Check the database before doing a ConfigMgr 2012 R2 SP1 upgrade

When doing a ConfigMgr upgrade (like ConfigMgr 2012 R2 SP1), it's good to check the database first. When upgrading a production environment, you want to make sure that everything went fine, and no error is given on the database. This can be done with the following command(s), which are recommended before upgrade.

When you want to start a Database Consistency Check against the ConfigMgr database, run the command: DBCC CHECKDB
This performs the following operations:
-Runs DBCC CHECKALLOC on the database.
-Runs DBCC CHECKTABLE on every table and view in the database.
-Runs DBCC CHECKCATALOG on the database.
-Validates the contents of every indexed view in the database.
-Validates the Service Broker data in the database.

Source: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb693745.aspx 

After that build a new server with the same SQL installation (version and configuration like collation) and import a copy of the ConfigMgr database on that server. This because you cannot test a database upgrade on a active ConfigMgr Site server! To test the database upgrade before doing it in production environment, just run the command: SMSSETUP\BIN\X64\Setup.exe /TESTDBUPGRADE <database> (from new ConfigMgr installation media)

Start Begin TestDBUpgrade

Yes, I'm sure about it :-)

TestDBUpgrade is done

After some time (22 minutes in my case) the following message is displayed in ConfigMgrSetup.log: Configuration Manager Setup has successfully upgraded the database. With that it's time to start the upgrade in production environment as well. Don't forget to have a good backup (as mentioned earlier) all times.

Happy upgrading! :-)

More blogposts about ConfigMgr 2012 R2 SP1:
ConfigMgr 2012 R2 SP1 and ConfigMgr 2012 SP2 released
Upgrade ConfigMgr 2012 R2 to SP1 with SP2 media (confusing)
New functionality in System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager SP1
Doing a ConfigMgr 2012 R2 SP1 upgrade (Notes from the field)