Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, January 19, 2010--- Enhansoft Inc., a leading developer of System Center Configuration Manager solutions, was awarded Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status on January 15^th 2010. Holding the Systems Management competencies confirms Enhansoft’s commitment to Microsoft customers and technologies. 

 

Microsoft Gold Certified Partners have access to exclusive resources and early product information. The program includes direct access to Microsoft staff, product support, new products and technologies, and planning tools and events on the latest Microsoft product developments and future direction.

 

 “Our new partnership provides us greater access to the Microsoft System Center team. Our dedication to providing the best solutions and support in the industry has paid off. ”

 

Garth Jones

 

Chief Architect

 

 

 

About Enhansoft Inc.

 

Enhansoft, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, specializes in providing software solutions and consulting services within the system management area focusing on Microsoft System Center products. Maximize the potential of your systems, the productivity of the company workforce and, best of all, the impact on the bottom line.

 

 

 

Our products have a worldwide reputation for extending and enhancing Microsoft technologies by leveraging Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr / SCCM) & Systems Management Server (SMS) technologies to extend their asset information and reporting capabilities.

 

 

Enhansoft professional services bring together a deep product knowledge of system management focused on Microsoft System Center products.

 

 

Our Clients Benefit From:

 

Our Focus

 

We specialize in the system management area, focusing on Microsoft System Center products with an emphasis on asset management.

 

 

Our Experience

 

The team at Enhansoft combines real-world system management experience with high-level programming expertise to design software that is easy to implement and has an immediate impact on workload and company bottom line.

 

 

Our professional services team helps customers realize value within their system management environment. Many of our consultants have more than 10 years of experience within system management area, are leaders in their respective IT communities and user groups, and have presented at such conferences as Microsoft Management Summit, Techdays, and EnergizeIT.

 

 

Our Expertise

 

Our products and services are designed for ConfigMgr experts by ConfigMgr experts.

 

 

From global corporations to institutes of higher learning and public school systems, to global government agencies, Enhansoft has the software and expertise to help any organization realize the long-term efficiencies and cost savings associated with asset management. Our headquarters are located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada with remotes offices in Chicago, Illinois. We leverage hands-on experience, as well as client feedback to continually refine our products. We also work with a network of partners — including software resellers and consulting firms — who recommend our products, service and expertise to their own clients.

 

 

 

http://www.enhansoft.com/

The ConfigMgr Documentation script has been updated again.

One of the key items in this versions is updating the boundary list for ConfigMgr. This version has only be tested with ConfigMgr. So this might mean that boundaries will no longer be displayed if used on SMS server. With that in mind I have left the SMS 1.18 version on the Enhansoft site with the old boundary method enabled.

If you have any comments, questions or additions that you would like, please post those to the support forum

'History
'
'1.21 - Fixed Boundaries and make this version work for ConfigMgr only now!
'1.20 - interim release.
'1.19 - more var issues. Fix issue with the alt username and password. (Doh!)
'1.18 - Increased MaxCharacters 500 to fix Microsoft Cursor Engine: Multiple-step operation generated errors. Check each status value. issue.
'1.17 - Made sure that all vars are declared, added ECStr Function, update some of the debug code
'1.16 - Fixed anther issue with username and password. Add more debug mode code
'1.15 - Fixed issue with username and password.
'1.14 - Re-released
'1.13 - Fixed typos Thanks to Jim Dempsey for finding them
'1.12 - Add lots of conversion details such as 1/0 to True/False etc.
'1.11 - Added site control file refresh
'1.10 - Fully Add  schedule token decode and update
'1.09 - Added bit shifting functions
'1.08 - Add Decodetext schedule Token
'1.07 - Add Decodetext Function
'1.06 - Add Boundary, Agent setting (HW, SW, etc.)
'1.05 - Add Help, Added Command line options
'1.04 - Changed Default Font size from 12 to 10
'1.03 - Removed SQL Query for Web report, Added ReportID
'1.02 - Fixed Basic site info
'==========================================================

http://www.enhansoft.com/pages/downloads.aspx

Time and time again the question of “I need a report of all software for all PCs” is posted to the forums / mailing list / newsgroups and every time it is going to be used for a software audit.  This is an unrealistic request.  Some may ask why. So let us do some math.

