Hey everyone! I'm a new System Administrator, and my team is gearing up to upgrade all our Windows servers. We have six SCCM VMs that also need an upgrade. A senior admin told me that an in-place upgrade isn't an option for these servers. He suggested we rebuild them from scratch and switch our SCCM tenant to High Availability mode during the process. I'm looking for advice on this – has anyone done something similar? What are the best practices for upgrading? Thanks!
1 Answer
I actually went through this upgrade a couple of months ago, and yes, it’s possible to upgrade the OS on your SCCM site server while keeping everything operational. Here's what we did that worked well:
1. **Prep:** Make sure your version of SCCM supports the new OS (for example, we were on version 2403, which works up to Server 2025). Do a full backup of your site DB and server image, and check your system health.
2. **In-Place Upgrade:** We mounted the ISO and did the in-place upgrade from 2012 R2 to 2019, choosing to keep files and settings.
3. **Post-Upgrade Cleanup:** After the upgrade, some services didn't auto-start, so we started them manually. We also ran a site reset to sort out any broken links.
4. **Reinstall Roles if Needed:** If you uninstalled WSUS/SUP, re-add them through Server Manager and run the post-install tasks.
Make sure to do your homework on backups and a site reset afterward – it really helps! We’ve had a stable system since. Good luck!
Thanks for the tips!
Great checklist! I did a similar upgrade from 2012R2 to 2019, and I found removing WSUS and doing a site reset also helped a lot. Luckily, I didn't run into any major issues.