ConfigMgr 2012 Automatic Deployment Rules

 

In CM12 we have a number of changes in Software Updates. One of the most anticipated one’s is Auto Deployment Rules.

Yes finally I hear you say….

Well Lets run through creating an Auto Deployment and one little gotcha to keep your eye on.

In the Console we select

 Software Library > Software Updates > Automatic Deployment Rules

Choose Create Automatic Deployment Rule from the Ribbon or Right click on the mouse.

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In the first screen we can choose a Template

(Templates are no longer a node in the console they are now created when creating an Auto Deployment Rule or manually Deploying Updates and are saved at the Summary screen.Ill point this out later in the post)

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You can Select to Add to an Existing Software Update Group or Create a new Software Update Group.

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If you select Add to an Existing Software Update Group a brand new group will be created the first time the Auto Deployment Rule is run and every time the rule runs after that the new updates are added to that group.

(NOTE You cannot create a software Update group manually and then create an Auto Deployment rule to add new updates to that group. Even if you give it the same name and description the Auto Deployment Rule will still create a new group. See Figure below.The group created at 6:02 pm was done manually. I then ran the Auto Deployment rule at 6:07 pm and you can see that it creates a group with a duplicate name and description.)

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If you select Create a new Software Update Group every time the rule is run a new Software Update Group is created.

 

You can also choose to Enable the deployment after the rule is run.

 

Here you can choose to use Wake on lan and also decide whether to automatically deploy all updates and approve any license agreements or deploy only updates that do not include license agreements.

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This is where you select the requirements to select the updates to auto approve.

 

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Here you can set a Schedule for the Rule to run. Potentially every Patch Tuesday or Daily for Forefront updates.

Or you can run the rule manually.

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Similar to CM07 we can set the deployment schedule and whether the Deployment will be Mandatory.

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Set the User Experience, deadline behaviour and reboot suppression.

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We can now Generate Alerts if the compliance falls below a certain after a certain period of time. As before we can select to disable alerts for Operations Manager.

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Set your Deployment options

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Either select an existing package or create a new one for the new updates

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Select a DP or DP Group

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Where to download the updates from

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Choose a language

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On the Summary screen you can Choose to Save your settings as a Template for future use

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We now see the new Rule in the console and we can choose to Run Now from the ribbon.

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The log file for troubleshooting is Ruleengine.log

We can see the Auto Deployment Rule is kicked off

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Evaluating and downloading updates

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Here we see it looking for an existing update group and not finding one therefore creating a new Software Update Group then adding the updates to that Group.

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Back to the console.If we select Software Update Groups we now see the newly created Windows 7 Automatic Deployment and the Deployment (Yet to be enabled) on the tab below.

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When we select Show Members we can see the updates applied.

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and there you have it.