What are the various Site System Role in System center configuration manager (SCCM) Current Branch

Service connection point:

• A site system role that uploads usage data from your site, and is required to make updates for Configuration Manager available in the console. This role also helps to manage mobile devices with Microsoft Intune and on-premises MDM. 

• A hierarchy only supports a single instance of this role, and that must be at the top-tier site of your hierarchy. If you expand a standalone primary site into a larger hierarchy, uninstall this role from the primary site, and then install it at the central administration site. 

Reporting services point:

• A site system role that integrates with SQL Server Reporting Services to create and manage reports for Configuration Manager. 
• This role is supported at primary sites and the central administration site, and you can install multiple instances of this role at a supported site.

Software update point:

• A site system role that integrates with Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) to provide software updates to Configuration Manager clients. This role is supported at all sites:

State migration point:

• When you migrate a computer to a new operating system, this site system role stores user state data. This role is supported at primary sites and at secondary sites. Install multiple instances of this role at a site, and at multiple sites in the same hierarchy.

Management point:

• A site system role that provides policy and service location information to clients. It also receives configuration data from clients.
• By default, this role installs on the site server when you install a new primary or secondary site. Primary sites support multiple instances of this role. 

Fallback status point:

• A site system role that helps you monitor client installation. It identifies clients that are unmanaged because they can't communicate with their management point. 

Enrollment proxy point:

• A site system role that manages Configuration Manager enrollment requests from mobile devices and macOS computers. Although this role is supported only at primary sites, you can install multiple instances of this role at a site, or at multiple sites in the same hierarchy.

Enrollment point:

• A site system role that uses PKI certificates for Configuration Manager to enroll mobile devices and macOS computers. Although this role is supported only at primary sites, you can install multiple instances of this role at a site, or at multiple sites in the same hierarchy.

Distribution point:

• A site system role that contains source files for clients to download, for example:

Application content
Software packages
Software updates
OS images
Boot image

Asset Intelligence synchronization point:

• A site system role that connects to Microsoft to download information for the Asset Intelligence catalog. This role also uploads uncategorized titles, so that Microsoft can consider them for future inclusion in the catalog.

Data warehouse service point:

• Use the data warehouse service point to store and report on long-term historical data in your Configuration Manager environment.

Cloud management gateway connection point:

• A site system role for communicating with the cloud management gateway.

Certificate registration point:

• A site system role that communicates with a server that runs the Network Device Enrollment Service (NDES). This role manages device certificate requests that use the Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP). This role is supported only at primary sites and the central administration site.

Application Catalog website point:

• A site system role that provides users with a list of available software from the Application Catalog. Although this role is supported only at primary sites, you can install multiple instances of this role at a site,

Application Catalog web service point:

• A site system role that provides software information to the Application Catalog website from the software library. Although this role is supported only at primary sites, you can install multiple instances of this role at a site, or at multiple sites in the same hierarchy.

SMS Provider:

• The assigns this role to each computer that hosts an instance of the SMS Provider. The provider is the interface between a Configuration Manager console and the site database. By default, this role automatically installs on the site server of a central administration site and primary sites. Install additional instances at each site to provide access to additional administrative users or for redundancy.

Configuration Manager site database server:

• The site assigns this role to site system servers that hold an instance of the site database. Only move this role to a new server by running setup to modify the site to use a different instance of SQL Server to host the site database.

What is Apache Cassandra

What is Apache Cassandra?

* Apache Cassandra is an open source, distributed and decentralized/distributed storage system (database), for managing very large amounts of structured data spread out across the world.

* It provides highly available service with no single point of failure.

What is mongo DB

MongoDB:

* MongoDB is a cross-platform document-oriented database system that avoids using the traditional table-based relational database structure in favor of JSON-like documents with dynamic schemas making the integration of data in certain types of applications easier and faster.

What is Apache HBase

Apache HBase :

* HBase is an open source, non-relational, distributed database modeled after Google’s BigTable and is written in Java.

* It is developed as a part of Apache Hadoop project and runs on top of HDFS, providing BigTable-like capabilities for Hadoop.

What is HAL or hardware abstraction layer l

* HAL hardware abstraction layer is used by the operating system to interact with the hardware.

* It is simply a dll call HAL.dll.

* What does HAL.dll does is that it provides the necessary drivers for your operating system to interact with hardware.

