Configuration Manager 2012Client Health at a glance

Tim De KeukelaereConsultant

June 2013

Client Health - OverviewGoal: Enabling Administrators to monitor the activity and status of ConfigMgr client computers in their environment.

Two methods to evaluate overall status

• Client Activity: Monitored from the Server

Configure thresholds to determine if a client is active

• Client Check: Monitored from the Client

A client evaluation engine is installed with the ConfigMgr client, which periodically evaluates its health and state of dependencies. It can also remediate some problems with the client.

Client Health - Components

Client Check

• Independent agent• Single install• Auto-Remediation

• Prerequisites• Dependencies• Services• WMI

• Viewable by collection

Client Activity

• Track server activity• DDR• SINV• HINV• Status messages• Policy requests• State Messages

• Viewable by collection

In console alerts

Client Activity - Settings

• Configurable from the console

• When all thresholds are exceeded, the client is marked as inactive

Client Check• Reasons for CfgMgr clients to become unhealthy• WMI Failures• DCOM Permissions Issues• Service Failures• Etc ...

• Challenge• Effective handling of these issues requires a validation and

remediation mechanism that is independent and external to the client itself.

• Solution• Independent engine which runs as a scheduled Task

Client Check – Client Health Tool

• Automatically implemented at client installation time

• Independent from the ConfigMgr Client• Runs as a scheduled task

• By default around midnight

Client Check – Installation properties

Property Details

/NotifyOnly Specifies that client status will report, but not remediate problems that are found with the Configuration Manager client.

Property Details

CCMEVALINTERVAL Specifies the frequency when the client health evaluation tool (ccmeval.exe) runs. You can specify a value from 1 through 1440 minutes. If you do not specify this property, or specify an incorrect value, the evaluation will run once a day.

CCMEVALHOUR Specify the hour when the client health evaluation tool (ccmeval.exe) runs. You can specify a value between 0 (midnight) and 23 (11pm). If you do not specify this property, or specify and incorrect value, the evaluation will run at midnight.

Client.msi

CCMSetup.exe

Client Health - Dashboards• 3 dashboards• Overall• Client Activity• Client Health

• Scheduled summarization• Scoped by collection

Client Health - Alerts

• Integrated Alerting• Enabled at collection level

Client Health - Reporting

• Built-in Reports