Released and Pulled: UR4 for Service Manager 2012 SP1

Yesterday, we announced that Update Rollup 4 for System Center 2012 Service Manager SP1 released to provide a cumulative update to issues accumulated since the last rollup. Well, like most other Microsoft releases these days, UR4 was pulled from public availability pretty quickly after being posted for download. In a statement on the Service Manager Engineering blog, Christian Booth states that the update was pulled due to not including Debug Symbols, which are used to help support UR4 should it create any further issues.

Christian also asks that those who have already downloaded the update to NOT install it until the issues can be worked out and an updated rollup be made available. The fix is promised to be "available soon."

UPDATE: Per Microsoft... If customers have already installed it, leave it there and wait for Microsoft to tell them what to do. Nothing should be broken, it’s just that Microsoft cannot attach a debugger to look into the execution and identify problems.

Thanks to @HmmConfused and @philaitman on Twitter for the heads-up about this issue!

This "release and pull" scenario is all too common these days. And, while the Service Manager team may not have been involved in more recent events, it still adds the growing list of updates that have been made available only to be retracted due to quality issues. I truly hate to harp on this, but I think IT Pros should expect more from Microsoft. Failed releases cost customers in wasted time, increased resource utilization, and money. I realize that each team at Microsoft is responsible in a way for their own updates, but processes need to change and all update releases need to be managed from a central point to ensure quality and control.