Today I was playing around on some machines on which I noticed the Power Plans were set incorrect, Balanced on a server :'( Now of course I can do this manually, or I can use PowerShell instead! Tools not scriptsSince I want to use this more often and want to create my own “toolbelt” [aka module with common tools], I’ve decided to make the solution as advanced functions, not just scripts.

A quick post this time about something that might be helpful for others, something that saves me from typing too much 🙂 I’ve noticed over the last week that I’ve been doing various remoting commands through Invoke-Command to the same machines, which require additional credentials to access. Why re-type something when you can automate it 🙂 BeforeI used to have to do the following: 1 2 3 4 5 $SCCMServers = 'CM01.

As you might have noticed, I’m having fun playing around with SCCM lately and have really noticed that PowerShell is king here. While the application has great potential, I personally feel that the GUI is lacking functionality which you can only obtain through PowerShell. Of course this isn’t a problem, merely a challenge in some cases, but I feel that they could’ve stepped up a bit. It at least explains why I see so many SCCM admins playing around with PowerShell.

I’m in the finishing stages of a new SCCM deployment, but also in the process of an Active Directory consolidation at the moment, and ran in to the following issue: A machine from Domain A has been re-imaged using SCCM to run in Domain B. SCCM has a Device Collection X for Domain A and Device Collection Y for Domain B. Device Collection Y has a Deployment for a specific VPN Application that’s required, otherwise it won’t run.

New toys!As mentioned before, I’ve recently started a new assignment, one that required me to design and roll out a System Center Configuration Manager solution for 4 locations. While that wasn’t too difficult and the configuration was quite straightforward [thanks to my friends at Manning and Google], the biggest challenge came when creating packages to deploy. Luckily I was quite familiar with packaging and .MSI editing due to various MDT configurations I had made, but the latest “Current Branch” version of SCCM has “Applications”, which are smart packages [pieces of software] which you can deploy, but also uninstall if you want.

OK, so I’m at my new job and for the first time in years, I have to deal with proxy servers again… Since I’m used to having full admin rights on my machine and unrestricted internet, this was somewhat of a shock, while perfect for my productivity as well 😛 Unfortunately for them, I have since been informed that a special IT proxy is available, which provides this access, hence me being able to update my site again 🙂