SCCM Migration, but keep old site in tact

Question

SCCM Migration, but keep old site in tact

Jeff Maraviglia 41

I am in the middle of a project to migrate an SCCM environment in one domain over to a new domain. I was wondering if it was possible to migrate the contents of the old over to the new, but NOT switch over to the new until a later date. I'd rather do a switch over a little further on down the line, but unclear if I can actually do that with the migration process. All of my discovery methods are disabled in the destination domain. Is that enough to prevent a cut over?

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Answer 1

@Jeff Maraviglia , Thanks for posting in our Q&A. From your description, it seems you want to migrate an existing SCCM environment to a new domain. If there's any misunderstanding, feel free to let us know.

Based on my research, SCCM does not support migration to a new domain environment.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/configmgr/core/plan-design/configs/support-for-active-directory-domains#requirements-and-limitations
For your situation, you may need to export everything out manually from the existing site and then reimport into the newly built site. Here is a similar thread for your reference:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/327646/domain-name-change-with-sccm.html

In addition, if you want to migrate SCCM without changing your domain environment, I recommend you use ‘backup and recovery’, you can refer to this article:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/configmgr/core/servers/manage/backup-and-recovery

Thanks for your understanding and if there’s anything unclear, feel free to let us know.

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Caleb-MSFT 161 Reputation points

2023-01-03T02:01:40.9+00:00

Hi, @Jeff Maraviglia

Hope things are going well. I am writing to see if there's any update on our issue, if you have anything unclear, feel free to let us know, we will do our best to help you.

If the response is helpful, it's appreciated that you could click "Accept Answer" and upvote it, this will help other users to search for useful information more quickly.

Thanks for your time and have a nice day!

Best regards,

Caleb

Answer 2

Jeff Maraviglia 41

Hi Caleb,
Thanks for responding. So if I understand you correctly, SCCM migration only works within the same domain? And in my scenario, I have to either rebuild everything manually or export from the old and import into the new. Is that correct?

Jeff

Jason Sandys 31,421 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-01-03T18:24:19.077+00:00

No, the answer above is not correct. You can 100% perform a cross domain migration using the built-in ConfigMgr migration tools. This creates an entirely separate ConfigMgr hierarchy and the old hierarchy can certainly be left in place for whatever reasons you may have.

You cannot backup and restore a site to another domain.
Jeff Maraviglia 41 Reputation points

2023-01-03T18:27:45.973+00:00

Hi Jason,
What I was hoping to do is migrate the old environment over to the new, but NOT cut over to the new one until a later date. Currently, I'm still trying to get the migration setup working (not there yet). So I've manually added collections, boundaries, etc.

Thanks,
Jeff
Jason Sandys 31,421 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-01-03T18:33:51.453+00:00

Yep, totally plausible and doable and pretty much standard procedure as well for migrations. The migration tools allow for a staged, controlled migration of everything that they support. Both hierarchies are ultimately fully independent and have no dependencies on each other. Keep in mind that the migration tools don't/can't migrate everything though, e.g., Client Settings, and that client systems can only be managed by one or the other.
Jeff Maraviglia 41 Reputation points

2023-01-03T18:39:20.833+00:00

Ok, that's exactly what I was trying to confirm. I have no problem manually adding components that don't migrate. The only issue I have now is my failed migration test. There is a trust between the domains, ping the IP, nslookup, but it still fails with "A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible...". So once I get that figured out, I'll move forward with the migration. Thank you very much for your time, Jason!

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SCCM Migration, but keep old site in tact

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