How not to get lost in the abbreviations SCCM [Cheat Sheet]
CM2012, SCCM 2012 R2 SP1, SCCM Current Branch, SCCM CB 1702, ConfigMgr 2016 ... This is not a complete list of abbreviations that are available to administrators when working with System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). So that you no longer have any confusion, we asked one of our ITPros to write a useful cheat sheet based on his experience. I give the word to the author.
Nowadays System Center Configuration Manager ( SCCM ) is one of the most popular systems for managing IT infrastructure based on Microsoft technologies in Enterprise environments. Each administrator, working with this system, is faced with a wide variety of abbreviations in official documentation, articles, numerous blogs and forums. In addition to personal inconvenience, this is the cause of critical errors in the implementation, configuration, and work with SCCM.
The task of the article is to understand and understand why so many abbreviations are used, how to “read” correctly and, most importantly, what information can be obtained from this.
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First, a little history. The product appeared in 1994 and was called Microsoft Systems Management Server ( SMS ) until 2007. During this time, there were three versions of SMS. In 2007, the next version of System Center Configuration Manager 2007 ( SCCM 2007 ) will be released. The name change here is due to the creation of the System Center product line, which included SMS 4.
In 2012, System Center 2012 Configuration Manager RTM (build 5.00.7711) was released, representing a completely new generation of the product. SCCM 2012 , CM2012 and ConfigMgr 2012 began to be used as an abbreviation in the official documentation. The exact reason for the emergence of new abbreviations is unknown, but there is a popular unofficial explanation - SCCM is the abbreviation of the Society of Critical Care Medicine .
Further, the product was developed traditionally, through the release of updates, fixes and functional additions. In May 2015, in preparation for the official release of Windows 10, Microsoft launches two SCCM versions - SCCM 2012 R2 SP1 / SCCM 2012 SP2 , which had the same build 5.00.8239.1000, but differed in functionality and licensing model (R2 required additional licenses when certain conditions). Read more about the differences here .
In July 2015, Microsoft officially releases Windows 10 RTM, which has a fundamentally new system update model - Windows as a Service . From this point on, administrators begin working with three different versions of Windows 10 — Current Branch, Current Branch for Business, and Long-Term Servicing Branch. At the same time, information appeared about the upcoming next generation of SCCM, codenamed ConfigMgr v.Next .
In October 2015, a product development strategy was published, from where it becomes known about the future name - SCCM Current Branch , and in December 2015 the first version of SCCM Current Branch 1511 ( SCCM CB 1511 ) officially comes out . Similar to the Windows 10 releases, the numbers indicate the year and month of the release of this release. The main feature here is that the support time for each release is 12 months .
It is also necessary to take into account that until a new release has been released, security & critical updates will come. As soon as the next release comes out, for SCCM with the previous release, only security updates will come. At the moment (April 2017) the following releases have been released: SCCM CB 1602, SCCM CB 1606, SCCM CB 1610, SCCM 1702. The table below shows how the release life cycle looks like:
In each release, changes are made in the functionality of SCCM, so you need to regularly get acquainted with this list .
It would seem that this is all, but in the official Microsoft blogs, you can find another shortcut not specified above - ConfigMgr 2016 - what is it? This is the general name for SCCM CB, starting with the release of 1606 and further, in connection with the release of the System Center 2016 line, more information can be found here. In fact, this is a marketing renaming, since nothing has fundamentally changed, for example, the generation of the product is 5.00.
Let's summarize the brief summary above. Currently there are two current versions of SCCM:
The information obtained above is important when working with official documentation - some features and settings relate to any version of the product, and some - only to a specific version. When working with docs.microsoft.com or with technet.microsoft.com, it is necessary to look through the list of versions to which this or that article belongs. The picture below shows that the article relates to SCCM 2012 R2.
For SCCM CB, this article is not applicable, since SCCM 2012 R2 supports Windows XP as an operating system for clients, but SCCM CB does not.
In the official blog of the product team, only ConfigMgr is used as tags instead of SCCM. Apparently in the near future we are waiting for an evolutionary transition to just one abbreviation, which of course greatly simplifies the life of system administrators.
