The main reason for this article is because a friend asked “we are looking at migrating SCCM hardware for the hierarchy – can the active/passive site server functionality be used for this?”

The TL;DR response is “yes”. Whether its supported or not is another matter – but i can say for sure that it does work, because i’ve done it.

In 2019, i had a client who had let their hierarchy go…. it had been outsourced to people that claimed to have SCCM skills – but clearly did not, nothing had been updated for years etc etc… it was a real mess.

To paint the scene… there was approx 35,000 clients, thousands of collections, packages, OSD, software updates etc…. so starting a new hierarchy was not an option. There was a hell of a lot of crap – but there was a lot of stuff that was current too. The core servers were 2008 R2 with SCCM 2012 R2 SP1 with an SQL 2008 dedicated cluster behind the scenes. This was all on physical hardware – so reverting back to a snapshot in the case of a failure was not an option. So yer, you get the picture – not an easy upgrade – just because there was so many dependencies.

The full upgrade process is a long story – but a very compressed version is:

• Preparation – get everything ready such as media, license keys, access over SCCM and SQL etc. Design your end state – and have a step by step guide from your current state to your end state. My migration plan was split into 15 “phases” – some phases were a couple of hour piece of work, some took a week.
• Migrate SQL – create your new SQL server and use build in SCCM setup functionality to migrate it
• Migrate custom SQL reports – this can be a pain…. there are a few scripts out there that can help such as https://www.scconfigmgr.com/2014/11/28/export-and-import-reports-in-configmgr-2012-with-powershell/
• Upgrade SCCM to 1606 – as this is the first version that supports upgrading the underlying OS
• Migrate the SUP – as the SUP does not survive the OS upgrade
• Upgrade the primary site server OS (depending on your version this might be multiple steps)
• Upgrade to the current version of SCCM, in my case, this was 1902 (at that time) – it has to be 1806 or above to support active/passive site servers – but given how old that is now – i dont see any reason why you would not move to the most current CB version – again, this may be multiple upgrades depending on where you are at
• Prep for site failover – this will generally be creating your new VM’s that will become your site servers, move your content library to a “3rd” server
• Add one of the “new” VM’s as a passive site server
• Once complete, activate the passive server to make it into the active server
• Take care of moving the roles around as required (e.g. this became an MP and one node of a shared SUP for me)
• Remove the “old” passive site server
• Add the 2nd VM as a passive site server
• Take care of moving the roles around as required
• Decommission your old site server, starting with the SMS provider

There are many other steps around this – many of which will be specific to your environment….

If you were like me and wondering if this can be done and looking for someone else that had done it – here you go 🙂 Depending on where you are, it might be a big piece of work – but it can be done.