SMS planning for global WAN

[DanIT]

Hello. I am in the early stages of installing SMS and have a few questions for people using the product. Our network is currently NT4.0, clients are Win2k Pro and Win98 mostly. We have offices connected via frame; some links are slow (128K). Network is single domain, with individual subnets in each location.

Questions:

1. Do I need to plan for SMS/SQL server at each remote site? Some sites are small (20 users).
2. A big business driving force is asset management. How much traffic does that generate?
3. I read that metering is a bandwidth hog. True?

I appreciate any help. Thank you.

Dan

 

[snyderj]

Here are some general thoughts:

Q1. Do I need to plan for SMS/SQL server at each remote site? Some sites are small (20 users).

A1. You only need one database, and it can be located anywhere, but scale and control may dictate that the architecture be more dispersed. In the SMS 2 world, a site may be primary (which requires a database) or secondary (which does not). In either case the site-to-site communication may be tuned for optimum use of bandwidth (which hours, and % of bandwidth). If personal (not PC clients, but actual people) at your 20 person site (for example) need strong control over site configuration, have strict security requirements, or need excellent connection speed to the site database, then they'll need to have a local primary site (with a local database).


Q2. A big business driving force is asset management. How much traffic does that generate?

A2. There are two general types of traffic generated by SMS: client/site status communication (small but frequent traffic), and package distribution (sometimes large but infrequent traffic). Most of your "asset management" traffic will be in getting updates to the clients. Keep in mind that while you can't tune the client to CAP to site communication, you can tune the child to parent site communication (central to local distribution).

Q3. I read that metering is a bandwidth hog. True?

A3. I don't have knowledge here.

 

[RodTrent]

Software Metering can be a bandwidth hog depending on which mode you select. Active, of course, is going to cause extra bandwidth requirements. And, for every SWM server you put up, you need an additional one for fail over.

Sorry to dump a bunch of links on you, but here's some good info for research on your WAN rollout:

http://www.myitforum.com/articles/1/view.asp?id=1898

http://www.myitforum.com/articles/1/view.asp?id=1717

http://www.myitforum.com/articles/1/view.asp?id=1767

http://www.myitforum.com/articles/1/view.asp?id=1854

http://www.myitforum.com/articles/1/view.asp?id=2050

http://www.myitforum.com/articles/1/view.asp?id=3687

http://www.myitforum.com/articles/1/view.asp?id=114

http://www.myitforum.com/articles/1/view.asp?id=3656

http://www.myitforum.com/articles/1/view.asp?id=2257

http://www.myitforum.com/articles/1/view.asp?id=989

http://www.myitforum.com/articles/1/view.asp?id=526

Rod Trent
Microsoft.MVP.SMS
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Main site:

http://www.myITforum.com

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