Going through the prerequisites for enabling multicast on SCCM and I notice that WDS role with Transport Server has to be installed. This guide also makes mention of WDS role with Transport Server component. However, none of them are very clear about whether the DP itself has to have the WDS role with the Transport Server component or whether having the WDS with Transport Role installed on the Site Server is sufficient. At the moment, we have two servers: 1) Site Server with WDS role and Transport Server component installed. 2) DP with multicast enabled and without WDS installed. Does WDS have to be installed on the DP as well? cogu

The first link describes it: "The Windows Deployment Services for Windows 2008 must be installed before multicast is enabled on the distribution point server", so yes, WDS has to be installed on the DP.Torsten Meringer | http://www.mssccmfaq.de

My colleagues and I were discussing the semantics of that phrase before posting here. We read it as follows: The Windows Deployment Services for Windows 2008 must be installed [on server ABC] before multicast is enabled on the distribution point server. In other words, it doesn't actually say on which server it needs to be installed on. Also, the second link reads: Multicast requires a distribution point and the 'transport server' component of WDS installed on a Windows 2008 server. Again, this specifically says a server as oppose to the DP, which further seems to support the idea that it doesn't have to be installed on the DP itself. Can you confirm exactly what the requirements are?

It has to be installed on the DP because it's WDS that provides the multicast functionality.Torsten Meringer | http://www.mssccmfaq.de

I've never considered this before. What if you PSP and you DP are on seperate servers? John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|

Multicast has nothing to do with PXE for ConfigMgr. The functionality for both is provided by WDS, but the PSP in ConfigMgr only delivers boot images and DPs only deliver content. Thus, if you want to deliver content (namely OS images) using multicast, then WDS must be on the content delivery mechanism, aka the DP.Jason | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jsandys | Twitter @JasonSandys

Can I suggest that the page with the list of prerequisites gets updated to avoid confusion as that particular sentence is quite ambiguous at the moment? cogu