Managing SCCM Console installs

As I move to implement CU3 in our 2012 R2 environment, one of the tasks done is to update all your consoles. With my firms size we have consoles all over the place. They are on Site Servers, Workstations, Abacus', even hosted on Citrix. I wanted an easy way to deal with them, so why not treat it like any other software you manage via ConfigMgr?

While we are on CU1 currently, I learned that there are actually several console installs that are still on R2 and should be on CU1, even a non R2 out there. When we move to CU3 those will get cleaned up.

First things first, setup the Collections. We set them up not only for 2012, but also for each CU revision as shown above. This was to manage and keep track as we migrate from CU1 to CU3 and beyond. As with any other software Collection, we looked at Add/Remove for the Console Software which was called 'System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager Console'. We then split it out for versions. Luckily we turned to this TechNET blog post that had the version info to query on. This link is also useful for other tasks like ConfigMgr agent version.

To save time, you can cheat and just copy the query language below:

 select SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceID,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceType,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Name,SMS_R_SYSTEM.SMSUniqueIdentifier,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Client from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_SoftwareFile on SMS_G_System_SoftwareFile.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId inner join SMS_G_System_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS on SMS_G_System_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS.ResourceId = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where SMS_G_System_SoftwareFile.FileVersion = "5.0.7958.1401" and SMS_G_System_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS.DisplayName = "System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager Console"  

Just change the version '5.0.7958.1401' to the one you care about, or remove it.

For the pre R2 systems we had to use a different Add/remove name of 'Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Console'. BTW, you can use this query if you don't want versions. Here is that query:

 select SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceID,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceType,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Name,SMS_R_SYSTEM.SMSUniqueIdentifier,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Client from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS on SMS_G_System_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where SMS_G_System_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS.DisplayName = "Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Console"  

Update:
Looks like I wasn't the only one with this idea.


-Kevin