Book Image

Troubleshooting System Center Configuration Manager

By : Gerry Hampson
Book Image

Troubleshooting System Center Configuration Manager

By: Gerry Hampson

Overview of this book

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager is the most popular enterprise client management solution in the world with some of the best features available. Troubleshooting this product, however, is not always as simple as you might want, not least getting to know the hundreds of log files and understanding how the various components work. The book starts with discussing the most commonly used tools for troubleshooting the variety of problems that can be seen in Configuration Manager. It then moves to providing a high level view of the available log files, their locations, what they relate to and what they typically contain. Next, we will look at how we can fully utilize and extend all the available information from the console monitoring pane through to the status messages and down into error logging with some further reaches into WMI, SQL, registry and the file structure. You will then learn what the common error codes mean, how to make sense of the less common ones and what they actually mean with respect to Configuration Manager. Further to this, you will pick up widely acknowledged best practices both from a proactive stance when carrying out your daily administrative tasks and also from a reactive position when the green lights start to turn red right down to a complete failure situation. By the end of the book, you will be competent enough to identify and diagnose the root causes of System Center Configuration Manager administration issues and resolving them.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Troubleshooting System Center Configuration Manager
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
2
Configuration Manager Monitoring Workspace and Log Files
Index

Common problems


It is always difficult writing a book on troubleshooting as there is no way to list every possible error that could be seen and how to resolve it. Particularly in a product such as Configuration Manager that incorporates many dependencies outside of the core applications and is often well distributed, it simply would not be feasible. We can, however, cover some of the more frequently occurring problems and error messages based on both my own and others' experiences with the product.

External factors

First of all, we should get this sometimes obvious hurdle out of the way—external factors. So often it has been seen that outside influences put heed to successful operations where Configuration Manager itself is not actually at fault. Due to the level of logging available in Configuration Manager, people are often led down blind alleys without considering the basics. Can the client actually see the server and vice versa? In these times of increased IT security, we should ensure...