SCCM 2012 Migration From SCCM 2007

[pnyce24 0]

Good Morning,

 

I'm currently in the process of migrating SCCM 2007 to 2012 and wanted to know how should I setup my new site structure in SCCM 2012. The current site structure we have now in SCCM 2007 is this:

 

1 Primary Site

3 Secondary Sites w/ a DP(Distribution Point) server at each site.

Total Clients= 500

 

After reading some documenatation I was thinking of going to one CAS, and one primary site with distribution points instead of secondary sites.

 

What do you all think?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Paul

[Peter van der Woude 143]

Why the CAS?

[Tay 3]

Primary site and DP's that is all you need.

[Oneone 12]

You def dont need a CAS when running 500 clients.

 

Primary site

Run the rest as DPs

[pnyce24 0]

The only reason I was thinking about adding a CAS was for future growth. But thinking about it now, I doubt we ever go over 1500 clients across all three sites. Also, can I use SQL server 2012 for the database? I know the requirements state SQL Server 2008, but SQL 2012 is my preference.

 

Thanks everyone in advance

 

Paul

[Oneone 12]

You will be able to use 2012 SQL as soon as the SP1 for CM 2012 is released.

 

And you still dont need a CAS for 1500 clients, maybe if you where running 10k clients or more.

[pnyce24 0]

Those that mean I can use 2012 SQL, and it's just not supported until SP1 CM 2012 comes out, or are you saying it will not run properly using 2012 SQL. The reason i'm asking is because I'm currently running SQL 2012 for SCOM 2012 and it's working fine.

 

Thanks,

 

Paul

[binarymime 9]

For our school division we have approximately 3000 clients spread out over 42 sites, config is as follows:

 

1 Primary Site

1 SQL Server (Remote)

42 DP's

 

As stated above, do not use a CAS, totally unnecessary, you would only need one if you had more than one Primary site, and you would only need more than one primary site if you were reaching the theoretical limit on the amount of clients supported in one primary site which is 100,000.

 

This works perfectly for our situation, however in our case we use 80GB dedicated partitions for DP's, i cannot stress the importance of having adequate disk space for ditribution points and future growth, i also strongly advise a dedicated sql server, hosting them both on the same box will drag your performance down depending on how heavily the SQL database is taxed

 

Regarding the version of the SQL server, always check the SCCM whitepaper, i believe the newest currently supported, which we are using is 2008 R2 CU 6..., when 2012 is supported, just do an in place upgrade (i am totally assuming you can) if not just migrate your database to a replacement 2012 server when the time comes...maybe im just not sure why you specifically want a 2012 SQL server over 2008...in my opinion always go with the newest supported

[pnyce24 0]

For our school division we have approximately 3000 clients spread out over 42 sites, config is as follows:

 

1 Primary Site

1 SQL Server (Remote)

42 DP's

 

As stated above, do not use a CAS, totally unnecessary, you would only need one if you had more than one Primary site, and you would only need more than one primary site if you were reaching the theoretical limit on the amount of clients supported in one primary site which is 100,000.

 

This works perfectly for our situation, however in our case we use 80GB dedicated partitions for DP's, i cannot stress the importance of having adequate disk space for ditribution points and future growth, i also strongly advise a dedicated sql server, hosting them both on the same box will drag your performance down depending on how heavily the SQL database is taxed

 

Regarding the version of the SQL server, always check the SCCM whitepaper, i believe the newest currently supported, which we are using is 2008 R2 CU 6..., when 2012 is supported, just do an in place upgrade (i am totally assuming you can) if not just migrate your database to a replacement 2012 server when the time comes...maybe im just not sure why you specifically want a 2012 SQL server over 2008...in my opinion always go with the newest supported

 

Thanks for that information, especially about creating dedicated partitions for the DP's. We are also hosting SCCM and SQL on its own dedicated servers. Are you using VM's for any of these? As for which version of SQL server to use, I just prefer SQL 2012 because in my opinion installing 2008 always caused me issues during installation. SQL 2012 installation goes so much more smoothly.

[binarymime 9]

Primary server and SQL server along with DP's are all hosted on vmware virtual machines, i have never had issues with the 2008 installation, just followed the wizard. I would recommned that you install it with the default instance intact and then add a dedicated SCCM instance on top of it, there have been indexing issues in past release when not keeping the default instance intact. I should correct myself that we are using SQL 2008 R2 SP2 with no CU.

 

Also as an added tip, when you create your boundary groups, use one group for site assignment, and create a seperate boundary grp for distribution points

 

Thanks

[pnyce24 0]

Primary server and SQL server along with DP's are all hosted on vmware virtual machines, i have never had issues with the 2008 installation, just followed the wizard. I would recommned that you install it with the default instance intact and then add a dedicated SCCM instance on top of it, there have been indexing issues in past release when not keeping the default instance intact. I should correct myself that we are using SQL 2008 R2 SP2 with no CU.

 

Also as an added tip, when you create your boundary groups, use one group for site assignment, and create a seperate boundary grp for distribution points

 

Thanks

 

Both my Primary server and SQL server will be running on VMWare VM's. However, as for your DP's, are you hosting that data on a separate VM?

 

Thanks

 

Paul

[binarymime 9]

At our Core backend "Data Center" we have a Primary Site Server VM and an SQL Server VM:

 

TEST-SCCM-A (Hosts Primary Site Server, Source files and folders, and acts as the distribution point for our Data Center)

 

- Contains a System partitition

- Contains SCCM Data Partition

 

TEST-SQL-A (Hosts the SQL Database for SCCM)

 

- Contains a System Partition

- Contains SQL Data Partition

 

At our Secondary Sites / Schools:

 

We run one Dell server at each site running VMware, each server hosts two VM's, a Domain Controller (DC), and a File Server (FS). We leverage the file server for the SCCM Distribution point:

 

TEST-DC (Local DC)

 

- Contains a System Partition

 

TEST-FS (Acts as the file server for the school, PXE Services, Distribution Point)

 

- Contains a System Partition

- Contains a DATA partition for Staff / Student access

- Contains SCCM Data Partition

 

On each server we use the NO_SMS_ON_DRIVE file to control where the package repository stores its data, we place this file on any partitions present on any of the servers (including removable drives, if present) that will NOT be hosting SCCM Data. This ensures our package repository is always on the same drive.

 

Does that answer your questions?

[Kingen 6]

You can always upgrade a stand alone primary site to a CAS hierarchy with SP1.

 

"More flexible hierarchy management with support to expand a stand-alone primary site into a hierarchy that includes a new central administration site, and the migration of a Configuration Manager SP1 hierarchy to another Configuration Manager SP1 hierarchy."

 

//K

[scho228901 0]

Question here... I know a CAS really isn't needed unless you are going to have a ton of nodes. But what about this scenario:

 

LegacyForest A

LegacyForest B

NewForest C

 

Both LegacyForest A and B have their own SCCM 2007 deployments. We are looking to install a new 2012 deployment into Forest C and migrate everything into that. Before we can get all machines and such migrated into the new forest we want to manage both the the legacy and new forests with the 2012 deployment. Would it be better to install a Primary Site server into NewForest C then have it manage the Legacy forests with DPs or would it be better to run a CAS in NewForest C with primary site servers at in each LegacyForest? As a note we have 2 way trusts between LegacyForest A and NewForest C as well as with NewForest C and LegacyForest B.

 

 

Thanks!

 

 

Josh Schofield

JSchofield22.wordpress.com

[Kingen 6]

I whould have just installed a StandAlone site in New Forest C i think