Hi All I have been tasked with managing our SCCM setup and look to get the most out of it as it is currently only used for software deployment and OS deployment. I have not had any training and only began reading technet and a couple of books this past week or two and was wondering if i could get some advise on how best to overhaul the setup. Our site only has around 1000 clients in two locations, though there is a 1gb Fibre link between the two and is considered a LAN rather than WAN connection. Currently we have 2 VM Ware Virtual servers :- Primary SCCM Site - dual core Xeons, 8gb ram SQL Server - Dual Xeons 4gm ram I have been given the go ahead to place an order for 1 or 2 new phisical servers as the virtual ones seem slow to respond to requests and deploy software to clients but i have been having trouble working out what the best plan of action is and have a few questions :- 1 Would one single server with specs defined in technet (8 core cpu, 16gb ram, 15,000rpm disk array) manage all SCCM server roles including software, os, update distribution, pxe etc other than sql which i would link the new server back to our existing virtual SQL server? Or would it be too slow with the ammount of network traffic involved? I have read up the maximum clients a single site can manage for different server roles but was unsure if that was if it only took on that single role. 2 If not should i look to implement a secondary site or a child site with another sql server to take on some of the roles? 3 Would it be better to put the SQL server on a physical server or would that still be ok on a virtual server? Thanks for any help in advance and i apologise if this has already been discussed

Hi, For 1000 clients I would install everything both SQL and SCCM on the same server. that should be fine from a performance perspective given that the performance in the Vmware host is OK, Disk IO is important keep that in mind. regards, jörgen-- visit my System center blog at http://ccmexec.com --

1- Server specification which you have mentioned thats more than enough to take the load for the 1000 servers with OS Deployment and other features. (I hope you would be using physical server for this.) 2-For Faster performance you can implement a secondary server there is no need of installing SQL or anything, this server will work for load balancing, make sure you define site bounderies. 3- As you do not have much load on Primary server only 1000 clients i agree with Jorgen and would suggest to run on the same server instead of using separate server.

1) I have 4.000 clients running on a virtual box with the SQL role. What I have done in that environment is creating the Reporting Services Point on another box, and it works like a charm. But it also depends on how you wil use the different CM features. 2) How many client do you have in the second location? With no site you will not be able to control the bandwidth between the primary site and the clients. But maybe you don't have to do, depending on how you will use the different features.Kent Agerlund | My blogs: http://blog.coretech.dk/author/kea/ and http://scug.dk/ | Twitter @Agerlund | Linkedin: /kentagerlund

Thanks for the quick replies all, really appreciate it. From what you are all saying i think for now i will implement one single site server. Im hoping moving from a lower spec virtual box to a physical server with the specs mentioned above will alleviate some of the performance issues we are experiencing. So, based on the replies ive got a few more questions to answer if possible 1 is it possible to setup a second site say 6 months down the line if we still experience performance problems without it being too much trouble? 2 Would we see a significant improvement in moving the SQL server from its current virtual server onto the new main physical server? Im even worse at SQL databases than SCCM and my plan was to uninstall our old site and setup a new site on the new hardware with the same identity so we can link back to the existing sql database. Would it be trouble to move (migrate?) this database from the vitrual server onto the new server (i assume this isnt as simple as a copy, paste with a bit on configuration) 3 Would our Gb LAN cope with one SCCM server running as a distribution point, OS deployment, Software deployment, Software Update point, Reporting site and Management site all in one? i essentially want to make use of all of SCCM's functionality and am still a bit worried. I think this is mainly because our current server when under no load takes over an hour to upload a 500mb install file to just one client. Again thank you in advance for any replies

1- Secondary site can be setup anytime without any issues. (Just a few mins task). 2-If you have already planned to move your SCCM server to Physical box then i would suggest you to run the DB on the same Physical box. (For Moving the database you can find it here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680707.aspx) 3-I dont think there should be any issues related to SCCM functionalty by the time both the site are communicating (connected ).

