Introduction
Microsoft have announced Technical Preview 2411 via a tweet from Bala and a blog post.
This release is interesting as it precedes the yet to be released Configuration Manager 2409 production release, and many of the features in this release will end up there (no doubt).
Don’t believe me?
see this comment in Bala’s tweet.
Even with comments on Twitter/Reddit/Facebook about SCCM being dead, it’s still being developed, just not at the scale that it was some years ago under DJam’s watchful eye but still, there is development happening and it adds new and exciting features.
When a new release like this appears we should all do whatever we can to try it, use it, test it, to keep the momentum going, yes Intune is great and the ‘future’ or even ‘present’ but don’t forget your past.
If you do have a Technical Preview lab (and I’d recommend that you do) then upgrade as soon as possible as the current 180 day trial license will expire in a few days. In my case there were 6 days left before my Technical Preview lab which I’ve had since 2015 would expire.
What’s new ?
What’s new with this release, actually some cool stuff summarized below. For more details about all those new features (and the SQL depreciation) look at the blog I listed in the opening comments or for more details see here.
- Operating System support added for Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025
- Enhanced Security for CMG
- CMG Entra Application secret renewal
- SQL 2012 and 2014 support are deprecated
- Software metering support in Arm64 devices
Once you are upgraded, you’ll notice that the ‘trial’ period has been extended from 180 days to 360 days which for some is great but in other ways signals (at least to me) that the development of this amazing product will slow down even more.
I did ask the product group to comment and they stated the following.
For those of you that don’t remember the Technical Preview releases used to come out monthly, and that was awesome… but now, it’s only a couple of releases a year and based on this new change I suspect it will change to…….. 1 release per year.
I hope I’m wrong.
It’s also quite noticeable that the ‘what’s new’ info is now just a ‘read more‘ link versus the actual new features show cased in the console after the upgrade, I miss that. A bug perhaps ? I asked the product group about this change and they responded like so.
After the upgrade
A quick look at some logs revealed that even though my upgrade was completed successfully, some things are not OK. Particularly regarding my CMG.
“The vm is reporting itself as unhealthy or is unreachable”
Oops.
A quick check of the Connection Analyzer told me to Connect to the CMG service to see if it’s running, even though the service is running and the status is Ready.
so I stopped the service, and started it again before re-checking the Connection Analyzer.
After doing that and waiting some minutes, I re-checked and all was good.
While I was in there (the CMG properties) I could clearly see one of the new features, CMG Enhanced Security. So now that my CMG is working again let’s take a look at that.
CMG enhanced security
Interestingly when clicking the CMG enhanced security button in the ribbon it prompted me for credentials (much like you see in the Connection Analyzer) twice, and then there was an Update button.
I clicked Update and it showed me this after updating.
After clicking Close and clicking the CMG enhanced security button again in the ribbon. I was once again prompted to sign in TWICE and then… offered to update…
Ok this is clearly a bug. Closing the Cloud Management Gateway enhanced security UI window, and refreshing the ConfigMgr page now shows that the CMG enhanced security button in the ribbon is greyed out (not selectable).
and… right clicking my CMG and choosing properties
shows me what the original blog post was trying to explain. The maintenance windows options.
Great stuff !
cheers !
niall
