System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager (SCCM) with Windows Intune

Editor's Notes

• #3: The explosion in use and number of consumer devices and ubiquitous information access is changing the way that people perceive their technology, in addition to how that technology shapes their personal and work lives. The constant use of information technology throughout the day, along with the easy access of information, is blurring traditional boundaries between work and home life. These shifting boundaries are accompanied by a belief that personal technology—selected and customized to fit user’s personalities, activities, and schedules—should extend into the workplace. Accommodating the consumerization of IT presents a variety of challenges. Historically, most or all devices used in the workplace were owned, and therefore managed, by the organization. Policies and processes were focused on device management—and usually on a relatively small, tightly controlled, and managed set of corporate-approved hardware that was subject to predetermined corporate replacement cycles.   The consumerization of IT dramatically alters this scenario. There is greatly increased device and operating system diversity and volume in the organization. This can fundamentally change the IT landscape and necessitate a shift in management objectives from tight control over hardware to effective, user-centric governance.   The way resources and applications are accessed and consumed is also changing. With the shift to personal devices and mobility, there is a need to adapt how applications work. IT departments must also now consider authentication of the user, validation of the device, and updated service consumption models when planning their consumerization policies and implementation.   The best organizational response is IT policies that match business realities and priorities, moving toward a people-centric model that replaces the older paradigm of device-centric policies and management. The Microsoft people-centric vision helps IT administrators increase their organizations’ productivity by enabling access to corporate resources, regardless of location or device used. This shift in focus requires policies, processes, and technologies that give people the freedom to select the devices they want to use, along with device-agnostic access to applications and data.
• #4: Microsoft has a history of providing rich IT-infrastructure solutions to help manage every aspect of enterprise operations. Microsoft’s people-centric solution consists of products and technologies that can help IT departments handle the influx of consumer-oriented technology and the work style expectations of users, thereby helping increase productivity and satisfaction for the people within their organizations. Microsoft’s people-centric IT vision helps organizations enable and embrace the consumerization of IT by: Enabling your end users by allowing users to work on the device(s) of their choice and providing consistent access to corporate resources from those devices. Helping protect your data by protecting corporate information and managing risk. Unifying your environment by delivering comprehensive application and device management from both your existing on-premises infrastructure, including System Center Configuration Manager, Windows Server, and Active Directory, as well as cloud-based services, including Windows Intune and Windows Azure. Let’s discuss each of these areas in more detail.
• #5: There are two Microsoft solutions for managing mobile devices: The first is the unified scenario with System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager with Windows Intune. This enables Configuration Manager to extend beyond on-premises PC management to devices that live in the cloud, including Android, iOS and Windows Phones devices, whilst using a single console for the admin experience. This solution provides rich policy management and reporting. It also provides for greater scalability. The second is using Windows Intune as a standalone solution. This uses the web-based administration console and is ideal when the deployment of a management infrastructure on-premises would be overly complicated.
• #6: There are three main focus areas that are addressed with System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager: Enable Users – allowing people to get access to their corporate applications and data, providing them with the tools to manage their own devices (for example, wipe), and get easy access to support, across multiple device platforms Unify Infrastructure – bring together management in a common infrastructure, whether it is for on-premises PCs, virtual applications or mobile devices. Simplify Administration - Provide a single pane of glass view for managing the corporate estate, including flexibility for role-based administration and scripting (through PowerShell).
• #7: To begin with Enable Users, there are two aspects to look at: Unified device management, enabling the users regardless of what device they are using, and providing a compliance environment that helps manage corporate data protection User-centric Application Delivery – providing the user with the appropriate application for the device they are using, whether it is a PC application, a native mobile application or a virtual or web-based application
• #8: The SP1 release of System Center 2012 Configuration Manager introduced the ability to connect Configuration Manager to Windows Intune to enable management of cloud-based mobile devices. The R2 release builds upon this to increase the management capabilities and provide support for new platforms such as Windows 8.1.
