System Center 2012, SCCM part 1

Phuh! This easter has been alot to do, reading for my MCP exam and setting up my new home lab enviroment. So far I have setup most of the servers, they consist of:
1: AD + DNS
2:  SQL w/Reporting Services
3: SCCM w/DP, MP, Application web site point, PXE role, Reporting point (all in one)
4: SCVMM Management + Self Service Portal
5: SCOM w/Management Server
6: SCSM

So im going to start with the innstallation of SCCM 2012. I presume that you have a basic understanding of what SCCM is, if not I suggest heading over to Microsoft -> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/configuration-manager-2012.aspx In short it is a system management framework, used to manage computers (Software deployment, patching, OSD, AV, Baselines and compliance, reporting ++++ )
Before we start with the installation be sure to check that you have either of these versions of SQL server installed.

• SQL Server 2008 SP2 with Cumulative Update 9
• SQL Server 2008 SP3 with Cumulative Update 4
• SQL Server 2008 R2 with SP1 and Cumulative Update 4
• The instance of SQL Server in use at each site must use the following collation: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
  

To check what version of SQL server you have installed start SMSS, and then click About on the Help menu.

You can download the SCCM 2012 RC from here http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/configuration-manager-2012-trial.aspx

Choose Container from the options,

click Next and enter System Management as the value.

Click Next and Finish .Open Active Directory Users and Computers. Click on view, select Advanced Features.Select the System Management Container, and right click it, choose All Tasks and Delegate Control

When the Welcome to Delegation of Control Wizard appears click next, then click Add. click on Object Types, select Computers. Type in your SCCM server name and click on Check Names (It my case my server name is SCCM (I changed it later to configmgr) so therefore enter the name of your server here)

Click Ok, then Next. Choose Create a Custom Task to Delegate, click next, make sure This folder, existing objects in this folder and creation of new objects in this folder is selected.
click next, select the 3 permissions General, Property-Specific and Creation-deletion of specific child objectsare selected then place a check mark in FULL CONTROL, and click next then Finish.
If you don’t do this, you will recive some errors from the SCCM server and the agents  (Since by default SCCM tries to publish its information to AD)
Next we need to extended the AD schema, do this on your Active Directory server as well, browse the network to your sccm server \sccmisodrive$ and locate the folder where you uncompressed SCCM 2012 and find SMSSetupBinx64Extadsch.exe, right click and choose Run As Administrator,

  after you have done this there will be generated a log file on your c: ExtADSch.log so please check this for error before continuing, if it is successful it should look like this.

Now when you start the wizard, you have the option to download the prerequisites,  I suggest you start by download those to a local folder on the server since we need them later in the setup. 

After they are downloaded continue with the install.

Since this is a new install, We choose the Install a Configuration Manager primary site (The other option, install Configuration Manager Central administration site also known as a CAS is used to centrally manage multiple CM sites. more on that later)

Since I don’t have a product key I choose evaluation

Accept the license terms

Accept more license terms

Browse the path to the previous downloaded prerequisites

I choose english here

Same here

Here we enter a site code, which consists of 3 letters, this site code is used as a boundary so the clients know that when it belongs to that particular site it should contact these servers. Much like when you live in Oslo, you know that you need to contact the local police station in case something happens 🙂
In the site name just type something relevant, this information will also appear in the application web portal we are going to install later.

Next I choose, install the primary site as a standalone site ( Since this is a singel domain )

Now enter the name of the SQL server (Need to make sure that port 1433, and 4022 is open in order for it to work ) (Also you need to give the computer account administrative access on the SQL server and on the server you are installing SCCM on. )

review the SMS provider settings,

Client computer communication settings, select Configure the Communication method on each site system, since I don’t have a Root CA I need to choose http,

Next I choose to install a Management Point & Distribution Point on this site, that will communicate via http

Now you get the summary screen just doublecheck that this is correct and continue,

Next, now its going to check the prerequisites.  This consists of checking if the server has rights to publish information to AD, if the AD schema is populated with the new SCCM schema, if the SQL server is responding, if WSUS and/or AIK (You don’t need to have these installed since you might be using some other solution for patch management, so these will just give you a warning if you don’t have it installed) + some more. You can check the setup log file on C: drive and you can see what checks the setup does.

In my case I forgot to install WSUS, and I forgot to give the server administrative rights on the server, so I need to fix that before we continue (As you can see, we can’t continue until we fixed the problems that are listed as critical, you can have multiple warnings but still continue with the install )

Now that I’ve the previous steps, we only got some warning messages, So I continue with the installation (Since my SQL server is running on a low specced Virtual machine I get those error messages)

Voila, installation if complete, if I check in Active Directory now you can see that it has automaticly published information about that site.

PS: IF something went wrong during the installation doublecheck the log C:ConfigMgrSetup.log it might contain information what went wrong.
In case you might want to install cmtrace which is a log viewing tool which resides on the installation media of configmgr under Tools.

Now I can open the console so we can continue with the configuration, so stay tuned for part 2 of this SCCM blogathon.