Nomad Reports Installation and Administration Guide

Nomad Reports Installation and Administration Guide
Streamlined systems management
www.1e.com
i
Version 1.1
Document revision 1
1E Ltd 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this document or of the software (the software) to which it
relates shall be reproduced, adapted, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission from 1E Ltd.
It is the responsibility of the user to use the software in accordance with this document and 1E
Ltd shall not be responsible if the user fails to do so. Although every precaution has been taken
in the preparation of this document, 1E Ltd and the authors assume no responsibility for errors
or omissions, nor shall they be liable for damages resulting from any information in it.
Trademarks
1E, the 1E device, ACTIVEEFFICIENCY, APPCLARITY, NIGHTWATCHMAN, NOMAD, DROWSY and

DROWSY SERVER are trademarks belonging to 1E Ltd. 1E is registered in the UK, EU and the
US. The 1E device is registered in the UK, EU, Australia and the US. NIGHTWATCHMAN is
registered in the EU and the US. NOMAD BRANCH is registered in the EU and the US. DROWSY
is registered in the UK. DROWSY SERVER is registered in the US.
MICROSOFT, WINDOWS 7, WINDOWS VISTA, WINDOWS XP, CONFIGURATION MANAGER,
INTERNET EXPLORER are all trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other
countries.
Macintosh is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

Contents ii
Contents
1. Overview ........................................................................................................ 3
2. Prerequisites .................................................................................................. 4
3. Installing Nomad Reports ............................................................................... 5

3.1 Installing interactively ......................................................................................... 5
3.2 Installing silently ................................................................................................ 5
4. Configuring Nomad Reports ............................................................................ 6

4.1 Client Settings ................................................................................................... 6
4.2 ConfigMgr 2012 ................................................................................................. 6
4.3 ConfigMgr 2007 ................................................................................................. 9

4.4 SQL Reporting Configuration .............................................................................. 10
4.5 Security and Reporting Speed Considerations ....................................................... 11
5. Upgrading Nomad Reports ............................................................................ 12

5.1 Installing Nomad Reports .................................................................................. 12
5.2 Configuring Nomad Reports ............................................................................... 12
5.3 SQL Reporting Configuration .............................................................................. 12
6. Reporting data sources explained: ................................................................ 13

7. Nomad Reports in details: ............................................................................ 14
7.1 Savings Reports (Daily, Weekly, Monthly) ............................................................ 14
7.2 Nomad Downloads ............................................................................................ 14

7.3 Deployment Reports (Summary and Details) ........................................................ 16
7.4 Nomad roll out reports ...................................................................................... 18
Nomad Agent Versions Count ............................................................................. 18

Nomad Missing Count of ConfigMgr Clients ........................................................... 18
Nomad Missing on ConfigMgr Clients ................................................................... 18

7.5 Nomad Health Report ........................................................................................ 19
7.6 Nomad Cached Packages for a Specific Computer .................................................. 19
7.7 Nomad Pre-Cached (AD-Sites and Subnet) ........................................................... 19
7.8 Nomad Packages on Machines ............................................................................ 21
8. Reports Caching ........................................................................................... 22

Overview 3
1. Overview
Nomad Reports provide visibility of Nomad operations in the ConfigMgr environment on the network.
These reports allow the ConfigMgr administrator to view deployment results at multiple levels
Advertisements, Packages and AD Sites etc. These reports are compatible with Nomad 3.2 and above.

Prerequisites 4
2. Prerequisites
The following are required before Nomad reporting can be installed.
SQL Server Reporting Services installed and configured
Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (ConfigMgr 2007) or Microsoft System
Center Configuration Manager 2012 (ConfigMgr 2012) installed and configured with the
Reporting Services Point role configured.
ConfigMgr Reporting must be using SQL Reporting Services
Hardware Inventory enabled on all clients. Nomad Reports rely on ConfigMgr Hardware
Inventory to collect the Nomad Status Messages.

