How to backup & restore your TaskSequence–Configuration Manager 2012 and Powershell

And here’s another quick one for the weekend, before the wife wants to go shopping ;-)

This is a quick way of “backing up” and restoring your Task Sequences, just in case you’re not doing it another way.

Backup of Task Sequence

I already showed you how to use the new Powershell module for ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 beta (Powershell module for ConfigMgr 2012) and today I will show you how to use a bit of it.

In order to access the cmdlets you need to open a 32-bit Powershell and add the module like I showed you in the previous article.

A little reminder:

Import-Module "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Configuration Manager\\AdminConsole\\bin\\ConfigurationManager.psd1"

Now you can use all the nice cmdlets there are for ConfigMgr, for example

(Get-CMTaskSequence | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq "TEST_TS"}).Sequence | Out-File c:\\temp\\TSsequence.txt

I now extracted all of the Task Sequence Steps of the Task Sequence with the name “TEST_TS” and put it into a textfile. If you take a look at the file you see that it’s actually in xml format, just like with ConfigMgr 2007.

Restore of Task Sequence

I now want to restore this Task Sequence, maybe because someone messed up with the Task Sequence, maybe because it’s corrupted (had that at one customer a few weeks ago) or maybe because of some other reason…

This is the script:

param (
    [string]$SiteCode,
    [string]$TaskSequenceName,
    [string]$InputFile
    )

#########
# What does it do?
# Script imports a previously "exported" TaskSequence from CM12 to CM12
#
# Howto: Extract the TaskSequence with the following command:
# (Get-CMTaskSequence | where-object {$_.Name -eq $NameOfTaskSequence}).Sequence | Out-File $PathToExportFile
# This will be your $InputFile
#
# 
# Created: 28.09.2012
# Prerequisites:
#               - Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 (beta)
#               - ConfigMgr Powershell to get your existing TaskSequence
#
#########

$Class = "SMS_TaskSequencePackage"
$Instance = $null
$TS = $null
$NewSequence = $null
$TS = [wmiclass]"\.rootsmssite_$($SiteCode):$($Class)"
$Instance = $TS.CreateInstance()
$SequenceFile = Get-Content $InputFile
$NewSequence = $Ts.ImportSequence($SequenceFile).TaskSequence
$Instance.Name = "$TaskSequenceName"
$NewTSPackageID = $TS.SetSequence($Instance, $NewSequence).SavedTaskSequencePackagePath

What does it NOT do?

It won’t check if any of the package references are wrong, this might come in a later release and it doesn’t “export/extract” anything else than the steps inside the Task Sequence.

So if you configured anything inside the Task Sequence’s properties, for example that it should use a boot image to boot from, then you will have to do that again.

It seems odd that Microsoft should have forgotten to give us a tool to export Task Sequences. Well this is a first step to do it without direct access to the Admin Console.

Comments? Does anybody need this or is it just fun to know it works?