Cliff Hobbs is a UK-based systems management consultant who specialises in the various systems management tools covered by his website FAQShop.com such as Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) and Systems Management Server (SMS).Having worked with SMS since 1998 Cliff has gained extensive experience of designing, deploying, and supporting large enterprise-wide systems management solutions on behalf of companies such as EDS, 1E and Getronics.In recognition of his contribution to the Systems Management community Microsoft awarded Cliff the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for SMS in January 2004 which has been re-awarded in all subsequent years.Having grown up with the PC from the days of the IBM AT and PC-DOS 3.3, he has an extensive knowledge of several operating systems and applications gained through his present and past employment with companies such as EDS, Du Pont, Abbey National and Getronics, amongst others.The prime goal of FAQShop.com is to help people use Systems Management technology to make their lives easier - not for technology to control their lives which is reflected in this site's mission statement:
'Ensuring you get the best of IT'.
Problem:
I'm trying to upgrade a Secondary Site but the option to upgrade the Site is greyed out. I'm seeing this in the ConfigMgrSetup.log:
Setup has detected an existing installation of the administrator console. This server seems to be a site server for a secondary site.
Because the current installation is a different version, you do not have the option of modifying the installation.
Resolution:
The reason for the error is Microsoft assumes that the SMS Admin Console is not installed on a Secondary as there's no real point. Although you can do it, there's very little point as you need to connect back to the Secondary's Parent Primary Site in order to be able to administer the Secondary Site.
Uninstall the Administrator Console from the Secondary Site then re-attempt the upgrade to ConfigMgr at which point you will be able to upgrade it.
It gets worse when you cannot uninstall the admin console, when this happens you can run the upgrade from the command line and disable checks