DP converts, but content fails

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I hit an odd issue with a customer recently that was not easy to figure out or troubleshoot so I would like to share the problem and solution in hopes that others can avoid the pain we had to go through.

 

The issue is, in general, very straight forward.  The customer had  several existing System Center Configuration Manager 2007 distribution points (DPs) which they wanted to upgrade to be System Center 2012 Configuration Manager DPs as part of their migration from the old product to the new.  The DP migration job ran and converted over the DP but none of the content was successful in conversion, which was really the point of the conversion in the first place.

 

Before I get into the gory details let me say that I have had numerous customers convert DPs and content, so why this failure occurred I don’t know.  It might have been something in the environment, it might have been a product defect, or it might have been a solar flare at the wrong time causing an electrical disruption.  In any case, the solution was so easy once we figured it out that we never bothered to spend time trying to find root cause.

 

The early symptom of the problem was a 2389 status message that indicated a failure to connect to the DP.  The logs seem to indicate some kind of WMI failure, which may not really be the problem.  After a bit of other troubleshooting steps we managed to follow these fairly easy steps to resolve it:

  1. Open up SQL Server Management Studio
  2. Run the following query against your ConfigMgr database, where <ServerName> is the FQDN name od the DP you are having problems with:
    1. select * from DistributionPoints  where ServerName = ‘<ServerName>’
  3. Make note of the corresponding DPID for your problem (in this example I will call it 122389)
  4. Using the DPID returned form the query create an empty DPU file with the DPID as the file name
    1. example:  122389.dpu
  5. Put the file in the \Microsoft Configuration Manager\inboxes\distmgr.box

 

That’s it.  You should start seeing the content converted on the DP.  One query…, one DPU file…, problem solved!  Why it happens I’m still curious to know but I need another customer who is experiencing it to hire me to investigate it.  If you are a premier customer who wants to spend their premier hours on me and you have this issue, contact your TAM and I will be there in 1-4 months. Smile