Assumptions:

 

 

·        80 lines per page

·        Average of 186 entries within Add/Remove Programs.

·        Total site hierarchy of 10 000 clients

·        500 sheets of paper in a bundle

Math:

 

 

186/80 = 2.325 pages per PC

2.325 * 10000 PCs = 23250 pages for all software on all PCs! Or

46.5 bundles of paper!

 

 

 

Who will ever read this? No one! This is why this is an unrealistic request!

So why am I posting this blog post? The answer is simple; there are far too many people out there that need to know the basics of how to perform a software audit.

I’m lucky enough to work with an auditor and here are our guidelines on how to review your environment to help ensure that you understand your software licensing. These are high level guidelines only.

Before you even start you need to determine a few things:

What is the purpose of the audit? 

What is it you are trying to establish?

 

 

 

There is no point in moving forward if you don’t know what the goal is. For example:

·        Are you trying to determine if you are over licensed on MS Project?

·        Are you under licensed on SAP?

·        Are you trying to determine how well your purchasing controls are working?

·        Are you trying to get an idea as to your licensing status and this is the first phase of the project?

Doing an audit can be a huge project and should not be taken on without some planning.

 

 

 

1.      Understand your data

a.      Review your ConfigMgr settings

                                                    i.     Hardware Inventory setting

                                                   ii.     Delete Aged Data setting

                                                  iii.     SW metering rules

                                                  iv.     Etc.

b.      Review AD

                                                    i.     Are PCs removed from AD when the PCs are decommissioned?

c.      Are all PCs (including servers) within ConfigMgr?

d.      Do you have remote PCs?

                                                    i.     Laptops?

                                                   ii.     On average how often do they logon to the Network?

e.      Are you proactively reviewing your PCs data and resolving issues that arise?

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.      PC life cycle management

This might seem odd to talk about PC life cycle management but the answer is simple. If you install SW for a person doing a particular job and the person moves job what happened to the SW? Even worse what do you do when someone gets a new PC, do you install all the SW that existed on the old PC? Who reviews what SW is still needed by that user when they get a new PC?

a.      What is the PC replacement life cycle?

                                                    i.     How is SW transfer to the new PC?

b.      When a person changes job do they keep their PC?

                                                    i.     Is SW they don’t need removed?

 

 

 

3.      SW life cycle management

a.      Are you using old versions of SW?

b.      What policies are in place to upgrade old versions of SW?

c.      When a person changes job does anyone review what SW they have and why?

 

 

 

4.      Polices

a.      Determine if the users are Administrators on their PCs

b.      Determine if there is a SW procurement process

c.      How are exceptions to the SW procurement process handled

d.      When did management last review the SW procurement policies

e.      For Licensed Software

                                                    i.     How is SW licensing controlled?

                                                   ii.     Is it reviewed to ensure accuracy?

                                                  iii.     Are any PCs using SW that you can’t determine whether they are licensed for?

1.      Ask the user how they got the software (note that this is not the time determine blame)

                                                  iv.     Is SW Metering (SWM) enabled?

                                                   v.     Is someone reviewing the SWM data and is SW removed from a PC when it is no longer being used?

 

 

 

5.      Understand ConfigMgr

a.      How many sites do you have?

b.      What about PCs in your DMZ?

c.      Are you using IBCM or DirectConnect?

 

 

 

6.      Reporting data

a.      Print and review the “Count of Add/Remove Programs”

b.      Print and review the outliers

                                                    i.     PC with Maximum # of ARP

                                                   ii.     PC with Minimum # of ARP

c.      Based on the number of site and size of those sites, randomly select a statistically significant sample of PCs and print and compare the ARP to ConfigMgr data. About 100 PCs should be enough. If you can’t compare the ARP to ConfigMgr data for one of the 100 Random PCs, explain why not

d.      Create a report that shows the last Hardware Inventory date in ranges.

e.      Conclude how reliable the data is within the above reports

 

 

 

7.      Testing reliability of the data

a.      Of the 100 PCs randomly select 30 PCs and perform a full audit

                                                    i.     Compare what is within the ARP to what ConfigMgr says is within the ARP.