For completeness, it remains to discuss how to determine the current version (release) in a running system. It is necessary to understand what kind of fixes already exist and what functionality is in this version.
The first method (in my opinion the most informative) is to select the Administration section in the ConfigMgr console, then go to the Cloud Services section and select the Updates and Servicing item.
In the column Full Version we can see the full build of the system (state - Installed) - 5.00.8458.1526, where 5.00 is the ConfigMgr generation (this is SCCM 2012, SCCM 2007 was the 4th generation), 8458 is the build release of SCCM CB 1610, 1526 - installed hotfix 4016483 . If hotfixes were not set after the last release (for example, 1702), the system build will end in 1000. This section will also show the releases and hotfixes available for installation, only in the State column the value will be Available.
The second method is also in the ConfigMgr console. Accordingly, you need to open the console, select the drop-down menu in the upper left corner and select the item “About Configuration Manager”.
After selecting this item, the “About System Center Configuration Manager” window will appear.
We see several meanings:
The third way is the registry. To do this, open the HKLM \ Software \ Microsoft \ SMS \ Setup branch.
But just as in the second method, we will not receive information from the accuracy to the established hotfix. In SCCM 2012 R2SP1, the CUlevel parameter was used to display information about installed cumulative updates, but for SCCM Current Branch it is no longer relevant (although it is still present in the registry).
The fourth way is through PowerShell, but even here we will not get the information up to the hotfix.
I hope that the above information has allowed us to better understand the naming of the system, where and how to correctly search for current information about the installed version and how to correctly search for documentation.
Andrey Petrov is an IT specialist with 15 years of experience, specializing in Infrastructure Support, Cloud Computing and DevOps.
Next article by author: SCCM inventory .
What for?
Nowadays System Center Configuration Manager ( SCCM ) is one of the most popular systems for managing IT infrastructure based on Microsoft technologies in Enterprise environments. Each administrator, working with this system, is faced with a wide variety of abbreviations in official documentation, articles, numerous blogs and forums. In addition to personal inconvenience, this is the cause of critical errors in the implementation, configuration, and work with SCCM.
The task of the article is to understand and understand why so many abbreviations are used, how to “read” correctly and, most importantly, what information can be obtained from this.
')
Cheat Sheet and Some History
First, a little history. The product appeared in 1994 and was called Microsoft Systems Management Server ( SMS ) until 2007. During this time, there were three versions of SMS. In 2007, the next version of System Center Configuration Manager 2007 ( SCCM 2007 ) will be released. The name change here is due to the creation of the System Center product line, which included SMS 4.
In 2012, System Center 2012 Configuration Manager RTM (build 5.00.7711) was released, representing a completely new generation of the product. SCCM 2012 , CM2012 and ConfigMgr 2012 began to be used as an abbreviation in the official documentation. The exact reason for the emergence of new abbreviations is unknown, but there is a popular unofficial explanation - SCCM is the abbreviation of the Society of Critical Care Medicine .
Further, the product was developed traditionally, through the release of updates, fixes and functional additions. In May 2015, in preparation for the official release of Windows 10, Microsoft launches two SCCM versions - SCCM 2012 R2 SP1 / SCCM 2012 SP2 , which had the same build 5.00.8239.1000, but differed in functionality and licensing model (R2 required additional licenses when certain conditions). Read more about the differences here .
In July 2015, Microsoft officially releases Windows 10 RTM, which has a fundamentally new system update model - Windows as a Service . From this point on, administrators begin working with three different versions of Windows 10 — Current Branch, Current Branch for Business, and Long-Term Servicing Branch. At the same time, information appeared about the upcoming next generation of SCCM, codenamed ConfigMgr v.Next .
In October 2015, a product development strategy was published, from where it becomes known about the future name - SCCM Current Branch , and in December 2015 the first version of SCCM Current Branch 1511 ( SCCM CB 1511 ) officially comes out . Similar to the Windows 10 releases, the numbers indicate the year and month of the release of this release. The main feature here is that the support time for each release is 12 months .
