We are deploying Office 2013 to many PC's in our environment. Soon we will be deploying this to remote sites that have 50 - 75 PC's. We have one SCCM site server at Site A. Our remote sites are setup as distrubution points with AD boundaries. The remote sites have a site to site VPN connection that is fairly slow (10-20 mb). I am trying to figure out the best way to deploy this Office 2013 application to these remote sites without making any SCCM site configuration changes (basically using my site setup the way it is with our site server at Site A and then the remote sites being setup as distrubtition points). I currently have an application created for these remote sites but the content is pointing to a server on Site A. My question is then:

1. Would it be best to copy the Office 2013 install content to each remote site server to a file share, and then on our main sccm site, create an application and point to the content on these remote site servers for the installation files? And then of course chose the remote server as the only distribution point? My thought is by doing it this way, nothing gets copied over the site to site pipe between the main site and the remote site. Or does sccm still copy files back onto itself?

2. Or is better to keep the content on the sccm server file share, but distribute it to the remote sites distribution points? My only fear with doing it this way is it will take the connection down due to having to copy 700 mb over a 10-20 mb pipe that gets used for everything.

Hopefully my explanation makes sense...

You should let ConfigMgr handle the copy action, as you've got to copy it anyway. To keep it a bit in control you can use the Schedule tab on the remote distribution point to schedule a window and a bandwidth usage.

Thanks. But why not copy it manually and create an application pointing to these files? Wouldn't that save on potential problems. They are a 24/7 facility (nursing home).

Thanks. But why not copy it manually and create an application pointing to these files?

What would be the benefit then? Why would copying files manually be better compared to ConfigMgr?

I'm probably not being clear. So I would go to these remote sites, copy the 700 mb of files off of a flash drive to the remote site server folder share. Then come back to my office, create an application, and the first prompt is it asks me where the install .msi is, I would point it to the UNC path on the remote server. This way ConfigMgr wouldn't have any files to copy over the slow pipe since I already did that, and I am having the application point directly to those files. Right? I'm trying to avoid any large network traffic. (\\lhc08dc is the remote site server)

Hi,

That is the path to the source files where configuration manager will copy the content from to the ContentLibrary on the Primary Site server. So in this case the files will be copied twice over the wan once to the SCCM Primary site server and then back to the DP again.
What you could do is use a prestage package and create that application in configuration manager and then in the console create a prestage package that you can copy and import on the remote DP.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh692395.aspx

Regards,
Jrgen

May i know other than deploying your applications to your remote site.

If you can share your experience how do you handle OSD or reimaging machines in your remote sites using SCCM over a VPN connection?

Can share?