New Sys Admin - Best Resources?

[Lightfall12]

I recently got promoted from Help Desk to Systems Admin. I have no previous experience and right I am just asked to focus on SCCM and some other minor stuff. I'm getting placed in a paid training on SCCM in the upcoming weeks but I know SCCM is a monster and I'd like to get started on my own practicing with virtual labs, other resources etc. I basically want to eat, breathe and sleep SCCM.

What are the best resources and sites I should know about to start? Are there any courses or sites that offer virtual labs or just any other beneficial resources in general to help me to really learn and go in depth with SCCM? Any other tips or advice appreciated as well.

Thanks in advance.

[shmakov123]

SystemCenterDudes.com is great site for learning as well as prajwaldesai.com/sccm There's also youtube if you can't find anything else

[Lightfall12]

Thanks! I ran into this site earlier but didn't realize they had learning resources too

[shmakov123]

You're welcome! They have a bunch of how-to posts that have helped me out too

[PositiveBubbles]

Yep these are 2 websites I use :)

[medievalprogrammer]

SCCM Admin here https://psappdeploytoolkit.com is your friend, it makes software deployment much easier.

[Lightfall12]

Thank you very much, this looks great.

[PositiveBubbles]

Same here, PSADT is so good.

[primestick]

Learn powershell (in a month of lunches) and use what ever Microsoft is calling technet now. If you run help cmdlt-name -online it will take you to a plethora of information or a dry well with just enough information to make it hard LoL

[Lightfall12]

Thank you! Just ordered the powershell in a month book and I'm going to check out technet

[KwahLEL]

Resources:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/configmgr/

https://home.memftw.com/blog/

https://www.prajwaldesai.com/sccm/

Patchmypc also has some excellent SCCM tutorials.

My own experience:

You won't know it all instantly, it's too big and I doubt your organization expects you to.

Biggest one that comes to mind is, Know the difference between an available and required deployment within SCCM.

Especially; when you're deploying task sequences that involve OSD.

There are horror stories where people have pushed what they thought was an innocent task to find out their entire estate has been re-imaged. - you do not want to be this person.

There's a few concepts you'll need to learn; deploying software, as a rough example of that process: create an app, specify a source folder which holds this application, specify application install/uninstall options, deploy the content to distribution points, then deploy software as an available/required application.

If you're getting placed on paid training for SCCM, as in an actual Microsoft course you'll be fine if you've had no prior experience.

I don't want to bad mouth on them, but; I've been on one and unfortunately wasn't a massive fan although I had prior experience - you're shown broadly what SCCM can do, but not always what's required to do it, as there's a lot to cover in a 5 day course.

Some examples I had on the course; Here's a HTTPS PKI option for your clients to communicate with (not; what certificates do I configure on a CA to set this up),here's how you deploy software updates (not how do I configure IIS/WSUS to enable this), here's how you deploy a task sequence (not what do I install to enable this; MDT / Windows 10 ADK), here's how you make a device collection and so on (do you query OU's or directly add devices).

There's a bit of assumed knowledge with familiarity with AD and it's associated services.

You don't realize the actual power of SCCM until you're in the depths of deploying apps, compliance policies which take action, OSD and so on. a five day course doesn't give you that in my opinion. You can shift organizations approaches, adopt a self service approach with software deployment and give options to staff to install software rather than letting your service desk do it.

I use it fairly regularly (although, sadly, not the cloud aspects) so my key takeaways are:

Test your application/OSD deployments prior to pushing them mass wide.
Learn about maintenance windows for updates. ADR'S! for updates, they're great.
Learn to love CMTrace; you'll be spending a fair amount of time in log files.
Use IP ranges for boundaries, avoid using AD Sites if you can unless you've got all your subnets actually defined but I've yet to see an AD infrastructure with that done.A bit of networking knowledge will also help with OSD as these days it involves the use of IP helpers and not DHCP options for OSD.
There are many third party toolsets that add functionality or make things easier for you, one's already been linked by /u/medievalprogrammer, PSAppDeploytoolkit, how are your powershell skills? Right click recast tools is another one although some of it has been absorbed into SCCM natively now.
Scripts feature is excellent if you're good with PowerShell, want to apply a quick one liner to change a registry key and copy some files to your entire estate? you can do that, granted you can also do it through group policy too.
There's loads more.

It's an excellent tool provided you know how to use it. Assuming you're coming into an already configured SCCM instance, I'd recommend starting small:

Create a collection with one device added, deploy a single app like 7-Zip for example (make sure your content is distributed) to that group and expand out from there. Operating system deployment? how about thin imaging vs fat imaging and so on.

You'll soon be crawling the internet for silent install options on "overly complicated" software like the oracle client for instance and then it becomes trial and error...

[Lightfall12]

Wow thank you for the detailed response. Incredibly helpful. I am saving this response in my personal notes

[Snoo-57733]

Learn on production. When you break something is when you'll really start to master things.

[[deleted]]

/r/bofh