Microsoft Says Hold Off on Updating ConfigMgr DPs in the Cloud Running on a Family 1 Guest OS

On Monday, Microsoft announced that it would be retiring Azure Guest OS Family 1 images, pertaining primarily to Guest OS's based on Windows Server 2008. Almost immediately there was concern among System Center Configuration Manager customers who have enabled Cloud-based Distribution Points (DPs) for those DPs that run on Family 1 Guest OS's.

Microsoft has taken to the blogs today to clarify what this means for Configuration Manager customers.

The deadline of September 2, 2014 should be enough time to migrate, except that customers need to wait for a special update to Configuration Manager before it will work with Family 2 (Windows Server 2008 R2) Guest OS's.

In the blog, Microsoft warns:

While customers will need to manually update the Azure guest OS for any deployed Cloud-Based DPs prior to the September retirement date, we recommend that you hold off on updating your Cloud-Based DPs until updates to Configuration Manager are released. Configuration Manager will need to be updated to create new Cloud-Based DPs using a family 2 (Windows Server 2008 R2) based guest OS as well as address a race condition where the status for you Cloud-Based DPs could be set to “Performing Maintenance” indefinitely even though the Azure guest OS update has completed. These updates will be released before the September retirement date. This blog post will be updated when those updates are released. 

Full post: Azure Guest OS Family 1 Retirement Impacts Cloud-Based Distribution Points