In this post I share a few tips regarding migrating from System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 to SCCM 2012 SP1 or SCCM 2012 R2. This expands on my post Planning a Migration from SCCM 2007 to SCCM 2012.
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1) Credentials to access source site server
As illustrated below, the migration wizard indicates that the account needed to access the SMS Provider on the SCCM 2007 site server only needs Read permissions. However, if you click to "Enable distribution point sharing for this source site" and then upgrade an eligible distribution point (DP), the account also needs Delete and Modify permission to the Site class.
2) Distribution Point Upgrade
You can upgrade an eligible DP that you have shared in the SCCM 2007 hierarchy with clients in the SCCM 2012 hierarchy. If you do so, check the following tips.
Ensure that you first migrate the packages that are deployed to the SCCM 2007 DP because only the content of packages that you have migrated is converted into the single instance store format required in the destination hierarchy.
When you upgrade a branch distribution point, first uninstall the SCCM 2007 client on it, otherwise the content previously deployed to it is removed during the upgrade and the upgrade will fail.
If you upgrade a distribution point that is located on an SCCM 2007 secondary site, the secondary site is uninstalled (and not reinstalled in the SCCM 2012 hierarchy). As a result, the site system server is removed in the SCCM 2007 hierarchy and any remaining DPs on the site become orphaned. Check for secondary sites before upgrading a DP.
Remember that once the DP is upgraded, it will no longer be able to provide content to SCCM 2007 clients that may remain in the SCCM 2007 hierarchy.
3) Migrating Clients
Plan to migrate clients in phases to minimize network bandwidth utilization and server processing. A 2007 client being upgraded not only downloads the client installation files but after the 2012 client is installed it has to send its full inventory to the SCCM 2012 site (which needs to be processed by the site server).
Migrate the objects needed by the clients before they are migrated (such as packages) so they continue to be managed in the new SCCM 2012 hierarchy as needed.
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