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  • Superseded Update support
    • Persist SCCM 2007 behavior and automatically expire superseded updates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
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