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

Client installation


Initially, we will briefly cover a section on installing the client. It seems almost too obvious, but quite often people experience problems with Configuration Manager clients only to later find out they installed it with incorrect parameters. This is particularly pertinent when dealing with HTTPS communication as the addition of certificates into anything often seems to send people into a world of confusion. To recap, we have a number of methods available when installing the Configuration Manager client. Some of the methods are as follows:

  • Client push

  • Manual installation

  • Group policy installation

  • Logon script

  • Software update point installation

  • Client upgrade

Keeping it simple, we have only one installer we can use, but two installation files available. These are CCMSetup.exe and Client.msi. Effectively, CCMSetup.exe calls the Client.msi file during installation, but each method has its own installation parameters and this often causes confusion among Configuration Manager administrators...