Guide – State Migration Point Creation (with the correct permissions)

I’ve created dozens of State Migration Points over the last few years, and 99% of the time, i’ve had to alter the permissions in 1 place or another to get it to work properly.

Having researched this a lot, I note there is no 1 place to say; “Set these permissions” …Until now

Preparation

By default, SCCM will use the machine account of each client to set permissions in the State Migration Point (hereby known as SMP).  I’m not overly keen on this and would prefer a Service account do this instead.  Thankfully, we can set SCCM to use the Network Access Account (hereby known as NAA) to do this instead.  I’ve found this to be much more reliable and so this is what we’ll utilise.

1) Ensure your NAA is a member of the Local Administrators group on the Site Server that will be your SMP.

As a side note, best practice should be to have a single AD security group which contains your NAA, and the machine accounts for each site server.  This security group should then be in the Local Admins group on every site server.

2) Before you install the SMP role in SCCM, create a root folder for it to sit in:  “_USMT”

In this example, i’m going to create Z:\_USMT

Set its permissions like so;

Ensure ‘Include inheritable permissions from this object’s parent’ is unticked, and “Replace all child object **” is ticked.

3) Create the SMP Role

Now in SCCM, install the SMP role onto the selected Site Server.

And set the folder to the one we created earlier:

Clients\Free space your choice

 

4) Check the logs

Before we jump in, its a good time to check the logs to make sure its creating our SMP Share as expected.  On your SMP Server, open the SmpMgr.log

We can see here its created an SMPStore folder in our Z:\_USMT directory.  Although its not quite done yet, but at this point you’re safe to proceed…

 

5) Finalise the permissions

There’s no pretty way to do this, so i’m just going to reel off screenshots in the order of how you should ensure yours are configured.

Open your ‘_USMT’ folder and Continue when prompted.

Open your SMPSTORE folder, and continue when prompted.

Open the properties\security of your SMPSTORE folder

Add the permissions exactly as per below, it should have inherited local admins and system from the parent but if not, add them too;

Authenticated Users = Read Attributes (only!)

Local Service = Full Control

The bottom obscured should be the account your are currently using, its fine to leave as it is.

File sharing permissions;

Advanced Sharing Permissions should be empty;

 

6) Last check on the log

Give the log file another check and you should see it has completed its configuration.  Microsoft do say to allow up to an hour for this to complete and be available to clients, but i’ve generally found once the perms are set correct as per above, its good to go.

7) Ensure your USMT Steps in your TS are set to use the NAA

On both your Capture and Restore State Store steps ensure “If computer account fails to connect to state store, use the Network Access account” is ticked.

 

Summary

Those are the steps I follow to have a seamless, quick and secure State Migration Point, every time.

Your clients will now backup and restore, using the Network Access Account.

I hope this has helped you.

Rich Mawdsley

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