SCCM 2012 R2 Upgrade Checklist/Guide

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Friday (October 18th. 2013) Microsoft is releasing the next major release of System Center 2012 Configuration Manager the “R2” release. My guess is that many customers would like to install this update very fast, so I thought I’d make a simple overview guide to help with this process. This checklist/guide will explain the steps required to upgrade an existing SCCM 2012 SP1 Stand-alone primary site to SCCM 2012 R2.

    1. Verify that all your sites run SCCM 2012 SP1
    2. Uninstall the existing version of Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) 8.0
      Note: If you have other servers with the SMS Provider installed, you also need to uninstall Windows ADK 8.0 on these servers
    3. Install Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 (Can be installed as part of the ADK). Restart might be required.
    4. Install Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK) 8.1 for Windows 8.1.
      Download Windows ADK 8.1: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39982
    5. Review the site and hierarchy status.
    6. Install all critical updates available from Microsoft Updates on all relevant servers.
    7. Back up the site database.
    8. Disable all site maintenance tasks that might run during the upgrade.
    9. Run Setup Prerequisite Checker, to verify that the site server is ready to upgrade.
    10. Download the prerequisite files and redistributable files for SCCM 2012 R2 by running setupdl.exe.
    11. Test the database upgrade process on a copy of the most recent site database backup.
      More information: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8b6ff5c8-3c84-49fb-8bc7-930bed865de5#BKMK_TestSiteDBUpgrade
    12. Restart the site server (to ensure that there are no pending restarts).
    13. Install the SCCM 2012 R2 Upgrade on the Primary Site Server.
    14. Create Collections for updating Clients, Consoles and Site Servers.
      More Information: http://eskonr.com/2014/07/sccm-configmgr-2012-r2-collections-to-upgrade-clients-to-cu2-version/
    15. Upgrade the stand-alone Configuration Manager Consoles.
    16. Reconfigure the database maintenance tasks you might have disabled prior to the upgrade.
    17. Upgrade clients (use any method you prefer).

Today, I only have upgrade experience from my lab, but when the product is ready for download, and we start to upgrade our customers, I’ll keep updating this post with all the things we learn while upgrading our customers.

Enjoy.

+Ronni Pedersen

About Author

My name is Ronni Pedersen and I'm currently working as a Cloud Architect at APENTO in Denmark. My primary focus is Enterprise Client Management solutions, based on technologies like AzureAD, Intune, EMS and System Center Configuration Manager. I'm is also a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Microsoft MVP in Enterprise Mobility.

6 Comments

  1. Scott Hetherington on

    One other thing not mentioned here: the secondary sites in your hierarchy must be running SQL 2012 Express SP1 (SCCM 2012 installs the non-SP1 version by default), or you’ll end up with a prerequisite check failure when attempting to upgrade the site from the console. The error will be something about either not having admin to the SQL instance, or that the instance couldn’t be contacted.

    Hope that helps someone!

  2. Hi Ronni
    There is som known issues when upgrading.
    I’m having the PXE problem 🙁

    Taken from http://www.deploymentresearch.com/Research/tabid/62/EntryId/117/A-Geeks-Guide-for-upgrading-to-ConfigMgr-2012-R2-and-MDT-2013.aspx

    Potential Network Access account problems

    Sometimes after an upgrade to ConfigMgr 2012 R2 upgrade, the network access account does not work anymore. If that happens, create a new network access account and add that (ConfigMgr 2012 R2 can use multiple accounts), and delete the old network access account.

    Potential PXE problems

    In ConfigMgr 2012 R2, the PXE feature on the site server may break after been used some time, and the usual fix of removing/adding it doesn’t fix it . Currently I don’t know of any workarounds other than setting up a separate DP, and enable PXE on that one.

    Performance problems

    There is a known issue of ConfigMgr 2012 R2 being very slow downloading the image (15 minutes instead of 5 minutes compared with ConfigMgr 2012 SP1). I will post back when I have a workaround. For know, take longer coffee breaks when deploying Windows. 🙂

  3. Just FYI there’s a slight discrepancy on the hotfix page:

    At the top of hotfix 2905002 you’ll see a message stating that it has been superseded by hotfix 2910552 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2910552).

    When you read hotfix 2910552, towards the bottom there’s a “Hotfix replacement information” section that states: This hotfix does not replace any previously released hotfix.

    My recommendation: Install 2905002 and then follow up with 2910552.

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