Upgrading from System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2

This section of the Deployment Guide provides information about how to upgrade from System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 to System Center 2012 – Operations Manager. This section of the guide is not intended to be read in order, from start to finish, because your upgrade path will depend on your current configurations. You should use the Upgrade Process Flow Diagrams or Upgrade Path Checklists for Operations Manager to help guide you through the upgrade process.

Upgrading to System Center 2012 – Operations Manager is supported from Operations Manager 2007 R2 CU4, or from the latest available CU. Before you begin the upgrade process, make sure that all the servers in the management group meet the minimum supported configurations for System Center 2012 – Operations Manager. For more information, see Supported Configurations for System Center 2012 – Operations Manager. If a server does not meet the minimum supported configurations, you might have to introduce new servers into your management group before you upgrade. For more information, see Upgrading Hardware and Software to Meet System Requirements.

When you run upgrade on an Operations Manager 2007 R2 management group, the Upgrade wizard automatically detects the Operations Manager 2007 R2 features that are installed, and it lists the features that will be upgraded. For example, on an Operations Manager 2007 R2 single-server management group with all the features installed, the Upgrade wizard lists the operational database, management server, data warehouse, operations console, web console, and reporting. The System Center 2012 – Operations Manager Upgrade wizard performs system prerequisite checks and provides resolution steps for any issues. Installation will not continue until you resolve all issues. If any of the mandatory Operations Manager features were not previously installed in the Operations Manager 2007 R2 management group, such as the data warehouse, the Upgrade wizard automatically detects the feature and adds it to the list of features to be added during the upgrade process.

In System Center 2012 – Operations Manager, all management servers are peers; there is no root management server (RMS). Therefore, the RMS is no longer a single point of failure as all management servers host the services previously hosted only by the RMS. Roles are distributed to all the management servers. If one management server becomes unavailable, its responsibilities are automatically redistributed.

If you are upgrading a distributed management group, you must upgrade certain features, such as the secondary management servers, gateways, and agents before you upgrade the management group. You run the management group upgrade from the server that hosts the RMS, unless it does not meet the minimum supported configurations for System Center 2012 – Operations Manager. For example, if the RMS is installed on a 32-bit operating system or if it is a clustered RMS, you cannot run upgrade from the RMS. Instead, you must upgrade the management group from a secondary management server. If you follow this upgrade path, this secondary management server is marked as the RMS emulator, and the unsupported RMS is removed from the management group. The RMS emulator enables legacy management packs that rely on the RMS to continue to function in System Center 2012 – Operations Manager. For more information about the supported configurations for System Center 2012 – Operations Manager, see Supported Configurations for System Center 2012 – Operations Manager.

There are four upgrade paths. The path you choose depends on your current topology and system configurations. The following table describes the upgrade paths in more detail.

This guide also contains the specific pre-upgrade and post-upgrade procedures and checklists to help you through the upgrade process. The following content will help you upgrade to System Center 2012 – Operations Manager.