                                                   ii.     Compare the physical data about those PCs

1.      CPU

2.      RAM

3.      Hard drive size

                                                  iii.     If the data does not match, why not? Is it isolated, timing or consistent error issue in the larger population of data

                                                  iv.     If errors are judge to be timing or isolated, do you need to increase the number of PCs that need to be tested?

 

8.      Do the math

a.      Compare PC numbers in AD to ConfigMgr

b.      Compare PC numbers in ConfigMgr to AV console data

c.      Determine what % / range of clients are missing from ConfigMgr

d.      Determine what % of PC are Remote PCs

e.      Determine how often software is used based on SWM data

 

 

 

9.      Prepare report and recommendations

a.      What risks are there?

b.      What improvement can be made?

c.      What areas are under control?

d.      How can client service be improved?

 

 

 

10.   Schedule Follow up SW audit

a.      It does no good to do a one time audit; you need to compare the SW audit over time to determine are you getting better. 6-12 months is a good time frame

b.      Schedule a yearly review of all relevant policies

                                                    i.     SW procurement

                                                   ii.     HW procurement

                                                  iii.     Life Cycle Management

c.      Present findings to management

Now why is the above better than “I need a list of all SW on all PCs?” Well there are many reasons.

1.      This follows generally accepted audit standards

2.      The amount of paper used will be significantly reduced.

a.      100 PCs * 2.325 page = 232.5 pages

b.      For 10K PCs there will be about 80K unique entries within the ARP. This means about 1000 pages.

c.      In either case you will need to generate a report so there should be no difference there.

d.      Therefore 23,250 pages vs 1,233 pages! Or 94.7% less paper.

3.      And the most important reason, this is doable.

To participate in this public beta, please contact support@enhansoft.com, and we will send you the license key and link to the ENDD setup program. 

As a participant in this beta, you will receive a 4 month license for ENDD and will help shape future releases of ENDD.

 

 

During the beta program Enhansoft will send out surveys to participants to help guide us with future releases. Support can be obtained by posting issues within support forum http://support.enhansoft.com/Forum/ or by contacting support.

 

 

 

 

 

A quick overview of ENDD is below and attached is the latest ENDD documentation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enhanced Network Device Discovery (ENDD)

 

 

 

 

 

Enhance ConfigMgr / SMS asset management information with network devices such as Printers, Routers, Switches, and IP Phones.  ENDD augmented with SNMP can:

• Provide data such as make, model and serial number of each device
• Capture any SNMP data

   

  Sample output

 

 

 

 

 

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us.

 

Why does Monitor Information Reporting (MIR) v2 and below display more active monitors than the PC truly has?

This is what is called a false positive. There are many reasons why this occurs. The two most popular reason are when the OS has crashed and a new monitor replaces the original monitor or when the PC is imaged the active monitor flag does not always get cleared. 

How can I resolve this issue?

In MIR v3, a new feature has been added to help fix this issue. Launch MIR as an Administrator on the local PC, from the File menu and select Scrub, once the data has been scrubbed, reboot the PC to allow for the monitor data to be recreated. There is also a /Scrub command line switch that can be used by ConfigMgr to delete the display data. 

I don’t have MIR v3, how can I scrub the data from my PC?

For manual instruction on how to clean up monitor data, please see How to manually clean out the monitor data 

 

What are the 4 monitor power management options and what do they mean?

The 4 options are: 

Mode	Power	Approximate Recovery Time
On	100%	0 Second
Standby	< 80%	1 Second
Suspend	< 30W	5 Seconds
Active Off	< 8 W	20 Seconds

Why do I care about monitor power consumption?

There are many reasons why, but with all the discussion about “Green IT” let’s not forget that a PC is made up of two major parts:  CPU & Monitor. If we only look at the power consumption of a PC we might not be getting all the power savings available to you. What happens in many case is that the PC is shut down or Wake-on-LAN product is use to turn off a CPU, however the monitor is not shut off. 

