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Upgrading System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 to R2

The upgrade process is reasonably smooth but requires you to uninstall the SCVMM 2012 SP1 and any Hotfixes or update rollups that are in place.  You will also need to uninstall the 8.0 Microsoft ADK and install the latest 8.1 version before running setup from the Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 disk.  The 8.1 ADK can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=39982

Before starting gather and record the details of the existing implementation if not already documented.  For example the database server, instance name, database name and the details of the virtual machine manager service account.  You can view the current database configuration from within the VMM console.  While in the “Administration/Settings” view, click on “General” and then double click “Database Connection” While it is possible to use the local system service I would recommend creating a domain user for the service to run as with a local system service account baremetal hyper-v host deployments are not possible and you may have trouble logging in from other machines.

I would also make sure at least 10GB of free space is available on the VMM server as the 8.1 ADK is quite large.

  1. Uninstall both the VMM 2012 condole and management features. Make sure you select the option to retain the database.
  2. Take a backup of your SCVMM database.
  3. Uninstall the 8.0 ADK
  4. Install the 8.1 ADK – If you are using the online installer a large amount of data will need to be downloaded.  If this is not possible consider running the installer ahead of the upgrade and download the full install for later offline installation.
  5. Run setup from the VMM 2012 R2 disk
  6. Simply follow the wizard entering the database and service account details you recorded earlier
  7. Once setup is complete there are a few tasks left to complete: Any driver packs will need to be removed and re-added or they may not be discovered correctly.  Virtual Machine templates may need to be re-pointed to the correct operating system containing VHD.  You will also of course need to update the agents on all of your VMM managed hosts.