Monday 21 April 2014

Updated 2012 R2 Orchestrator Integration Packs - Fixes ConfigMgr Console Crash

Since the release of System Center 2012 R2 there has been an issue with having the Orchestrator console, with the ConfigMgr integration pack installed, on the same system as the ConfigMgr console.

Having both of them installed would result in the ConfigMgr console crashing when trying to open it with an error similar to this:

Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement has stopped working
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name:          CLR20r3
Problem Signature 01:         LRE420M52QQYT0KWXNWESOVVMQF5I2RH
Problem Signature 02:         5.0.7804.1000
Problem Signature 03:         50adcdf1
Problem Signature 04:         System
Problem Signature 05:         4.0.30319.17929
Problem Signature 06:         4ffa5c88
Problem Signature 07:         5b0
Problem Signature 08:         19
Problem Signature 09:         N3CTRYE2KN3C34SGL4ZQYRBFTE4M13NB
OS Version:                       6.2.9200.2.0.0.400.8
Locale ID:                          1033
Additional Information 1:    5861
Additional Information 2:    5861822e1919d7c014bbb064c64908b2
Additional Information 3:    dac6
Additional Information 4:    dac6c2650fa14dd558bd9f448e23afd1



This was seen previously in the SP1 release - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2800707


Thankfully the other week an updated version of the integration packs were released.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39622

 
Note:  Following are the fixes in this release (4/3/2014 - v7.2.167.0):
  • The Configuration Mangager integration pack will cause the Configuration Manager Console to fail when opened.
  • The System Center Operations Manager Monitor Alerts activity can get an out of memory exception when processing a large amount of alerts.
  • The Exchange Administration activities will fail when using Exchange Online with redirection enabled.
  • The Configuration Manager Deploy Task Sequence can incorrectly set the remote client flags if you set the Download locally when needed property. This will cause the client to incorrectly evaluate it and will not run.
  • The Invoke REST Service activity was incorrectly setting the header information when using basic authentication that resulted in a 401 - Unauthorized
  • The SharePoint Integration pack will not connect sucessfully to SharePoint online if it is configured to use Active Directory Federated Services.
  • The SharePoint Integration pack Get List Items will fail to return values for column types of Choice.

Thursday 3 April 2014

Windows Server 2012 R2 Update (April)

Microsoft announced at //Build a new update for Windows 8.1 that brings new UI features and improvements.

* Updated 08/04/14 - Required Update Changes *

Alongside this is also the fact that the same update is applicable for Windows Server 2012 R2.
The update will be available from the 8th April via Windows Update, is currently available for TechNet and MSDN subscribers and available from the 14th April for Volume Licensing customers as integrated media.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2919355

Microsoft have stated that this update will become the new service base for Windows 8.1/2012 R2 moving forwards meaning that all new updates after April will require it to be installed first.

Microsoft have being saying that as part of this update it includes previous update rollups before March, however on first boot I did a scan and found these updates as required:

Doing some further checks also shows (based on MSDN media) these following updates as offline serviced into the image:
  • KB2919442 - March servicing stack update
  • KB2919355 - Windows Update April and top level wrap for the following updates
    • KB2937220
    • KB2938772
    • KB2939471
    • KB2949621

So for a nice clean deployment based on the new Windows Server 2012 R2 Update media we presently only require 2 further updates and these two can be offline service added to the image.
 
Previously if you ran an update scan before the 8th April (When the April Update went GA on Windows Update) you saw some rollup updates from February and March.  This now isn't the case, but there are some further updates along side the April Update.
 
 
So now we have:
 
Hang on... KB2919355?? This is slightly odd since I deployed this VM using the MSDN media with KB2919355 integrated.  Looks like there must have been some last minute changes since going GA.
 
This doesn't include .Net 3.5 updates which are shown below but need adding after deployment due to .Net not being able to be offline serviced into an image, best done as part of creating your reference image.
  • KB2898868
  • KB2901125