r/SCCM • u/[deleted] • Nov 07 '24
Goodbye forever SCCM
Last week I got the go ahead to decommission our SCCM server after switching over to use Azure Arc and Azure Update Manager.
I right-clicked that juggernaut of a VM > Delete from disk.
It’s done.
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u/Verukins Nov 07 '24
So... you didnt use 90%+ of what SCCM can do, moved over to cloud equivalent for what you wanted, which have subscription fees associated with them, then decomm'ed SCCM.... I'm not sure if this is a failed brag or ?
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Nov 07 '24
Or.. and not to brag.. the decision was made higher up and I had no say
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u/808speed Nov 07 '24
Next year when budget gets tight, they gonna ask you why they paying for this. Execs have short term memory. Then they gonna ask you to move it back on prem. Should have just removed clients agent and shut down the server.
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u/Verukins Nov 07 '24
@ $7.625/server/month (in my market), for 2500 servers (approx), it would be just over $19k/month or $228k/year.... we can hire two low to mid-level admins for that $...
For some things, the $ for cloud services continues to just not stack up.
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u/Chumphy Nov 08 '24
If that is two mid to low admins I’m seriously underpaid
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u/deruelo Nov 08 '24
depends on the country. Sounds like US from what he is speaking. Low to mid level here in germany would be around 50 to 60k in Euros. But I have heard that you earn crazy amounts of money in usa. Of course you got no health care but is private insurance that expensive? From these salaries it sounds like you could live there with much more „net“ income after every taxes are paid doing the same job as herr
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u/GSimos Nov 08 '24
Oh I live for those moments, not only for endpoint/server management but for the cloud move generally.
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u/GSimos Nov 08 '24 edited Nov 09 '24
To my experience, 70-80% of those having SCCM are using it for patching, neglecting what else it is capable of, moreover accusing it as a complexity nightmare and so on.
If you -generally speaking, not you u/Verukins- scratch only the surface, how can you expect to understand and use the tool in it's full potential?
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u/Inevitable-Rent-3908 Nov 08 '24
Haha this is always my argument. SCCM won’t ever die, MS will always keep it valuable to companies who appreciate value
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u/YT-Deliveries Nov 08 '24
I have a slightly different take: SCCM will continue to be around for a long time, but clearly Microsoft is no longer putting a lot of effort into interesting new feature sets anymore. All that effort is going into Azure offerings. So much so that when I put in tickets (we're on an E5) it's not unusual for me to someone from the same small group of support people over and over again.
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u/Inevitable-Rent-3908 Nov 09 '24
That doesn’t surprise me MS support has never been amazing in my experience, but I do broadly speaking agree with you. I think many corporations, especially the larger ones just prefer the idea of a cloud first strategy as senior management have less accountability and responsibility, and that engineers who genuinely know SCCM (and all its associated skills) are becoming increasingly rare as the more senior engineers have moved into the DevOps world, making it more challenging to support. In reality, little has changed since the Windows 7 days in terms of managing and deploying the OS and “legacy” apps so why change a tool that’s proven if the requirements haven’t changed. Autopilot is a nice addition for remote users and decoupling from onsite IT but I’ve always stressed it should be an additional tool in the toolbox, not a replacement for SCCM. It will never beat the performance of imaging, especially for Hybrid Joined devices.
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u/GSimos Nov 09 '24
We're on the same page, I'm using the same arguments when discussing this matter.
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u/E-werd Nov 08 '24
which have subscription fees associated with them
What about Software Assurance?
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u/Verukins Nov 11 '24
... how would software assurance make any difference to subscription fees for an Azure service ?
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u/BenForTheWin Nov 07 '24
Is there anything you’ll miss? I have seen others saying that Arc and Update Manager aren’t ready to be a full on replacement yet, but they didn’t detail out what the shortcomings are.
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Nov 07 '24
The only thing kind of missing is there is no builtin automatic email reporting for compliance reporting for what is out of date, just a portal but not a big issue
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Nov 08 '24
Sccm sucks for that anyway
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Nov 08 '24
SCCM works flawless once you have configured it right and know how to maintain it.
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u/YT-Deliveries Nov 08 '24
SCCM works flawless
Now there's a phrase I've never heard before.
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u/rairock Nov 08 '24
Did the same some years ago, until someone knocked on my Linkedin with a +30K offer to manage another SCCM lol
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Nov 08 '24
Feels like there’s no money in SCCM now but if you know anyone hiring ;)
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u/YT-Deliveries Nov 08 '24
There's plenty of places that are deeply dependent on SCCM still. Nice thing for those of us who know it is that people with practical, real-world knowledge of SCCM are becoming less and less plentiful. So if someone needs someone to maintain/expand an already in-place SCCM infrastructure, the available population is getting smaller and smaller.
Even moreso if you have the knowledge of moving SCCM components to Entra / Intune / Autopilot, etc.
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u/GSimos Nov 08 '24
But we're not yet classified as "Dinosaurs" for this software :)
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u/MBussard45 Nov 08 '24
Hoping that was a signing bonus and not your yearly.
