion Manager (PCMs) Fix & Convert–Moving Manual Readiness Packages

In today’s post, I wanted to take some time to outline to ConfigMgr administrators how to...

Author: ChrAd Date: 11/16/2011

MDT 2012 Beta 2–User-Driven Installation (UDI) Version 2

Since the release of MDT 2010 Update 1, our User-Driven Installation (UDI) engineering team has...

Author: ChrAd Date: 11/14/2011

ConfigMgr 2012: Package Conversion Manager (PCM) & Readiness State

In today’s post, I wanted to take a little bit of time to build a bit deeper on the underlying...

Author: ChrAd Date: 11/09/2011

ConfigMgr 2012: Introducing Package Conversion Manager (PCM) for Seamless Migration to AppModel

For the past 15 months, our engineering team has spent a great deal of time partnering with the...

Author: ChrAd Date: 11/07/2011

TFS 2010 RTM: Builds Fail with Library Mismatch - Windows Update Breaks TFS Build Services

We recently ran into a problem whereby all of our build definitions started failing, mysteriously....

Author: ChrAd Date: 10/10/2011

Changing Hyper-V Cluster Virtual IP Address (VIP) After Layer 3 Changes

We recently had a change take place in our engineering lab that included a large set of layer 3...

Author: ChrAd Date: 09/16/2011

VhdCapture & VhdPrep: Using these tools to P2V your physical server to USB, Network Share

In today’s post, I want to spend some time sharing how to use the virtualization tools that...

Author: ChrAd Date: 09/09/2011

Using WinPE Creator to Create Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) of your physical server

In the past two posts, I’ve focused on the first two capabilities provided in the Configuration...

Author: ChrAd Date: 09/01/2011

Creating Stand-alone Media to Deploy Windows Server 2008 that Captures Physical Host

The entire goal of the Configuration Manager Physical-to-Virtual Migration Toolkit is to, as I...

Author: ChrAd Date: 08/30/2011

Using ConfigMgr Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) Migration Toolkit’s “Action Pad” to build Task Sequence

  As I’ve previously discussed on my blog, our engineering team has partnered with two System...

Author: ChrAd Date: 07/31/2011

Making Agile Work for You in TFS 2010–MSDN Magazine June 2011

“Get an inside peek into internal Microsoft development practices as Chris Adams documents his...

Author: ChrAd Date: 06/11/2011

Enabling Hyper-V Role Successfully via Operating System Deployment Task Sequence

During a ask-the-experts at Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2011 in Las Vegas, a customer asked a...

Author: ChrAd Date: 05/01/2011

Soup to Nuts–Bare Metal Build-out of Cluster using EMC SAN, Brocade Fibre Switch, & Dell R610/R710’s

As is usual for many of my posts, I like to document things that become somewhat as a “reference”...

Author: ChrAd Date: 04/30/2011

MMS 2011: 2 Sessions, 1 State of the Union, and 100’s of Customers Conversations

I’ve landed.  My bags didn’t arrive so the first evening in Vegas was one of no relaxing. ...

Author: ChrAd Date: 03/20/2011

TaskList, TaskKill, Remote Machine, Spinning Process, and killing that runaway process! 2-steps!

I’ve been dealing with a “application” these days that is absolutely driving me...

Author: ChrAd Date: 02/16/2011

TFS 2010: MSF Agile vs. Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 Smackdown -- Planning w/ Agile (Part III)

In this final post for this series, I wanted to outline how Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 is alike and...

Author: ChrAd Date: 02/13/2011

TFS 2010: MSF Agile vs. Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 Smackdown– Planning w/ Agile (Part II)

In my earlier post, I focused on bringing to light that MSF Agile v5.0 vs. Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0...

Author: ChrAd Date: 02/10/2011

TFS 2010: MSF Agile vs. Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 Smackdown

With the introduction of the new Microsoft Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 template, software development...

Author: ChrAd Date: 02/06/2011

VMM 2008 R2: Hyper-V Host is in Perpetual “Pending” State & VMM Service Crashes

Recently, I was doing some Hyper-V physical hosts moving and I found that one Hyper-V host getting...

Author: ChrAd Date: 12/11/2010

TFS 2010 Burndown, Completed Work, and Remaining Work–“Zero” is the Magic Number

As the leader of your agile project, you’ve been tasked by management to keep your project running...

Author: ChrAd Date: 12/06/2010

TFS Work Item Manager Breaks when changing Iteration Dates when storing in settings in TFS

We recently ran into an issue when we were trying to add iterations, or change existing dates for an...

Author: ChrAd Date: 11/18/2010

TFS 2010: Scoping Assigned To field in Work Item Definition for a Project

If you are like us, we have a huge investment in Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 that includes...

Author: ChrAd Date: 10/20/2010

Error: VMM 2008 R2 Service Account Changes Not Supported without Uninstall

We recently did a slight shakeup of all our service accounts as our engineering lab that we use to...

Author: ChrAd Date: 08/28/2010

Deploying Windows 7 to Microsoft – Using User-driven install Whitepaper Released

The IT Showcase team at Microsoft who aims at sharing how Microsoft uses their own technology to...

Author: ChrAd Date: 08/17/2010

TFS 2010: Service Account Password Changes Breaks Excel Web Services, SSS, AppPools in MOSS

It’s ending summer here in the US and the heat is raging in the Pacific Northwest and with that...

Author: ChrAd Date: 08/16/2010

Using Telerik’s TFS Work Item Manager & Dashboard for Snapshot Views into Progress

As you know, our team spends a lot of time running software development projects such as the MDT...

Author: ChrAd Date: 08/13/2010

Soup to Nuts – TFS 2010 Agile Iteration Backlog Workbook utilized in the Real World

It seems that many people will get the first iteration backlog workbook working and then they will...

Author: ChrAd Date: 07/28/2010

TFS 2010 Dashboard Permissions when running in SharePoint Server 2010 – Layers & Layers of Security

As you may know, my engineering team migrated off of the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and over...

Author: ChrAd Date: 07/27/2010

TFS Dashboards in MOSS 2010 Return Access Denied for TfsOlapReport to End-Users

If you’ve decided to integrate your TFS 2010 infrastructure with Microsoft’s enterprise-ready...

Author: ChrAd Date: 07/21/2010

Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) – Extending a Volume

There are often times where you have a need to expand a LUN when running enterprise systems. ...

Author: ChrAd Date: 07/15/2010

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