Using a Dell 1901FP as an example we can see that the ON mode uses maximum 75W and typically 55W vs in Active off mode it uses less than 3W. If we assume that a PC is turn off for 14 hours a day then we can calculate that power saving by having a monitor that can enter into Active Off mode.  

With average cost per KW cost 9.13¢ according to the Energy Information Administration.  

55W-3W=52W

52Watts*14 hours = 728W savings or ~6.6¢ per PC/Day or $24.26/PC/Year 

Or IBM E74 Monitor

75W-2W=73W

73W*14Hours= 1022Watt or ~1KW or ~9.3¢ per PC/Day or $34.05/PC/Year 

Now this does not sound like a lot of money to be saved but what these numbers don’t take into account are the AC cost nor do they take into account that businesses pay more for electricity compare to residential rates.  

Now take an originations with 5000 PCs, 10 000 or 100 000, how much will they save with Active Off mode using the Dell 1901FP as an example?

5000 PC                                $322.33/Day       $121 301.18/Year

10000 PC                              $644.66/Day       $242 602.36/Year

100000 PC                            $6446.60/Day     $2 426 023.60/Year 

Even farther saving can be achieved if the monitor uses any of the other modes during the day! Is $322.33/day good enough reason to care about monitor power consumption? 

Need more convincing? 

Quoting Energy Star’s web site http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=power_mgt.pr_power_management 

“Hundreds of leading organizations have activated system standby and hibernate settings. Read how GE, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, North Thurston Public Schools and others are saving as much as $75 per computer annually.” 

Use Energy Star calculate to help you determine the cost saves. Estimate your savings using our online savings calculator 

Which of my monitors support “Active Off” option?

Monitor Information Reporting (MIR) v3 has just added this feature to collect this data and return it to your System Center Configuration Manager 2007 database.  

For more information about monitor power management options see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_Display_Power_Management_Signaling or http://www.vesa.org/Standards/summary/2003_3b.htm  

What is a preferred monitor size?

Preferred monitor size is defined by the Monitor standards group (vesa) as the resolution as“The display manufacturer defines the “Preferred Timing Mode (PTM)” as the video timingmode that will produce the best quality image on the display’s viewing screen. The display manufacturerdefines the meaning of the words “best quality image”. For most flat panel displays (FPD), the preferredtiming mode will be the panel’s "native timing" based on its “native pixel format”.” 

Why should I use a monitor’s Preferred Timing Mode / Native Pixel Format?

Most LCD flat panel monitor users do not realize that operating their monitor in a resolution other than the native resolution negatively impacts the performance of their flat panel monitor. Unlike cathode ray tube (CRT) displays, the liquid crystal display (LCD) panel used in flat panel monitors has a fixed, predefined pixel format over a set area. A fixed pixel-format means that if the native resolution of the LCD panel is 1,024 x 768, there are exactly 1,024 pixels in each horizontal line and 768 pixels in each vertical line or 786,432 total pixels. When the PC’s resolution is set to the native pixel format, this allows for a 1:1 ratio and yield the best results. When the non-native resolution such as the 800 x 600 is displayed on a 1024 x 768 native resolution monitor scaling occurs. Scaling adjusted the image to fill the entire monitor screen. This results in manipulation of pixels to fill screen but, the manipulation may cause text and images to appear blurry.  There is no good way to show a non-native resolution on a fixed matrix display. 

How do I know what the native monitor size is for my monitor?

Monitor Information Reporting (MIR) v3 displays and collects this information. 

Let face it, most IT people are not finance savvy, however they unknowingly have to deal with finance issues on a day to day bases.

 

So to help out everyone lets discus Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

The TCO of a PC is not just the cost of the PC itself it is much more than that.

• Service Desk cost
• Infrastructure cost
• Application Testing cost
• Out of Warranty Support costs
• Etc. 

In a recent WIPRO study “Using Total Cost of Ownership to Determine Optimal PC Refresh Lifecycles” (available on the Intel web site), they listed various cost associated with TCO for a PCs.

What you might be asking yourself is why not keep the PCs until it breaks. Well this is when the more hidden cost come into play.

