After you’ve gathered your information about the new Configuration Manager 2012 infrastructure, you can design the new infrastructure. When designing a new Configuration Manager 2012 infrastructure, you need to keep a couple things in mind. Whereas in SMS 2003 and Configuration Manager 2007 you could easily design an infrastructure based on bandwidth, languages, or administrative purposes, in Configuration Manager 2012 the hierarchy is simplified and modernized. For most cases you can do more with less. Of course, you still need to identify your network locations and the bandwidth between your locations. Keep in mind that Configuration Manager 2012 has the goal of simplifying your Configuration Manager infrastructure by flattening the hierarchy and by server consolidation.
When designing a Configuration Manager 2012 infrastructure, you will need to review your gathered intelligence and translate this into a design. Things you need to take in account are the following:
Physical Locations of Your Environment As we said, the first step is to translate your network infrastructure information into information that can be used for the design of the Configuration Manager infrastructure.
Ask yourself the following questions:
◆ Where are my locations?
Are my locations in the same country? If so, larger locations often are well-connected sites, and smaller locations usually have less bandwidth available.
◆ Are my locations on the same continent?
If your locations are on the same continent, you need to place a management point at your site, and you can create a secondary site for each location. If a location is not on the same continent, it is wise to create a primary site for that location.
◆ What is the available bandwidth?
For well-connected locations it is often unnecessary to create a Configuration Manager site for that location. If there is a need for local content, you can install a distribution point on such locations since the distribution point now has throttling and bandwidth control.
◆ How many users are working at the location?
One primary site can handle 100,000 clients. Depending on your hardware performance and bandwidth, you can implement one primary site for your entire Configuration Manager infrastructure. Consider using BranchCache for small locations or just a distribution point.
◆ What kind of traffic needs to flow down in the network?
Depending on the data that needs to flow down for administrative or political reasons, it might be necessary to implement a primary site at a location that should normally not be a primary site because of the size or available bandwidth.
Central Administration Site or Not? When you need more than one primary site in your Configuration Manager infrastructure, you also need a Central Administration Site. The placement of this CAS can be a design choice, but often you will place this site at the datacenter or the location where the IT department resides. Configuration Manager clients do not connect to a CAS.
High Availability Considerations If you need a highly available Configuration Manager site or infrastructure, you can install multiple roles (management point, provider, and so on) of the same role in one site without the need for network load balancing. The Configuration Manager 2012 client automatically finds the right management point if one is offline. You also can cluster the SQL database.
Client Settings As we said, client settings are no longer a reason to implement a primary site. Multiple client settings can be assigned to collections of users or computers. While designing, try to define different client settings for the groups of users or computers as needed. Otherwise, just use the default client settings.
Boundary Management Boundaries and boundary groups are fundamentals of your Configuration Manager infrastructure. Be sure to identify all the boundaries so that all the Configuration Manager clients can be managed.
Virtualization Microsoft supports the virtualization of Configuration Manager site servers. Before implementing, always check the Microsoft website for the latest versions and supported third-party virtualization software.
Managing Untrusted Environments In the past you could manage untrusted domains by supplying accounts with rights. With Configuration Manager 2012 you can manage other forests only via two-way trusts. Another way is to install site roles in an untrusted domain, but it cannot be a primary site role. You can provide some services but not all of them.
Naming the Configuration Manager Sites After determining your sites in your Configuration Manager 2012 infrastructure, you need to name the Configuration Manager sites. Like in earlier versions, you use a three-character-length code. The site code can contain only standard characters (A–Z, a–z, 0–9, and the hyphen, “-”) and must be unique for your Configuration Manager infrastructure. In earlier versions of Configuration Manager you were not able to use Microsoft reserved names: SMS, CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, OSD, SRS, or FCS. This is still the case.
