Thursday, July 15, 2010

ConfigMgr site from Eval to Production

This question comes up in the forums frequently. Most people ask. I have setup a ConfigMgr server and I like it, how can I move this to production. If you have search the forums and docs then you see many people have done it. Here is the supporting Microsoft Docs
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb693584.aspx

By simply doing an in place upgrade on the site it will pull in your Key and other info and change the site to a production version. It isn't a quick install. Depending on how complex you have setup on the server it might take an hour or more.

I recently ran into this when another IT Admin called me and ask me to look at his site. The server patched at 3AM and when he checked it the next morning there were some errors and the Site wouldn't attach to the database. Well I have seen several errors like this so I headed on over. I looked at the log and found the one error you don't really expect to see in the Event log. "You 180 Evaluation of Configuration Manager has come to an end" It just so happened to have done this just after the patches were installed. So 5 mins to find the problem. About 1 hour or more waiting for the upgrade to occur. The person who had setup the site had left and the current admin didn't know that the site was an Eval. We put in the licensed CD for ConfigMgr and told it to upgrade the site. After a while of watching progress bars the site wanted a restart and then we check and it was all happy. The admin was grateful for my assistance and I admit that this was the first time I personally had ever performed an Eval to production move. I think if I wasn't there he might have formatted and started over. He is just now getting into ConfigMgr and is not an expert, nor is that is only job area. If you don't spend you life in ConfigMgr like I do then you are greatfull to the ones that do.

When the problem looks like the world is coming to an end, ask another IT person, forum, phone, directly. No one can learn unless you ask, and failing is the only way to truly learn. I know I have failed and stumbled many times. It is a part of life and no one should be too proud to say, "I don't know how to do that.". Especially in IT. I had no idea how to do a Pivot table until someone asked me to show them how. I told them I didn't know but I would look it up and figure it out and we can both work on it.

Have a good evening.