* The problem with a HAl.dll is that when you restore your operating system you need to use identical hardware for successful restore this was huge drawback with HAL.dll

* In new your operating system such as Windows 10 this dependency on HAL.dll is removed.

* Now when you restore your operating system the BIOS will detect the existing hardware or the new hardware on which the operating system is being restored.

* To configure this dynamic HAL you need to use a tool call BCDedit.

Bcdedit /set {current} detecthal yes

What is Data Model in Couch DB

Data Model

* Database is the outermost data structure/container in CouchDB.

* Each database is a collection of independent documents.

* Each document maintains its own data and self-contained schema.

* Document metadata contains revision information, which makes it possible to merge the differences occurred while the databases were disconnected.

* CouchDB implements multi version concurrency control, to avoid the need to lock the database field during writes.

What is NoSql DB

NoSQL Databases

* A NoSQL database (sometimes called as Not Only SQL) is a database that provides a mechanism to store and retrieve data other than the tabular relations used in relational databases.

* These databases are schema-free, support easy replication, have simple API, eventually consistent, and can handle huge amounts of data (big data).

* The primary objective of a NoSQL database is to have the following −

1. Simplicity of design,
2.Horizontal scaling, and
3.Finer control over availability.

What is CouchDB

What is CouchDB?

* CouchDB is an open source database developed by Apache software foundation. The focus is on the ease of use, embracing the web. It is a NoSQL document store database.

* It uses JSON, to store data (documents), java script as its query language to transform the documents, http protocol for api to access the documents, query the indices with the web browser.

What is Avro Seriealization

*Avro-Serialization is the process of translating data structures or objects state into binary or textual form to transport the data over network or to store on some persisten storage.

*Once the data is transported over network or retrieved from the persistent storage, it needs to be deserialized again. Serialization is termed as marshalling and deserialization is termed as unmarshalling.

What is avro

* Apache Avro is a language-neutral data serialization system. It was developed by Doug Cutting, the father of Hadoop. Since Hadoop writable classes lack language portability, Avro becomes quite helpful, as it deals with data formats that can be processed by multiple languages. Avro is a preferred tool to serialize data in Hadoop.

* Avro has a schema-based system. A language-independent schema is associated with its read and write operations. Avro serializes the data which has a built-in schema. Avro serializes the data into a compact binary format, which can be deserialized by any application.

* Avro uses JSON format to declare the data structures. Presently, it supports languages such as Java, C, C++, C#, Python, and Ruby.

What is Sqoop and why it is used ?

Sqoop:

Sqoop is an open source framework provided by Apache. It is a command-line interface application for efficiently transferring bulk data between Apache Hadoop and external datastores such as relational databases, enterprise data warehouses. It is used to import data from relational databases such as MySQL, Oracle to Hadoop HDFS, and export from Hadoop file system to relational databases. 

Sqoop Import:
The import tool is used to imports individual tables from RDBMS to HDFS. Each row in a table is treated as a record in HDFS. 

Sqoop Export:
The export tool exports a set of files from HDFS back to an RDBMS. The files given as input to Sqoop contain records, which are called as rows in table.

Why Sqoop is used?
For Hadoop developers, the work starts after data is loaded into HDFS. For this, the data residing in the relational database management systems need to be transferred to HDFS and might need to transfer back to relational database management systems. So developers can always write custom scripts to transfer data in and out of Hadoop, but Apache Sqoop provides an alternative.
Sqoop uses MapReduce framework to import and export the data, which provides parallel mechanism as well as fault tolerance. Sqoop makes developers life easy by providing command line interface. Developers just need to provide basic information like source, destination and database authentication details in the sqoop command. 

Sqoop Connectors:
All the existing Database Management Systems are designed with SQL standard in mind. However, each DBMS differs with respect to dialect to some extent. So, this difference poses challenges when it comes to data transfers across the systems. Sqoop Connectors are components which help overcome these challenges. Data transfer between Sqoop and external storage system is made possible with the help of Sqoop's connectors. Sqoop has connectors for working with a range of popular relational databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2. Each of these connectors knows how to interact with its associated DBMS. There is also a generic JDBC connector for connecting to any database that supports Java's JDBC protocol. In addition, Sqoop provides optimized MySQL and PostgreSQL connectors that use database-specific APIs to perform bulk transfers efficiently.