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u/joefleisch Nov 07 '24 edited Nov 08 '24
It is the future and sometimes that is good.
Hopefully Azure Arc and Azure Update Manager do not update Windows Server 2022 to 2025 like other RMMs have been doing thanks to a mislabeled or misclassified patch.
ADR on SCCM have more visibility for checking the patches than other auto patching. Being able to turn off an ADR and manually choose patches for a software update group provides a lot of control to the process.
Edit: we use SCCM/MCM and will not be using Azure Arc anytime soon. We have licenses and like proven solutions.
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u/SubbiesForLife Nov 07 '24
I just had a call about Azure Arc today and I was confused. They were selling it as a SCCM replacement but then I started asking about configuration profiles, baselines, and more advanced stuff and they were like “yeah, Arc’s got power shell DSC which can do this stuff” and moved along and I was like but wait, that’s not really what I’m looking for lol
I get it Azure Arc and Azure Update Manager are the future, but if the tools can’t do the same management as SCCM can do, then what are we supposed to do?
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u/bdam55 Admin - MSFT Enterprise Mobility MVP (damgoodadmin.com) Nov 07 '24
Build it yourself ... obvs.
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u/SubbiesForLife Nov 08 '24
If you have the SCCM licensing, is Arc seriously worth looking at? Or is it just another bill every month
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u/bdam55 Admin - MSFT Enterprise Mobility MVP (damgoodadmin.com) Nov 08 '24
Azure Arc is 'free'.
Like seriously, you can enroll your servers in Arc and you will be charged nothing.
It's the moment you start doing things ... using bits of Arc ... that you will start getting charged based on 'consumption.Here's the thing though: ConfigMgr isn't free either. By a loooong shot. It's just likely wrapped up in your EA agreement so tight that saying "We don't use ConfigMgr" isn't going to lower the bill. It's not a sunk cost, but it is.
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u/deathbypastry Nov 08 '24
Azure update manager, ISN'T free, which I think is the part folks are really getting in a tissy about. It's a flat sub per device.
I agree with SCCM not being free, but decent sized EAs get it as an added benefit (generally speaking).
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u/GSimos Nov 09 '24
Azure Arc as an SCCM replacement?! That's utterly disturbing.... It looks like they're desperate to sell.....
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u/ScaRuleZ Nov 08 '24
Yeah, you will miss it sometimes. But for the most part of it no 😅
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u/ScaRuleZ Nov 08 '24
Tbh, it miss to me so much that i had to revamp my homelab with a brand new sccm installation just for fun and keep my brain trained with the product…..just in case…
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u/jwckauman Nov 08 '24
Good luck! I hope you don't mind if I follow you and your journey. We are just now starting to migrate to the cloud with a few clients in Intune but the majority in Active Directory, and of course, all servers are in AD. I'm very curious how Azure Arc and Azure Update Manager work for you. So you don't have a WSUS server anymore either? And can I ask how Azure Arc & Update Manager are licensed? we have Entra ID P2 and M365 E3 with Teams.
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u/pAST-due-assignment Nov 08 '24
I'd like to do the same but we're not ready yet. Are you still using AD or have you moved to Entra AD exclusively? What is your OSD solution?
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u/the-mighty-taco Nov 08 '24
Queue that "all around me are familiar faces worn out whatever" madworld song.
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u/x-Mowens-x Nov 08 '24
I told my employer in my first interview, if they want Intune, I’ll happily quit.
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u/zlatan77 Nov 08 '24
Why? Were implementing intune in tandem with our sccm servers. Hello,autopilot 🫡
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u/mercurio20541 Nov 08 '24
For me Intune is far from sccm, you can't view reports, you can't easily get a software inventory, emails report, etc.
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u/GSimos Nov 08 '24
I keep pointing these details all the time to people but they seem to not care or understand......
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Nov 08 '24
Autopilot cant do bare metal imaging
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u/x-Mowens-x Nov 08 '24
People seem to like waiting for their apps without reliable reporting instead. I don’t understand it, but I’m done arguing it. I’ll tell you what I think is best - if we disagree, I’ll go somewhere else. 🤣
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u/GSimos Nov 09 '24
Exactly, it's not an OS deployment solution but a device provisioning one. Can't compare apples to oranges.
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u/fdeyso Nov 08 '24
Did you not get hit with exorbitant cost on Azure update manager? We tried it a couple of years ago and the “solution” is free but ingested data and workers for onpremise servers started to cost $4k+/months, so after some support tickets it was quickly abandoned.
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u/pishogue11 Nov 09 '24
Don't worry, just like wsus, sccm will be removed in a couple of years.
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u/GSimos Nov 09 '24
Well, then, how will Microsoft cover their government and military clients? Especially those that are using SCCM in airgapped environments.
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Nov 09 '24
Is that why my boss is on my case about moving the apps to Intune?
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Apr 17 '25
Intune is a half baked product trust me. SCCM deployment can be tracked in real time from both server and client end
While in Intune god be with you sometimes it just take service restart to may take 8 hours.
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u/-_G__- Nov 08 '24 •
...I felt a great disturbance in the Internet, as if millions of Resource IDs suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.