My SCCM-server has a C-drive with the OS and a datadisk with the source data of the packages. The server is also an distribution point. I made a folder on the datadisk named packages with all source data of the packages. When I create a distribution point on this server it copys the source data to SMSPKG<driveletter>$. So in fact the source data on the datadisk is double. When I create a distributionpoint on a secondary site it copys the source data in a compressed format to a folder named SMSPKG with PKG-files. Now the source data is 3-double. This situation is not really efficient with the diskspace. Is there a way to make this more efficient?

The way I understand it, from my standpoint: drive space is cheap. bandwidth is not. So, the package is compressed prior to distributing across what is (usually) expensive bandwidth links from one location to another (in most companies, anyway). In almost every company, in fact, almost every server application I have ever heard of, best practise is to NOT install an application on the same drive as the %windir%, so that you can (theoretically at least) get larger drives and swap out for more or bigger drives in the future. So my first instinct is to tell you to get more drive space: drives are cheap. Other than that... I think there is a place, per package, where there is a checkbox about compressing the source or not. Try unchecking that box. Standardize. Simplify. Automate.

Yes, SMSPKG folder on the Primary/Secondary sites contains the compressed PCK files for all the package that were push to them. SMS/SCCM copies these PCK files to sites first and then extracts them on the distribution point. Yes it is true that it may not be really efficient with disk space, but this is how SMS/SCCM are designed and I guess this was designed like this to save the network bandwidth and to use delta replication. If there any package that you are sure you will never ever update, then you can delete the PCK files for those package from the sites. Do not remove the PCK files of the packages that may need to be updated. Madan | http://www.madanmohan.com

Thanks for the replys, preventing the increase of bandwidth makes it clear for me.

As a general rule I always tell customers to consider how much disk space they think they need then triple that number because of the way SCCM stores packages ;-) John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|