How to Expand SCCM CB Standalone Primary server with CAS server Configuration Manager ConfigMgr

How to Expand SCCM CB Standalone Primary server with CAS server Configuration Manager ConfigMgr? How can we expand the SCCM CB stand-alone primary server? In this post, we will see how to expand the stand-alone primary server and attach that server to CAS. 

We need to install an SCCM CB CAS server from the latest source files, we can get the latest source files from the stand-alone primary server’s CD.Latest folder.

More details about CD.Latest folder in my previous blog is here. When do you want to convert/expand your SCCM CB stand-alone primary server to a hierarchy and install SCCM CB CAS?

Introduction – How to Expand SCCM CB Standalone Primary server with CAS server

The only reason for this activity is “If your SCCM CB stand-alone primary server and it is going out of support in terms of a maximum number of supported clients”.

As per the latest documentation from Microsoft, a stand-alone primary server can support up to 175K clients. In case you have exceeded this magical number, then you need to expand your stand-alone primary server to the SCCM CB hierarchy with CAS.

How to Expand SCCM CB Standalone Primary server with CAS server Configuration Manager ConfigMgr
How to Expand SCCM CB Standalone Primary server with CAS server Configuration Manager ConfigMgr

More details – How to Expand SCCM CB Standalone Primary server with CAS server

1) I’ve created a video tutorial to explain the process of SCCM CB stand-alone primary server expansion. There are some important prerequisites we need to take into consideration before starting the expansion activity.

2) We must install the new SCCM CB CAS server from the installation media (source files) -CD.Latest Folder- that matches the version of the stand-alone SCCM CB primary site.

3) The SCCM CB stand-alone primary site cannot be configured to migrate data from another SCCM hierarchy. Remove all those migration configurations before expansion.

4) The computer account of the SCCM CB CAS server must be a member of the Administrators group on the stand-alone primary site. You may or can remove this account after the expansion.

5) The user account that runs setup to install the SCCM CB CAS server must have FULL Admin or Infra Admin permissions at the stand-alone primary site.

6) We have to uninstall the following site system roles from the SCCM CB stand-alone primary site before you can expand the site:- Asset Intelligence synchronization point, Endpoint Protection point, and Service connection point.

7) The SQL Server Service Broker(4022) port must be open between SCCM CB CAS and a stand-alone primary server.

ConfigMgrSetup.log 

Snippets from ConfigMgrSetup.log which may help you to trace the installation of CAS and connectivity between SCCM CB primary server:-  

INFO: Registering SQL connection to primary site's SQL server BLRITPROCM.BLRITPRO.COM.
INFO: checking whether BLRITPROCM.BLRITPRO.COM is a standalone site and whether it has the matched version
INFO: Creating sender address on primary site BLRITPROCM.BLRITPRO.COM to access CAS site BLREMSCAS.BLRITPRO.COM.
INFO: Creating sender address on CAS site BLREMSCAS.BLRITPRO.COM to access primary site BLRITPROCM.BLRITPRO.COM.
INFO: Stored SQL Server computer certificate for Server [BLREMSCAS.BLRITPRO.COM] successfully on [BLRITPROCM.BLRITPRO.COM].
Successfully bulk copied file [C:\SEDO_LockableObjectTypes_bcp.bcp] into table [SEDO_LockableObjectTypes] with rows [20]. Configuration Manager Setup 17-08-2016 15:37:58 3936 (0x0F60)
Creating Service Broker routes for site BLR on SQL server BLREMSCAS.BLRITPRO.COM. ConfigurationManager Setup 17-08-2016 15:38:43 3936 (0x0F60)
INFO: RCM received a message from "BLRITPROCM.BLRITPRO.COM", BCP initialization has started. Configuration Manager Setup 17-08-2016 15:47:36 3576 (0x0DF8)

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…