Automating windows

Day 2, session 3 was "Automating windows"- details were pretty sketchy, but I though it sounded interesting...This presentation focussed on manipulating WMI and CIM using Powershell 2, and showed the benefits of replicating changes to single or multiple PCs, even those outside of a DMZ in a secure manner. I must admit, not being a Powershell/WMI wizard myself, I got somewhat lost in the detail on this session, although the benefits of automation were quite clear for task like client monitoring and configuration. Currently we manage this type of activity in the Zen environment, however going forward I can see this technology will be commonly used in the new Mars environment.

How do they do that?

An interesting session for a couple of reasons. First, hearing about how exisiting customers are working around product limitations is a great way to find out the 'real' product limitations. Second, there was a discussion about 'best practice' application packaging and deployment which is as relevant to our current environment as it is to Microsoft System Center customers.

The slides are pretty good so I won't go into too much detail here, but some things we should think about are Desired Configuration Management (DCM) and a consistent hardware decommissioning process. Our process and organisation actually map fairly well to best practice with the noticeable exception of our insistence on 'bundling' the applications into monolithic updates, but it seems to me this stems from a lack of automation at the site end, so we should carefully consider what can be done to reduce the burden on our local infrastructure teams.