John Quirk's Blog

The MDT Package Mapping approach is a great bit of OS deployment technology and can help to provide an excellent deployment rate when it comes to large-scale zero touch deployment projects. One limitation that currently exists is that package mapping only works in the refresh computer scenario, i.e. I’m moving from XP to Vista, when I install my Vista image, put back the applications which I used to have.

For the Replace Computer scenario, where we’re deploying new hardware, out of the box, package mapping does nothing for us.

In the ConfigMgr Replace Computer scenario we use ConfigMgr Computer Associations to provide the capability to recover the user state (via a state migration point) from the OLDCOMPUTER to the NEWCOMPUTER during the build process. We run the Replace Computer Scenario task sequence on the OLDCOMPUTER, this captures the user state, then the NEWCOMPUTER state restore phase magically recovers this. All good stuff, but it doesn’t help us with the apps…

But it can. A small change to the PackageMapping stored procedure can use the same Computer Association record to migrate the applications across machines in the same way as we migrate the user state. It’s a shame that this isn’t integrated in the ConfigMgr console as elegantly as the Computer Associations are, but it works…

First we need to import the NEWCOMPUTER into ConfigMgr using the Import Computer Information wizard. Select the OLDCOMPUTER as the Source for the NEWCOMPUTER (obviously this can be done on a large-scale by populating a CSV file with these entries).

Next we need to modify the PackageMapping process so that it runs against the MACAddress of the OLDCOMPUTER rather than the NEWCOMPUTER.

In SQL Management Studio, browse to the PackageMapping stored procedure and select to modify it. Replace the entry shown with this text (replace SMS_JON with the name of your SMS database)

set ANSI_NULLS ON

set QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON

go

ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[RetrievePackages] @MacAddress CHAR(17) AS SET NOCOUNT ON /* Select and return all the appropriate records based on OLDCOMPUTER inventory */ SELECT * FROM PackageMapping WHERE ARPName IN ( SELECT ProdID0 FROM SMS_JON.dbo.v_GS_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS a, SMS_JON.dbo.v_GS_NETWORK_ADAPTER n WHERE a.ResourceID = n.ResourceID AND MACAddress0 = (select sourceMACAddresses from SMS_JON.dbo.v_statemigration where restoreMACAddresses=@MacAddress) AND n.ResourceID IN (Select ResourceID from SMS_JON.dbo.v_R_System_Valid))

A little explanation of what is happening here:

With a thorough PackageMapping database and thorough User State Migration profile and very good planning in terms of assigning the OLDCOMPUTER and NEWCOMPUTERs through Computer Associations we can achieve a near seamless and very high performance desktop replacement approach.