What are Daemons in Hadoop and types of dameons

Daemons:
Daemons are resident programs which constitute to hadoop running. In computing terms it is a process that runs in the background.
Hadoop has five such daemons. They are 1.NameNode,
2.Secondary NameNode
3.DataNode
4.JobTracker
5.TaskTracker.

Each daemons runs separately in its own JVM. We discuss about these daemons in this post as they are associated with HDFS and MapReduce.

What is Hadoop

What is Hadoop?

Apache Hadoop is an open-source java framework that is used to store,analyze and process Big data in a distributed environment across clusters of computers. It is used by Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Youtube, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more. Hadoop is top level apache project developed by Doug Cutting. It works on distributed system. It is inspired by google mapreduce algorithm for running distributed application. Hadoop could be good if you have a lot of data you do not know what to do and you do not want to loose it. 
Hadoop is initiated and led by YAHOO. hadoop is written in java programming language with some code in C and some commands in shell-scripts. Companies that offer hadoop services are - IBM, Amazon Web Services, Cloudera, Microsoft Azure, Dell. 

What is Just Enough Administration or JEA in Windows 2016

What is Just Enough Administration or JEA in Windows 2016

• JEA is new kind of Administration Model in Windows 2016.
• Its Role Based administration Model where you can fine tune custom Admin Settings.
• To understand more look at the below video

Video:

What is Azure resource group and how to create it PowerShell

What is Azure resource group and how to create it PowerShell

What is Resource group:

• Before deploying any resources to your subscription, you must create a resource group that will contain the resources.

Create a resource group:

• To create a resource group, use the New-AzureRmResourceGroup cmdlet.

New-AzureRmResourceGroup -Name CognosApp -Location "West US"

• Uses the Name parameter to specify a name for the resource group and the Location parameter to specify its location.

What does Sealed and Unsealed Management Packs mean

What does Sealed and Unsealed Management Packs mean

• Management packs are either sealed or unsealed. A sealed management pack is a binary file that cannot be edited. An unsealed management pack is an XML file that can be edited. Sealed management packs should have an .mp extension, while unsealed management packs should have an .xml extension.

• In general, management packs obtained from an application or hardware device vendor are sealed.

Although you cannot change the settings in a sealed management pack, you can still customize the applied settings of a management pack after it is imported by using overrides or by creating additional settings such as rules, monitors, and tasks that supersede the management pack's default settings. All customizations that you create are saved to a separate management pack file.

What is a Management Pack in SCOM mean

What is a Management Pack in SCOM mean

• Generally when you explain to your top management about SCOM, you use the word Management pack. All of sudden on of the executive stopped and asked me what does Management Pack mean, So i taught it would be useful if i give some explanation here.

• Management packs typically contain monitoring settings for applications and services. After a management pack is imported into a management group, System Center 2012 – Operations Manager immediately begins monitoring objects based on default configurations and thresholds that are set by the management pack.

Each management pack can contain any or all of the following parts:

• Monitors, which direct an agent to track the state of various parts of a managed component.
• Rules, which direct an agent to collect performance and discovery data, send alerts and events, and more.
• Tasks, which define activities that can be executed by either the agent or the console.
• Knowledge, which provides textual advice to help operators diagnose and fix problems.
• Views, which offer customized user interfaces for monitoring and managing this component.
• Reports, which define specialized ways to report on information about this managed component.
• Object discoveries, which identify objects to be monitored.
• Run As profiles, which allow you to run different rules, tasks, monitors, or discoveries under different accounts on different computers.

What is a Management Pack an What does it contain

What is a Management Pack an What does it contain

Management packs contain monitoring settings for applications and services. Once you import the management pack in SCOM 2012 R2 management group, it immediately begins monitoring objects based on configurations and thresholds that are set by the management pack.

Each management pack can contain any or all of the following:

• Monitors:It tells an agent to track the state of various parts of a managed component.

• Rules: It tells an agent to collect performance and discovery data, send alerts and events etc.

• Tasks: The activities that can be executed by either the agent or the console.

• Views: It offer customized user interfaces for monitoring and managing this component.

• Reports: It define specialized ways to report on information about this managed component.

• Object discoveries: which identify objects to be monitored.

• Knowledge Base: It provides Knowledge to help operators diagnose and fix problems.