Migrating to Configuration Manager 2007 : Conducting an In-place Upgrade (part 1) - Running the Prerequisite Checker

You can upgrade an SMS 2003 SP 2 or SP 3 primary site to Configuration Manager 2007 by running the Setup program from the ConfigMgr 2007 installation media. Use the slipstreamed SP 1 version of ConfigMgr for upgrades wherever possible. Using a slipstreamed version saves the extra effort of applying the service pack after the upgrade; in addition, SP 1 has an enhanced prerequisite checker.

In some cases, you may not be able to upgrade to SP 1 directly. In such a case, upgrade from a supported service pack level of SMS 2003 to the Release-to-Manufacturing (RTM) version of ConfigMgr 2007 and then upgrade again to SP 1.

1. Feature Packs

Microsoft released several feature packs for SMS 2003 that add functionality not included in the original product. If you installed any of the SMS 2003 feature packs, uninstall them before upgrading each site. The only exception to this is the Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates (ITMU), used for patch deployment to SMS clients. You should keep ITMU installed and upgrade it as part of your upgrade to Configuration Manager.

If you are using the Operating System Deployment (OSD) Feature Pack, your existing OS images will display under the OSD FP Packages node in the ConfigMgr console. You will need to deploy each of those images to a reference machine prior to the upgrade and capture them as part of your Configuration Manager OSD if you want to continue to use the images in Configuration Manager 2007 OSD. 

2. Upgrade Prerequisites

The prerequisites for upgrading to Configuration Manager 2007 include the following requirements:

• All SMS 2003 sites being upgraded must be at SMS 2003 SP 2 or above.

• All site server systems must be running Windows Server 2003 SP 2 or above with .NET Framework 2.0 installed.

• All primary sites must be running SQL Server 2005 SP 2 or above.

• All sites you will be upgrading need to be in advanced security mode.

• Microsoft Management Console (MMC) 3.0 is required for the ConfigMgr console.

• SMS 2003 supported two types of clients: legacy clients and advanced clients. ConfigMgr sites support SMS 2003 advanced clients, but legacy clients do not work in ConfigMgr 2007 sites and are not supported by Microsoft. You should install the advanced client on SMS 2003 client systems running Windows 2000 Service Pack 4. ConfigMgr 2007 sites do not support clients running earlier versions of Windows.

The Configuration Manager installation media includes a prerequisite checker that looks for these and many other requirements.Some additional considerations for site upgrades include the following:

• Running the prerequisite checker on the site server only verifies the readiness of the site server itself. You can run the prerequisite checker separately on management point servers to verify that your management point meets the requirements for Configuration Manager. You should also verify that any site system roles you have distributed to other systems meet the minimum requirement for those system roles. 

• If you modified the membership rules for any of the default SMS collections, the upgrade preserves those modifications. If you removed any of these collections, they are re-created unless you run Setup with the /NODEFAULTCOLL switch.

3. Running the Prerequisite Checker

Before running the actual site setup, run the prerequisite checker from the Configuration Manager installation media; then download the required files and resolve any issues reported. To run the prerequisite checker, launch splash.hta from the root folder of the ConfigMgr installation media. The splash screen, shown in Figure 1, offers several options.

Figure 1. The Setup splash screen (RTM version)

Choosing Run the prerequisite checker brings up the Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Installation Prerequisite Check Options screen, displayed in Figure 2.

Figure 2. The Prerequisite Check Options screen

Notice that the options for installing a new site are grayed out and the only available option in Figure 9.2 is Upgrade. There is also a check box allowing you to check the readiness of all secondary sites. You will want to select this option if you are running the prerequisite checker on a site server of a primary site with immediate child secondary sites. After verifying the appropriate options are selected, click OK to run the prerequisite checks. The checks may take a few minutes, after which you will see a screen displaying the results of the prerequisite check. Figure 3 shows an example of the prerequisite check results.

Figure 3. The Installation Prerequisite Check screen with resulting output

The output may show two types of results:

• A red circle with an X indicates a critical error, which is likely to cause Setup to fail. You must correct any critical issues before continuing.

• A yellow warning symbol with an exclamation mark indicates a possible problem that will not prevent you from upgrading your site but should be fixed prior to the upgrade.

Notice the text in the lower pane, which tells you that you can double-click any item to display details about how to resolve the problem or view the ConfigMgrPrereq.log file to help identify problems. Ensure you understand each issue presented by the prerequisite checker before continuing. The results screen also includes a link to view the latest prerequisite information. Use this link to access a complete list of prerequisite check rules with the severity level of each rule (warning or failure), a description of the prerequisite the rule is checking, and detailed information about the check. Figure 4 shows an example of the details displayed in the Results pane by double-clicking the “WSUS SDK on site server” result.

