I got this question from my customer and decided to share it by writing this post, so more ConfigMgr administrators can benefit of it. They would like to know what happen behind of scenes when they select the option to Reassign Distribution Point (This option was previously known as "Upgrade Distribution Point" on RTM and SP1 version), in order to upgrade/migrate a ConfigMgr 2007 Distribution Point into a ConfigMgr 2012 Distribution Point.
Scenario: You need to upgrade a ConfigMgr 2007 Distribution Point to ConfigMgr 2012 Distribution Point and the goal is to avoid redistributing content throughout the network.
That said, our focus on this post will be to talk about this specific "behind of scenes process", the main idea here is to provide additional information for those who need to troubleshoot this process. Here is what happen when you click on "Reassign Distribution Point" on ConfigMgr 2012 R2:
1. Delete DP role in the source site
2. Delete site system record in the source site
3. Delete shared DP role in the destination site
4. Delete shared DP site system record in the destination site
5. Install a new site system in the destination site
6. Install a new DP role in the destination site
7. Run a store procedure "sp_MIG_UpgradeDistributionPoint" to fix NALPath to point to new Distribution Point (created in the step 6) in the following Distribution Point related tables:
- PkgServers
- PkgStatus
- ContentDPMap
- DPUpgradeStatus
This is important so all packages we migrated prior to DP upgrade can continue work with new DP without customers to redistribute the content
8. Drop a notification (.dpu file with the DP ID number under of distmgr.box) that will wake Distribution Manager to convert all old SMSPkg folder to new content library. You can see the process through the distmgr.log on Site server side and the smsdpprov.log on the DP side. As soon as the Distribution Manager component gets the DP upgrade notification, it does the following:
- It goes through each migrated package on that Distribution Point and for each such package, it gets the Distribution Point package location on the DP for this package from the ContentDPMap table.
- It connects to this DP and imports all the package files into the SIS (Single Instance Store) Content Library of the upgraded DP.
- Once all the files have been successfully copied to the Content Library on this DP, it removes the package files from the DP package location, depending upon whether or not the package is marked to copy content to the package share (This is enabled for migrated packages if there is an associated advertisement which requires package to be run directly from Distribution Point).
9. When the conversion is done Distribution Manager will mark the Distribution Point upgrade job to completed so you will be able to see the ContentLib folder created with the 3 subfolders:
- DataLib
- FileLib
- PkgLib
Troubleshooting Tip:
If you cannot see all the three folders above, you have an issue. Review the logs: distmgr.log on the site server side and smsdpprov.log on the Distribution Point side to more information, I've seen a common error and you may see that too: "Failed to convert content". If you open the distmgr.log you'll be able to see a WMI error as well which it is not the issue.
The solution here is straight forward, you just need to follow few steps:
1. Run the following query against your site server by using SQL Management Studio:
- Select * from DistributionPoints where ServerName = '<DP Server name>'
2. Get the DP ID number, then create an empty .dpu file, in my lab as my DP is ID 4, the file was: 4.dpu
3. Drop this file in \distmgr.box, wait few seconds
Basically you're going to enforce the process of the content conversion, so after sometime you'll be able to see your DP upgraded/migrated through the console with the status Completed reassign Distribution Point.
Final considerations here, I do recommend you to enable SQL tracing and verbose logging to see further information through the distmgr.log in case you want to go deep on this, it's really good stuff. Special thanks for the ConfigMgr Product Team for help me out with the details on this process.
Hope this help!
Cheers,
Andre Della Monica
SMS/SCCM PFE