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  • Glen (Xapity)
    • Dec 6, 2016
    • 6 min read

SCSM 2016 - Upgrade


Upgrading to System Center Service Manager 2016 can be a straight forward process, but requires


SCSM 2016 - Upgrade Process

careful the planning and testing to have a successful migration. This blog post hopefully will help by providing a high-level summary of the SCSM Planning and Deployment notes from Microsoft.

The SCSM 2016 upgrade is essentially an in-place upgrade and looks very much like an install of SCSM 2012. If you have meet all the compatibility requirements and prerequisites for SCSM 2016 it should be a smooth upgrade. But there are some gotchas in the compatibility guides and it is an all or nothing upgrade.

You cannot mix and match SCSM and SCSM 2016 at any level – Server, Client Console or Self-Service Portal (SSP). Everything has to be SCSM 2016 or everything SCSM 2012. As you are upgrading, components will be at different versions, but the environment is not functional at this point. Plan for a substantial outage to the SCSM environment while you do the upgrade.

Testing of third party and custom development is also extremely important. Changes with Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.1 mean that SCSM third party tools will break in SCSM 2016 and will need to be upgraded\reinstalled with versions compatible with SCSM 2016.

The changes with .NET Framework 4.5.1 will potentially apply to any other custom development, usually if it involved writing code it will need to upgraded\recompiled for .NET Framework 4.5.1, but it will depend on what was done. Extending classes and forms with the Authoring tool will generally be compatible, but always test before starting a production migration.

System Center Suite Upgrade Order

The upgrade order for System Center components is important and is the same as System Center 2012. Refer to Upgrading System Center 2012 R2 - Service Manager to System Center 2016 and Upgrade Sequencing for System Center 2012 SP1

Upgrade System Center components in this order:

  1. Orchestrator

  2. Service Manager

  3. Data Protection Manager

  4. Operations Manager

  5. Configuration Manager

  6. Virtual Machine Manager

  7. App Controller

Note: You can only upgrade to SCSM 2016 from SCSM 2012 R2 with Update Rollup 9 or later installed.

High Level Steps for upgrading SCSM 2016

This is a high level guide of the overall process, rather than a guide of installing SCSM 2016. Refer to our blog SCSM 2016 - Upgrade Screen Shots for the detailed steps involved.

Step 1: Meet Compatibility Requirements

Compatibility Notes

Probably at least one of these will have an impact and if you are unlucky all of them. Getting the existing SCSM 2012 environment compatible with SCSM 2016 is the first major step. This may take some time and involve other teams (client windows version or server versions) before you will be ready to migrate to SCSM 2016.

Third Party Tools Most, if not all of them will need to be upgraded or re-installed for SCSM 2016. The implementation of Microsoft Framework .NET 4.5.1 made some changes to where things were stored and any plug-ins will need to be updated to reflect those changes.

The good news is that most third-party vendors have released SCSM 2016 versions. But before migrating, check what you are using and confirm you have a SCSM 2016 version. Follow the vendor instructions for upgrading to SCSM 2016. Custom Development If you have customized to the point of writing code you will probably need to update the code for SCSM 2016. Refer to SCSM 2016 – Upgrade steps for custom development and SCSM 2016 - Steps for Upgrading Custom Development

If you have extended classes and forms, these should not be affected. But test anyway. It is generally only when you have compiled code against .NETor written specific workflows that you will need to rewrite\re-compile the code.

Step 2: Read the Release Notes

There are known issues that may be important for your environment

  • SQL Server 2014 Cardinality Estimation might affect the performance of Service Manager 2016

  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable is a pre-requisite for installing Service Manager 2016 Authoring Tool

  • Create Exchange Connector wizard might crash

  • Browsing domain in AD connector wizard raises error

  • Creating a new Software type configuration item throws the error - "The form could not be submitted for the following reasons: Property Is Virtual Application must be set"

  • Manual steps to configure remote SQL Server 2014 Reporting Services

  • Service Manager Console installed on a VMM Server causes VMM connector failure

  • Data Warehouse Setup Might Fail if the Database or Log Path Includes a Single Quotation Mark Character

  • Setup Might Fail if the Service Manager Authoring Tool Has Been Installed

  • Setup Does Not Install the Report Viewer Language Pack

  • Service Manager Setup Fails if a SQL Server Instance Contains a $ Character

  • Orchestrator Connector Account Password Cannot Contain $ Characters

  • Information Linked from Setup Might Not Display Localized Content

  • Errors Might Occur When You Modify or Delete Service Request Template Items

  • Configuring the Reporting Server Might Take a Long Time

  • Double-Byte Characters Are Sent Incorrectly to Search Provider

  • Sorting Knowledge Articles by Date Does Not Work

  • Do not change Active Directory group expansion selection after upgrade until the connector has run at least one time

Check out the release notes page for more details and on possible workarounds: Release Notes for System Center 2016.

Step 3: Back up Everything

Step 4: Upgrade the Data Warehouse Server

  • List the data warehouse jobs that are running.

  • Disable the data warehouse job schedules.

  • Confirm that the data warehouse jobs have stopped running.

  • Met the Data Warehouse server prerequisites: Software Requirements for System Center 2016 - Service Manager

  • ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for Windows Server

  • SQL Server Native client

  • Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable, which is available with the Service Manager media.

  • SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)

  • The SQL Server and Analysis Services collation settings must be the same for the computers hosting the Service Manager database, data warehouse database, analysis services database, and Reporting Services database

  • SQL Server Analysis Management Objects

  • Upgrade of the data warehouse management server

Do not restart Data Warehouse jobs until Step 8. Refer to Upgrade to System Center 2016 - Service Manager for more details and PowerShell examples for managing the Data Warehouse jobs.

Step 6: Upgrade other SCSM Management servers

  • Meet the management server prerequisites as above

  • Install all additional management servers

  • HTML 5 Portal requires an extra patch

Step 7: Upgrade and third party tools or custom development

  • Refer to vendor instructions on upgrading.

  • Redevelop any custom code for SCSM 2016

Step 8: Restart the data warehouse jobs.

  • Restart the data warehouse jobs

Refer to Upgrade to System Center 2016 - Service Manager for more details and PowerShell examples for managing the Data Warehouse jobs. Step 9: Deploy the new Self-Service Portal

  • Refer to Upgrading the Service Manager Self-Service Portal

  • Meet the Management server prerequisites: Software Requirements for System Center 2016 - Service Manager

  • Windows 2012 R2 server or Windows Server 2016

  • Join the server machine to the same domain where the Service Manager SDK Service is running. Ideally, on the primary or secondary server

  • Enable the IIS role and ASP.NET 4.5

  • SQL Server Analysis Management Objects

Step 10: Upgrade the Client Consoles

  • Deploy the SCSM 2016 console to clients

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