SCCM and Intune Project

The first real IT interview I ever had I was asked what the difference was between a GPO and an OU. I had never worked with Active Directory before, so I had to admit that I had no idea (I did not get the job...). After that, I went home, looked up AD tutorials, made my own AD environment, and started learning how it worked.

The next interview I had also asked about AD, and this time I knew the answer, and got the job. Now I had my own computer lab I was in charge of, and was responsible for. The stations and lab were in BAD shape (some still had hard drives, and others had dead CMOS batteries, so they couldn't authenticate because they thought it was 1949). I replaced the HDDs with SSDs, made a "golden image" for them, and deployed the image with the latest and great assistive technology settings and and helpful GPOs I could think of, and I was finally a real tech.

Then I heard in a meeting about something called Systems Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), and how it helped them understand their lab. I asked for access to SCCM, got access to it, and was then greeted with the following screen shot:

"Imagine seeing this as a Political Science major..."

If you're looking at that dashboard and struggling to make heads or tails of it, then you're experiencing exactly what I experienced when I first saw this. Where do you even start with this! I had to learn how this thing worked, and fast, and in an environment that I could safely screw up and make mistakes. I went to Youtube and found the perfect SCCM set up guide That playlist is listed here, from Priscilla Leon I also have another playlist here from Daniel "Brother-Bear" Barras that helped me a ton. After a LOT of trial and error (more error than trial), I had own my working SCCM environment. Now I could safely screw up and learn without worrying about accidentally deleting the HR OU.

This was a great experience, as it gave me a full environment (I had three servers acting as my DC, CM, and Gateway servers, as well two desktops, one set up with PXE, and the other with just a Windows 11 image).

Just as confusing as before, but now easier on the eyes 😎

When I have time, I'm also going to provide a write up of the different things I've done with SCCM (such as packaging ZoomText and some of the reports I can run), and also finish up with my Intune instance. Stay tuned (or don't, up to you)!