Kent and Secunia

Written by Brian Mason.

Yes, we recently had Secunia to our group, but they didn't do a full session. If you are interested and if you just can't get enough of Kent, here's where you can get more. Online. Free!

 

Managing Third Party Updates with Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager Monday, May 13, 2013 1:00pm CST Sign Up Today: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/8113/74379

Kent Agerlund, Coretech, Configuration Manager MVP, Microsoft Certified Trainer and Senior Consultant

During this 45 minute webinar, Kent Agerlund will provide you with tips and tricks to solve the daily challenges around patching your environment with Microsoft and non-Microsoft updates. You will learn how to design and configure a software update solution that will be easy to manage, yet powerful enough to maintain your server and desktop environment. Lastly, he will go through how you can patch 3rd party applications in SCCM and his key learning's on how to manage common challenges in this area.

MNSCUG May 2013 Meeting

Written by Brian Mason.

Our next MN System Center User Group meeting will be Thursday, May 16th from 4:30pm - 7:15pm at Microsoft's new Edina HQ building - 6th Floor, Lake of the Woods.

This month's sessions will cover Orchestrator and a MMS session review.

System Center Orchestrator and Self Service Portals

Ben Schreiber (General Mills) will be covering a self-service portal using Service Manager, SharePoint, and Orchestrator.

  • Create DFS shares w/security and permissions using SharePoint and Orchestrator
  • Update a VMware virtual server's hardware, tools, and hot-swap options using Service Manager, SCCM, and Orchestrator.
  • Add CPU using Service Manager and Orchestrator.
  • Add memory using Service Manager and Orchestrator.
  • Expand an existing VM disk using Service Manager and Orchestrator. (this was cool because we had to match up the windows drive letter with the VMware drive number)
  • Orchestrator QA

MMS Overview

  • User driven discussion on highlights from MMS.
  • Review my 10 top session picks.
  • Group Q and A

Eventbrite - MNSCUG May 2013 Meeting

NowMicro is sponsoring this month. We will have Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Cookbook give away for the best question during the Orchestrator session as well as some swag from MMS 2013.

February 2013 Meeting

Written by Brian Mason.

Our next MN System Center User Group meeting will be Wednesday, February 27th. from 4:30pm - 7:15pm at Microsoft's new Edina HQ building - 6th Floor, Lake of the Woods.

 

On deck:

Data & Reporting & More by #2 John Nelson

If there's data that's inside SCCM and you want it out, this is the session to attend.

  • We'll show you how to setup your own theme-based SRS reporting system (hint: it's easy, and the work is already done for you).
  • We'll show you some cool examples of fancy SRS reports to show you some of the advanced things it can do. We'll show you how to get just about any piece of data out of SCCM.
  • We'll even show you some of the new features of BDNA's Normalize for CM integration.This is the result of this user group's feedback to them. A few years ago they came to MNSCUG and showed their product. We gave them some pointed feedback on how they could make it better and they responded. Their Normalize for CM is the result of that feedback. We can go into as little or as much of that as there is interest to see it.
  • Come with questions and with stumpers, if there's ever anything SQL or reporting wise that you've wondered about or want to know how to do, bring those problems and we'll work through them.

BDNA is sponsoring food and drink, but please register to help us with attendance via ClickToAttend.

 

If time permits, our MS rep, Betty-Jo Wilson is asking if we'd like info on Cloud DPs. I've always told MS no dice to this sort of thing since we have no pricing on it. But guess what, we finally have some clue on that now. If we don't make it to this topic, at least you can check out the link if you're interested.

March 2013 Meeting - 2nd Session is Pete Zerger!

Written by Brian Mason.

Update!

Kent and Brian are speaking at the 1st hour of the March MNSCUG Meeting.

We just finalized the 2nd speaker and it's none other than Pete Zerger!

Infront Consulting Group
Managing Principal Consultant
Pete is a consultant, author, speaker and Microsoft MVP focusing on System Center management, private cloud and data center automation solutions. He is a frequent speaker at Microsoft conferences and has written a number of books and articles on System Center technologies.

So for the 2nd hour of our meeting on Wednesday evening:

Title: Connecting Enterprise Systems with Orchestrator
Abstract: In this demo-driven session, we'll visit use case scenarios for orchestration interacting with enterprise Systems such as Active Directory, Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and Configuration Manager

Happy to let the discussion drift in one direction or the next based on the groups interests.

Upcoming Meeting and special offer

Written by Brian Mason.

We have Kent Agerlund coming back in March. Kent is in town doing another Mastering System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (SP1) class. These are simply the best CM12 classes you can take. And here's the best part:

MNSCUG members can get $250 off this 4-day course by sending an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Register for the class here.

The class will be held in the New Horizon's building in Eagan.

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