Are you’re running System Center Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 and you need to now support Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 clients? Or, do you want to utilize new Server 2012 R2 machines as Configuration Manager site systems? You’ll need to download and install SCCM 2012 SP1 Cumulative Update 3.

Here is an example of what a Server 2012 R2 client will appear like in the System Center Admin Console if you attempt to manage it:

For more information about CU3 check out this blog post from Microsoft:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/configmgrteam/archive/2013/09/16/support-questions-about-win-8.1-and-winsvr-2012-r2-for-configmgr-and-endpoint-protection.aspx

In this post, I will walk you through the installation with screenshots. Note – I ran this update in both a development and production environment, no issues have been encountered and a reboot is NOT required.

First, pickup the hotfix here (or take a shortcut and change the below from .fun to .exe):

http://hotfixv4.microsoft.com/ConfigMgrV5/sp1/ConfigMgr_2012_SP1_CU3_KB2882125_ENU/05.00.7804.1400/free/468425_ENU_x64_zip.fun

From this point, I will provide screenshots of the installation, for security purposes, blurring out my hosts name. Note – Make sure that there are no SCCM admin consoles open before beginning the installation.

You can now manually go into the Configuration Manager admin console and manually push the agent update to any Server 2012 R2 servers you have or if you have enabled the automatic agent upgrade, see below, then your Server 2012 R2 machines will be managed within the time period configured:
Now you’ll see that the server I took a screenshot of in the beginning of this article, is now fully managed with the new client version 4.3.215.0:
Now that you’re able to manage your Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 clients, its time to look ahead to System Center Configuration Manager 2012 R2! Check out the release notes here:

Hope this walkthrough has been helpful to other CM admins out there and thanks for reading!

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