My personal notes, SCOM 2012 R2 Update Rollup 11 (UR11) has a lot of networking monitoring fixes, Linux/UNIX support and security fixes, along with more OMS integration. What is OMS, please go HERE. It is highly recommended to upgrade your lab/Dev environments first before upgrading your Production environment(s). The step by step procedures below are the steps I took and in no way shape or form do I accept responsibility for any data loss, and/or issues within your environment. It is advised to always take a backup of your SQL databases and/or snapshots of your SCOM environment(s). Please take these notes as suggestions. Always refer to Microsoft’s KB (posted above) for full documentation steps.
Here are the key updates for UR11 (source Microsoft):
Issues that are fixed in this update rollup can be found here, https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3183990
Once you are ready to begin your upgrade, it is recommend you do the following server/roles in the order below:
Once you have downloaded the rollup files, I like to extract and only keep the language I need, in this case, ENU (English). You will need to install these with Administrative rights, I like to use PowerShell as Local Administrator. It really does frustrate me, as there is no indication that the rollup installed correctly, (other than looking at the file version number change via File Explorer).
Personally, I prefer to execute the MSP files via PowerShell (RunAs Administrator) console.
Again, the order needs to be:
Once the rollups are installed, you will now need to apply the SQL scripts. First update the Data Warehouse, then followed by the OpsMgr DB.
The scripts can be found here, “%SystemDrive%\Program Files\System Center 2012 R2\Operations Manager\Server\SQL Script for Update Rollups”
Please note, the user executing these scripts needs to have read and write permissions to the database(s).
Once you have successfully executed the SQL scripts, you will now need to import the updated Management Packs (MP). These MPs can be found here, “%SystemDrive%\Program Files\System Center 2012 R2\Operations Manager\Server\Management Packs for Update Rollups“.
You will need to import the following MPs, please see below:
Once the MPs have been imported, you should now go back to your Pending Management view, under the Administrations pane, and update all servers.
And that is that! You are now on the latest and greatest System Center release for SCOM 2012 R2.
So you have multiple SCOM Management Servers, yet you just happen to have all of your SCOM agents reporting to one server, or maybe two if you half tried to load balance your agents. There are several reasons why you would want to have multiple Management Servers, ie. off-load workflows, reduce stress on servers, etc., etc. Well what is the point of having multiple Management Servers yet nearly all of your agents are reporting to one, or maybe two at best Management Servers, while the others are collecting dust. Load balance those agents! You could manually move an agent by right clicking and moving to a new server, or you could let our friend PowerShell automate this for you.
In my experience I have seen many SCOM environments where load balancing is either done manually, or not done at all. And usually manually implies the SCOM administrator takes a look which of the servers has the least agents, and deploys away. That works, but why not deploy to any server then let PowerShell load balance for you.
In the solution below, I am using PowerShell along with Orchestrator 2012R2. The runbook can be setup to run ad-hoc, or run regularly, ie. monthly, weekly, etc. Of course if you do not Orchestrator deployed in your environment, you could very well take the script and schedule it to run via Windows Scheduled tasks.
Here I have created a Runbook to execute the script, and then send back a warning notification if the Runbook failed, or an informational notification that the Runbook executed successfully.
See below for the PowerShell script. Please note, you will need to change the Line 5 with a SCOM Management server applicable to your environment, duh. This script can also be modified, and you can load balance between two gateway servers.
The script can be found HERE!
Happy SCOM’ing!
SCOM & Other Geeky Stuff 