Building a Global Condition in System Center Configuration Manager to Test for Server Core

When specifying requirements for an application package, Configuration Manager doesn’t provide a way to differentiate between full installations and Server Core installations of Windows Server 2012 and higher, but we may sometimes need to know this in order to choose between deployment types or to prevent installation of an application altogether. This is a job for: a new Global Condition!

Microsoft was good enough to provide documentation: Determining Whether Server Core Is Running. We’ll use the registry option described on that page.

In Configuration Manager, in the Software Library workspace, navigate to Application Management>Global Conditions. I named my Global Condition “OS InstallationType”, and here are its properties:

Property Value
Name OS InstallationType
Description Returns the OS installation type from the registry. Possible values: Client, Server, Server Core.
Device type Windows
Condition type Setting
Setting type Registry value
Data type String
Hive name HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Key name SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
Value name InstallationType
This registry value is associated with a 64-bit application Unchecked

Coming Up

Next time, we’ll use this new Global Condition to specify an installation requirement for a Configuration Manager Application deployment type.

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