It is also necessary to take into account that until a new release has been released, security & critical updates will come. As soon as the next release comes out, for SCCM with the previous release, only security updates will come. At the moment (April 2017) the following releases have been released: SCCM CB 1602, SCCM CB 1606, SCCM CB 1610, SCCM 1702. The table below shows how the release life cycle looks like:
In each release, changes are made in the functionality of SCCM, so you need to regularly get acquainted with this list .
It would seem that this is all, but in the official Microsoft blogs, you can find another shortcut not specified above - ConfigMgr 2016 - what is it? This is the general name for SCCM CB, starting with the release of 1606 and further, in connection with the release of the System Center 2016 line, more information can be found here. In fact, this is a marketing renaming, since nothing has fundamentally changed, for example, the generation of the product is 5.00.
Let's summarize the brief summary above. Currently there are two current versions of SCCM:
- SCCM 2012 R2 SP1 / SCCM SP2 . Released 05/14/2015 and only supports Windows 10 RTM (1507) and Windows 10 1511. End of support - 07/11/2017, end of extended support - 07/12/2022.
- SCCM Current Branch. SCCM as Service is a continuation of the development of SCCM 2012, the first version was released in December 2015 (SCCM CB 1511). It is updated several times a year with releases, each release is supported for exactly a year. The basic idea is to provide support for Windows 10 CB and Windows 10 CBB. That is, at the moment SCCM CB 1511 and SCCM CB 1602 are no longer supported, SCCM CB 1606, SCCM CB 1610, SCCM 1702 are current versions. Starting with SCCM CB 1606, the abbreviation ConfigMgr 2016 is used.
Immersion, or how to determine the current version
The information obtained above is important when working with official documentation - some features and settings relate to any version of the product, and some - only to a specific version. When working with docs.microsoft.com or with technet.microsoft.com, it is necessary to look through the list of versions to which this or that article belongs. The picture below shows that the article relates to SCCM 2012 R2.
For SCCM CB, this article is not applicable, since SCCM 2012 R2 supports Windows XP as an operating system for clients, but SCCM CB does not.
In the official blog of the product team, only ConfigMgr is used as tags instead of SCCM. Apparently in the near future we are waiting for an evolutionary transition to just one abbreviation, which of course greatly simplifies the life of system administrators.
For completeness, it remains to discuss how to determine the current version (release) in a running system. It is necessary to understand what kind of fixes already exist and what functionality is in this version.
The first method (in my opinion the most informative) is to select the Administration section in the ConfigMgr console, then go to the Cloud Services section and select the Updates and Servicing item.
In the column Full Version we can see the full build of the system (state - Installed) - 5.00.8458.1526, where 5.00 is the ConfigMgr generation (this is SCCM 2012, SCCM 2007 was the 4th generation), 8458 is the build release of SCCM CB 1610, 1526 - installed hotfix 4016483 . If hotfixes were not set after the last release (for example, 1702), the system build will end in 1000. This section will also show the releases and hotfixes available for installation, only in the State column the value will be Available.
The second method is also in the ConfigMgr console. Accordingly, you need to open the console, select the drop-down menu in the upper left corner and select the item “About Configuration Manager”.
After selecting this item, the “About System Center Configuration Manager” window will appear.
We see several meanings:
- Version 1610 . This is information about the current installed release.
- Console Version: 5.00.8458.1520. This is the current console version. This is important if you are using remote consoles that may not have been updated during the installation of the new release.
- Site Version: 5.0.8458.1000. Please note that information about the installed hotfixes is not displayed here. That is, there will always be 1000, although in reality in the system 1526;
The third way is the registry. To do this, open the HKLM \ Software \ Microsoft \ SMS \ Setup branch.
But just as in the second method, we will not receive information from the accuracy to the established hotfix. In SCCM 2012 R2SP1, the CUlevel parameter was used to display information about installed cumulative updates, but for SCCM Current Branch it is no longer relevant (although it is still present in the registry).
The fourth way is through PowerShell, but even here we will not get the information up to the hotfix.
I hope that the above information has allowed us to better understand the naming of the system, where and how to correctly search for current information about the installed version and how to correctly search for documentation.
about the author
Andrey Petrov is an IT specialist with 15 years of experience, specializing in Infrastructure Support, Cloud Computing and DevOps.Next article by author: SCCM inventory .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/326264/
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