Summary: Update Rollup 5 for System Center 2012 R2 and Azure Pack now available

Yesterday Microsoft released a new Update Rollup for System Center 2012 R2 and Azure Pack called Update Rollup 5. Update Rollup 5 has a lot of fixes and new features especially for Windows Azure Pack and System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Data Protection Manager.

Components that are fixed in this update rollup

• Data Protection Manager (KB3021791)
  • Protect SharePoint with SQL Always on Configuration
  • Protect SharePoint Server, Exchange Server, and Windows Client workloads to Microsoft Azure by using Data Protection Manager
  • Support for multiple retention ranges for long-term backup on Microsoft Azure
  • Ability to transfer initial backup copy offline to Azure
  • Support for protecting Microsoft workloads that are hosted in VMware
  • Display missed SLA alerts on the Data Protection Manager console
  • Enhanced reporting with Data Protection Manager central console
• Operations Manager (KB3023138)
• Service Manager (KB3009517)
• Virtual Machine Manager (KB3023195)
  • Differencing disk as an option in the Windows Azure Pack VMRole deployment
  • New operating system support
  • New ExplicitRevokeRequired parameter to control IP address management when Grant-SCIPAddress is used
  • Support for SQL Server 2014
  • Azure Site Recovery
• Windows Azure Pack (KB3023209)
  • Adds support for SQL Governor in the SQL Server Resource Provider.
  • Adds administrator support for disabling native Network RP to allow for third-party network provider
  • Provides detail on Virtual Machine Memory type, Memory Startup and Maximum values in the Tenant Portal.
  • Fix to the Get-MgmtSvcRelyingPartySettings PowerShell cmdlet.
  • Fix to the issue of failing to establish Remote Desktop Connection to virtual machines put behind a Network Address Translation (NAT) device.
  • Fix to the Attached Network dialog box where the network entries in the list were disabled.

As you can see you get several new feature with Update Rollup 5. In Data Protection Manager you finally get support for SharePoint, Exchange and Windows Client workload protection to Microsoft Azure, and support for workloads running on VMware infrastructure. Virtual Machines Manager not only brings new features such as support for the Virtual Machine Manager Database to run on SQL Server 2014 it also includes a lot of fixes and a security update (3035898
MS15-017: Vulnerability in Virtual Machine Manager could allow elevation of privilege: February 10, 2015). Some of the most interesting fixes for me are:

• DHCP extension: Currently, users have to manually update the DHCP extension after update rollup installation on all hosts. This is now automated. After the DHCP extension is replaced in the Virtual Machine Manager server’s installation folder to the latest version, Virtual Machine Manager automatically checks the DHCP extension against all hosts. If the host has an older version of DHCP extensions, the agent version status will be displayed as “DHCP extension needs to be updated in host properties on the Status page.” The user calls the update agent and updates the DHCP extension on the Hyper-V host in the same way that the user did this for the Virtual Machine Manager agent. Also, if the VSwitch is a logical switch, the status will be shown in “logical switch compliance.” The user can remediate the logical switch. This will also update the DHCP extension on the host.
• Bare-Metal Deployment: If a physical computer profile is created by using vNic (and by using a virtual machine network) and if there are more than one hostgroup for a logical network that also has that virtual machine network when you add a host resource on the “Provisioning Options” page, the host profile will be displayed for only one host group. The profile won’t be displayed for the rest of the host groups.

For Windows Azure Pack also includes some important fixes and improvements on of the is in the Tenant Portal, users can now see details on Virtual Machine Memory type, Memory Startup and Maximum values.

Update Rollup 5 for System Center 2012 R2 brings a lot of new features and important fixes to the table, however before deploying the fixes in your production environment, I recommend to test the Update Rollup and maybe wait for some reports about issues from other users.