Today I received an email that made my year!

I was awarded System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP by Microsoft.

Here is the email I received:

Dear Steve Buchanan,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2012 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management technical communities during the past year.

I want to give thanks to God first for all achievements are only possible through him. I also want to give a big thanks to the System Center MVP’s especially Islam Gomaa, Robert Hedblom, Yegor Startsev, and Mike Resseler. I am glad to be joining my friends.

Also thanks to Cluster MVP Russ Kauffman and SharePoint MVP Ben Curry for being inspirations.

I also want to thank Microsoft and the System Center community.

There is a new book on Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager coming soon.

This book will cover the following:

• Install SQL before considering System Center 2012 Configuration Manager
• Set up security so administrators can’t see or touch each other’s machines
• Use the new System Center 2012 Configuration Manager features to set up monthly patching
• Create applications, deploy them, enforce them, and monitor them
• Create Security Baselines and Monitor Drift
• Use Compliance Settings instead of Hardware or Software Inventory
• Set up Discovery and Inventory with the least impact to the network
• Install SRS and edit the canned reports
• Flatten your hierarchy to get faster reporting back from your clients
• Deploy Windows 7 to your workstations
• Manage drivers for your images
• Leverage boundary groups to save you work

It is being authored by Brian Mason and Greg Ramsey. Brian Mason is the president of the Minnesota System Center User Group, a Microsoft Configuration Manager MVP, and manages 350,000 clients for Wells Fargo using SCCM.

Greg Ramsey specializes in systems management for Dell Services, is a Microsoft Configuration Manager MVP,  author of  2 previous books on SMS and is cofounder of the Ohio SMS Users Group.  These two know their stuff and I am sure have put together an awesome book.

Visit Brian's blog here:

http://mnscug.org/blogs/brian-mason

Visit Greg’s blog here:

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/gramsey/default.aspx

Links to more info about the book here:

http://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-system-center-2012-configuration-manager-administration-cookbook/book

Problem:

You want to change or have already changed the DPM SQL Reporting Services account password DPMR$<DPMSERVERNAME> after initial install of DPM.

Now when you try to access DPM reports you get this error:

An error has occurred during report processing. (rsProcessingAborted)

Cannot impersonate user for data source ‘DLS’. (rsErrorImpersonatingUser)

Log on failed. Ensure the user name and password are correct. (rsLogonFailed)

Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password

Solution:

You need to modify the DPMR$<DPMSERVERNAME> password in SSRS also.

To do this go to:

http://DPMSERVERNAME/Reports_MSDPM2012>

Click on the DPM Reports folder

Then click on the DPMReporterDataSource object

Update the password for the account under "Credentials stored securely in the report server"

Click "Test Connection" to make sure it is working. Once confirmed click "Apply".

Now Reports should work again.

Recently I had to deploy System Center Endpoint Protection (SCEP). SCEP was not installing on clients. I knew I would run into problems because Symantec Endpoint Protection was on these clients and there was a password required to uninstall it. Sure enough the require uninstall password was causing the issue. Here are the details:

From the EP log on the client:

%systemdrive%\WINDOWS\CCM\Logs\EndpointProtectionAgent.log
Failed to install endpoint protection client with exit code = 0x8004ff67.

And

Detail error message is : [EppSetupResult]
HRESULT=0x8004FF67 Description=System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection installation error. The System Center Endpoint Protection Setup wizard was unable to remove one or more programs that conflict with System Center Endpoint Protection. To install System Center Endpoint Protection you must manually uninstall the following programs and then run the wizard again. Error code:0×80041108. Programs: Symantec Endpoint Protection LiveUpdate 3.3 (Symantec Corporation)

I performed a manual install of SCEP just to see what would happen.

Here is the resulting error when it came time to remove Symantec Endpoint Protection.

Manually uninstalling Symantec Endpoint Protection on 10,000 clients was not an option. Here is what I had to do to get past this.

I had to create a batch file that performed the following steps.

• Change to the Symantec directory.
• Stop the Symantec client service while inserting the password.
• Delete two Symantec registry keys.
• Change to the local ccmsetup directory.
• Kick off the System Center Endpoint Protection Install.

I placed my batch file in the packages directory on the SCCM server and pushed it out via software deployment to the clients. This is what was in my batch file:

cd C:\Program Files\Symantec\Symantec Endpoint Protection
smc -p YOURPASSWORDHERE -stop
regedit.exe /s \\SERVERNAME\SHARENAME\removesymantecep.reg
cd C:\Windows\ccmsetup
SCEPInstall.exe /s

NOTE: The default password for Symantec Endpoint Protection is symantec.

In the registry file add “-“ after  “=” on these two keys
"smc_exit_test" and "SmcInstData"

They should look like this:

"smc_exit_test"=-
"SmcInstData"=-

The registry path to these keys is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\Symantec Endpoint Protection\SMC

Once this went out to the clients it was a smooth uninstall of Symantec and a smooth install of System Center Endpoint Protection without bothering the end user or rebooting the client PC.