SCCM 2012 setup for production

[Xandor]

Hey everyone,

Been working on a setup for our company in regards to the SCCM 2012 SP1, and things are looking good in the LAB environment I got.

But I have a few questions surrounding the production setup.

I have after a lot of considerations, come to the conclusion I will be using a CAS + 2 Primary sites (at start, will probably expand with more in not to long).

We have a lot of offices that have poor/unstable connections around the world, where I will be placing a MP/DP + a SQL Replica (And maby some more roles if needed/wanted).

Some of the locations are in separate domains, without trust (political issues), so I see this as the best solution for us, in regards to having control without setting up trusts/separate installations.

We don't have to many clients, thats why I was wondering about if I needed the CAS, but political wise, and due to the fact we have alot of unstable locations, I ended up going for it.

Currently around 20-30.000 clients I'm guessing, with another 30-40.000 during the next year. (quite a big expansion onwards now)

Since there is a max of 10 MP's pr Primary, I will at start need 2 (currently 12 locations that I want this, but expecting another 10-12 during the next year, both because of unstable connections, but also to support untrusted forests/workgroup computers).

So, the CAS + Primary Servers, will be located in our main datacenter (maby placing one primary in another datacenter later on, but thats TBD).

We currently have a stable and nicely specced SQL cluster (enterprise licensed) that I can use for this, but from what I've seen a lot of places, its reccomended local SQL on the systems, as its easier to troubleshoot (mostly compared to a Standalone server)

Is this also the case, when you have a properly setup cluster?

So, my questions are as follows:

Should I use instances on the cluster, or local SQL on the CAS?

Should I use instances on the cluster, or local SQL on the Primary's?

Another question is in regards to the servers (CAS + Primary's),

Should I go for physical or virtual machines?

I have seen alot of back and forth on this issue, some recommend physical, some say virtual.

Virtual wise we got a few VMware cluster (currently around 450-500 servers in there currently), with no problems setting off the specs I need.

Disk wise, we use NetApp in the datacenter, so load shouldn't be an issue there.

Any good hw load/I/O numbers/Network load info I should run by the VM/storage/network guys to verify it can handle everything as a minimum?

Any pointers will be more than welcome

Thanks.

Best Regards

Eirik