DEM and UEM in same environment

[mathewdsa]

Hi. I am planning a migration from UEM to DEM with completely new shared folders for the DEM Config and User profiles. It's probably best not to actually call in a migration if you read further 🙂 but I need some advice please from anyone that's done what I plan to do.

I already have the ADMX files available in AD after upload to the SYSVOL.
From what I can tell, if I have completely separate sets of folders and am working off DEM ADMX templates to create new DEM GPOs, it should not touch anything in my already working UEM environment.
The VMs will be Horizon VDIs on Windows 10 and will have the DEM10 agent installed.
Has anyone done it this way where you've had UEM and DEM at the same time temporarily in your environment before eventually doing away with UEM? With separate folders and GPOs, is there anything else to consider?

[Mickeybyte]

@mathewdsa 

The renaming of UEM to DEM was actually just a name change. The new GPOs mention the new name, but the settings are actually the same as with UEM. 

You can do a migration to a new shared config, just make sure the VDIs you want to use the new config are in a different OU where you can specify a different share location for the DEM config. Don't use a GPO with DEM settings and one with different UEM settings on the same OU because (as said before) they are actually the same registry keys/values! 

[mathewdsa]

Thanks. So we will be using it for user personalization only against a USER OU and not machine OU.

Also, the VDI will be different anyway because the old ones use the UEM 9.8 agent and the new ones will connect with the DEM 10.10 agent.

[Mickeybyte]

@mathewdsa 

Your GPOs can be user or computer configuration, but they should be applied to the OU where the VDIs are in, not on the OU of your users

Also, the version of the DEM/UEM agent doesn't matter as I mentioned, they are using the same settings.

[mathewdsa]

Thanks very much for this. I am really new to this stuff so please excuse the newbie questions.

Should I understand from this that the UEM 9.8 config share that holds the configuration is actually compatible with DEM 10 then? And if so, is it the same for the Profile Archives? Reason I ask is I am in the process of upgrading an I went the route of creating a new config share and was going to re-do the Profile archive and GPOs entirely. Am I overdoing it? Should I just update my golden image by removing the UEM agent and installing the DEM one and then enabling new DEM GPOs against the VDI OU and disable the older ones on the UEM ADMX templates?

[Mickeybyte · Accepted solution]

@mathewdsa 

As always, make sure you test this before doing this in production.

That being said, yes, you can just upgrade the existing UEM 9.x agent to the new DEM 10 agent, you can even just keep your existing profile config and archives without even touching any GPO. If you want to just keep your existing config and archives, that's the fastest way to go.

For the ADMX templates, just add the new DEM ADMX files to your PolicyDefinitions folder and open your GPO with your existing UEM settings. You will see you now have entries for both DEM and UEM settings, but the settings you configured earlier for DEM will be just the same as when you look into the UEM settings of that GPO as they are the same settings, just another name in the GPO.
Once you're confident with the new ADMX templates, you can remove the old UEM ADMX files from the PolicyDefinitions folder to remove the old and duplicate DEM namings from the GPO.

[mathewdsa]

Thanks so much. Greatly appreciated. So I guess all that remains for me now is to actually swap out the UEM agent for the DEM agent in the golden image and publish again to the relevant Horizon pool.