Remove Delete Special option from SCCM console

I found this TechNet forum post interesting on which the SCCM team wants to control their engineers from using Delete Special. Though you can set Role based permission to engineers, there are cases where mistake happens by experienced engineers or when people unwittingly delete machines. 

The 'Delete Special' option comes with the SCCM product, and here is how Christjan Schumann explained in the forum post with steps to remove the option from the SCCM console. 

• Make a backup and then edit "SCCM\AdminUI\XmlStorage\ConsoleRoot\adminconsole.xml" file.
• Search for lines containing: DisplayName="DeleteSpecialAction". You will find 3 matches. 
• All of them are parameters of "ActionDescription" tag and 2 of those matches should be removed from XML (from start tag to end tag ).
• To remove "Delete Special" option from context menu of root level collections: delete lines 7787 to 7807.
• To remove "Delete Special" option from context menu of child level collections: delete lines 8529 to 8549.

The above line numbers are valid in original SP2 adminconsole.xml. They might differ if you've customized it before.

Ref. Original Post: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/systemcenter/en-US/6868c190-1aee-4690-8e23-6e019f8d7472/delete-special

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/systemcenter/en-US/4b467010-3c55-4fa3-9a61-127c9d846416/sccm-2007-delete-special?forum=configmgradminconsole

How to Assign Security Rights on SCCM

Today when i had to check and assign security rights for one of the user at my client place, i thought it would be better to share this on my blog. This has been explained well in technet under the title:

How to Assign Rights for Objects to Users and Groups - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680648.aspx

Backup the SCCM Backup with AfterBackup.bat

It's always better and a preventive thought to Backup the Daily SMS/SCCM Backup, (keeping a daily copy on the server & mirroring the backups to an alternate server). I have seen people trying to add custom scripts in Scheduled tasks to copy/move the Backup data to a Remote server. But in the process of SCCM's daily backup (visible in smsbkup.log), there's an 'AfterBackup.bat' file used to perform post-backup actions automatically after the Backup Site Server maintenance task runs successfully. By default, the AfterBackup.bat batch file does not exist. To use it, you must first create the batch file and add commands.

To create the AfterBackup.bat batch file:

1. Prepare an ASCII file with commands that archive your backup snapshot, run a third-party archive tool, or perform any other post-backup tasks your site requires.
2. Name the file AfterBackup.bat, and save it in the *ConfigMgrInstallPath*\inboxes\smsbkup.box folder

Here is a simple script for 'AfterBackup.bat' written by 'Garth Jones', which saves 7 days backup to a folder named the day of the week, and also deletes/overwrites the older ones.

************************************************************************************************** 
REM @echo off

Setlocal enabledelayedexpansion

Set target=\\Destination_Servername\E$\Primary_SCCM_Backup\%date:~0,3%

If not exist %target% goto datacopy

RD %target% /s /q

:datacopy

xcopy "\\Source_Servername\SCCM_BackupPath\*" "%target%\" /E /-Y

***************************************************************************************************
where, *Source_Server is the Primary Server from which the backup has to be copied,
and *Destination_Server is the Remote Server where you want to copy the SiteBackup.

* You can also replace the word 'copy' to 'move' if you want to move the files instead of copy.
* You can also remove the part "\%date:~0,3%" from the script if you only require present day's backup. In my case we were running out of space on one backup server to save 7 days stuff, hence i removed that date part on the script.

[Although the intended use of AfterBackup.bat is to archive SMS backup snapshots, you can use that file for other tasks that you need to perform at the end of every back up operation, such as: 

• Run a SQL Server DBCC test to verify that there are no integrity problems with the SMS site database.
• Run a site health tool, or other health tools.]

Update: I have created a simple document with snapshots on how to implement the AfterBackup.bat script in your SCCM infrastructure. Click the below link to download the document for reference.

Backing up SCCM Backup - Download Link - https://sites.google.com/site/ucrajee/welcome/attachments/Backing%20up%20SCCM%20Backup.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1

Process Ref: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc180424.aspx
Script Ref: http://smsug.ca/blogs/garth_jones/archive/2011/01/13/afterbackup-bat.aspx