Need Suggestion for OS upgrade in SCCM server

Nathaniel Thomas 1 Reputation point
2022-05-24T13:17:41.917+00:00

Hi All,

We have single primary server, a DB server and 50+ secondary servers. Our Primary and DB servers are in Windows 2012 R2 OS and we need to upgrade it to Windows 2019 server OS.All run in VM's. Kindly clarify me on the below points

  1. Should we go for in place upgrade from Windows 20212 to 2016 and then 2019
  2. Build new systems with 2019 OS and migrate
  3. After migrating will the secondary's work properly or should we reinstall all secondaries too

Thanks,
Nathan.

Microsoft Configuration Manager
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  1. Sherry Kissinger 3,801 Reputation points
    2022-05-24T13:25:46.63+00:00

    Just my opinion(s), I could be wrong and likely am.

    1. "in place upgrade... twice". From what I recall when we did similar, the most difficult things to t-shoot post upgrade were any IIS-related things. It's been a while, so my memory is fuzzy, but IIS components seem to have changed slightly between the versions, causing some interesting issues to be resolved. And it wasn't clearly obvious things... just goofiness; that ended up being subtle things to tweak or reinstall.
    2. build new systems and migrate: if I remember the docs correctly, this is the supported method (again, I may be wrong). If it is important to you to do things in the supported way, this method would be the one to use. Of course, the downside is what you mean by "migration". By migration, do you mean a WHOLE NEW SITE CODE, and migrate the clients to the entirely new system (side by side migration), or do you mean following the documentation for standing up a new server, then shutting down the cm services on the old, renaming the old server... rename the new server to <old server name>, and restoring from backup? That's two different paths, really.
    3. Secondaries working properly... I have no opinion on. Haven't used secondary sites in years and years. Someone else would have to chime in on this... I literally have no idea.
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  2. AllenLiu-MSFT 40,081 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2022-05-25T08:51:41.87+00:00

    Hi, @Nathaniel Thomas

    Thank you for posting in Microsoft Q&A forum.

    It's supported to upgrade Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2019 directly.
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/configmgr/core/servers/manage/upgrade-on-premises-infrastructure#upgrade-the-os-of-site-systems

    And the things we need to do before upgrade and after upgrade:
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/configmgr/core/servers/manage/upgrade-on-premises-infrastructure#before-upgrade

    It's not recommended to do the migration unless you want a hardware swap out.
    Jason has a great article:
    https://home.memftw.com/configmgr-site-server-os-instance-change/

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