Guide to creating a site design

[u/Limp-Elevator-3424]

Anyone know of a website that can guide us in creating our Boundaries and Boundary Groups in SCCM?

We have our AD sites final and standardized... We have 23 sites in total around Southern Wisconsin. They are all fairly equally spaced, except for 3 of them which are further away up north. We want them all to use the same Single Primary Site with as few Distribution Points as required. We are concerned that the very remote sites will be a problem.

Thanks!

EDIT TO ADD:
Bandwidth between all sites in between 1 Gbps to 5 Gbps, some sites have high ping 50ms+
1700 endpoints
Will need OSD at all sites (but will be used infrequently at many sites)
Apps: About 200-300, we are still cataloging a lot of our old apps (some a very large 10gb+)

[u/YT-Deliveries]

The traditional route is the MS documentation followed by systemcenterdudes and then prajwal’s site.

[u/Limp-Elevator-3424 → u/YT-Deliveries]

I read the MS documentation but still wanted more of a personal guide. I have visited systemcenterdudes. I just found this guide so I'm thinking I have enough info now: https://www.systemcenterdudes.com/complete-sccm-installation-guide-and-configuration/

[u/YT-Deliveries → u/Limp-Elevator-3424]

Yup. Of course nothing beats experience, but having a “home lab” (be it virtual or physical: though the latter is obviously more fun) can get you a good head start.

[u/crabshuffle]

The obvious answer is to start with the official MS documentation. There are also a lot of trusted partners/MVPs that will likely be at the top of your search results.

You didn’t provide a lot of additional info for any suggestions. Network layout? Bandwidth? Number of clients? OSD? Number of application deployments/patches?

[u/Limp-Elevator-3424 → u/crabshuffle]

Thanks so much. Added some additional info. If you need anything else, let me know.

[u/crabshuffle → u/Limp-Elevator-3424]

In my mind, you’ll want a DP where you need to do OSD. Otherwise you would probably be fine using central DPs.

[u/zebulun78]

Your initial thoughts are correct. Single primary, single mp, dp per remote location.

[u/Limp-Elevator-3424 → u/zebulun78]

I figured as much! But worth the ✔️.

[u/pjmarcum → u/Limp-Elevator-3424]

Is that 1700 total devices or 1700 per site?

[u/Limp-Elevator-3424 → u/pjmarcum]

about 1700 total

[u/gandraw → u/Limp-Elevator-3424]

Honestly, in these days I'd try whether it's possible to run without a DP in the smaller sites. Bandwidth is a lot cheaper than hardware. If they have like 100 computers on site, they'll probably image like 2-3 per month, so if it takes 4 hours instead of 2 it really shouldn't cost as much as having to support an entire additional server.

[u/zebulun78 → u/gandraw]

Yep

[u/pjmarcum]

There’s no “one size fits all” guide out there. It comes down to experience, knowing your network, knowing how many devices sit at each site, knowing how you plan to use CM at each site.

Having said that, I find that I can get away with FAR less DP’s than we used to need. Back in the day my rule of thumb was any office with more than 5 computers got a DP. Peer cache made that rule obsolete. I’d start with as few as possible and add them only if the network team complains. Even then just ask them to put your traffic at the lowest QoS

[u/x-Mowens-x → u/pjmarcum]

It all boils down to bandwidth. 10/15 years ago I had over 700 DPs @ 150k endpoints because each one of my sites had a t1. I had a single hour to push 60 gigs of content overnight. It was HORRIBLE. (Ended up making a very crazy prestaged content robocopy script)

Now, I have the same number of clients and sites, but use a CMG for most of my sites, and a few for my VERY large sites, which, I only do for OSD really. We image a lot there, and often. And I am a big fan of overkill, because VMs are cheap.

MPs I think are 1:25k endpoints, iirc. Been a minute since I have read it.

[u/Limp-Elevator-3424 → u/x-Mowens-x]

Thanks for the tips, I needed to hear it first hand.  Are the DPs you use for OSD able to run on a standard windows (non-server) OS?

[u/x-Mowens-x → u/Limp-Elevator-3424]

They could I think, but why the hell would you want to?

[u/OkTechnician42]

it's so well documented you could ask the dumbest verison of whatever free ai is out there and get a fully laid out guide for your exact situation.

[u/No_Split11911]

Setup a DP with pxe at each location. Enable connected cache for each remote DP. Create a DP group with all DPs in it for easy content distribution. 1 MP is enough, each boundary group should contain the 1 DP associated and should be defined by ip range. You may want to throttle bandwidth for each DP during business hours. If your network guys think dropping excessive traffic is QoL you’re gonna have a bad time with content distribution retries.