Testing management points the Configuration Manager 2007 way – Jeff Gilbert’s Web blog at myITforum.com: “Testing management point connectivity is just one of those things that SMS/ConfigMgr admins need to do on a regular basis. You can always peruse the mpcontrol.log to check management point health, but to make it easier, the product team has provided some handy test urls that can be used instead of reviewing the mpcontrol.log all the time.
Using the management point test urls is a pretty old tip. It’s documented in a ton of places including the SMS 2003 FAQ, the Configuration Manager 2007 documentation, and a myriad of other Web locations. However, there is a catch when using these test urls in Configuration Manager sites that may not seem obvious at first and is a change from SMS 2003 behavior. I noticed this while working on something in my lab so I figured it would be a good tip to pass along.
When testing management point connectivity in SMS 2003 sites, you just open up a Web browser instance and go to: https:///sms_mp/.sms_aut?mplist. If all is well with the management point you will see:
(Yes, I know there’s nothing there…that’s a good thing for SMS 2003 sites and what you should see if the management point is responding to http requests )
In Configuration Manager sites, you actually do see something when you browse to the test urls and Don Hite has done a nice job documenting some of that behavior in his blog already.
So, in SMS 2003 sites, seeing nothing is good and something (IIS errors) is bad. In Configuration Manager sites, seeing something is good and nothing (IIS errors) is bad…that sounded a lot clearer in my head.
Anyway, moving on. If you browse to that”