SCCM 2012 Questions

[strom0bli]

Hello Everyone,

 

I have a ton of newbie questions and the more googling I do, the more overwhelmed I am getting by what is all bundled into SCCM 2012.

 

So here are a list of questions, if you know any of them, I would really appreciate your insights!

 

1. Is Forefront Security now built into this rather than being its own package?

2. SCCM is built for deployment of software/OSes, correct? If so, does this replace WDS and does it allow for distribution of Adobe, Java, etc. updates?

3. SCCM manages DirectAccess configurations, correct?

4. When setting up SCCM, I am wondering which setup I should use to deploy SCCM 2012. Standalone vs Hierarchical.

• My environment isn't remotely close to 100,000 clients, let alone 10,000 clients, however we have multiple offices in different geographic areas. Thus, here are my questions about the standalone vs hierarchical deployment.
  
  • Without a CAS, will I be able to put a server in each location to cache all of the files I want to push out.
    
  • Will I be able to centrally manage each of those locations?
    
  • Will I be able to make this highly available, so in the event a server goes down, I can failover to a different node?
    

Thanks for any feedback you may shed on this!

stromb0li

[Peter van der Woude]

(Sorry about the layout) 1. Endpoint Protection is building 2. All yes and it uses WDS for PXE deployments 3. Nope 4. I don't know your whole situation, but I almost never go for a CAS anymore. One primary can be centrally managed and uses multiple MPs/ DPs etc. for some sort of HACODE] 2

[strom0bli]

Thanks for the response Peter! I believe I read a technet article stating that the Forefront suite integrated with DirectAccess (I am really looking into deploying this throughout our organization, rather than messing with VPN), but has in turn been replaced my SCCM. Have any ideas on what that might have been?

[Peter van der Woude]

Then you are probably looking at Forefront TMG or UAG.

[strom0bli]

Ah! Forefront UAG is exactly I what I was looking at. So if I implement that, then SCCM is saying that it will handle the deployment side of getting the protection to the client?

 

Thanks for the clarifications Peter, much appreciated!

[Peter van der Woude]

Indeed, then you can configure SCCM to deploy the Endpoint Protection client to all systems (even the ones, that are connected via DirectAccess/ UAG).