I recommend getting the process documented in a service level agreement and get managers to sign off on it. If the desktop staff are supposed to plug a “shelf” machine in once a month but aren’t it really should not be up to you to monitor and enforce that. Document the process and get their manager to sign off on it. If they deploy a “shelf” machine and it spends the first several hours getting caught up and the end-user is upset, it falls on the desktop’s manager to enforce policy.
You don’t really have a technical problem. You are looking for a technical solution for a failure of staff to follow policy. Unless you are their supervisor, it isn’t your job to follow the desktop folks around and make sure that they’re doing their jobs. That is what their manager is paid to do. I know I sounds cynical, but you have a personnel problem and not a technical problem. Finding a technical solution is just making more work for you. Mike “The Jaded Cynic” ☺ From: <[email protected]> on behalf of Todd Miller <[email protected]> Reply-To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Date: Friday, April 8, 2016 at 5:41 PM To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Subject: [MDT-OSD] RE: Hot/Warm spare computers? Believe me, keeping them plugged in was my first suggestion, but we often don’t have the facilities available to do that. Right now, they are required to plug a “shelf” machine into Ethernet and turn it on for at least one day per month – but my compliance rate on that rule sucks. They almost never do it, and I don’t have the time or patients to ride them on it. In reality – the process I am proposing is not all that different from OEM factory mode. Of course I prune SCCM, but that takes 180 days of no talking. AD, we don’t prune any more. We have a provisioning process now and use stale AD membership as one of the hints a machine has gone missing or could be taken back for repurposing. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Marcum, John Sent: Friday, April 08, 2016 3:59 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [MDT-OSD] RE: Hot/Warm spare computers? Ideally what Andreas says is the best solution. For me they’d age out of both CM and AD. Are you not pruning either? ________________________________ John Marcum MCITP, MCTS, MCSA Desktop Architect Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP ________________________________ [VP] <https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/overview> [MS] <http://mmsmoa.com/> From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Andreas Hammarskjöld Sent: Friday, April 8, 2016 2:55 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [MDT-OSD] RE: Hot/Warm spare computers? Keep them warm, i.e. plugged in with Ethernet and wake em up weekly to update them and let them slumber to sleep once patched and updated. Keep them in a collection and check them out when they leave. Simple. If you got “roles” you can have a few of each as well. Don’t build and put on the shelf. That’s like cooking food and putting it on the shelf… thinking it’s going to be good when you want to eat it, then you might as well build from scratch and skip the whole thing. That will be equally fast. //A From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Miller, Todd Sent: den 8 april 2016 21:33 To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [MDT-OSD] Hot/Warm spare computers? I am looking for some ideas about this scenario. Our desktop support staff frequently installs computers using OSD/ MDT and then sit the computers on a shelf – sometimes for several months-- before putting them into service. This is mostly because they want to be able to quickly drop a new computer in place if an existing computer fails. If a computer in a critical area, they want to swap out the computer quickly so that critical use is not down for the day. This cause me stress because those machines are in AD and in SCCM but are not active. So they show up on my reports of machines that are AD joined but haven’t checked in in a while (are they lost or stolen or just sitting on a shelf?) They haven’t patched in a while (are they on a shelf or is SCCM agent broken?) It is really difficult to tell the difference between a computer that is off and a computer that is broken. At least the Off machines respond to a WOL typically. Machines sitting on a shelf do not…. Id like to have a task sequence that prepares the computer with the OS and applications and brings it to current patch level, but then is able to put the computer into a “dormant mode.” Dormant mode might mean deleting the computer from AD, preparing the computer to resume the TS on next power on, and then powering off. Then when the computer turns on, the TS should resume. Maybe I’d have a task step to rejoin AD and go through some finalization process – maybe run an install update task to get caught back up etc and then the machine is ready to go. This would get the machines ready faster and would not cause me so much trouble with idle machines on shelves. Is there a name for this already? Good blogs about it? ________________________________ Notice: This UI Health Care e-mail (including attachments) is covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. 2510-2521, is confidential and may be legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any retention, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. Please reply to the sender that you have received the message in error, then delete it. Thank you. ________________________________ ________________________________ Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail is from a law firm and may be protected by the attorney-client or work product privileges. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender by replying to this e-mail and then delete it from your computer. ________________________________ Notice: This UI Health Care e-mail (including attachments) is covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. 2510-2521, is confidential and may be legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any retention, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. Please reply to the sender that you have received the message in error, then delete it. Thank you. ________________________________ ********************************************************** Electronic Mail is not secure, may not be read every day, and should not be used for urgent or sensitive issues
