How to silent install the ConfigMgr 2012 Admin Console

As we all know, a lot of things are made a lot easier with ConfigMgr 2012. One of these things is installing the ConfigMgr 2012 Admin Console. We don’t need to make ini-files anymore and we don’t need the complete installation source anymore. Instead ConfigMgr 2012 delivers a separate installer for installing the console only. In this post I will shortly explain, in two steps, how easy this can be done.

Step 1. Locate the installation files

The first thing we need to do, is to locate the installation files. When we are looking around, we will see that there are two different locations were the installation files can be found:

1. <ConfigMgrSiteServerInstallPath>\tools\ConsoleSetup
2. <ConfigMgrInstallMedia>\SMSSETUP\BIN\I386

Of these two locations the first one is the best option (and also the best practice), as it will also contain the supported language packs for the site. With the second option only the English version will be installed.

Step 2. Create the command line

The second thing we need to do is create the correct command line. But before we can do that, we need to know which installer we need to use. Well, the best practice is  to use the consolesetup.exe to initiate the install, as it will do some prerequisite and dependency checks. This installer has the following command line options:

Silent install example: consolesetup.exe /q TargetDir=””C:\Program Files\Configuration Manager\Console” EnableSQM=1 DefaultSiteServerName=server1.example.local

Silent uninstall example: consolesetup.exe /q /uninstall

To conclude, this makes it very easy to deploy the ConfigMgr 2012 Admin Console via ConfigMgr 2012. Just create a new Application from these source files, create a complete command line and it’s ready to go!

See for more information: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg712320.aspx#BKMK_InstallConsole