Configuraiton Manager Beta 2 has been out a few months by now. Most of you have already seen or performed a testdrive of the beta 2 version. Next public relelase will be the release candidat. Some of the changes you can expect to see is described below. As the product is still in beta, all information in this post is subject to change and NO, I do not know anything about a release date.
Setup
- Improved multi-lingual support, during setup you will be prompted for additional languages you wish to install. Those are languages for the console and also for the clients.
- Secondary site added content routing giving you are better control of the route being used when deploying content to secondary sites.
- SQL Configuration Options har changed, you now can specify Ports and Instance names
- MP Replica support addedjust like in CM07
Console Changes
- Administration Workspace and Assets and Compliance workspace switches place.
- Searching via dates, x number of days
- Reports will be grouped as in CM07
- Role Based Administration for reports. Example, Application administrators will only see reports that are available for the Application administrator.
- You can use BROWSE when adding users – WOW, no more NT 4.0
But not only can you browse, you can also verify that the account works in your environment. For client push you can connect to admin$ on a host pc in your environment while you are adding the account – so cool!
Application catalog & Software Center
- Application catalog now allows you to modify the color scheme.
- Software Center, UI changes filter – drop down like in CM07
- Show/hide optional deployment
- Update Catalog tables on a schedule
Monitoring
- Mail subscriptions on Alerts
Discovery
- Computer discovery introduces Stale computer filtering. You can filter system that are not active in Active Direcotry based on password change and/or lasted logons.
- IP subnets becomes IP address ranges.
- AD forest discovery will create IP ranges instead of IPsubnets.
- System Group Discovery is removed. (OU, Nested group is now part of AD system discovery)
- Security group discovery is renamed to Group Discovery
- Delta discovery will find group changes even on existing objects. Removal from a group will also be part of the discovery process.
- Domain functional level must be Windows 2003 or higher
Client Settings
- Client agent settings can be imported/exported
Settings Management
- Baseline remediation’s can now be limited to maintenance windows.
- Baselines can generate OpsMgr. Alerts
- Create dynamic collection from baseline compliance
Client Health
- Check now checks for 21 settings.
- Automatic remediation can be turned off in registry on the client
- Client health state is now real time data
Remote control
- Disabled by default
- Remote control viewer shortcut in the ConfigMgr. program group
- Added support for Windows 7 SP1 etc.
great stuff, can wait for RC!
I’m not seeing anything on Powershell cmdlets that ship with the product, do you know if there are any or is Powershell support limited to examples in the SDK?
Hi Kent
Excellent info, thanks, do you know if sccm 2012 supports clients with linux or aix? or if this is considerated in a near future for sccm
thanks in advance
@Luis, Yes crossplatform support is one of the new features of CM2012. There will be support for some UNIX/LINUX versions. It was revealed during a MMS session in Vegas ealier this year
Great!!!!! thanks
Hello Kent
I know you did not cover software updates in this post. I would like to ask if you have heard if they are going add back the ability to have sub collections. I have be using the Article that was written by Chris Stauffer. I have divided my deployment over a 4 week schedule with sub collections under each week. I have about 35 to 40 collections that are sub collections. I have asked this question of our TAM and our other contact at Microsoft and no one can give me an answer. If they do add this feature back to you have any ideas on how to get around this issue.
Thanks for any help you can offer.
@Steve I’m pretty sure we will not see subcollections being added to RTM. What you should consider, is creating a new collection (your old “top collection”) and then add Include collection rules. This way you still only have one collection for your deployment.
Kent
Thank you for the reply. I just have one more question since I do not have a big test lab and do not have to many clients I can’t test this so hopefully you can answer. When I add a collection using the include collection rule will the collection I add maintain it’s maintenance window information that was set on it? Or will it get that information from the parent collection. Thanks for all your help you have pointed me in different direction then I was thinking about.
Steve