Installing Nomad Reports 5
3. Installing Nomad Reports

The installation can be interactive or silent.
Note: The NomadReports.msi deploys only the Report files in the Installation folder. The
setup and configuration of Nomad Reports is required to be done manually post installation,
as per the steps mentioned in Heading 4 - Configuring Nomad Reports
3.1 Installing interactively

To install Nomad Reports MSI using a wizard double-click on the NomadReports.msi and follow the
onscreen prompts.
Table 1 Nomad Reports installation steps
Screen Interaction
The Welcome Screen No interaction required here, just click Next.

License Agreement You should read the license information displayed here and then
choose to continue with the installation by selecting the I accept the
license agreement option and clicking on Next.
Destination Folder Click Next to accept the default installation directory of
%ProgramFiles%\1E\NomadReports\, or Click the Change button to
modify this.
Ready to Install the Application Click Install to begin the installation.
3.2 Installing silently

Windows Installer enables you to install and configure silently. To install Nomad Reports MSI silently,
execute the following command line:
msiexec /i NomadReports.msi /qn
Note: The Nomad Reports will be installed to %ProgramFiles%\1E \NomadReports

Configuring Nomad Reports 6
4. Configuring Nomad Reports

The instructions for configuring the Nomad Reports are dependent on the version of ConfigMgr being
used.
4.1 Client Settings

The Nomad Reports rely on ConfigMgr Hardware Inventory to gather the Nomad Status Message Events.
In order to enable the Nomad Status Message events, set the following Nomad registry setting on all
Nomad clients:
NomadBranch\StatusMsgEvents REG_SZ 0x1000002024
This setting can also be enabled during the installation of Nomad on the clients using the following
installer command line switch:
msiexec /i NomadBranch.msi PIDKEY=ABCD-1234-5678-8765-4321 STATUSMSGEVENTS=0x1000002024 /qn
Where ABCD-1234-5678-8765-4321 should be replaced in the above command-line example with the
license key you obtained from 1E.
Note: If the Nomad Status Message events are not enabled on the clients, the Reports will
display that the clients downloaded the packages using BITS.
4.2 ConfigMgr 2012

Add Nomad Reporting inventory classes into ConfigMgr 2012.
1. Open the 1E_NOMAD_CONFIGMGR_CONFIGURATION_v1.3.MOF file installed by

NomadReports.msi and copy the contents.
2. Open <ConfigMgr Install Directory>\Inboxes\clifiles.src\hinv\configuration.mof and paste in

between the extension start and finish points:
//=======================
// Added extension start
//=======================
NOMAD MOF EXTENSION GOES HERE
//=======================
// Added extension end
//=======================
3. Save the configuration.mof file - Automatically mofcomp runs for you on the server.

4. Open up the ConfigMgr 2012 console and navigate to Administration\Client Settings\Default

Settings then Right-Click and select Properties.
Either enable these two classes in the Default Client Settings that you have open at this time or
create a new Custom Client Device Setting for Hardware Inventory with these classes enabled
and target the appropriate systems in your environment (1E recommended method).

5. Click Hardware Inventory on the left hand side of the page, then click Set Classes.

6. Click Import and navigate to the 1E_NOMAD_CONFIGMGR_SMS_DEF_v1.3.MOF file.

a) At this point the following two new classes will appear at the top of the Hardware
Inventory Classes list:
b) 1E Nomad Packages (NomadPackages)
c) 1E Nomad Settings (NomadSettings)
4.3 ConfigMgr 2007
1. Adding customizations to SMS_DEF.MOF:

Open 1E_NOMAD_CONFIGMGR_SMS_DEF_v1.3.mof in Notepad, copy all its contents
and paste it at the bottom of the following file:
SCCM\inboxes\clifiles.src\hinv\sms_def.mof
2. Adding customizations to Configuration.MOF:
Open 1E_NOMAD_CONFIGMGR_CONFIGURATION_v1.3.mof in Notepad, copy all its
contents and paste it at the bottom of the following file:
SCCM\inboxes\clifiles.src\hinv\configuration.mof
To check success of these changes, open log file SCCM\Logs\dataldr.log. Following messages in
the log file should confirm that the changes were successful:
SMS_DEF.MOF change detected
End of cimv2\sms-to-policy conversion; returning 0x0

4.4 SQL Reporting Configuration

In order to allow fast report creation an intermediately report table will be built, this table is configured
to be created in a database called _1E_Reports. Create this database via SQL Server Management
Studio manually on the same SQL server as the ConfigMgr database is hosted, and add the ConfigMgr
Reporting Services Point Windows user as DB_Owner.
1. Ensure that ConfigMgr Reporting Services is installed.

