I have tried to do this in the past and have had to fix my server by manually changing the MS in Add/Remove Software. I now need to change the management server on 30+ agents. What is the most efficient way to do so ? And what is the proper way to decommission a management server ? Just move the agents away from it and delete ? Any tips tricks highly appreciated.

Hi It depends on how you have installed your agents: For agents installed through the console (push), you can change under Administration, Device Management, Agent Managed - select the servers, right click and "Choose Management Server". http://systemscenter.ru/opsmgr2007.en/html/18179170-8c69-4c86-92ec-1dffd272e4db.htm You can also use PShell: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/operationsmanagerdeployment/thread/8f928146-30b0-41a1-9ffa-7aae4abe6f75 For manually installed agents, R2 turned off the ability to set primary management in the console. You can change this as described by Kevin Holman here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2010/02/20/how-to-get-your-agents-back-to-remotely-manageable-in-opsmgr-2007-r2.aspx For decommissioning a management server: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc540378.aspx Cheers Graham View OpsMgr tips and tricks at http://systemcentersolutions.wordpress.com/

Hi It depends on how you have installed your agents: For agents installed through the console (push), you can change under Administration, Device Management, Agent Managed - select the servers, right click and "Choose Management Server". You can also use PShell: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/operationsmanagerdeployment/thread/8f928146-30b0-41a1-9ffa-7aae4abe6f75 For manually installed agents, R2 turned off the ability to set primary management in the console. You can change this as described by Kevin Holman here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2010/02/20/how-to-get-your-agents-back-to-remotely-manageable-in-opsmgr-2007-r2.aspx For decommissioning a management server: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc540378.aspx Cheers Graham View OpsMgr tips and tricks at http://systemcentersolutions.wordpress.com/

Graham, I just tried doing it through Admin-> Device Management -> Agent Managed-> right click "Change Management server" with one agent and now after this was changed that agent shows up gray in the Agent Managed View. so the step of doing it from the Console even for "push" agents does not seem to work. BTW I am on 6.1.7221.0 version of the agent and CU4 on the SCOM side.

Hi Is the new management server healthy? If you look in the Operations Manager console, under Monitoring, Operations Manager, Management Servers, Management Server Health State View - are all the management servers green and healthy? Additionally, - are there any errors in the OPerations Manager event log on the agent? - are there any errors in the Operations Manager event log on the new Management Server? - are there any agents communicating with the new Management Server? If not, check windows firewall settings. Cheers GrahamView OpsMgr tips and tricks at http://systemcentersolutions.wordpress.com/

The new management server is healthy and green. It already has 60 agents reporting to it all of which are healthy. There is no firewall issue in communicating from the agent managed server to the MS. I have verified by doing a telnet from the agent-managed server to the MS over 5723. On the agent managed server i do see an event 20070 which is indicating that it tried to connect to the old MS but the connection was immediately closed. This most likely means that hte old MS knows that the agent managed server is not supposed to report to it. On the old MS there is a Event Id 20000 saying "A device which is not part of this management group has attempted to access this Health Service. Requesting Device Name : Agent_Managed_ComputerName" There is no error in the new MS. It looks like the new MS is not even getting any connections from the Agent_Managed_ComputerName.

Hmm, if you get those 20000 events saying that agent doesnt belong to this management group you might still want to go check out that agent first. Check if it is using the same management group name as the new MS is. Check if it is/was using a certificate to communicate or the normal way. In case of certificate of course make sure the MS has one and trusts the same root cert chain and so on. You could of course also try to stop the system center management service -> rename c:\program files\system center operations manager 2007\health service state\ -> start the system center management service again. Check the operations manager event log right after this and keep an eye on it for 10 minutes. Also check the MS server log to see if that one is seeing the agent coming in.Bob Cornelissen - BICTT (My BICTT Blog)

Hi Has this resolved itself? Did you try a repair of the agent to see if it would pick up the new MS? Cheers GrahamView OpsMgr tips and tricks at http://systemcentersolutions.wordpress.com/

No luck Graham. In all instances the change is shown in the console but the agent still thinks it needs to report to old MS. There are no certificates being used since they are all in the same domain. Additionally the only way to get it fixed is to stop service on the agent, rename folder, replace old MS with new MS in registry or add/remove programs, start service.

Hi, actually dont try to play with registry in this case. if you do it on the agent you use add/remove programs to add the new mgmt group and remove the old one. It will stop and start the agent service for you when you do this.Bob Cornelissen - BICTT (My BICTT Blog)