Remember the good old days in SCCM where client upgrades had to be done by reinstalling the agent from scratch and there was no easy way to upgrade? Well today I’ll be discussing the feature of Automatic Client Upgrade within SCCM 2012 SP1 and also some of it’s limitations which you need to be aware of before you rush into enabling the feature. To get to the Automatic Client Upgrade screen as shown below navigate to:- Administration -> Site Configuration -> Sites -> Hierarchy Settings – Automatic Client Upgrade

Pros:-

  • No more manually updating clients or reinstalling agents from scratch to receive the latest version (reduced administrative overhead)
  • Customizable time-frame for automatic upgrade of SCCM agents (useful for poor network links etc)
  • Automatic distribution to pre-staged content distribution points

Cons:-

  • Automatic upgrade of clients only works with Windows Operating Systems (all other supported client types will still have to be pushed out separately)
  • Clients in slow or unreliable boundaries will not be upgraded automatically (check your boundary identification)
  • Settings are applied at a site level and therefore affect all subordinate sites and clients!
  • All eligible clients need to be assigned to a site that is the same version as the top level site in the hierarchy (standalone deployments on one Primary Site are obviously not affected, so this really only affects larger scale environments)
  • Lack of monitoring. If you want to monitor how many clients are being / have been affected by an upgrade then create a separate package and deploy it separately

Enjoy auto upgrading!