Assess the current environment.

Identify existing business requirements that are met by the source hierarchy and develop plans to continue to meet those requirements in the destination hierarchy.

Review the functionality and changes that are available with the version of System Center 2012 Configuration Manager that you use, and use this information to help you design your destination hierarchy.

For more information, see Fundamentals of Configuration Manager and What’s New in Configuration Manager.

Determine the administrative security model to use for role-based administration.

For more information, see the Planning for Role-Based Administration section in the Planning for Security in Configuration Manager topic.

Assess your network and Active Directory topology.

Review your existing domain structure and network topology and consider how this influences your hierarchy design and migration tasks.

Finalize your destination hierarchy design.

Decide upon the placement of a central administration site, primary sites, secondary sites, and content distribution options.

Map your hierarchy to the computers that you will use for sites and site servers in the destination hierarchy.

Identify the computers that sites and site system servers will use in the destination hierarchy, and ensure that they have sufficient capacity to meet existing and future operational requirements.

Plan your object migration strategy.

Plan to use the available migration jobs to migrate different objects, which include site boundaries, collections, advertisements, and deployments. For more information, see Types of Migration in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager.

System Center 2012 Configuration Manager migrates only the objects that you select. Any objects that are not migrated and that are required in the destination hierarchy must be re-created in the destination hierarchy.

Objects that can migrate are displayed when you configure migration jobs.

Plan your client migration strategy.

Plan to migrate clients by using a controlled approach that limits the network bandwidth and server processing requirements when you migrate clients to the destination hierarchy. For more information about planning a client migration strategy, see Planning a Client Migration Strategy in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager.

Plan for inventory and compliance data.

System Center 2012 Configuration Manager does not support migrating hardware inventory, software inventory, or desired configuration management compliance data for software updates or clients.

Instead, after the client migrates to its new site in the destination hierarchy and receives policy for these configurations, the client submits this information to its assigned site. This action populates the destination site database with current inventory and compliance data.

Plan for the completion of migration from the source hierarchy.

Decide when objects and clients will be migrated. After migration completes, you can plan to decommission the site servers in the source hierarchy.

Identify the computers to use in the destination hierarchy.

System Center 2012 Configuration Manager does not support an in-place upgrade of Configuration Manager 2007 infrastructure. Therefore, if you migrate from Configuration Manager 2007, you must use a side-by-side deployment and install System Center 2012 Configuration Manager on new computers.

Similarly, when you migrate from another System Center 2012 Configuration Manager hierarchy, you must install a new destination hierarchy that is a side-by-side deployment to your source hierarchy.

Create your destination hierarchy.

To prepare for migration, install and configure a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager destination hierarchy that includes a primary site. For example:

• Install a central administration site and then install at least one child primary
  
  
• Install a stand-alone primary if you do not plan to use a central administration site.
  
  

If you want to migrate information that is related to software updates, configure a software update point in the destination hierarchy and synchronize software updates.

You must configure and synchronize software updates in the destination hierarchy before you can migrate software updates information from the source hierarchy.

For more information, see Configuring Software Updates in Configuration Manager

Install and configure additional site system roles in the destination hierarchy.

Configure additional site system roles and site systems that you will require.

Verify operational functionality in the destination hierarchy.

Check the following:

• If the destination hierarchy includes multiple sites, confirm that database replication is working between sites. Database replication is not applicable to stand-alone primary sites.
  
  
• Verify that all installed site system roles are operational.
  
  
• Verify that System Center 2012 Configuration Manager clients you install to the destination hierarchy can communicate successfully with their assigned site.
  
  

Enable migration in the destination hierarchy.

Configure a source hierarchy by specifying the top-level site of the source hierarchy. For more information about specifying the source site, see Planning a Source Hierarchy Strategy in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager.

When the source hierarchy runs Configuration Manager 2007 SP2, select and configure additional sites in the source hierarchy.

For each additional site in the Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 source hierarchy that you want to collect data from, you must configure credentials for data gathering. When you configure each source site, the data gathering process begins immediately and continues throughout the migration period until you stop data gathering for that site. Data gathering ensures that you can migrate objects from the source hierarchy that are updated or new since a previous data gathering process.

Note
When the source hierarchy runs System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, you do not need to configure additional source sites.

Configure distribution point sharing.

You can share distribution points between the two hierarchies to make content for objects that you migrate available to clients in the destination hierarchy. This ensures that the same content remains available for clients in both hierarchies and that you can maintain this content until you stop gathering data and complete the migration.

For information about shared distribution points, see the Shared Distribution Points Between Source and Destination Hierarchies section in the Planning a Content Deployment Migration Strategy in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager topic.

Create and run migration jobs to migrate objects associated with the clients in the source hierarchy.

Create migration jobs to migrate objects between hierarchies. The required configurations for each migration job can vary depending on what data the job migrates.

For example, when you migrate content, regardless of the migration job you use, you must assign a site in the destination hierarchy to own management of that content. The assigned site will access the original source file location for the content and is responsible for distributing that content to distribution points in the destination hierarchy.

For more information, see the Create and Edit Migration Jobs for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager section in the Operations for Migrating to System Center 2012 Configuration Manager topic.

Migrate clients to the destination hierarchy.

The process of migrating clients depends on your migration scenario:

• When you migrate clients that have a client version that is not the same as the destination hierarchy, the client software must upgrade. Upgrade requires the removal of the current Configuration Manager client, followed by the installation of the new client version that matches the destination site.
  
  
• When you migrate clients that have a client version that matches the version of the destination hierarchy, the client does not upgrade or reinstall. Instead, the client reassigns to a primary site in the destination hierarchy.
  
  

When you migrate a client to the destination hierarchy, the client is associated with its data that you previously migrated to that destination hierarchy.

For more information, see Planning a Client Migration Strategy in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager.

Upgrade shared distribution points.

When you no longer have to support clients in your source hierarchy, you can upgrade shared distribution points. When you upgrade a distribution point, the site system role transfers to a primary site in the destination hierarchy and is removed from the source site in the source hierarchy. When you upgrade a shared distribution point, you do not have to redeploy the content that is on the distribution point computer to new distribution points in the destination hierarchy.

You can also upgrade a distribution point that is co-located on a secondary site server. This removes the secondary site and leaves only the System Center 2012 Configuration Manager distribution point.

For information about shared distribution points, see the Shared Distribution Points Between Source and Destination Hierarchies section in the Planning a Content Deployment Migration Strategy in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager topic.

Complete migration.

After you have migrated data and clients from all sites in the source hierarchy, and you have upgraded applicable distribution points, you can complete migration. To complete migration you stop gathering data for each source site in the source hierarchy. You can then remove migration information that you do not need and decommission your source hierarchy infrastructure. For more information, see Planning to Complete Migration in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager.