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Does anyone know if Maintenance Windows Inherit in SCCM 2012 R2?

Lets say I create a Device Collection called Monday Updates that has a Maintenance Window of 2100 to 0400 Monday morning.

If I then create another Device collection Called Windows Server 2008 R2 that references the Monday Updates Device Collection but does not have a Maintenance Window, will the Windows Server 2008 R2 Device Collection inherit the Maintenance Window from the Monday Updates Device Collection?

Chuck Herrington
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You use a Collection to apply a Maintenance Window to machines. Once that Window is applied to a machine, then it's applied to that machine, any Deployments on any Collection that machine is also a member of can take advantage of any Maintenance Window that the machine has picked up.

During that maintenance window the machine will look for any active, applicable Deployments that fit within the Maintenance Window (by comparing the Max run time set on the patch or install to the remaining time left in the Maintenance Window) and then run them one by one (re-evaluating the remaining time at the end of each install).

It doesn't matter which Collection applied the Maintenance Window, or which Collection applied the Deployment, just so long as the machine is a member of both Collections.

So it depends what you mean by "references a collection". When you double click the collection in the console and see the list of machines that match its rules does the machine in question show up in that list? If so it will pick up any MWs or Deployments set on that collection, if not then it won't. Inheritance isn't the important thing, whether a machine is a member of a collection is.

GAThrawn
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  • That does kind of answer my question. What I meant by "references a collection" was that, when I created the Windows Server 2008 R2 collection, for membership rules I choose the "Include Collections" option and selected the Monday Updates device collection. – Chuck Herrington Jun 17 '15 at 19:02
  • In your response you said that "During that maintenance window the machine will look for any active, applicable Deployments ... and run them". Does this include optional updates or only required? – Chuck Herrington Jun 24 '15 at 13:48
  • I can't 100% say (as there's no overlap between where we have maintenance windows and where we have optional deployments) but I would be pretty sure that only required deployments would be automatically installed during a maintenance windows. After all it's a bit irrelevant to optional deployments as a human on the machine effectively clicks a button to say "I want this on here now", so they're making the decision about when is OK for maintenance. – GAThrawn Jun 24 '15 at 18:23