Scenario

Do you have a primary site and a few secondary sites in ConfigMgr 2012+?

Do you schedule the legacy Package format to update on a schedule?

Do you have a backlog in the distribution manager?

Well, so far this is known (by Microsoft) defect that apparently is yet to be fixed (until 1606 – nothing confirmed beyond that)

Symptoms

If you review the database where ConfigMgr resides you can see that there is a constant growing amount of DistributionJobs. Sample query to get an overview;

use <database>
select COUNT(*) from distributionjobs

The problem grows the more packages you have set to update on a schedule. The frequency of the schedule is not relevant, the package will loop into a forever updating loop. Most likely the primary site will handle this efficiently, however the sending to secondary sites will cause a backlog that is not just an annoyance but causing severe problems as the backlog will continue to grow.

Repeating this: The frequency of the schedule is not relevant. Just check the above checkbox and the issue will occur.

SQL query to locate relevant packages

use <database>
select pkg.PkgID, pkg.Manufacturer, pkg.Name, pkg.Version, pkg.Language, pkg.RefreshSchedule from SMSPackages as pkg
where datalength(pkg.RefreshSchedule) !=0

Fixit

Easy – uncheck all these check-boxes that updates packages. If you still want to update packages on a schedule use a powershell script to trigger the update and use the task scheduler to run the update.

Run the command-line;

powershell -executionpolicy bypass -file SCCM.UpdatePkg.ps1 -packageid <PACKAGEID>

Code:
(I honestly don’t know if I have stolen / copied this from somewhere – if I have give me a ping and I will remove this)

#========================================================================
# Created on: 2014-10-28 15:06
# Created by: Nicke Källén
# Organization: Applepie.se
# Filename: SCCM.UpdatePkg.ps1
#========================================================================
Param(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,Position=1)]
[string]$packageid
)

Function Invoke-CMPackageUpdate
{
[CmdLetBinding()]
Param(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,HelpMessage="Please Enter Primary Server Site code")]
$SiteCode,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,HelpMessage="Please Enter Primary Server Name")]
$SiteServer,
[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,HelpMessage="Please Enter Package/Application ID")]
$PackageID
)

Try{
$PackageClass = [wmiclass] "\\$($siteserver)\root\sms\site_$($sitecode):SMS_Package"
$newPackage = $PackageClass.CreateInstance()

$newPackage.PackageID = $PackageID

$newPackage.RefreshPkgSource()
}
Catch{
$_.Exception.Message
}

}

Invoke-CMPackageUpdate -SiteCode <SITECODE> -SiteServer <SERVER> -PackageID $packageid