SCCM Multiple Maintenance Window Question

Question

Hi All

If someone can clarify this for me please?

A client is in two collections.

Collection A (is All device with client installed collection). This collection has maintenance window set for say 2am to 6am. It is set with "All Deployments" and has some deployments sets to deploy some packages.

Collection B (is a separate Patching collection). This collection also has maintenance window set for 4am to 7am. It is set with "Software Updates" and has deployments set for updates only.

Now we deploy a new software update to COLLECTION B. When the update gets deployed to this client machine, what maintenance window will it have? Will the MW be 4am to 7am (as this is the collection that the software update is deployed to?). OR it will ignore any deployments, and will receive the merged MW (that is 2am to 7am) for this software update deployment.

Thanks.

Answer 1

AFAIK, when a client computer is a member of multiple device collections that have maintenance windows, these rules apply:

• If the maintenance windows don't overlap, the client treats them as two independent maintenance windows.
• If the maintenance windows overlap, the client treats them as a single window for the entire time of both windows. By default, with multiple maintenance windows, the client only installs software updates during Software Updates type windows. It ignores any All deployments maintenance windows, unless they're the only type.

In your scenario:

• The machine is in Collection A with a window 2 am-6 am set to All Deployments.
• The same machine is also in Collection B with a window 4 am-7 am set to Software Updates.
• You deploy a software update via Collection B.

Because the deployment is a Software Updates type, and there is a maintenance window on Collection B explicitly for Software Updates (4 am-7 am), the client will respect the Software Update‐type maintenance window (4 am-7 am). The "All Deployments" window of 2-6 am from Collection A will not extend the update deployment window, because for software updates the client follows the window type that matches "Software Updates". The overlapping window does not mean the client merges "All Deployments" plus "Software Updates" in this case; it uses the specific window of type Software Updates.

Effectively, it will have the 4 am-7 am window (from Collection B for Software Updates), not the merged 2 am-7 am window.

Refer to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/configmgr/core/clients/manage/collections/use-maintenance-windows for details.

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hth

Marcin