2. Open Reporting Services Configuration Manager.
3. Switch the tab to Reporting Manager URL and click on the URL.
4. Click on ConfigMgr_<SiteCode>
5. Create a new folder and call it 1E Nomad.
6. Go into the 1E Nomad folder and upload the .rdl files installed by NomadReports.msi.
7. Select a report and select Manage, select the Data Sources tab and change radio button from A
custom data source to A shared data source. Click Browse and select the shared ConfigMgr
source.
8. Click Apply.
9. Repeat this process for all Nomad reports.
10. Test that the reports work within SQL Server Reporting Services.
11. Test that the reports are working within ConfigMgr 2012 console.
Running the reports directly within ConfigMgr 2007 is not supported and you would have to use
native SSRS instead.
Note: If the hardware inventory has not been extended, the reports will not display any
results and instead display a message to extend the hardware inventory.

4.5 Security and Reporting Speed Considerations

The following installation instructions are not mandatory but recommended for environments with more
than 5000 Nomad clients.
The Nomad Pre-Cached AD-Sites report will attempt to create an index on the Nomad packages table
on the CM database if it cannot find such index in place already.
In order to allow this index to be created please run the report with escalated privileges just once. This
index will speed up future report creation for all Nomad reports that key off from it by a factor of 5.
You can also run the code manually:
IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT name FROM sysindexes WHERE name = '_E_Nomad_Packages_DATA_PackageID')
BEGIN BEGIN TRY
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX _E_Nomad_Packages_DATA_PackageID
ON [dbo].[_E_Nomad_Packages_DATA] ([PackageID00])
INCLUDE ([MachineID],[Version00])
END TRY BEGIN CATCH END CATCH
END
IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT name FROM sysindexes WHERE name = '_E_NomadPackages_DATA_PackageID')
BEGIN BEGIN TRY
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX _E_NomadPackages_DATA_PackageID
ON [dbo].[_E_NomadPackages_DATA] ([PackageID00])
INCLUDE ([MachineID],[Version00])
END TRY BEGIN CATCH END CATCH
END

Upgrading Nomad Reports 12
5. Upgrading Nomad Reports

New versions of Nomad Reports will be released from time to time; the following process outlines how to
upgrade to the latest version.
5.1 Installing Nomad Reports

Uninstall the previous Nomad Reports.
Follow the installation procedure in section 3 of this document to install Nomad Reports.
5.2 Configuring Nomad Reports

Some versions of Nomad Reports may include changes to the MOF files, following the procedure in
section 4.2 Configuration Manager 2012 or section 4.3 Configuration Manager 2007 depending on the
version of Configuration Manager being used.
5.3 SQL Reporting Configuration

Some versions of Nomad Reports may include new reports, make changes to existing reports or may
retire reports.
1. Delete the 1E Nomad folder before importing the new reports.
2. Follow the procedure in section 4.4 SQL Reporting Configuration

Reporting data sources explained: 13
6. Reporting data sources explained:

ConfigMgr Hardware inventory, the NomadBranch registry with PkgStatus subkey.
+Low overhead in data
+Can report on configuration changes

-Delayed reporting
-Volatile report. (i.e Nomad cache gets cleaned as needed)
Status messages, Request Started, Master Changed, Error and Final Statistics
+Faster reporting results, including ongoing downloads.
-Slow query performance on status messages means the reports require intermediate table.
-4 messages per download, sometimes more if download gets stuck and master changes a lot to find a
client that can still download.
Note: The Nomad Downloads report can show you which download have a lot of elections.

Nomad Reports in details: 14
7. Nomad Reports in details:

7.1 Savings Reports (Daily, Weekly, Monthly)
Based on StatusMessages FinalStats message.
Will use _1E_Reports DB but works without it, just slower & less historical data.
Keeps a history in _1E_Reports DB that is 2 years by default
Fast reporting, when cached, somewhat slow when running directly from Status Message table,
but will be decent with < 10k machines.
All three reports use the same, non-aggregated table; the main difference is the GROUP BY
statement. For this reason, even the daily report is capable of creating a 2 year graph.
7.2 Nomad Downloads

Based on StatusMessages messages (all 4).
Requires _1E_Reports DB
Keeps a history in _1E_Reports DB that is 2 years by default
Fast reporting, caching will take 2-8 minutes depending on your environment size.
The Package Name drop down is ordered in the following order, TS, Classic Packages, App Model
and Windows Updates.

