Preface

When I was approached to write this book, I wanted to create a resource that ConfigMgr administrators could use to quickly get up to speed with what is, under the hood, a complicated product. This was driven by many years’ experience in consulting, where I saw frustrated ConfigMgr admins struggling with the product due to a simple lack of knowledge about how the product hangs together and where to go to extract critical information about what’s happening and what might be going wrong.

In essence, I wanted to write the sort of book on ConfigMgr that I would have liked to have on hand when I installed the product for the first time, with my manager and colleagues looking on saying, “Well? Does it work yet? When can we deploy Windows?”

The book doesn’t focus on the underlying architecture of ConfigMgr—at least, no more than is strictly necessary. While it’s important for any ConfigMgr administrator to understand what’s happening behind the scenes, installing new distribution points or deploying new primary site servers aren’t exactly everyday occurrences, whereas patching, software distribution, and reporting definitely are. So this book provides a detailed look at a core set of fundamental tasks that every ConfigMgr administrator will tackle on a regular basis, broken into easily consumed chunks so you can boost your productivity quickly and effectively.