Hello there,I'm evaluating the product in order to asses its viability in our environment.As part of our services, we offer IT management outsourcing to our customers.These customers tipically have multiple branch offices with 3-5 workstations, and we need to be able to monitor, manage and provision these PCs with an integrated product like SCE. So the question is, in this scenario, is there a way to use Essentials to manage these branch offices' IT infrastructure without forcing our customers to install an aditional PC per office to act as a domain controller?Thanks in advance,Juan Ignacio GelósEvolutio

Hi,If you mean that you want to monitor machines that is not in the domain, take a look at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc339469.aspxAnders Bengtsson | Microsoft MVP - Operations Manager | http://www.contoso.se

Hi,SCE does not require a local DC on every branch. You can install SCE on the HQ and from the SCE server push the agents to the bransh (if they are in the same domain/forest as the SCE server). When the branch computers has the agent it will pull updates/Software from the SCE server and it will also send monitoring data to the SCE server.And as Anders wrote, if you have computers in "workgroups", have a look at the link he provided.Does this answer your question?Bjrn Axell MVP - Advisec AB http://blog.advisec.com

Hi, SCE does not require a local DC on every branch. You can install SCE on the HQ and from the SCE server push the agents to the bransh (if they are in the same domain/forest as the SCE server). When the branch computers has the agent it will pull updates/Software from the SCE server and it will also send monitoring data to the SCE server. And as Anders wrote, if you have computers in "workgroups", have a look at the link he provided. Does this answer your question? Björn Axell MVP - Advisec AB http://blog.advisec.com Yes, Thank you