Tag: SCCM 2012

The Unique Application ID

If you ask me the biggest change in SCCM 2012 is the backend. The DP and MP can be combined and it will use SQL replication (execpt for content). Another interresting change is the use of application. It’s an evolution of SCCM 2007 packages (still supporting in 2012).

First thing you have to take in mind is that application installation will run in 64-bit mode. Although you can also force to use 32-bit. the current packages still run in 32-bit mode and cannot run in 64-bit. So you can say that packages are obsolete.

If you look at the backend a package difference a lot from a package. Especially the unique id. Where you have a package id in package a applications has multiple unique keys.

  • First you have the CI_ID which is just a number. My guess is that this is site specific.
  •  The second key is what looks like a packageid. This key will be used for the content.
  •  The Third key is long descriptor that starts with scope_[guid]\application_[guid].
    First part is the unique identification of the site server and the second part is the unique id for the application. This key I guess will be used at the entire environment. But that has to be checked when RTM arrived.
$identificationClass = [WMICLASS]"\\$($SccmServer.Machine)\$($SccmServer.Namespace):SMS_Identification"
$cls = Get-WmiObject SMS_Identification -namespace $SccmServer.Namespace -ComputerName $SccmServer.Machine -list
$tmp = $identificationClass.GetSiteID().SiteID
return "ScopeId_$($tmp.Substring(1,$tmp.Length -2))"

I will update this post when more information and documentation is availble

PowerShell and System Center Configuration Manager 2012 (SCCM 2012)

For a customer in the Netherlands I’m developing an environment which includes SCCM 2012. The release is near but for now we still using SCCM 2012 RC 2. We hope that the release will be at the MMS in 2 weeks.

Until now the product works great and the only problem is lack of PowerShell controls. If I’m correct this will be released 2012H2. So until then we have to create or own scripts. At this blog I will post some of the PowerShell scripts than can be helpful to control SCCM with PowerShell. Although there is little documentation I tried my best to make it work.