Windows 10 Upgrade Readiness Architecture with SCCM – Part 1

New Windows 10 versions are released multiple times a year. The biggest challenge is ensuring application and driver compatibility on an ongoing basis. This is key for organizations to decide and adopt new Windows 10 versions when they are released. The Microsoft tool for this solution is “Upgrade Readiness”.  In this post, we will see more details about Windows 10 Upgrade Readiness Architecture with SCCM.

This is a series of posts as listed below:-

1. Define Windows 10 Upgrade Readiness Architecture with SCCM – Part 1
2. How to integrate Windows 10 Upgrade Readiness with SCCM – Part 2
3. Configure Telemetry for Upgrade Analytics/Readiness with Intune & SCCM – Part 3

In this post, I will describe :-
Importance of Telemetry
Upgrade Readiness Architecture with SCCM
Functionality
Frequently asked questions

Importance of Telemetry in Modern World Device Management

Window 10 telemetry is useful to organizations and Microsoft to help each other. How does this work for organizations and Microsoft? Microsoft can improve their products with Telemetry data. Other organizations can use services like upgrade readiness. upgrade readiness improve the quality of service to their internal client. It will reduce the development time and also improve the end user experience.

Upgrade Readiness collects system, application, and driver data for analysis using Telemetry. We can define “Telemetry” as data uploaded by “Connected User Experiences and Telemetry service”. Microsoft uses this telemetry data to improve the quality of future Windows releases.

The Upgrade Assessment Tool provides the following functionality:

• Retrieves hardware and application compatibility information from computers in your environment.
• Allows you to see which computers meet the recommended system requirements for Windows operating systems and to work on the compatibility issues that can block an OS upgrade.
• Provides reports which provide enterprise wide view of operating system upgrade readiness.
• Allows you to create dynamic collections for an operating system deployment. The collection query rules can be based on hardware, application compatibility and device driver status.

Windows 10 Upgrade Readiness Architecture with SCCM

Upgrade Readiness work flow is described in 6 stages as shown below. The following diagram explains how Upgrade Readiness Works.

1. Telemetry enabled computer sent data to Microsoft datacenter
2. Microsoft Data Management cloud Service acts as bridge between Telemetry enabled computer and Microsoft data centers
3. Upgrade Readiness Service analyze telemetry data and updates OMS workspace console. Upgrade Readiness is a component of OMS.
4. OMS workspace console updated with latest telemetry information. For new computers, I have seen it takes at least 24 hr. to 48 hr. to get reflected in the OMS workspace console.
5. You can start using the solution.We will discuss more details of the solution in this post.
6. After Upgrade Readiness integration with SCCM,you will be able to monitor telemetry information from SCCM console.

Functionality of Windows 10 Upgrade Readiness

As shown below Windows 10 upgrade readiness gives detailed view on the applications in your estate for Rationalization.

• Upgrade Readiness Overview
• Step 1: Identify important apps
• Step 2: Resolve app and Driver issues

Microsoft Windows 10 upgrade readiness provide guidance to identify applications and drivers that need attention and suggest known fixes. The following information are useful regarding application known issues. For example :-

• Guidance: This application has been installed on at least 100,000 commercial Windows 10 devices.
• Importance: Not Reviewed
• Upgrade Decision: Ready to upgrade
• Ready for Windows :- Highly adopted [Link]

As shown below,Upgrade readiness provides ranking which help you to prioritize application/driver issues to be worked up on.

• 73 apps and Drivers to test to unblock 10% of computers
• 370 Apps and Drivers to test to unblock 80% of computers

Windows 10 upgrade readiness provides insights about the compatibility issues for Internet explorer and office add-ins.

• Site Discovery: An inventory of web sites that are accessed by client computers using IE.
• Office Add-ins: A list of the Microsoft Office add-ins that are installed on client computers.

Select Export computers option to generate a comma-separated value (csv) list with details including computer name, manufacturer and model, and Windows edition currently running on the computer.

Following are the three categories in the report:-

• Review in progress
• Ready to upgrade
• Won’t upgrade

Deploy blade

Upgrade Analytics node in SCCM for Upgrade Readiness

We can monitor and create new SCCM collections based on the assessments provided by Upgrade Readiness.This is possible if you integrate with SCCM. Refer post 2 for more details about the integration.

Following are options which we can view from SCCM console 

• Unknown
• Ready to upgrade
• Ready to upgrade with WU Driver
• Ready to upgrade with Inbox Driver
• Cannot upgrade
• Incomplete data
• Upgraded

FAQ on Windows 10 Upgrade Readiness

1.   How much does this solution cost?                                                                            The service is free, and data storage/processing does not count toward your Azure subscription or OMS limit.

2.   Do I need additional agent on my computers?                                                            No.Inventory collector is an inbuild OS component for Windows 10.However for other OS like Windows 7 and 8.1 you need to install latest compatibility update KB.

3.   Can we use Upgrade readiness solution to plan Windows 7 to Windows 10 migration? 

      Yes.To enable telemetry on Win 7 or Win 8 you need to install compatibility update KB.

Note : Upgrade Readiness cannot evaluate Windows Vista/XP for upgrade eligibility.

4.   How much data size is uploaded from my machine?                                                  For the first time when you run Upgrade analytics deployment script, it will upload approx 2 MB of data per machine. Thereafter it will be delta.

5. What is Windows Analytics ?

Windows Analytics is a cloud solution build in to Microsoft Operations Management             Suite.There are 3 solutions.

1.        Upgrade Readiness
2.        Update Compliance
3.        Device Health

References :-

1. Microsoft. how to obtain and configure Upgrade Readiness for your organization https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/core/clients/manage/upgrade/upgrade-analytics
2. Microsoft. Windows Analytics https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsforbusiness/windows-analytics
3. Microsoft. Manage Windows upgrades with Upgrade Readiness https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/upgrade/manage-windows-upgrades-with-upgrade-readiness
4. Microsoft. Integrate Upgrade Readiness with SCCM https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/core/clients/manage/upgrade/upgrade-analytics