I have received queries regarding hardware specification used in Microsoft IT for Configuration Manager site roles, so this post is to share hardware specification used in Microsoft IT for different site roles including both physical and virtual platform. This hardware specification would not be applicable for all ConfigMgr hierarchies due to different business requirement and number of clients managed. I also want to acknowledge my colleague Blair Wright who contributed for these platform standards for meeting our requirement and reviewing them regularly.
For more details on sizing and recommended hardware please refer product documentation - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd547071.aspx
Microsoft IT Configuration Manager Virtualization Technical case study is available on : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff684119.aspx
Central Site Hardware Specification
Primary Site Hardware Specification for Large Sites
Primary Site Hardware Specification for Medium/Smaller Sites
Management Point or Software Update Point Hardware Specification
Distribution Point Hardware Specification
Hyper-V Role Hosting ConfigMgr Sites Hardware Specifications
Please share your comments and thoughts for these platform standards and I would be glad to answer any queries.
Disclaimer: The information on this site is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, confers no rights, and is not supported by the authors or Microsoft Corporation. Use of any included script samples are subject to the terms specified in the Terms of Use
Very cool post. Thanks for sharing Shitanshu. Would is be possible to get schedules for client agents that MSIT uses to put this into more content rather than client ?
Regards,
Saud.
Very cool post. Thanks for sharing Shitanshu. Would is be possible to get schedules for client agents that MSIT uses to put this into more content rather than client counts?
Great post! What's the rational behind moving the SMS Provider to another server? Certainly it must improve performance but I'm wondering if you've been able to quatify to what extent.
Thanks!
Is the DB on the cnetral site used for production reporting or have you created a DB copy for reporting purposes?
@Saud Al-Mishari, thanks for the comments and my next post will have this details for all client agent settings. I expect to have this posted later today :)
@Anonymous, Regarding rational for moving SMS provider on different server was primarily due performance issue as in the past we are running into inbox backlogs issue quite often every month which was impacting our SLAs for reporting compliance. The root cause identified was Disk IOs as it was highly utilized if you have SMS provider and SQL on same server in large SMS hierarchy and after moving we have not experienced inbox backlog issue due to performance since we moved almost 2+ yrs. I have post on SMS performance here – blogs.msdn.com/.../configuration-manager-site-performance-analysis-during-jan-2010-out-of-band-release.aspx
@JohnH, The DB on central site is used for standard reporting as well as we have another DB copy for large SMS data feeds.
Great technical insight, thanks a lot!
I'm curious about whether or not the used Windows Server 2008 R2 version (Enterprise vs. lets say Standard) has any real impact on the performance or manageability?
@Christoph Voigt, There is no difference for performance between Enterprise and Standard edition but there is more features difference. Here is complete details for all editions - www.microsoft.com/.../r2-compare-roles.aspx
The age old question: Where to put the Provider? Am I correct to understand that you had it on the SQL Server prior to moving it to a separate server? Can you comment on the initial decision?
The following post from the Configuration Manager in Microsoft IT blog details the hardware specs for
@JohnH, we have provider on SMS site server for our central site but one of the primary site we have provider on SQL server. Yes prior to moving we had provider and SQL on same server and we had performance challenges as explaind in above comment. Also I don't see any gain with provider on SQL server vs. SMS Site server as we had main issues with disk IO when we had site server and SQL on same server.