It will show the latest deployment of the selected package for the time period specified.

7.3 Deployment Reports (Summary and Details)

Based on StatusMessages messages (all 4).
Requires _1E_Reports DB
Very slow build up the cache due to BITS and TS data (5-15 minutes). Recommendation is to
rebuild once or twice a day via automatic report caching.
Once the Cache is built the report is fast and useful to quickly drill into deployments.
Mouse over help on fields.
Find Packages & Adverts via Like field which updates the drop down.
Drill Down: Fields that allow drill down are shown with a magnifying glass.
Caveat:
Does not show Windows updates or App Model downloads. ConfigMgr 2012 Task Sequences that
deploy app model apps will not show these App model apps.

Customization:
If you have a large ConfigMgr environment you may want to remove parameter to Delete
Cached Data so that engineers cannot tax the ConfigMgr SQL server too much during business
hours.

7.4 Nomad roll out reports

There are three Nomad roll out Reports:
Nomad Agent Versions Count

Based on Hardware Inventory Settings.
Use this to see your upgrade or roll out project status.
Nomad Missing Count of ConfigMgr Clients

Based on built in ConfigMgr hardware inventory ARP
Use this to see your upgrade or roll out project status.
Nomad Missing on ConfigMgr Clients

Based on built in ConfigMgr hardware inventory ARP
Use this to see clients that are otherwise active that are missing Nomad.

7.5 Nomad Health Report

Based on Hardware Inventory PkgStatus and ConfigMgr built in inventory data.
Shows Nomad health for Service, and Hardware inventory.
Looks at if Nomad has downloaded something, and how long ago Nomad was installed as well as
last hardware inventory.
Can show machines that had failures when downloading.
7.6 Nomad Cached Packages for a Specific Computer

Based on Hardware Inventory PkgStatus and ConfigMgr built in inventory data.
Shows every package currently cached. How long it downloaded and Back Off/Caching Time.
7.7 Nomad Pre-Cached (AD-Sites and Subnet)

Overview of AD-Sites or Subnets for an overview for Caching %
Drill Down: Fields that allow drill down are shown with a magnifying glass.
FastReport Feature, to drastically reduce query time while not showing less used fields.
Mouse Over for explanations of fields. This will also explain how the fields are different with
FastReport True/False.
Subnet report has a SQL Like field for a subnet parameter.
Caveat:
The AD-Sites report does not Show TS packages that are completely un-cached on an AD-Site.
The Subnet report is not affected; it will show uncached and cached TS referenced packages.
Customization:
For smaller organization you may want so switch the default FastReport parameter to false
to get richer data by default.


7.8 Nomad Packages on Machines

Does not allow selecting Task Sequences.
Useful to export a long list of machine names to excel.

Reports Caching 22
8. Reports Caching
The Nomad Deployment and Nomad Downloads reports will run too slowly for estates of 5000 clients
or more because they look at all the status messages in order to determine Nomad/BITS usage and Task
Sequence events.
This is why these report write into an intermediately table on the _1E_Reports Database at least once a
day. You should setup this once a day refreshment to happen via report caching.
Note: You should only have to set it up for either the summary or the details Nomad Deployment, no
need to do it for both.
In order to setup caching follow these steps:

1. Click to manage the report.
2. Go into the Processing Options and select Always run this report with the most recent data
and below that select Cache a temporary copy of the report. Expire copy of report after a
number of minutes:
3. Set the timeout to 5-30. (Do not set higher than 30 minutes).
4. Now go into the Cache Refresh Options tab. Here create a New Cache Refresh Plan.
5. Setup a plan to run every day around just before the start of the business day when
deployments should have finished, usually 7am. It is important to select the Parameter Delete
Cached Data or Update Cached Data respectively and set it to TRUE.

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Streamlined systems management