SCOM 2012 - Deploying Cumulative Update Rollup 1 (CU1) Hotfix

With the recent RTM of SCOM 2012, Microsoft have just announced the release of Cumulative Update Rollup 1 (CU1). Unlike previous Cumulative Rollups for SCOM 2007 R2 which were over 1GB in size, thankfully this one is only 74MB!

Edit July 2012: This update has now been replaced with Cumulative Update 2 (UR2). Check out my post on it's deployment here:

SCOM 2012 - Deploying Cumulative Update Rollup 2 (CU2) Hotfix

The process to deploy the update is quite simple and this time there is no need to run any SQL queries against the SCOM databases as part of the update - as was the case with the SCOM 2007 R2 CU's. Some of the information below is taken directly from kb 2686249 on the Microsoft Support website.

Note: As with all updates, it goes without saying that you should first make a full backup of your SCOM 2012 environment before proceeding with these steps.

The supported installation order of CU1 is as follows:

Server Infrastructure Deployment Order Overview:

• Management server or servers

• Gateway servers

• Reporting servers

• Web console server role computer

• Operations console role computers

Note: If Connected MG/Tiering is enabled, the top tier should be patched first.

Update Management Packs Overview:

• Manually import CU1 management packs

Agent Deployment Overview:

• Apply the agent update to manually installed agents, or push installation from the Pending view in the Operations console.

Note: This update rollup can be installed on agents either before or after server infrastructure.

Installation

Download CU1 to a location on your SCOM 2012 Management Server from the link below:

Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 - Operations Manager

Right mouse click on the downloaded package and choose 'Run As Administrator' to begin the extraction of files

Click Yes to accept the licence

Choose a location to extract the files to (this can be a shared network folder if needs be), then click OK twice to finish the extraction

You should now see the following files extracted to the chosen folder

Server Infrastructure

Now you need to apply the relevant .MSP package to your computers depending on the architecture (AMD64 or i386) and the role each one has in your SCOM environment (Server, Console, Web Console, Reporting, Gateway or Agent)

On servers that have User Account Control (UAC) enabled, be sure to run these updates from an elevated command prompt as you will most likely receive 'Access Denied' errors when running direct from the GUI.

The server I'm installing this to is a single SCOM 2012 Management Server with the Console and Web Console roles deployed so in this instance, I have to install three packages - KB2674695-AMD64-Server, KB2674695-AMD64-Console, KB2674695-AMD64-WebConsole.

Edit: Thanks to my good man Steve Beaumont for pointing out that I forgot to mention that when deploying the KB2674695-AMD64-WebConsole update to your Web Console server, a line within the 'web.config' file needs to be modified to allow the fixes within the update to be applied - nice one Steve, can't let the standards slip at all these days :)

The following is taken directly from the KB:

Web console fixes will work after adding the following line to the %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\CONFIG\web.config file:

<machineKey validationKey="AutoGenerate,IsolateApps"
decryptionKey="AutoGenerate,IsolateApps" validation="3DES" decryption="3DES"/>

The line should be added under <system.web>, as described in the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

911722 You may receive an error message when you access ASP.NET Web pages that have ViewState enabled after you upgrade from ASP.NET 1.1 to ASP.NET 2.0

In my environment, I also need to deploy the KB2674695-AMD64-Reporting package to my SQL Reporting Services (SSRS) server and the KB2674695-AMD64-Gateway to my SCOM 2012 Gateway server.

To install a package, just right mouse click on it and then choose Apply from the menu as below

You will see a window similar to the one below open up and run through some processes before automatically closing without any notification or reference to the process being completed.

Once you have updated your server, browse to the SCOM 2012 installation folder - normally located at C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager 2012\Server. Once here, add a column view for 'File Version' and then sort the column by file version and you should see four files with a new version level of 7.0.8560.1021 as the screen below shows

If you don't see the product version updated as above to your files, then your server hasn't updated properly and you will need to revisit the installation to see if you've missed something.

Thanks to Shaun Loughton for pointing these updated file names out in his comment below!

Once you are happy that your first SCOM 2012 Management Server has been updated, then you can then move onto installing the new management packs that come with the CU1 hotfix.

Note: You only need to import the updated management packs once. You will not have to carry out this process for every SCOM server role that you upgrade.

