Part 1: Upgrading to Service Manager 2016 – Getting Ready

Upgrading to System Center Service Manager 2012 to System Center Service Manager 2016 is something most of us are facing now that 2012 has gone out of mainstream support. The process is fairly simple, with the biggest hurdle generally being all the customization’s that have been made.

This blog post is the first in a series of posts on upgrading to SCSM 2016:

• Part 1: Upgrading to Service Manager 2016 – Getting Ready
• Part 2: Upgrade Steps for SCSM 2016
• Part 3: Screen Shots of the SCSM 2016 Install
• Part 4: Service Manager 2016 Install/Upgrade Troubleshooting and Error Messages

 

In-Place Upgrade

The actual upgrade itself is a big bang, in place upgrade. Everything needs to be done at one time and Service Manager will be down for the period of time it takes to upgrade. The install looks the same as Service Manger 2012 and the steps for upgrading to 2012 still apply to upgrading to 2016.

 

.Net Framework 4.5.1

Microsoft have upgraded the .Net Framework used by Service Manager from .Net 3.5 to .Net 4.5.1. This is a huge improvement, but comes at the cost of having to recompile any custom code that has been written for Service Manager.

Any customization’s that did not involve code, like extending classes, adding properties, changing forms, should be fine. It is only when there was code written that used .Net 3.5 that you will need to recompile. Have a look at this post from the Official SCSM blog SCSM 2016 – Upgrade steps for custom development and this one from Kurt Van Hoecke for more practical details

 

 

Prerequisites and Compatibility requirements

Check out all the compatibility requirements and make sure that you meet the basic prerequisites for SCSM, Server and SQL:

Windows OS

• Server 2012 R2 or higher

SQL Server

• SQL Server 2012 SP2 or higher is needed

Service Manger

• SCSM R2 Update Rollup 9 or later is needed

If you are running an older version of Windows OS, you will need to do an in-place OS upgrade or move Service Manager onto new servers before upgrading to Service Manager 2012. This will require installing a new Secondary SCSM server(s) and then moving the Workflow server.

Use this blog post How to Promote a Service Manager Management Server  on how to move the workflow server.

It will also mean moving the Data Warehouse server, which can be a bit scary. Use this blog post as a starting point How to Recover a Data Warehouse Management Server

Use this blog post as a starting point for Moving the Service Manager and DW Datases  to a new version of SQL.

 

SCSM Upgrade Software Requirements

There are additional software requirements for each SCSM role: Software Requirements for System Center 2016 – Service Manager 

Service Manager management server

• NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for Windows Server
• SQL Server Native client
• Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable, which is available with the Service Manager media.
• SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
• The SQL Server and Analysis Services collation settings must be the same for the computers hosting the Service Manager database, data warehouse database, analysis services database, and Reporting Services database.
• SQL Server Analysis Management Objects.

Data warehouse management server

• SQL Server Native client
• SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
• The SQL Server and Analysis Services collation settings must be the same for the computers hosting the Service Manager database, data warehouse database, analysis services database, and Reporting Services database.
• SQL Server Analysis Management Objects.

Service Manager console

• Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable, which is available with the System Center 2016 – Service Manager media.
• You must have Microsoft Excel 2007 or later installed in order view OLAP data cubes on the computer running the Service Manager console.
• NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for Windows Server. *
• SQL Server Analysis Management Objects

Self-Service Portal (HTML5 version)

• Windows 2012 R2 server or Windows Server 2016
• Join the server machine to the same domain where the Service Manager SDK Service is running. Ideally, on the primary or secondary server.
• Enable the IIS role and ASP.NET 4.5
• SQL Server Analysis Management Objects

 

Evaluation versions of Service Manager

Do not use an evaluation version of Service Manager 2012 or 2016. There is no officially supported way to upgrade an evaluation version of service Manager (2012 or 2016) to a production version. You cannot just enter a license key as you can with just about every other Microsoft product.

There are some web comments out there that do give ways to do it, but =this is your production environment, do not use an evaluation version – just enter your existing license key and it will be accepted.

 

Upgrade SCSM Versions

The upgrade is an all or nothing proposition – you cannot mix SCSM 2012 and SCSM 2016 at any level – Server, Client Console or Self-Service Portal (SSP). Everything has to be SCSM 2016 or everything SCSM 2012. However, as you are upgrading, servers will be different versions, but the instance is still off line and is not being used by analysts or users. Give yourself plenty of time to do the upgrade and organize an outage with both the analysts and the users of Service Manager.

 

Third party Tools

Third party tools will need to be upgraded as well. Just about all of these will have used code based on .Net 3.5 at some point. Check with the vendors for the latest version. All vendors will now have SCSM 2016 versions. The upgrade process for third party tools should involve importing the new Management Pack and replacing any custom dll’s used.

System Center Suite Upgrade Order

The upgrade order for System Center components is the same as it was for System Center 2012. Essentially if you have Orchestrator in your environment the suggested order is upgrade it first before Service Manager.

But I have seen it done after, so there is some flexibility.  However, I would upgrade Orchestrator as soon as possible after Service Manager.

Refer to Upgrade to System Center 2016 for the official position.

Upgrade System Center components in this order:

• Orchestrator
• Service Manager
• Data Protection Manager
• Operations Manager
• Configuration Manager
• Virtual Machine Manager
• App Controller

 

Next posts on Upgrading to Service Manager (SCSM) 2016:

• Part 2: Upgrade Steps for SCSM 2016
• Part 3: Screen Shots of the SCSM 2016 Install
• Part 4: Service Manager 2016 Install/Upgrade Troubleshooting and Error Messages

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