• #9: Note: Highlighted items are new with System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager
• #10: When a user wants to use their own device, this immediately raises requirements from both the user and IT. The user needs access to apps and data, and IT needs to ensure that corporate information remains secure and that the business continues to deliver on it’s compliance and regulatory requirements. With Windows Server 2012 R2, we introduce a new concept known as device registration. Users can register their BYO devices for single sign-on and access to corporate data using Workplace Join. As part of this registration process, a certificate is installed on the device, and a new device object is created in Active Directory. This device object establishes a link between the user and their device, making it known to IT, and allowing the device to be authenticated, effectively a seamless 2nd factor authentication. In return for registering their device and making in known to IT, the user gains access to corporate resources that were previously not available outside of their domain joined PC. IT can publish access to corporate resources with the Web Application Proxy based on device awareness (i.e. is it registered) and the users identity. Multi-factor authentication can be used through Windows Azure Active Authentication (previously known as PhoneFactor). Users can enroll devices which configures the device for management with Windows Intune. The user can then use the Company Portal for easy access to corporate applications, data and to be able to manage their own devices, performing tasks such as remote wiping them in the event they are lost, stolen or replaced. And in order to provide administrators with a unified view of their entire environment, the data from Windows Intune is synchronized with Configuration Manager which provides unified management across both on-premises and in the cloud
• #11: An important concept in managing Bring Your Own Device scenarios is the ownership of the device. System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager introduces the ability to denote whether devices are corporate owned or personal devices. If a device is personally owned, then a limited set of inventory is collected from the device, to ensure the enterprise does not stray over privacy limits. If a device is corporate owned, then a complete inventory of the device is collected (where permitted by the device platform) Also, the ownership can be used as a condition for deployment of compliance items or applications, so if you wish to deploy a specific set of policies to corporate devices, or if you wish to deny a particular application from personal devices, you can use the new global condition to control the deployment based on the ownership flag.
• #14: A new capability of System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager is the ability to configure corporate resource access for devices. By setting things like VPN and Wi-Fi profiles through Configuration Manager, the end user does not have to worry about how to set up their device for corporate access. There are four areas that can be configured: Remote Connection Profiles – the ability to expose fully-managed (ConfigMgr client) PCs through the Company Portal. This enables users to open a Remote Desktop Session to their corporate PC from a mobile client, whilst outside of the corporate network. Certificate Profiles – Root certificates can be distributed to devices to enable verification of certificates. The Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol can also be configured, enabling user or device specific certificates to be acquired by the mobile client. These can then be used to authenticate the user or the device for scenarios such as VPN access, web application authentication, etc. VPN Profiles – These can be configured to enable the mobile device to easily connect back in to corporate network without the user having to manage the settings Wi-Fi Profiles – These can be configured to enable the mobile device to attached to corporate Wi-Fi environments without configuration by the user Email Profiles – These can be configured to enable the user to quick access preconfigured enterprise email. It also enables removal of the corporate email during a selective wipe (if the device platform supports it). Note: some of these capabilities vary by device platform
• #15: System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager supports a number of third party VPN solutions, as well as Microsoft’s own VPNs. Support is also available for standards based VPNs such as PPTP, L2TP and IKEv2. In addition, the VPN can be configured to automatically connect with a specific resource is accessed by DNS name , or when a specific application is launched on Windows 8.1
• #18: System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager also includes support for preconfiguring the new Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 Work Folders feature. This allows the admin to set up the users devices for Work Folder synchronization easily and without end user involvement.
• #20: How the device is registered or managed provides a different level of capability: Unregistered – devices that are not registered (via Workplace Join) and are not managed have a very limited set of management capabilities Registered – enabling a device with Workplace Join provides some addition access control and auditing, but is still a unmanaged, untrusted device MDM Enrolled – when a mobile device is enrolled for management there are a number of additional management capabilities that light up, ensuring the device is compliant and providing a rich experience for the end user Fully Managed – for clients that can be fully managed, this provides the deepest, most comprehensive level of management with Configuration Manager
• #21: System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1 introduced the ability to deploy and manage Windows 8 (modern) applications. These can run across both traditional x86 PCs and the ARM-based Windows RT devices. Windows 8 applications can either be deployed through Configuration Manager directly to the clients, or Configuration Manager can provide a link to the application if it resides in the public Windows Store.
