Wednesday, January 29, 2014

System Center 2012 R2 - Update Rollup 1 (UR1) Available for Download

As of yesterday, Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 R2 has dropped and is ready for download through the Microsoft Download Center.

This update has fixes for the following products in the suite:

Data Protection Manager (DPM) - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2904687

Operations Manager (SCOM) - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2904678

Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2904712

There's no updates available in this package for AppController, Orchestrator, Service Manager (SCSM) or Service Provider Foundation (SPF) however, in relation to SPF, Microsoft had the following to say:

The update for Service Provider Foundation is expected to release in mid-to-late February 2014. Updated information about this release will be added to this article when it becomes available.

Looking at the documentation for UR1, VMM seems to have gotten the most love here with the following 13 fixes:

Virtual Machine Manager

Issue 1

System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager cannot deploy a new or imported VMWare template.

Issue 2

A virtual machine with that uses VHDX cannot be refreshed correctly in System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager, and you receive the following error message:

Refresh job failed with error 2912: The requested operation cannot be performed on the virtual disk as it is currently used in shared mode (0xC05CFF0A)

Issue 3

Database operations sometimes fail with "FailedToAcquireLockException."

Issue 4

A new virtual machine template from a template that specifies an operating system profile doesn't use credentials from the operating system profile.

Issue 5

Virtual machines in VMWare that connect by the using Cisco N1000V dvSwitch are unavailable for management from Virtual Machine Manager.

Issue 6

System Center Virtual Machine Manager service crashes if you disable one of the teamed network adapters.

Issue 7

The Get-Scstoragearray -host command should return storage arrays that are visible to a host that is using zoning.

Issue 8

During the discovery of a network-attached storage (NAS) provider, the credentials that are used do not include a domain name.

Issue 9

Some localized strings are not displayed correctly in the UI.

Issue 10

A query to find the certificate should match both the subject name and the friendly name because FindBySubjectName is a wildcard search.

Issue 11

Template deployment fails, and you receive the following error message:

Error (2904)
VMM could not find the specified path on the <Server name> server.
The system cannot find the path specified (0x80070003)


Issue 12

Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) cannot be mounted on a host because VHD conflicts with other disks because of a stale entry that was left in the dictionary of Virtual Machine Manager memory.

Issue 13

Differencing disk based deployment may fail because the parent disk is being refreshed as non-cached.


SCOM came in second with resolutions for the following 10 issues:

Operations Manager

Issue 1

An error occurs when you run the p_DataPurging stored procedure. This error occurs when the query processor runs out of internal resources and cannot produce a query plan.

Issue 2

Data warehouse BULK INSERT commands use an unchangeable, default 30-second time-out value that may cause query time-outs.

Issue 3

Many 26319 errors are generated when you use the Operator role. This issue causes performance problems.

Issue 4

The diagram component does not publish location information in the component state.

Issue 5

Renaming a group works correctly on the console. However, the old name of the group appears when you try to override a monitor or scope a view based on group.

Issue 6

SCOM synchronization is not supported in the localized versions of Team Foundation Server.

Issue 7

An SDK process deadlock causes the Exchange correlation engine to fail.

Issue 8

The "Microsoft System Center Advisor monitoring server" reserved group is visible in a computer or group search.

Issue 9

Multiple Advisor Connector are discovered for the same physical computer when the computer hosts a cluster.

Issue 10

A Dashboard exception occurs if the criteria that are used for a query include an invalid character or keyword.

Lastly, DPM gets 3 fixes:

Data Protection Manager

Issue 1

An 0x80070057 error occurs when a session is closed prematurely. This error is caused by a failure during a consistency check.

Issue 2

Lots of concurrent threads or calls to Microsoft SQL Server from the Data Protection Manager (DPM) console cause slow SQL Server performance. When this issue occurs, the DPM console runs out of connections to SQL Server and may hang or crash.

Issue 3

The DPM console crashes, and an error that resembles the following is logged:

Paths that begin with \\?\GlobalRoot are internal to the kernel and should not be opened by managed applications.

You can view a full description of the update from the following link:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2904734/en-us


Installing System Center 2012 R2 UR1

When you are installing System Center 2012 R2 Update Rollup 1, pay close attention to the installation instructions contained towards the bottom of each products update link. All applicable System Center 2012 R2 products can be automatically updated via the Windows Update mechanism, however, with VMM and SCOM, you'll need to manually run some SQL scripts after the update applies. For SCOM, check out Kevin Holman's Step-by-Step post here to get this Update Rollup installed correctly.

Before you go wildly downloading and installing this update, I'd advise you to wait a few days/weeks before deploying it into your production environments and keep an eye out for any possible 'gotcha' posts about issues after installation.

Finally, when you're ready to go and as is the case with every update or upgrade to System Center 2012 R2, ensure you follow the correct upgrade sequence path as laid out in the 'Upgrade Sequencing for System Center 2012 R2' guide here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn521010.aspx



2 comments:

  1. Hi, do you know if the update sequence for SC components applies only when upgrading SC components from 2012 SP1 to R2? Or does this apply for update roll ups such as the recently release update roll up 4?

    Your comments:
    "Finally, when you're ready to go and as is the case with every update or upgrade to System Center 2012 R2, ensure you follow the correct upgrade sequence path as laid out in the 'Upgrade Sequencing for System Center 2012 R2"

    The MS Update 4 Roll up site makes no mention of this requirement.
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2992024

    Just looking for some clarification if possible as we have different components managed by different teams.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Would you happen to know what the latest versions of Cumulative Update and Update Rollups should be for SCCM 2012 R2? I was only able to find CUs 1-3 and 5-7 (curiously could not find 4 for R2)

    ReplyDelete