SCCM Server group

Hello friends

Hope this post finds you in great health and spirit. In this post we will discuss cool feature of SCCM, Server group, which is very handy for deploying software updates. But before we start, new name of SCCM is Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager. I have used SCCM term as its well known.

Server group is a collection setting which was first introduced in SCCM 1606. This is still (SCCM 1910) a pre-release feature.

What it does?

Server group is a collection setting which allows to limit the number of computers installing software update simultaneously. Server group allows:

• Percentage of machines to be updated at the same time – Specifies that only a certain percentage of clients are updated at any one time
• Number of machines to be updated at the same time – Specifies that only a certain number of clients are updated at any one time
• Specify the maintenance sequence – Specifies that the clients in the collection will be updated one at a time in the sequence that you configure. A client will only install software updates after the client that is ahead of it in the list has finished installing its software updates
• Configure PowerShell scripts to run custom actions before and after your deployments

How it works

Here is nice explanation from technet:

“When you deploy software updates to a collection that has server group settings configured, Configuration Manager determines how many computers in the collection can install the software updates at any given time and makes the same number of deployment locks available. Only computers that get a deployment lock will start software update installation. When a deployment lock is available, a computer gets the deployment lock, installs the software updates, and then releases the deployment lock when software updates installation successfully completes. Then, the deployment lock becomes available for other computers. If a computer is unable to release a deployment lock, you can manually release all server group deployment locks for the collection.”

Server group is very useful in scenarios when we dont want all the machines to install software update and the restart simultaneously. You may check technet blog for more details here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/configmgr/sum/deploy-use/service-a-server-group

So this was quick note about a cool SCCM feature. I will see you soon with some other technical post. Till then be safe and healthy as we are facing Corona pandemic.