To do this, simply open up the SCOM Console and click on the Administration button in the wunderbar from the bottom left hand side of the screen. From there, expand the Administration view, right mouse click on Management Packs and then select Import Management Packs from the resultant menu

From the Import Management Packs window, click on the Add button, choose the Add From Disk option and then click on No when prompted to go online to download any dependencies

You now need to browse to the location that you expanded the CU1 file into previously and you should see three management pack files (.MP). Select all three files and click on the Open button

Click on Yes from the security warning to confirm you are happy to continue

Once the import is completed, you should see a successful status beside all three management packs confirming you have imported them without issue

Once you have upgraded the first SCOM 2012 Management Server and imported the updated management packs into your environment, you then need to repeat the .MSP installation process on all of your other SCOM 2012 server roles as well

Agent Infrastructure

Although the agent installation upgrade can be carried out at any time, I prefer to wait until I have upgraded my SCOM 2012 server infrastructure first before working on the agents.

To upgrade the agents using the SCOM 2012 Console, simply browse to the Administration tab again in the wunderbar, expand the Administration view, expand Device Management and then click on the Pending Management view to see all of the agents awaiting upgrade. Highlight the ones you want to upgrade, then click on the Approve link from the Tasks pane on the right hand side to update all of your push based agents

For any agents that have been manually installed, then you will manually need to copy the .MSP file for the agent to each server and manually carry out each upgrade.


Unix/Linux Infrastructure

Once you have upgraded your Windows based servers and agents, all that's left to do now is to upgrade any Unix/Linux agents that you have in your environment. The following is taken directly from KB2686249:

Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2012 Operations Manager contains new agents and management packs for all supported Linux and UNIX operating systems. Therefore, to fully install Update Rollup 1, follow these steps to make sure that your monitoring of UNIX and Linux computers is up to date.

Download and then install the updated management packs from the following Microsoft website:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f947878-6bf6-48a1-adb1-3cc4c2e5d4af

Import the updated management pack for each version of Linux or UNIX that you are monitoring in your environment.

Use the Update-SCXAgent Windows PowerShell cmdlet or the UNIX/Linux Agent Upgrade Wizard in the Administration pane of the Operations Console to upgrade each agent to the latest version.

Note:The Management Pack Bundle files for each UNIX and Linux operating system version contain the management pack and agent files. It may take several minutes after importing the Management Pack Bundle for the agent files to become available for agent upgrades

For each UNIX or Linux Management Pack Bundle that is imported, the update installs new UNIX and Linux agents to the following folder:

Program Files\System Center 2012\Operations Manager\Server\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\DownloadedKits

The updated agents have file names that use the following format and a version number of 214:
Scx-1.3.0-214-server type.server version.architecture.package type

Notes:
The placeholder server type represents the name of the UNIX or Linux server product.
The placeholder server version represents the version number of the server type.
The placeholder architecture represents the processor architecture of the destination computer.
The placeholder package type represents the kind of installation file.

For example, the following is the file name format for the agent for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (x86):

Scx-1.3.0-214-sles.10.x86.rpm

The agents that are included with the original release of System Center 2012 Operations Manager have a version number of 204. These files are not removed during installation. These files are as follows:

Scx-1.3.0-206.aix.5.ppc.lpp.gz
Scx-1.3.0-206.aix.6.ppc.lpp.gz
Scx-1.3.0-206.aix.7.ppc.lpp.gz
Scx-1.3.0-206.hpux.11iv2.ia64.depot.Z
Scx-1.3.0-206.hpux.11iv2.parisc.depot.Z
Scx-1.3.0-206.hpux.11iv3.ia64.depot.Z
Scx-1.3.0-206.hpux.11iv3.parisc.depot.Z
Scx-1.3.0-206.rhel.4.x64.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.rhel.4.x86.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.rhel.5.x64.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.rhel.5.x86.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.sles.10.x64.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.sles.10.x86.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.sles.9.x86.rpm
Scx-1.3.0-206.solaris.10.sparc.pkg.Z
Scx-1.3.0-206.solaris.10.x86.pkg.Z
Scx-1.3.0-206.solaris.9.sparc.pkg.Z

That completes the deployment of SCOM 2012 Cumulative Update Rollup 1 (CU1) into your environment.