From my previous post of Overview of System Center 2012R2, I have discussed on what is Microsoft System Center, its products and the System Center Licensing structure.

From this article I’m going to talk about one of the popular product of system center stack, System Center configuration manager 2012R2. This is the first article of three related posts for Installing and configuring SCCM. This post will cover overview of SCCM, its main features, SCCM architecture, system requirements, supported configuration and server sizing.

Why System Center Configuration Manager

Configuration manager has been around since the 90’s with the name of Systems Management Server (SMS). It has evolved with the time and the latest version is System Center Configuration Manager 2012 R2. SCCM is a popular tool used by global enterprises to manage their end user infrastructure. It is helping System administrators to deploy software packages, Software Updates and Operating systems to computers remotely. Also SCCM is having strong reporting structure, which will capture Hardware software information and present this information in easy to read reports. SCCM 2012R2 comes with endpoint protection which is an antimalware software. SCCM is a single tool that is helping to archive most of the end-user management activities. 

Key Features of SCCM

Asset Intelligence

Configuration  Manager  includes  asset  intelligence  technologies  that  provide  administrators  with continuous  visibility  into  hardware  and  software  assets  and  usage.  Asset  Intelligence  translates inventory  data  into  information,  providing  rich  reports  that  help  administrators  with  software purchasing decisions, upgrade plans, and license reporting.

Software Update Management

Configuration Manager continues to simplify the complex task of delivering and managing updates to IT systems across the enterprise. IT administrators can deliver updates of Microsoft products, third-party applications, hardware drivers, and system BIOS to a variety of devices, including desktops, laptops, servers, and mobile devices.

Compliance & Settings Management

With Configuration Manager Desired Configuration Management, organizations can ensure that IT systems comply with desired configuration states to improve availability, security, and performance network-wide.

In Example you can get a report of all the machines which did not have virus guard definition update since last 7 days. (https://asithadesilva.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/monitor-virus-guard-definition-level-from-sccm-2012-compliance-management-symantec-end-point-protection/ )

Application Delivery (software package deployment)

Configuration Manager takes a user-centric approach to application delivery that allows administrators to create one application that can be delivered to all of a user’s devices. It evaluates device and network capabilities to deliver applications in the most optimal way for the user, whether that is through a local installation, streaming through App-V, or a presentation server.

Operating System Deployment

Configuration Manager simplifies the complex task of distributing operating systems to physical desktops, servers, laptops, and mobile devices across enterprise networks. Configuration Manager helps eliminate the inefficient and errors associated with manually installing applications. Operating system can be deployed by Network or USB storage with all applications, drivers and updates.

Power Management

System Center Configuration Manager helps organizations maximize their cost savings from energy-saving desktops and laptops. New tools to monitor, create, and enforce client power management policies enable IT to reduce power consumption and reap the resulting financial and environmental rewards.

Software Metering

Software metering can be used to measure the usage of a software, how many users using a particular software, for how long, how many concurrent users etc. This is really useful when comes to software licenses. Maybe you are having more licenses than its original usage or you need to buy more. Those decisions can be made by looking at a historical report of a few months of software metering.

Remote Control

Configuration manager remote tools helps to troubleshoot hardware, software and configuration issues in client computers. Remote assistance can be provided to the clients, by viewing or gaining control of the client sessions. Also these remote loggings can be tracked and can produce in a report.

Unified Device Management

Configuration manager now integrate with Windows Intune, which is a cloud service that is used to manage clients by internet. This can used to manage Windows RT, Mac, Windows Phone, Apple iOS and Android. 

Understating of SCCM Architecture

Before starting the installation the System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager it would be better to have an idea on System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager Site and System Roles and how are we going to install the roles and their limits. Followings are the site systems of Config-manager

Central Administration Site

CAS site only required when you are having multiple primary sites that need to manage using a single point, One CAS can support up to 25 child primary sites. Install CAS in a large organization when there are more than 100,000 clients in the hierarchy. The CAS is only used for administration and reporting purposes. It’s only next layer of primary layer where all processing happens.

Primary Site

All clients are connected to a primary site. Primary site can only support child secondary sites, but not child primary sites. Each primary site can support up to 250 secondary sites and up to 1,00,000 clients.

Secondary Site

Secondary sites are managed from the primary site server that they are connected to. It have its own SQL database (SQL Express). It work as a relay between clients to the primary site server. A secondary site supports a maximum of 5,000 clients. Secondary site server can deploy SCCM clients.

Distribution Point

Distribution point is where clients reached to get contents. This can be a local DP or remote DP. Each DP support up to 4000 clients, by default every primary site and a secondary site is a distribution point.

Requirement and Sizing

Before installing SCCM in your environment please follow following articles to know the SCCM system requirements, Supported configurations and Sizing.

System Requirements

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn281925.aspx

Supported configurations

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg682077.aspx

SCCM Sizing considerations

There is a good blog post is written to calculate site server sizing, disk space and database requirement.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/scstr/archive/2012/05/31/configuration_2d00_manager_2d00_2012_2d00_sizing_2d00_considerations.aspx.

From next two posts i will provide step by step information on downloading and installing prerequisites, Preparing Active Directory, Installing SQL server, Creating Service accounts and installing Configuration Manager 2012R2.

SCCM 2012 R2 Installing and Configuring – Part 02 Installing Prerequisites

Cheers

Asitha