Configuration Manager 1910 Upgrade Tips and Issues I Encountered

We have a new datacenter and the configuration manager server needed to be moved to that location. The setup of Configuration Manager is not too difficult. I did though run into several gotchas along the way.

• The first one was a warning that read 'configuration for SQL server memory usage'. I needed at least 8 GB of RAM allocated to the SQL database. The following SQL query executed on the ConfigMgr SQL server will rectify that issue. 

 sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1;  
 GO  
 RECONFIGURE;  
 GO  
 sp_configure 'min server memory', 8192;  
 GO  
 RECONFIGURE;  
 GO  

• I ran into the SQL server native client version warning. I fixed that by downloading the SQL Server 2012 Feature Pack which contains sqlncli.msi. That is the native client installer. SQL Server 2019 is the version being used for ConfigMgr 1910. The sqlncli.msi from the 2012 Feature Pack is compatible with SQL Server 2019. 

• When I started using the job migration tool, it seemed to migrate the packages and applications without issue until I went to push them to the new distribution points. That is when I saw the distribution status was still present in the pie charts of the content status. I had to go back and delete the imported items, and then remove them from the distribution points of the old server before migrating them back to the new ConfigMgr server. Once I did that, the newly migrated objects no longer showed false pie charts.

• The final error I got was 'failed to create virtual directory' when I began building my new distribution points. I did not use the old ones, as I wanted them to all be newly built like the ConfigMgr and SQL servers were. The fix to this was to reboot the distribution point server. Once it came back up, the error was gone. 

• I did not know whether I should trying and change the configuration manager clients to point to the new server, or just reinstall them. I ended up running the install client and checking the box to uninstall the old client. That worked perfectly. I chose this method because it would then have all new logs in the %windir%\ccm\logs directory for the new client and nothing left over from the old client. 

I must say that Microsoft has done a fabulous job with the installation process of the new Configuration Manager. This was by far the easiest installation/upgrade I have ever done. I am sure there are a lot more errors and messages others will encounter as every environment is different. The new server is now built and is up and running.