Planning for 1 primary server SCCM 2012 and 1 distribution point

[tiendungitd]

Hi everyone,

Currently, our company has 2 sites(Site A, site B)in different locations, and we already setup 1 SCCM 2012 R2 server in site A which as a primary server to deploy software, OS, patches to all PCs in 2 site. So my boss wanna build one more server to reduce its resource requirements and improve its performance as well as to load balance the potentially significant network traffic generated by clients downloading package source files. I found out 2 solutions:

Solution 1. Setup one distribution point in Site B, so boundary group in site B will get applications, patches content from this new DP, and boundary group in site A still get a content from old one. So if I distribute 1 application contents from DP A to DP B, will PCs in site A will get software content from DP B? For example: In SCCMconsole, I select Winzip, click distribute content, then select DP B, so the PCs in site B can be deploy Winzip quickly right now, but how about PCs in site A, it will deploy from DP B as well, make it slowly, how can I get rid of this issue?

Solution 2. Setup 1 secondary SCCM server in Site B, but with this solution, do I need to build 1 more server for central administration site(CAS), thus need 3 servers for SCCM(1 CAS, 1 primary, 1 secondary), is it possible if I just create secondary site without CAS? Actually we just have 400 PCs , no need to build hierarchy with CAS.

I'm new in SCCM, so I don't know how to fulfill the requirement, pls advise

Thanks so much.

[tregelen]

Just to clarify when you say Site A and Site B you mean two physical locations not two different sites within SCCM?

 

I would just set up a distribution point at Site B to host the content for that location. You set the boundary groups for the respective sites to direct the content to their local DPs eg

 

Boundary Group Site A - Content Location Site A

Boundary Group Site B - Content Location Site B

 

They shouldn't get content from the other site unless one is set up as a fallback.

 

As you only have 400 machines you could even use a standard workstation in Site B as your DP. They can't do PXE requests like a server OS can but all other content for the OSD can be hosted there you just need to make sure that it is an always available machine preferably with a static IP.

[tiendungitd]

They can't do PXE requests like a server OS can but all other content for the OSD can be hosted there you just need to make sure that it is an always available machine preferably with a static IP.

 

Thanks you, I got it. Site A and site B is two physical locations. Can you explain more detail about my quote above. If I use standard workstation for DP in site B, how client deploy OS, they will boot from Primary server in site A and use OSD content from DP in site B, how can I configure this?

[tregelen]

You would set up IPHelpers (or DHCP scope options 66 and 67 but IPHelpers are preferred) to point any PXE requests to your primary site server (PSS). The boot WIM would download from the PSS but after that the machine will see that it is in Site B's boundary and use the local DP for the rest of its content as long as that content is available there. If it's not it will fall back to the PSS. If you start the rebuild from within Windows it will get all content locally including the boot WIM. This is the way that we have it set up for around 20 remote sites and it works fine.