General SCCM related questions
loss4words
Member Posts: 165 ■■■□□□□□□□
Hello everyone!
I think I might have a weird question
At my current (new) position I feel our IT department's practices are a bit outdated and managers kind of stick to what they know, and although I'm not a manager I believe I have enough leverage to suggest new things/try new software and try to convince them to move the department in a new direction. I think setting up a lab/suggesting SCCM will be a step in the right direction, but what do you guys think?
The IT department is a big one and supports more than 1000 users. There are helpdesk folks who answer the phones and create tickets, desktop support (my department) who configure images and go out on calls, and a large number systems, database and network and other administrators. There's a MS AD domain but it baffles me because although all computers are joined to domain, end users are logging in with local accounts. The current process of re-imaging a PC is to go with an external drive, backup contents of user's profile, image and put user's files back in place. Software installations and other changes and setups are often manual. Although it works, it just seems so outdated to me, maybe because I come from a different background, granted my previous employer was much smaller and didn't support half as many users.
Would I be stirring the pan (so to speak) too much if I suggest SCCM? Imaging process using SCCM with USMT seems like something that could work along with other stuff that SCCM can do. Would I even be allowed to run it with the current setup - involvement of Systems, database and network admins seem almost essential for this work. It seems like right now there's no communication between Systems Administrators and Desktop Support and one department doesn't know what the other is doing and things aren't improving.
Sorry for all the babbling Any suggestions/comments?
I think I might have a weird question
At my current (new) position I feel our IT department's practices are a bit outdated and managers kind of stick to what they know, and although I'm not a manager I believe I have enough leverage to suggest new things/try new software and try to convince them to move the department in a new direction. I think setting up a lab/suggesting SCCM will be a step in the right direction, but what do you guys think?The IT department is a big one and supports more than 1000 users. There are helpdesk folks who answer the phones and create tickets, desktop support (my department) who configure images and go out on calls, and a large number systems, database and network and other administrators. There's a MS AD domain but it baffles me because although all computers are joined to domain, end users are logging in with local accounts. The current process of re-imaging a PC is to go with an external drive, backup contents of user's profile, image and put user's files back in place. Software installations and other changes and setups are often manual. Although it works, it just seems so outdated to me, maybe because I come from a different background, granted my previous employer was much smaller and didn't support half as many users.
Would I be stirring the pan (so to speak) too much if I suggest SCCM? Imaging process using SCCM with USMT seems like something that could work along with other stuff that SCCM can do. Would I even be allowed to run it with the current setup - involvement of Systems, database and network admins seem almost essential for this work. It seems like right now there's no communication between Systems Administrators and Desktop Support and one department doesn't know what the other is doing and things aren't improving.
Sorry for all the babbling
Any suggestions/comments?
Comments
Once you've got a working demonstration, estimate the labor savings. Present all of this to your supervisor - I bet they will like it.
Sorry I don't have a lot to add to what's already been suggested, but I read this bit and just couldn't let it go because it made my eyes bug out a bit. I'm very curious to hear the rationale they are using for this.
I have little experience.. I've set up a small lab and was able to make it work and got as far as deploying software to client computers. I also took a one-on-one week long Microsoft course and watched CBT videos to get more familiar with the product. I would say I have fundamental understanding of how it works and how to set it up. You're completely right about all the things that I will have to sell, it's a lot. It bothers me a little.
That caught me off guard too when I started. The only reasoning I can think of is the following: This is a university that has several small IT departments and one big "main" one. I work at the main one. The main IT has SLA's with departments which it supports. A department that signs an SLA agreement with main IT gets the technical support. SLA's have to be renewed every so often, maybe once every year. So in fact, a department that is covered by main IT this year, might not be the following year. So if end users become domain users, and decide not to sign an SLA agreement it can become messy. I don't know, though, that's the only explanation I can come up with.
Management wants options.
Also it will need to be a business case and if you approach it this way then you will be taken much more seriously. As stated, see if you can get a general estimate of human hours salvaged. Also, what is the initial software cost? Yearly maintenance/support? OS/server requirements? There are many more factors than just selecting the product.
Good luck!
It is pretty much insane that an organization that size wouldn't have such a tool, wouldn't use domain accounts, and wouldn't have more sophisticated OSD and software distribution models. You should absolutely be pushing for these things, even if you're rocking the boat in doing so. You are going to have to justify it to the right people, but you should be. If you don't, what is your job? Just doing piddly desktop support tasks? Do you want to do that forever? You're not going to get any valuable experience at that company if you don't get it doing some of the right things.
Walk before you run, though. Get them using AD accounts. There is simply no way there's a valid technical reason they would be using local accounts, and a hundred for why they should. SCCM is going to be pretty neutered if you keep using local accounts.
For USMT, specifically, although it can be used for side-by-side migrations, IMO it's really not that great for it in that it's not an enhancement over other methods. It's awesome for doing OS upgrades on existing hardware without user changes, but that's about it. Honestly, if you have an all Windows-7 environment, I'd recommend Windows Easy Transfer. Seriously. I haven't seen a process or piece of software that actually works any better than just doing Windows Easy Transfer to a network location. Well, if you have workstation/user backups or redirected personal folders, those work better. What's silly is using external drives at anywhere but remote sites with slow connections to any network resources.
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