SCCM 25k-50k client environment running entirely virtual

[patrickryan]

Hello,

 

If planning for a 25k - 50k + client environment, would you recommend using a 100 percent virtual solution for this. Storage and memory would be shared with the rest of the virtual environment, so i'm worried about I\O performance eventually catching up with things.

 

Also, in a lab test, we have the following

 

volume 1: OS

volume 2: sccm + sql

 

.. after reading a few white papers, it seems this is not the optimal way to configure sccm.

 

Any input on this would be great

[binarymime]

I would consider hosting sccm ad SQL on seperate vms, in fact I would highly recommend it. You will more than likely suffer a performance bottleneck otherwise.

 

Regarding your io performance, this has not historically been an issue for us, typically CPU allocation has caused is our performer problems if any. Are you planning I deploy distribution points? Do you have multiple sites seperate a hy slow links?

[binarymime]

We run about 3000+ clients an are growing and we are 100% virtualized, we have had next to no performance problems

[Rocket Man]

It is entirely up to you what way to set it up........some prefer to have dedicated VMs to host the SQL and SCCM services, personally I prefer to host all on the same server, lots of disk space, plenty of RAM (16GB-24GB) and lots of CPUs, Teamed network cards for throughput.......

 

Have never seen a DR restore from SCCM setup that has the services split onto different servers, may not be clean trying to introduce a failed SQL sccm DB server back to the main SCCM console server, could have underlying issues, but in saying that have never seen a DR restore from a single VM hosting all services, but to me I think this may be the cleaner DR restore having all services running on a single VM.

 

But as I said everyone has their own opinion, maybe you could have your PS DP on a seperate server which may alleviate some of the traffic on the main server!

 

Rocket Man

[patrickryan]

It is entirely up to you what way to set it up........some prefer to have dedicated VMs to host the SQL and SCCM services, personally I prefer to host all on the same server, lots of disk space, plenty of RAM (16GB-24GB) and lots of CPUs, Teamed network cards for throughput.......

 

Have never seen a DR restore from SCCM setup that has the services split onto different servers, may not be clean trying to introduce a failed SQL sccm DB server back to the main SCCM console server, could have underlying issues, but in saying that have never seen a DR restore from a single VM hosting all services, but to me I think this may be the cleaner DR restore having all services running on a single VM.

 

But as I said everyone has their own opinion, maybe you could have your PS DP on a seperate server which may alleviate some of the traffic on the main server!

 

Rocket Man

Microsoft doesn't seem to recommend using virtual servers, and they also don't recommend installing SCCM + SQL on the same physical drive. Hard drives have physical i\o limitations, so it's likely that utilizing the same drive will cause a bottleneck.. maybe not initially, but down the road, yes.

[patrickryan]

This is taken from Microsoft's Infrastructure and Design Guide for SCCM 2007 R3

 

• For site servers that manage a large number of assigned clients, use an eight-core computer with the fastest possible CPU and 16 gigabytes (GB) of memory.

• Configuration Manager is a 32-bit application, and 64-bit hardware does not deliver additional benefits.

• Configuration Manager has been designed to effectively maximize overall CPU processing. It is not unusual to see 85 percent or greater CPU usage on Configuration Manager site servers.

• The use of virtual computer site systems for Configuration Manager sites that must process a large amount of data is not recommended.

• Use separate storage volumes on the site server for:

• Operating system

• Configuration Manager installation directory

• Site and site database backup storage

• Volume Shadow Copy Service storage association for shadow copy temporary storage of the site and site database backup snapshots

• Separate the site server and the site server database roles onto different computers.

• Use separate storage volumes on the site server for:

• The SQL Server tempdb database

• SQL Server database logs

• SQL Server database

[Rocket Man]

 

so it's likely that utilizing the same drive will cause a bottleneck.. maybe not initially, but down the road, yes

 

Not sure if this is theory or factual, anybody any true evidence of this??

 

 

It is not unusual to see 85 percent or greater CPU usage on Configuration Manager site servers

 

Never have I ever seen the CPU running at this level, 85%, normally runs at zero% at any of my sites even at peak times which is from 8am-6pm daily(SCCM2012 not 2007)

 

And finally, not saying this is Bible, but again not to be brushed aside http://blog.coretech.dk/kea/system-center-2012-configuration-manager-sql-recommendations/

 

As I did say some people have their prefered infrastructure methods, this happens to be mine, touch wood my sites stay the same as they have been since the release of sccm2012, and do not suffer because the roles are all on the same virtual machine!

 

Rocket Man

[Peter33]

There is probably no best practice for this. We run the same setup as rocketman. Servers are HypeV instances with different configurations for primary and secondaries. The SQL Server is hosted on the same machine but with it's own LUN's for Database ,Transaction Logs and SCCM drives. 4 Cores and 16GB memory and 10GBit teamed network.

 

Actually you can see this high utlization though when the AD import runs at the same time with a huge deployment. Or when you perform several parralel offline servicing tasks. But that's still no problem at all.