How can I install System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager ?

[anyweb]

Introduction

 

Today at Tech Ed Europe 2013 in Madrid, Brad Anderson announced the availability of System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager preview (amongst other things). In this post I will focus on installing the R2 preview release on Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 (which just so happens to have Cu2 installed). In the past, R2 releases for System Center products traditionally add cool features to an otherwise complete product so this is going to be exciting.

 

Note: Test upgrading to R2 in a LAB before doing it in production and always backup your database before doing so. When upgrading a hierarchy always upgrade from the Top down, for example that would be CAS ---> Primaries ---> Secondaries ---> clients

 

Step 1. Get the goodies

 

You can get the System Center 2012 Configuration Manager R2 Preview release from here. Once you've downloaded the bits extract them to somewhere like C:\SC2012_R2_Preview_SCCM_SCEP

 

 

Once done, download Windows ADK 8.1 from here.

 

Step 2. Uninstall Windows ADK 8.0

 

Before you install R2, you'll need to satisfy certain prerequisites, and one of those is ADK 8.1, and as part of that you'll need to uninstall Windows ADK 8.0, it's not sufficient to simply install ADK 8.1 over ADK 8.0.

 

Open control panel and locate Windows Automated Installation Kit, click it and choose Uninstall (it's the one with version 8.59.25584).

 

 

Once uninstalled, no need for a reboot.

 

Step 3. Install Windows ADK 8.1

 

Now that you've removed the previous version, download the new ADK to support Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 from here.

 

Update: A new version of ADK 8.1 was released in the last week, see this post before continuing.

 

Run adksetup and accept the .NET 4.5 FrameWork agreement, make sure you've 2.25 GB free space on your C:\ drive before attempting to continue otherwise you may get a strange ASIA failure message (if you do get any failures, check %temp% for the .net installation logs to see why it failed.)

 

 

clicking on OK will enforce a reboot so if you don't want a reboot at this time, then wait before clicking ok.

 

 

after the reboot, login and you'll see the specify location screen for the new Windows ADK installation

 

 

click next through the wizard and select at least the following 3 components

• User State Migration Tool (USMT)
• Windows Deployment Tools
• Windows PreInstallation Environment (Windows PE)

 

and the installation should continue...slowly but surely...

 

 

click close when done.

 

Tip: Installation of the ADK will produce several logs for the separate components in %temp%\adk if you have any issues with the installation of the ADK open those logs individually in CMTrace to look for any errors during the installation.

 

 

 

Step 3. Install/Upgrade to R2

 

Tip: before starting the install consider stopping any in-progress package distributions (or waiting until they are complete) and stop all normal activities in the console (package/application creation etc). Also reboot the server (s) involved before commencing the upgrade in case any update required a reboot that could interfere with the below process. Always upgrade your Primary servers first, then upgrade any secondaries.

 

Now that we've fixed Windows ADK, browse to the extracted System Center 2012 Configuration Manager R2 files and click on splash.hta to start the wizard

 

 

and click on Install to start the installer, you will be presented with the before you begin screen, click next

 

 

and then you'll see the available setup options on the Getting started screen, it should auto detect that you have a primary installed and that you are upgrading the site

 

 

you can choose whether to input your license key or not, I entered the key it works fine

 

 

accept the EULA to continue

 

 

and place checkmarks in the products listed for Prerequisite licenses

 

 

choose to download the setup prerequisites locally or from a previously downloaded location

 

 

and then select the server languages that Configuration Manager will support

 

 

and then the client languages

 

 

review the settings summary

 

 

and the Prerequisite check will complete, it may list warnings (which are usually ok to ignore) or errors (failures, which you must fix). Click Begin install to continue (in the screenshot below I've modified a system collection, it's ok, and it's ok to continue)

 

 

time for a siesta (if you are in Madrid :-)) while it installs, as this will take some time...,

 

 

click on View Log to view the installation in CMTrace

 

 

Once the installation of System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager is done you'll see the following, I'd recommend you scroll up and down to verify all listed components are green, close the wizard when you can.

 

 

and start the new console via the new Start menu link, notice the R2 reference

 

 

the console appears, congratulations you've installed System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager. Notice the new build number of 7598 in the screenshot below

 

 

Further Reading

 

What’s New in System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager - http://technet.microsoft.com/library/dn236351.aspx
System Requirements

Installation Guide

Evaluation Guide

 

cheers

niall.

[EddieRio]

Hi, thanks for all your tutorials .

I'm having a problem to create mdt boot images after upgrading to R2. I'm getting the following message "Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Tools\PETools\x86\WinPE-FP's'.

It looks like the new AIK for windows 8.1 does not contains these files/folders. Are you having the same problem?

Thanks again.

[Peter van der Woude]

Also install MDT 2013 Preview and you should be fine.

[EddieRio]

Thanks, it's working again .

[EddieRio]

Do you know why the boot disk created from a MDT boot image wizard is almost 3 GB in size (I'm using the default settings)?

The boot disks created from x86 and/or x64 boot image are around 238MB in size only.

Thanks.

[anyweb]

you are probably including prestart commands in your boot image and it contains files/folders = 3gb in size,

[EddieRio]

The weird part is that if I create the boot image as part of the "Create MDT Task Sequence" wizard and then use that boot image to create a boot disk, everything works fine, the boot disk size is about 292MB (with the prestart commands included), but if I build a boot image from "Create Boot Image using MDT" and create a boot disk based on this image the image size is almost 3GB (maybe this is a bug?).

Thanks

[anyweb]

what version of mdt are you using and please describe what extrafiles and prestart files you are including in your mdt boot image

[prabha giduthuri]

While installing ADK 8.1, it is showing Acess denied error.. Not able to continue with installation. Pls help

[anyweb]

try running it as a user with Administrator permissions on the box