Package Source Best practice

[japhiffer]

So I'm mostly looking for recommendations here, or any best practice advice. Currently I have an SCCM 2012 R2 SP1 stand alone primary server. Soon we will be expanding our environment to include a CAS and another Primary server.

 

With my simple setup now, I have all of my software package source files located on the primary server itself. Earlier this year, I got my first hint as to why this might not be the best idea when I moved my 2012 environment from being hosted on a Server 2008 SP2 server to Server 2012 R2 server. In addition to the migration of the environment itself, I had to migrate the package source files over which is not covered by the built-in backup task of SCCM.

 

So my question ultimately is, where would you recommend as a location to keep source files? Should I host them on one of the site servers as is currently true of my environment? Should I have a separate server specifically for hosting package sources? I prefer to keep my source files all centralized to one location versus a free-for-all across multiple servers, but I feel like not having them on an SCCM site server would give me an environment that is easier to manipulate or worse case scenario, recover.

 

Thank you,

Jerome

[Ath3na]

I always have mine hosted on the primary site server. Do you really need a CAS? Are you managing more than 150,000 clients

[Jorgen Nilsson]

Hi,

I would say that best practice is to store the Package Source files on a separate file server, DFS prefeered as you will not have to change any names in any scenario for hwupgrade or anything like that. Then you can place the data on cheaper disks with no dependency to SCCM sites or hierarchies.

Regards,
Jörgen

[japhiffer]

Thank you Jorgen, didn't even think of the DFS aspect, that would make life much easier.

 

 

 

Ath3na,

 

While I won't have more than 150,000 clients, currently we have two business units, North America which I'm the SCCM admin over and have a primary site, and the UK who has their own primary site already up and running. They are wanting to throw us all under the same umbrella along with a new company acquisition down the line.

 

Things might get a tad messy just trying to force everyone under as secondary sites, and they no longer want to keep our primary sites separated, so a CAS with multiple primary sites is looking like the best option.