ConfigMgr 2012 CEP – SUM Session Key Takeaways

My notes from the CMCep Theme 8 session on Software Update Management (SUM).

Session from January 26th, hosted by Jason Githens. Jason is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft and will also be presenting at the upcoming MMS 2011 event.

Configuration

• Superseded Update support
  • Persist SCCM 2007 behavior and automatically expire superseded updates
  • Or Configure SCCM 2012 not to automatically expire them
  • Supersedence expiration setting can go up to 99 months (3 is common at most customers)

• RBA
  • Specific roles and scopes for Software Update Management

• Agent Settings
  • Client agent settings per collection (eg. Workstations vs Servers scenarios)
  • Ability to define collections to which software updates do not get applied

• Migration support (SCCM 2007)
  • Migrate templates and searches built in SCCM 2007
  • Preserve existing Update Lists or Deployments
  • Important: SUP configuration for products & classifications must be idential on SCCM 2007 and SCCM 2012
    

• Deployment
  • Update groups
    • Terminology changes: update lists are now update groups
    • New updates added to an existing update group are automatically deployed
    • Groups can be used for compliance only and/or for actual deployment
    • Important: 500 items per update group remains limit also in SCCM 2012 (to ensure it is deployable)
  • Automated deployments
    • Automatic approval of selected updates
    • Scheduled or manual run
    • Objects created by rules are interactive (enable/disable, add/remove updates, etc …)
  • End-User Experience
    • New software center UI
    • Control: install/schedule updates, usage of non-business hours

   

  Maintenance

  • In Console monitoring & alerts
    • Console key compliance and deployment views
    • Detailed state  of all deployments and assets
    • Software Update synchronization monitoring
    • Alerts generation for key issues
  • Reporting
    • Extensive out-of-the-box reporting features
  • Content Library
    • Updates are stored in the content library
    • Maintenance tasks to delete expired updates and content
  • Troubleshooting
    • Key logfiles (similar to SCCM 2007): Wsyncmgr.log, objreplmgr.log
    • New in 2012: RuleEngine.log, for tracking actions related to auto deployment rules

   

  And some additional items from the Q&A session afterwards:

• Q: will there be a feature to support populating deployment groups based on external sources (xls, csv …)
  A: no this will not be available
• Q: will the Office Reporting components be required to view statistical information
  A: no, this is built-in in the SCCM 2012 console