Service Manager 2012 R2

Service Manager 2012 R2 UR4

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I want to take this blog post and help promote Update Rollup 4 for System Center Service Manager 2012 R2. There has been many issues with Service Manager for some time. It is good to see the Service Manager team tackling these issues to give us a stable solution.

They continue to fix bugs in Service Manager with the new faster cadence. It is good to see the plan of stabilizing and improving performance materialize. Before we know it the Service Manager team will move on to adding new features and functionality to the product.

Don’t forget to go and apply update rollup 4 to your Service Manager 2012 R2. Note it is always recommended to apply updates to a test Service Manager environment first. The list of fixes include:

Bug fixes included in this update:

 

  1. ObjectGUID (MT_Microsoft$AD$UserBase) is retained correctly when Users imported into Service Manager using the Active Directory (AD) connector with Group Expansion check enabled. The changes will take effect the next time the workflow runs.
  2. The Folder and View links on the central pane of the ‘Work Items’ item of the console, appear correctly when the DataWarehouse Management Server is connected.
  3. Changes to DisplayName field are replicated correctly, when the title of a Manual Activity is updated.
  4. Request Offering wizard displays the runbook input parameters only (instead of all the properties) for Service Management Automation (SMA) runbooks.
  5. Saving a Template containing a Configuration item with an enumeration property that no longer exists works without errors.
  6. The default value for Data warehouse transform jobs have been increased to 180 minutes , up from 60. This value can be configured.
  7. Service Requests incorrectly entered the “Completed” status on rare occasions. This issue has been addressed.
  8. Creating a new SLA Calendar does not cause an error message to be displayed when the local timezone on the computer is custom.
  9. Console does not freeze after applying changes to an existing Knowledge Article.

 

You can download it from:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44575c

For steps and order of upgrade and tasks to applying Service Manager update rollups check out the bottom half of Sam Erskine’s blog here: http://itprocessed.com/2014/09/815/

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Service Manager SP1 to R2 Upgrade

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    Microsoft recently released System Center 2012 R2. I wanted to post about my experience upgrading System Center 2012 Service Manager SP1 to System Center 2012 Service Manager R2.

     

    The official upgrade steps for this can be found here on TechNet:

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn520902.aspx .

    Release notes for System Center Service Manager R2 can be found here:

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/dn299381.aspx.

     

    Before we get into Service Managers upgrade process we need to cover some housekeeping items. First off if you are using multiple System Center components (two or more) you need to upgrade them in a specific order. If you only have a single System Center component in your environment then don’t worry about this order. Here is the upgrade order:

    1. Service Management Automation (SMA)
    2. Orchestrator (SCORCH)
    3. Service Manager (SCSM)
    4. Data Protection Manager (SCDPM)
    5. Operations Manager (SCOM)
    6. Configuration Manager (ConfigMGR)
    7. Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)
    8. Service Provider Foundation (SPF)
    9. Windows Azure Pack for Windows Server
    10. Service Bus Clouds
    11. Windows Azure Pack (WAP)
    12. Service Reporting
    13. App Controller

    Here are links to upgrading all System Center components except for Service Manager because upgrading SCSM is being covered in this blog post.

  • Orchestrator
    Describes the sequence for upgrading Orchestrator.

NOTE: Some System Center components are not included on that list such as Service Management Automation .

This is because they will typically be new additions to your environment.

The upgrade order also applies if you plan on introducing new System Center components into your environment. For example if you plan to deploy DPM 2012 R2 at some point be sure to deploy this after Service Manager 2012 SP1 has finished being upgraded to R2.

More about this can be found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn521010.aspx.

 

Backup of Service Manager

Before any upgrade is started be sure to back up Service Manager and any customizations.

  • Backup encryption keys on the Self-Service Portal and management servers.
  • Export and backup all unsealed management packs these will include any customizations.
  • Backup management server and data warehouse databases. Here are the databases:

 

Service Manager Databases:

ServiceManager DB

DWStagingAndConfig DB

DWRepository DB

DWDatamart DB

 

  • Backup the SSRS database & RDL files.
  • Document any security that is setup.
  • Backup and document SharePoint web parts and customizations.

 

Before upgrading it is recommended to upgrade to the latest UR first… For example from SP1 –> UR4 –> R2 RTM. You need to be up to at least SP1 with UR2 or the upgrade will not run. If you don’t have a minimum of UR2 you will get the following message.

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After the latest UR has been applied this is the order we will upgrade Service Manager in: 

  • Data warehouse server/s first
  • Management server/s second
  • Self-Service Portal server last

There is more detail for each server upgrade that we will go through in the following sections.. Now let’s jump into the Service Manager upgrade process.

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