#1: setting up a second site (as a child site) won't help much, because the central site will have to process the same amount of data then #2: moving the database from one server (even a local one) to another is not a big deal #3: 1 hour for 500MB? There must be something wrong then ...Torsten Meringer | http://www.mssccmfaq.de

I'd stick with one physical box with SQL local on that box. My advice is always to buy the biggest server you can afford. For 1000 clients it's not a big deal but you should at least review SQL disk best practices. I'd try to get 32GB of RAM and if you plan on doing OSD try to get 1Tb of disk space. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc966534.aspx John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|

Thanks again for the replies. I think i have just one final question. I counted all the clients on our current SCCM server and the number came to around 2000 clients rather than just 1000. Would this make a difference? And our site is continually expanding so as we move to say 3000 or 4000 cleints would one site still cope? Cheers

Those numbers are nothing to worry about. A single MP can handle up to 25k clients.Torsten Meringer | http://www.mssccmfaq.de

We have an existing WSUS server setup on our network. Would it be more advisable to keep that server up and link our new SCCM server to it (by installing the wsus admin console before sccm?) or should we reinstall WSUS on the new server. Just feels like we are adding more and more to this one server and would be good to offload some of the traffic as an exisiting solution is in place.

It's not recommended to use an existing WSUS server. Starting from scratch is the way to go (when it comes to WSUS).Torsten Meringer | http://www.mssccmfaq.de

One final dialemma i have come accross is disk capacity. Im trying to follow the microsoft reccomendations by using 15,000 rpm sas drives with raid 1 but they only go up to a maximum of 150gb for 15k and 300gb for 10k drives. Even with 6 300gb drives for data, dp and sup in a raid i dont think this is going to be enough space to handle the data we need to put on the server. so now im thinknig i might have to move over to sata drives but these 500gb drives are only 7,200 rpm which im worried will severly impact on site performance. My original plan was as follows based on 1 Site taking on all sccm roles 73gb Raid 1 - OS (15,000 rpm drives) 73gb Raid 1 - SCCM Install (15,000 rpm drives) 146gb Raid 1 - SQL DB (15,000 rpm drives) 3 x 300gb Raid 1 (Maybe Raid 1+0) - Data storage inc DP, WSUS, SUP, package storage, OS images (10,000 rpm drives) as data will be duplicated with os images and software on the server and then also in the DP share folder this leaves me with around 400gb storage (100gb for WSUS) with 6 x 500gb sata drives in a read 1 will give me 1.5 TB but all drives will have to be sata, so will look more like this ( sata drives are only either 300 or 500 gb) 300gb Raid 1 - OS (10,000 rpm drives) 300gb Raid 1 - SCCM Install (10,000 rpm drives) 300gb Raid 1 - SQL DB (10,000 rpm drives) 3 x 500gb Raid 1 (Maybe Raid 1+0) - Data storage inc DP, WSUS, SUP, package storage, OS images (7,200 rpm drives) I am also a bit unsire with either setup where to put the DB log files thanks again

I wouldn't use SATA drives. If you need the disk space go to the 10,000 RPM SAS. C:\ OS only 2 disk - 75GB SAS 15,000 is plenty. You could even get away with a single drive here if you needed to. (you could use solid sate here) E:\SCCM at least 5 - 150GB 150,000 RPM disks in RAID 5. All site roles will be here. F:\SQL data 4 - 75GB 15,000 RPM disks RAID 10 G:\SQL Logs\ 3- 75GB 15,00 RPM disks RAID 5 If you can store you package source on the network somewhere that's best otherwise through in a big cheap drive for that. Bigger is better. You may also want to add the SQL shadow copy data there too. Of course you can always add more disks, this is just a config I was playing with. Dell has servers that hold up to 16 disks. John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|

just wanted to say a big thanks to everyone that replied in this thread, all your advice helped no end and now we have a server on order ready for a new isntallation of SCCM