Course 20703-1A: Administering System Center Configuration Manager

Posted on March 25, 2018 by Adrian Stoian

This week I delivered at MBL Computers – ComputerLand training center in Bucharest the course 20703-1A: Administering System Center Configuration Manager. This 5-day course is covering on System Center Configuration Manager 2016, was released in July 2017 and is the replacement for the courses 10747 and 20696 which were discussing System Center Configuration Manager 2012.

Course 20703-1A is a pure administration course for an on premise only deployment of System Center Configuration Manager 2016 . It covers infrastructure configuration, discovery, client deployment, hardware and software inventory, Asset Intelligence, reporting, content distribution, application management and deployment, software updates management, Endpoint Protection, compliance settings, operating system deployment, support and operations tasks. From this perspective, course 20703-1A is targeted as Systems Administrators that need to manage an on premise System Center Configuration Manager 2016.

In the past I delivered courses for Systems Management Server 2003 (courses 2596 and 2597), System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (course 6451), System Center Configuration Manager 2012 (courses 10747, 10748 and 20696) and I must say I am very happy with 20703-1A. This course has very good content, lot of technical details and strong hands-on labs. It was a pleasure to deliver it.

Unlike 20696, course 20703-1A does not cover Intune, EMS and Cloud Services. Microsoft Learning took the decision to create another 3-day course, 20703-2A: Integrating MDM and Cloud Services with System Center Configuration Manager. This course is focusing on Mobile Device Management, Internet Based Client Management, managing Microsoft Store for Business and Office 365 applications, hybrid MDM with Configuration Management and Intune as well as on premise MDM for Windows 10.

Microsoft recently released, on 8 March 2018, the Beta Exam 70-703: Administering Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager and Cloud Services Integration. The exam topics include both on premise deployment of System Center Configuration Manager 2016, as well as Microsoft Intune and Cloud Services. Both courses 20703-1A  and 20703-2A are recommended in preparation for this exam.

I took the exam 70-703 in beta. I would say it is a fair exam, no tricky questions, a lot of scenarios. As one would expect from reading the exam objectives, about 25-30% of questions are related to cloud features.

Looking forward for the next delivery!

Posted in Configuration Manager, System Center | 1 Comment

Beta Exam 70-703: Administering Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager and Cloud Services Integration

Posted on March 12, 2018 by Adrian Stoian

Microsoft Learning just announced on the Born to Learn blog the availability of the Beta version for the exam 70-703: Administering Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager and Cloud Services Integration (Beta). This exam is covering System Center Configuration Manager 2016.

Exam 70-703 will replace 70-696 which is scheduled to retire on 31 March 2018.

A discount code for 80% reduction on exam fee is also available on the Born to Learn blog post. I have just used it to register for the exam myself :-).

Later edit: Also the MCSE: Mobility certification will be updated so it will include exam 70-703 as an elective exam. The certification requirements will include:

Take one elective exam from the following:

Looks like I have to register to take some more exams …

Update 10 July 2017: I passed the exam !!!

Just received the notification today:

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Happy New Year 2018!

Posted on January 1, 2018 by Adrian Stoian

Happy New Year! Have a healthy and prosperous 2018!
La Mulţi Ani!
Gelukkig Nieuwjaar!
Bonne année!
Ein gutes neues Jahr!
Boldog Új Évet!
Gott nytt år!
¡Feliz Año Nuevo!
Felice anno nuovo

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CEE MVP Community Connection 2017

Posted on October 22, 2017 by Adrian Stoian

On 20-22 October 2017 I have attended the event CEE MVP Community Connection 2017 in Budapest, Hungary.

The event took place at the hotel Novotel Budapest Danube, nicely located just across the Parliament building.

There were more than 100 attendees, all MVPs from Central and Eastern Europe region. It was a great pleasure to meet again old friends like Slavko Kukrika, Florin Loghiade, Tudy Damian, Mihai Tataran, Alex Mang, Silviu Niculita, Catalin Gheorghiu.

The event was carefully organized by great hosts Gerbert and Tatiana. Thank you very much for providing us an opportunity to meet with Microsoft reps and fellow MVPs.
There were very good presentations (nothing I can talk about). We had even Laurent Ellerbach joining us for lunch.

It was a very enjoyable event! Glad I was part of it!

