A Geeks Guide for upgrading to MDT 8456

In this post you learn to upgrade an existing MDT 8450 environment, with or without ConfigMgr integration, to MDT 8456. The guide is divided in two parts:

• Upgrading to MDT 8456 Lite Touch (standalone)
• Upgrading to MDT 8456 Zero Touch (integrated with ConfigMgr Current Branch 1810)

Official MDT 8456 Release Notes
http://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/mdt/release-notes      

My own (Johan) Release Notes for MDT 8456

• The bug in Litetouch.wsf (line 1593) regarding DaRT Integration failing for networks beginning with 169.x is still not fixed. Just change "169." to "169.254" and you're good.
• WinPE Addon for Windows ADK 10 v1809 are missing files for WPF. Simply copy BCP47Langs.dll and BCP47mrm.dll from a Windows 10 v1809 installation to Windows\System32 of the boot image. You can either use the Extra Files feature, or simply mount the boot image and add them.

Download link

MDT 8456 download link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=57775

New Features at a glance in MDT 8456

Please read the release notes for a full list of new features, but the most important features are:

• Support for Windows 10 v1809
• Support for Windows Server 2019
• Nested task sequence support for LTI scenario
• Modern language pack support
• Support for Configuration Manager version 1810
• IsVM evaluates to False on Parallels VMs
• IsVM = False when VMware VM is configured with EFI boot firmware
• Gather doesn't recognize All-in-One chassis type
• MDT doesn't automatically install BitLocker on Windows Server 2016
• BDEDisablePreProvisioning typo in ZTIGather.xml

Now, back to the upgrade guides!

Upgrading to MDT 8456 Lite Touch (standalone)

Worth mentioning is that there are no changes in the MDT 8456task sequence templates compared to the 8443 release, so if you upgrade from that one, you don't need to create new task sequence. Very nice.

Upgrading to MDT 8456 is quite straight forward, simple follow these steps:

1. Make a complete backup copy of your deployment share(s)  
2. Yes, really, make a complete backup copy of your deployment share(s) 🙂
3. Check if there is a pending reboot, use the http://github.com/DeploymentResearch/DRFiles/blob/master/Scripts/Test-PendingReboot.ps1 script.

4. If you're not using Windows ADK 10 v1809 already, uninstall the version you have, and then install Windows ADK 10 v1809. Select the following components:

Deployment Tools
Imaging and Configuration Designer (ICD)
Configuration Designer
User State Migration Tool (USMT)

5. Install the WinPE Addon for Windows ADK 10 v1809. Select the following components:

Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE)

6. Reboot the machine (to make sure the wimgapi driver is registered)  
7. Install MDT 8456 (automatically uninstalls earlier versions)  
8. Using Deployment Workbench, right-click the deployment share you want to upgrade, and select Upgrade Deployment Share.

9. Repeat the previous step if you have more deployment shares.  
10. After upgrading the deployment share, using Deployment Workbench, right-click the deployment share and select Update Deployment Share. This will create new boot images.

11. Repeat the previous step if you have more deployment shares.  
12. If using WDS for PXE booting MDT boot images, replace the boot images with the new ones.

13. In MDT 8456 the Standard Client Task Sequence and Standard Server Task Sequence templates, as well as their VHD versions, are modified with an extra Apply Patches action in the Postinstall phase to support the updated language packs. This means if you want that support, you need to either create new task sequences, or modify existing sequence with this extra step.

Upgrading to MDT 8456 Zero Touch (integrated with ConfigMgr Current Branch 1810)

For ConfigMgr integration updates, make sure you have upgraded to Windows ADK 10 v1809 on your site server, and also installed the WinPE addon for Windows ADK 10 v1809. You should also update existing boot images to v1809, including the two default boot images (netboot files are typically extracted from these, and you want to have the latest version). Also worth mentioning, there are only minor changes in the MDT task sequence templates for ConfigMgr, but to take advantage of those changes, you either need to do the same modifications to existing task sequences, or create new ones.

1. Install MDT 8456 (automatically uninstalls earlier versions).
2. The ConfigMgr Integration extensions have not been updated from MDT 8450 (other then updated binary signatures), so there is no need to re-run the Configure ConfigMgr Integration wizard.
3. Create a new dummy task sequence using the Create MDT Task Sequence wizard, and select to create a new MDT package during that wizard.

4. There are no changes (other than version number updates in the boot image script), so you don't need to create new MDT boot images.  
However, since the MDT package has changed for ConfigMgr, you need to either:

Option #1: Create new task sequences, and select the new MDT 8456 package.
Option #2: Modify the existing task sequence to use the new MDT 8456 package (typically 5 – 7 changes in every task sequence).

Written by Johan Arwidmark.