News

System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager CU1 Released

• By Kurt Mackie
• March 28, 2014

Microsoft on Friday released the first Cumulative Update (CU1) for System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager ahead of its expected second-quarter ship date.

CU1 is available via Microsoft Support. Brian Huneycutt, a developer on Microsoft's Configuration Manager Sustained Engineering team, said in a blog post earlier this week that organizations should only apply CU1 "if you are encountering, or believe you may encounter, one of the issues fixed by current CU (or a prior one)." Applying CU1 will set a new servicing baseline for Configuration Manager, he explained.

Microsoft is planning to ship its CUs for System Center every quarter now, Huneycutt indicated. The CU numbering system gets reset with each new product release. Microsoft released System Center 2012 R2 back in October, so this release is keeping with the planned quarterly release cycle.

Microsoft typically releases its cumulative updates to fix problems reported by product users, and CU1 fixes a long list of issues, which are described in this Microsoft support article. The CU1 update doesn't require a reboot to take effect and the version that gets reported after CU1 is applied will be "5.0.7958.1203."

The fixes in CU1 address basic as well as obscure functions in Configuration Manager. An Administrator Console problem is addressed in which the wrong software update might get selected for an operating system image after sorting a list. A problem with downloading extensions through the Windows Intune Connector is also addressed.

A problem with enrolling Android devices is addressed. This sort of issue happens after enrolling a device "in both Exchange Active Sync (EAS) and Mobile Device Management." As a result, duplicate devices can appear.

A client device problem is addressed in which devices can't download content after they fail to connect with Windows Update.

CU1 also adds a "wake-up proxy feature," which helps to avoid falsely identifying client computers as being in sleep mode.

A Software Center problem is fixed. Configuration Manager wasn't following set business hours when running assigned tasks, in some cases.

Configuration Manager was also reporting external USB drives as fixed disks instead of "removable media," so the CU1 release addresses problems that may be associated with that misidentification.

There are a lot more fixes listed in the support article, but CU1 also helps with other Microsoft products that may be used. For instance, Organizations running Microsoft Application Virtualization 5.0 Service Pack 2 get support with this CU1 release as it addresses a package publishing issue. Also, CU1 contains "an updated version of Microsoft's Endpoint Protection client." Another highlight of the CU1 release is whole roster of PowerShell changes, which Microsoft described in this support article.

Microsoft's support article explained that it might perform additional tests associated with the issues, adding that "therefore, if you are not severely affected by these problems, we recommend that you wait for the next service pack that contains this update."