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Belgian Beer Weekend

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Adrian Stoian

In the order of appearance:

Watou’s Wit Bier
Baptist Wit
Gauloise Ambree
Roman Blanche
St. Bernardus Wit
Oude Gueuze
Trappistes Rochefort 8
Brunehaut Amber

More details about the event here.

 

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Microsoft MVP Award 2017

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Adrian Stoian

What a better way to start in 2017: I have received the MVP Award for Enterprise Mobility for another year. Thank you Microsoft! Thank you everyone that helped me to deliver the activities in the past year!

Looking forward for a great 2017!

Posted in Configuration Manager, Enterprise Mobility Suite, Windows Intune | Comments Off on Microsoft MVP Award 2017

Happy New Year 2017!

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Adrian Stoian
Happy New Year! I wish you to be happy and healthy! Have a great 2017!
La Mulţi Ani!
Gelukkig Nieuwjaar!
Bonne année!
Ein gutes neues Jahr!
Boldog Új Évet!
Gott nytt år!
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Attending #CloudBrew by @AZUGBE

Posted on December 4, 2016 by Adrian Stoian

Azure and beer … what could go wrong? In this case it was the recipe for success for the CloudBrew event organized by AZUGBE. The event took place in the former Lamot brewery, now a conference center, in Mechelen.

I have attended sessions on the infrastructure track presented by Alex Mang, Rasmus Hald, Robin Vermeirsch and Peter Örneholm.

The traditional beer sampling was presented by MALT&MOUT.

Congratulations for a wonderful event! Looking forward to the next year edition.

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Attending #SCUGBE System Center Night Winter Edition

Posted on November 27, 2016 by Adrian Stoian

Last Wednesday, on Nov 23, 2016, I have attended #SCUGBE System Center Night Winter Edition. The meeting took place at Microsoft Benelux offices in Zaventem.

The event was full house, all the seats were taken. The first session was Protect your business from within and without with Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) by Dieter Wijckmans and Florent Appointaire. Lots of questions from the audience, the topic was very interesting.

I had to leave at the break to catch the train, so I missed the session on Empower Mobility by providing a Single identity, delivered by Ken Goossens and Jan Van Meirvenne. I also missed the post-event beers.

Congratulations for the speakers and organizers for a great event!

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System Center Configuration Manager as a Service

Posted on November 19, 2016 by Adrian Stoian

In the last year I have seen and heard many rumours about System Center Configuration Manager:

  • Configuration Manager 2016 is the last version of the product
  • SCCM is end of life, Microsoft is not investing anymore in it
  • Intune will replace Configuration Manager

I am sorry to dissapoint the people making these statements. System Center Configuration Manager is alive and kicking. Check this blog post from Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President of the Enterprise Client & Mobility at Microsoft.

Gartner has recognized Microsoft as a Leader for the eleventh consecutive year,  in the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Client Management Tools (previously called Magic Quadrant for PC Configuration Life Cycle Management) with Configuration Manager (and previously SMS).
Funny enough, Gartner retired this magic quadrant for 2016. Probably Configuration Manager would have been the leader for the twelfth time.

In my opinion the above rumours are based on misunderstandings of the way Configuration Manager has evolved from a traditional on-premise product with a 3-year engineering cycle to the Software as a Service model.

Configuration Manager Current Branch
Back in 2015 the Configuration Manager team made the decision to adopt the Current Branch model, also used by the Windows team.
One year later, there have been 4 CB releases in the last 12 months – 1511, 1602, 1606, and 1610. So, actually System Center Configuration Manager 2016 is Configuration Manager Current Branch release 1606.
Microsoft is moving away from the versioning based on years, because there will be more versions per year.
This model is aligning with the Windows 10 Curent Branch model.
Besides the baseline releases there are also Technical Preview releases. They are intended for early validation in a lab environment, and allow you to validate new features before they are available on current branch. These should not be deployed in production (unless you are a TAP customer and you have  a support agreement with Microsoft).
So definitely Microsoft is investing in the development of Configuration Manager, by moving to a SaaS model.

In case you missed it, Update 1610 for System Center Configuration Manager was released on Friday.

Intune will not replace Configuration Manager
Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based Mobile Device Manageent (MDM) solution part of the Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS). It has a different feature set and is targeted as managing mobile devices: Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Windows 10 managed as a mobile device using OMA-DM protocol.If you are interested on OMA-DM protocol support check this page on MSDN.

If you want to manage both on-premise desktops (with Windows Vista and above) and  mobile solutions, you can use both Configuration Manager and Intune/EMS in hybrid mode.

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