In this post you learn to upgrade an existing ConfigMgr 2012 R2 environment to ConfigMgr 2012 R2 SP1 (which is done by running the ConfigMgr 2012 SP2 setup, brilliant 🙂 ).
Upgrade process overview
In this guide you upgrade a single primary site server named CM01, currently running ConfigMgr 2012 R2 on Windows Server 2012 R2 with SQL Server 2012 SP1 installed locally (of course). The ConfigMgr 2012 R2 installation is also integrated with MDT 2013, and has a working OSD environment configured. The high-level steps are the following:
- Do an extra backup of your ConfigMgr 2012 R2 server
- Restore the database to another SQL Server, and test the site database for upgrade
- Once upgrade is verified, install ConfigMgr 2012 SP2, which will upgrade your server to R2 SP1 (confusing, yes, I know)
Backup your ConfigMgr 2012 R2 server
Before beginning the upgrade, make sure you have a backup of your ConfigMgr 2012 R2 server. E.g. make sure you have SQL Backup of your site server database.
Note: The best guide for ConfigMgr backup configuration is of course Steve Thompson’s excellent post: SQL Server Backup Recommendations for Configuration Manager
Testing the site database for upgrade
Before you running the SP2 setup on the server, you should verify that your database can be upgraded. This by restoring the site database to a separate SQL Server (in my case SQL01), and running the ConfigMgr 2012 SP2 setup with the /TESTDBUPGRADE command-line option.
Successfully testing the site database upgrade after restoring it on a separate SQL server.
Upgrade to ConfigMgr 2012 R2 SP1 (well SP2)
Once the database upgrade is verified, you are ready to install ConfigMgr 2012 R2 SP1 (SP2).
First, restart the machine to make sure there are no pending reboots.
Then, assuming you are already on ConfigMgr 2012 R2 and are running Windows ADK 8.1, run the setup, and select the Upgrade this Configuration Manager site option.
Running the ConfigMgr 2012 R2 SP1 (SP2) upgrade.
Post Upgrade
After the upgrade finishes, don’t do anything on the server for about one hour (only applies to upgrades, not clean SP2 installs). It will take quite some time for the components to finish installing. Sometimes a reboot of the site server is needed as well (after waiting the full hour).
Waiting for upgrade to finish.
Happy Deployment, Johan