Figure 4. Details of the WSUS SDK on site server rule

As an example, if you double-click the “Client GUID consistency” error displayed in Figure 4, the text displayed in the user interface simply states “Inconsistent client GUIDs can lead to SQL Server errors and should be resolved before continuing the upgrade process.” The Setup Prerequisite Checks web page provides a somewhat more detailed description of the rule “Verifies that the Configuration Manager 2007 site database to be upgraded does not contain inconsistent client GUIDs.” The most useful information for resolving this problem is in the ConfigMgrPrereq.log, located in the root of the C drive:

<10-26-2008 17:19:41> Rule Name: Client GUID consistency
<10-26-2008 17:19:42> Query select Netbios_Name0, SMS_Unique_Identifier0, GUID from System_DISC 
sys join MachineIdGroupXRef xref on sys.ItemKey=xref.MachineID where IsNULL(SMS_Unique_Identifier0,'') != IsNULL(GUID,'') returned one or more rows.
<10-26-2008 17:19:42>         Result: Error
<10-26-2008 17:19:42>         Inconsistent client GUIDs can lead to SQL Server errors and should be resolved before continuing the upgrade process.

					  

You can copy the SQL query shown in the log and run it against your site database to find out which client GUIDs (Globally Unique Identifiers) are causing the problem. The exact steps for running the query will vary depending on the version of SQL Server you are running. If you are running SQL Server 2005, you can execute the query as follows:

1.	Launch Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio from the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 program group.
2.	Click the New Query button at the upper left, just below the menu bar.
3.	Enter the query text in the new query window. Be sure that your site database is selected in the database dropdown control, as shown in Figure 5. Figure 5. Using SQL Server Management Studio to execute the check for the inconsistent client GUIDs prerequisite checker rule

The results show the system SMS-000005 has an inconsistent SMS GUID. In this case, the problem can be corrected by deleting this system from the database, removing the SMS client software on the system, or by deleting the smscfg.ini file from the Windows folder and reinstalling the client.

The detail of the unsupported client operating system version rule included in the ConfigMgrPrereq.log contains the following SQL query:

select Netbios_Name0, ip.IP_Addresses0, Operating_System_Name_and0, os.CSDVersion0
from System_DISC as sd left join Operating_System_DATA as os
on sd.ItemKey = os.MachineID inner join System_SMS_Assign_ARR as assign
on assign.ItemKey=sd.ItemKey left join System_IP_Address_ARR as ip
on sd.ItemKey = ip.ItemKey
where Netbios_Name0 in
(select Netbios_Name0 from System_DISC as sd2
left join Operating_System_DATA as os2 on sd2.ItemKey = os2.MachineID   inner join
System_SMS_Assign_ARR as assign2
on assign2.ItemKey=sd2.ItemKey
where (os2.BuildNumber0 < '2195'
or (os2.BuildNumber0 = '2600' and os2.CSDVersion0 < 'Service Pack 2')
or (os2.BuildNumber0 = '2195' and os2.CSDVersion0 < 'Service Pack 4') )
and  sd2.Client0='1' and assign2.SMS_Assigned_Sites0="HOU")

					  

This query illustrates the fact that you may need to make some minor adjustments to the SQL syntax. In this example, the site name appears in the log enclosed in double quotes (“HOU”). You will need to replace this with the site name in single quotes (‘HOU’) before executing the query. The additional details of this rule indicate the following:

Configuration Manager clients are only supported on Windows 2000 SP4 or
later operating systems.

After running the SQL query to identify those clients running unsupported operating system versions, you will need to either upgrade these clients to a newer operating system or exclude them from the Configuration Manager migration.

The prerequisite checker shown in Figures 2 through 4 is from the Configuration Manager 2007 RTM version. Microsoft has enhanced the prerequisite checker shipped with Configuration Manager Service Pack 1 with a number of additional checks. Figure 9.6 shows the results when using the SP 1 prerequisite checker on the same SMS 2003 site server. Notice the scroll bars, which indicate you can see additional results by scrolling down on the results list.

Figure 6. The SP 1 prerequisite checker with details of the schannel hotfix rule

The Details pane shows that the particular rule selected in Figure 6 applies only to Out of Band service points (a new feature in SP 1). However, some of the added checks also apply to the RTM version. It is therefore advantageous to run the SP 1 prerequisite checker, even if you are upgrading only to Configuration Manager 2007 RTM.