How not to get confused with the abbreviations SCCM [Crib]

    CM2012, SCCM 2012 R2 SP1, SCCM Current Branch, SCCM CB 1702, ConfigMgr 2016 ... This is not a complete list of abbreviations that administrators encounter when working with System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). So that you no longer have confusion, we asked one of our ITPro to write a useful cheat sheet based on his experience. I give the floor to the author.



    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 can cause critical errors when implementing, configuring, and working with SCCM.

    The purpose 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.

    Crib and a bit of history


    First, a little history. The product appeared in 1994 and was called Microsoft Systems Management Server ( SMS ) until 2007. During this time, three versions of SMS were released. In 2007, the next version was released - System Center Configuration Manager 2007 ( SCCM 2007 ). 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. As an abbreviation, in the official documentation they began to use SCCM 2012 , CM2012 and ConfigMgr 2012. The exact cause of the new abbreviations is unknown, but there is a popular unofficial explanation - SCCM is the abbreviation of Society of Critical Care Medicine .

    Further, the product developed traditionally, through the release of updates, fixes and additions of functionality. In May 2015, preparing for the official release of Windows 10, Microsoft launches two SCCM versions on the market - 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 an additional license when certain conditions). Read more about the differences here .

    In July 2015, Microsoft officially released the Windows 10 RTM OS, which has a fundamentally new model for updating the system - Windows as a Service . From this point on, administrators start 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 release of SCCM, code-named ConfigMgr v.Next .

    In October 2015, a product development strategy was published , from which 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) Similar to the releases of Windows 10, the numbers indicate the year and month of release of this release. The main feature here is that the support time for each release is 12 months .

    It is also necessary to consider that until a newer release is 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 following table clearly shows what the release life cycle looks like:



    In each release, changes are made to the functionality of SCCM, so you need to regularly gets acquainted with this list .

    It would seem that’s all, but inofficial Microsoft blogs can be found yet another reduction, not listed above - ConfigMgr 2016 - what is it? This is the common name for SCCM CB, starting with the release of 1606 and beyond, in connection with the release of the System Center 2016 line, more about this can be found here. In fact, this is a marketing renaming, since nothing has fundamentally changed, for example, the product generation remains at 5.00.

    Let's summarize the above. There are currently two current versions of SCCM:

    • SCCM 2012 R2 SP1 / SCCM SP2 . The release date is 05/14/2015 and supports only Windows 10 RTM (1507) and Windows 10 1511. The end of support is 07/11/2017, the end of extended support is 12/07/2022.
    • SCCM Current Branch. SCCM as Service - continued development of SCCM 2012, the first version was released in December 2015 (SCCM CB 1511). It is updated several times a year by the release of releases, each release is supported for exactly one 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.

    Dive, or how to determine the current version


    The information obtained above is important when working with official documentation - some features and settings apply to any version of the product, and some only apply to a specific version. When working with docs.microsoft.com or with technet.microsoft.com, you must always look at the list of versions to which this or that article refers. The picture below shows that the article refers to SCCM 2012 R2.



    This article is not applicable to SCCM CB, since SCCM 2012 R2 supports Windows XP as an OS for clients, but SCCM CB does not.

    In the official blogonly ConfigMgr is already used as the product team tag instead of SCCM. Apparently in the near future we are waiting for an evolutionary transition to just one abbreviation, which of course will greatly simplify the life of the system administrators.

    For completeness, it remains to discuss how to determine the current version (release) in a working system. This is necessary to understand what kind of fixes are already standing and what functionality is in this version.

    The first way (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 Updates and Servicing.



    In the Full Version column we 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 - build release SCCM CB 1610, 1526 - installed hotfix KB4016483 . If after rolling extreme release (for example 1702) hotfixes were not set, then the build system will end at 1000. This section will also display releases and hotfixes available for installation, only in the State column will the value be Available.

    The second way 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 “About Configuration Manager” item.



    After selecting this item, the “About System Center Configuration Manager” window will appear.



    We see several values:

    • Version 1610 . This is information about the current installed release.
    • Console Version: 5.00.8458.1520. This is the current version of the console. This is important if you are using remote consoles that might not have been updated during the installation of the new release.
    • Site Version: 5.0.8458.1000. Please note that information about installed hotfixes is not displayed here. That is, there will always be 1000, although in reality there are 1526 in the system;

    The third way is the registry. To do this, open the HKLM \ Software \ Microsoft \ SMS \ Setup branch.



    But just like in the second method, we won’t get information accurate 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 won’t get information accurate to the hotfix.



    I hope that the above information made it possible to better understand the naming of the system, where and how to correctly search for relevant information about the installed version and how to look for documentation.

    about the author


    Andrey Petrov is an IT specialist with 15 years of experience, specializing in Infrastructure Support, Cloud Computing and DevOps.

    Author's next article: SCCM Inventory .

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