How to upgrade from MDT 2010 to MDT 2012

With the release of MDT 2012 Update 1 you might consider upgrading your MDT 2010 installation to MDT 2012.

I would really stress that you read the Release Notes that contains a lot of valuable information.

If you want to upgrade your current MDT 2010 installation to MDT 2012 you just:

• Make sure you have a backup of your current server (snapshot anyone?)
• During the installation process, MDT 2010 is removed and MDT 2012 is installed instead.
• After installation, deployment shares, distribution points, and databases needs to be upgraded by opening Deployment Workbench -> Deployment Share Wizard -> specify the path to the existing deployment share directory, and then select the Upgrade check box.

An alternative way of upgrading your current server to MDT 2012, and also the way I did it, is to move the whole MDT solution to a Windows Server 2012 server. Simply install a new server side-by-side. Then:

• Copy the Deployment Share directory to the new server.
• Start Deployment Workbench -> Open Deployment Share and specify the directory you just copied and choose "Upgrade the content of the deployment share":
  
• Hopefully it will succeed as it did for me:
  
• You have to manually share the Deployment Share (by default it's shared as DeploymentShare$ with Everyone - Full Control).
• Since you probably have a new servername, you need to right-click the Deployment Share -> Properties and edit the Network (UNC) path and Bootstrap.ini and then Update Deployment share with Completely regenerate the boot images to create those boot files with new settings.

Sure, there are many different scenarios for MDT 2010 to MDT 2012 migration/upgrade, especially if you have many Deployment Shares, but these are the basics.