• Application testing
• Service desk cost
• Client performance costs
• Increase of operation cost vs newer PCs. 

How is TCO affected by application testing?

Application testing affects TCO by increasing the number of workstations needed for any application rollout. If you have a 5 year life cycle and assuming that you replace 1/5 of your workstation each year at a minimum you would have 5 different configureations but more likely you would have 10 (5 Desktops and 5 laptops). If you are a multinational company this number would increase even more with respect to different OS languages and regional procurements. By reducing the refresh cycle to ever three years, you reduce this number significantly. 

How is TCO affected by Service Desk Cost?

There are hundreds of way this is affects TCO but some of the more common ways are:

• Locating drivers when moving from one version of an OS to the next
• Increased conflict resolution between drivers
• Increase in image sizes due to the number of drivers that need to be supported
  • Increase in bandwidth used by image deployment
  • Backup cost for bigger images
• Increase in troubleshooting
• Once a PC is out of warranty, there could be costs with stocking parts such as hard drives, RAM, monitors, etc. 

What are some of the client performance costs?

This is a catch-all for anything that affects the client. Costs in this section range from

• Downtime due to hardware failure
• Cost of overtime to recover from data loss
• Increase in cost of out of band PC replacements
• Inability to run needed software 

What are some of the increase operating cost vs newer PCs?

For example take these two Intel processors E5410 vs L5410, There is a difference of 30W. If you assume that you have 10000 PCs that were replaced you would see a 30*10000 = 300 000W or 300 KW/H. At $0.10 KWH that is $30 an hour in saving between the two processors. If you assume 7.5 hours a day with 200 working days a year that equates to almost $50K  is savings. ($30*7.5*200 =$45 000). From this we can see that you can save money by picking the right processor.  

We all know that if you that a PC and lock it away in a closed room that the room will get hot. Now take several hundred or thousands of PCs in a building, this will increase the air conditioning (AC) cost. Yes it will decrease the heating cost but you will find that AC cost will out weight your heating savings. As you look at processor specs you will see that some run hotter than others, there is a trade-off. This is where upgrading to a newer CPU might give you more saving with respect to AC / power consumed, etc. with the same performance. Don’t forget about the capital  & operating cost of the AC units and UPSs that you might need to run this equipment.  

What this is ultimately meant to show is that there is a lot more to a PC’s cost than just the capital cost of the PC. We need to look at all the costs to determine what is right for our company. These are just example of some of the costs are involved in TCO for a PC. 

Attached is a simple spreadsheet that you can used to help determine what is the appropriate TCO and therefore PC replacement cycle for your company.

TCO.xlsx (11.63 kb)

When I look at my monitor’s serial number it is a 20 character serial number, but when I run MIR or other tools they display a 12-13 character serial number. Why is that? 

The answer to that is simple: VESA, the monitor standards organization, has defined “up to 13 alphanumeric characters of a serial number may be stored”. This is why that EDID Serial number is a maximum of 13 characters long.  

When I look at my monitor’s serial number it is a 20 character serial number, but when I run Monitor Information Reporting (MIR) or other tools they display a 12-13 character serial number. Why does it not display the last 13 characters of the serial number? 

This answer is not so simple. Although the standards say “up to 13 alphanumeric characters of a serial number may be stored”, they don’t define which 13 characters are stored. Therefore it is up to the manufacturer to select which part why want to encode within EDID. 

Follow up question: But how can I determine which monitor is the right monitor? Keep watching here for an announcement on how to better handle monitors and their serial numbers.

 

There are a few reasons why you would want to clean out the monitor data that exists on a PC, for example monitor data included with the imaging process and falsely marked as active monitors.

With all version of the Windows there is no built-in way to clean up monitor data. Therefore these manual steps are needed to fix this issue.

Before beginning download and install Subinacl.exe .

Open an elevated command prompt and execute the following command.

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\DISPLAY /grant=<Domain>\<User Name>=f

Open Regedit, and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\DISPLAY

Delete the Display key.

It is important to reboot the PC at this time. This will allow the OS to recreate the display key with the appropriate data and to reset the security on the registry key.