Not SCCM 2016 Configuration Manager SCCM Current Branch version Download Install

Not SCCM 2016 Configuration Manager SCCM Current Branch version Download and Install? At last, the wait is over. Microsoft released the newest version of SCCM /ConfigMgr, known as SCCM/ConfigMgr Current Branch (CB).

SCCM CB will get updated every quarter along with Windows 10. It will be called SCCM 1511.

The version of SCCM won’t be called SCCM/ConfigMgr 2016, as I mentioned in the previous blog post here (What is the Next Version of SCCM ConfigMgr As A Service). To avoid confusion, don’t get confused with SCCM 2016; we don’t know whether there would be something called SCCM 2016 or 2017.

Not SCCM 2016 Configuration Manager

This version is the current branch of SCCM, and this will get updates every 4 months.

Download SCCM/ConfigMgr 1511 (not 2016) from MSDN here, Microsoft Evaluation Center, and Volume Licensing Service Center. I installed the SCCM 1511 version in the lab, and it has a few new options enabled, which were not there in the SCCM vNext Technical Preview versions. One of them is installed SCCM/ConfigMgr CAS (Central Administration Site) server.

CAS is not required for most of our organizations as SCCM 1511 primary server can support up to 200000 clients (200K). I’m escaped from CAS now !! What a relief. More details about SCCM 1511 here ConfigMgr team blog.

I would suggest going with a single SCCM 1511 primary server if your client count is near 200k, as we have an option to add the SCCM/ConfigMgr 1511 CAS server afterward. Following is the option to add CAS into your environment afterward.

The option is called “Join the Primary Site to an existing Hierarchy”.Another important point you need to take care of during the SCCM 1511 primary/CAS server installation is “Usage Data (telemetry)”.

The telemetry (Usage Data) helps SCCM 1511 collect the data over the internet to improve the product quality and installation/upgrade experience of the SCCM application. All the usage data sent to Microsoft will be encrypted, and there won’t be anything from which Microsoft can identify the customer details.  

All the data will be hashed. More details in the TechNet article are here.

Choose and Control option is there in the above Wizard, where you can select the options of usage data like  1. Basic, 2. Enhanced and 3. Full. Basic level data includes data about the SCCM hierarchy; this data will help improve the installation and upgrade experience.

Example data collected would be site data, operating system version, time zone, Site roles, site numbers, DB performance metrics, and details of SCCM features enabled on the SCCM site. 

Another new feature is to keep SCCM/ConfigMgr updated/up to date by connecting the on-prem SCCM infrastructure to ConfigMgr /SCCM cloud service. As I mentioned in the previous blog post here, this will help to upgrade and update SCCM / ConfigMgr environment very easily.

One another important point I’ve noticed with SCCM/ConfigMgr 151 prerequisite checks are:- AD system management container permission related warning (known bug) in the pre-requisite check seems to be fixed in the latest version of SCCM / ConfigMgr 1511.

This is the famous progress bar of SCCM/ConfigMgr 1511 primary site installation; nothing much changes here.

 Here we go! The latest System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM/ConfigMgr) 1511.  The version of the SCCM/ConfigMgr console is 5.0.8325.1000.

The site version of the latest SCCM/ConfigMgr release 1511 is 5.00.8325.1000. 

Resources

SCCM Related Posts Real World Experiences Of SCCM Admins (anoopcnair.com)

Author

Anoop is Microsoft MVP! He is a Solution Architect in enterprise client management with more than 20 years of experience (calculation done in 2021) in IT. He is a blogger, Speaker, and Local User Group HTMD Community leader. His main focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM 2012, Current Branch, and Intune. E writes about ConfigMgr, Windows 11, Windows 10, Azure AD, Microsoft Intune, Windows 365, AVD, etc…