• #22: With Configuration Manager, you can create criteria on application deployments that determine the method of delivery of an application. It may be that on a certain device type, network connection or other attribute, you could choose to deploy a full native application, but other devices will receive a link to a virtual version of the application. This is a great solution for ensuring that corporate data does not leave the data center for devices that are lightly managed or less trusted. Devices that are fully managed and trusted could receive the full application.
• #23: A key aspect of application delivery is the end user experience. A new self service portal is available that gives the user a rich, modern Company Portal, which allows access to all the applications that have been provisioned for the user.
• #25: With prior versions of Configuration Manager, there were a number of reasons for expanding the hierarchy with additional primary sites or secondary sites. Many of these reasons are now obsolete, listed in the bottom half of the table, due to new functionality that came with the SP1 and R2 releases of Configuration Manager. There are still a handful or reasons for expanding the hierarchy, and these are captured in the top half of the table. The reduction in reasons means that many customers with existing hierarchies can actually consolidate their infrastructure as they move to R2.
• #26: From: http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/9/2/6929CB82-0FD4-49C9-897D-717B2AF9AE5E/System_Center_Configuration_Manager_2012_Business_Value_White_Paper.pdf Consolidation: Organizations were able to cut down on the number of physical servers by… Co-locating site system roles onto single server instead of spreading these across multiple servers; Eliminating the servers required for client security as System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection integrates with Configuration Manager; and Simplifying system architecture by reducing the number of primary and secondary sites and the distribution points. Moreover, Configuration Manager now supports configuring distribution points that run as a cloud service in Microsoft® Windows Azure. This eliminates the need to plan for, purchase, and maintain the hardware for installing the site system roles – further reducing the infrastructure requirements and costs. [Note: Above feature requires System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1 (beta available September 2012). Also requires subscription to Windows Azure cloud service. All costs are determined by the customer’s Windows Azure licensing, and the volume of data that is stored and downloaded by clients. No additional licensing costs are added by Configuration Manager.] Cross-platform Integration: With Service Pack 1, Configuration Manager supports installation of the client on computers that run Mac OS X and servers running various Linux or UNIX operating systems. This allows administrators to perform compliance settings, deploy software, and include these devices in the hardware inventory collection tasks. Furthermore, through integration with Citrix XenApp, non-Windows users can still access business applications that are compatible with Configuration Manager.
• #27: Another key tenant of unifying the infrastructure is bringing the mobile device management in to the client management infrastructure. To connect Configuration Manager to Windows Intune there are two simple steps to be carried out: Configure the Windows Intune Subscription – this sets up the platforms to be managed, and the branding for the Company Portal experience Deploy the Windows Intune Connector – this is a lightweight Site Server role that can be deployed on an existing server. The Connector requires an outbound HTTPS connection to the Windows Intune cloud service, but does not need to be placed in the DMZ or exposed to the internet in any way.
• #28: The unification of the infrastructure also includes bringing the Endpoint Protection management capabilities within the client management frame. Through the single Configuration Manager administration console, the admin can deploy System Center Endpoint Protection and easily track the health and state of the endpoint clients.
• #29: Settings Management is also an important part of security and compliance for the enterprise. Configuration Manager contains extensive capabilities for configuration Compliance Baselines, deploying them to clients and monitoring the clients for baseline drift. If a client does go out of compliance this can be reported on in Configuration Manager, an alert could be raised or the client could be configured to auto-remediate the settings that are out of compliance.
• #30: To maintain a controlled environment it is important to deploy and monitor the updates to key software components. Configuration Manager integrates with Microsoft Update to enable the deployment and tracking of updates to Microsoft software (including the OS) in a scalable, manageable manner.
• #31: For clients that are frequently outside of the corporate network, you can now deploy a distribution point to Windows Azure. The reduces the need for staging content on a distribution point in your own perimeter network and means that you can take advantage of Windows Azure Content Distribution Network capabilities.
• #32: There have been a couple of key improvements to content management in System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager that help with the management of content within the hierarchy. In-console monitoring and improved reporting help give an overview of the content status in the environment. There have also been a number of improvements around managing the content flow and behavior of the Pull Distribution Points.
• #36: System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager builds on top of the existing Role-Based Administration capabilities to now include RBA for SQL Reporting.