Preparing for SCCM

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 As I have said in the past SCCM is a beast there are a lot of moving parts needed to make the system work. When you plan on installing SCCM you should take some time and step back to look at how you want your system to be set up. SCCM much like Active Directory can have multiple sub sites as apart of your primary site. In most cases you will only have a single site. An example of a user for multiple sites would be if you work at Food.inc and Food.inc owns Meat.inc, Veggie.inc and Grain.inc You could set up a Primary Site Server for Food.inc and a child Site server for each sub company.

When you start to look at what hardware you are going to need you should be looking at Microsoft SCCM recommendations page. However since Microsoft doesn't always do a good job of always keeping information on there site I have a PDF version of the page saved. Below is a table right from the PDF that will help you to determine what you are going to need to set up your own site.
Site details
Suggested minimum configuration
Central administration site with the Standard edition of SQL Server
  • SQL Server is located on the site server computer.
  • This configuration supports a hierarchy with up to 50,000 clients
System_CAPS_noteNote
Database replication represents the largest processing load on the central administration site.
  • 8 cores (Intel Xeon 5504 or comparable CPU)
  • 32 GB of RAM
  • 300 GB of disk space for the operating system, Configuration Manager, SQL Server, and all database files.
Central administration site with the Enterprise or Datacenter edition of SQL Server
  • SQL Server is located on the site server computer
  • This configuration supports a hierarchy with up to 400,000 clients
  • Beginning with System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager with cumulative update 3, this configuration supports 500,000 clients
System_CAPS_noteNote
Database replication represents the largest processing load on the central administration site.
  • 16 cores (Intel Xeon L5520 or comparable CPU)
  • 64 GB of RAM
  • 1.5 TB of disk space for the operating system, Configuration Manager, SQL Server, and all database files.
Beginning with System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2:
Central administration site with the Enterprise or Datacenter edition of SQL Server
  • SQL Server is located on the site server computer
  • This configuration supports a hierarchy with up to 600,000 clients
  • 16 cores (Intel Xeon E5-2650 v2 or comparable CPU)
  • 128 GB of RAM
  • 2.5 TB of disk space for the operating system, Configuration Manager, SQL Server, and all database files.
Stand-alone primary site
  • Up to 100,000 clients
  • SQL Server is installed on the site server computer
  • 8 cores (Intel Xeon E5504 or comparable CPU)
  • 32 GB of RAM
  • 550 GB hard disk space for the operating system, SQL Server, and all database files
Beginning with System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2:
Stand-alone primary site
  • Up to 150,000 clients
  • SQL Server is installed on the site server computer
  • 16 cores (Intel Xeon E5-2650 v2 or comparable CPU)
  • 64 GB of RAM
  • 900 GB hard disk space for the operating system, SQL Server, and all database files
Primary site in a hierarchy
  • Up to 50,000 clients
  • SQL Server is installed on the site server computer
  • 4 cores (Intel Xeon 5140 or comparable CPU)
  • 16 GB of RAM
  • 300 GB of hard disk space for the operating system, Configuration Manager, SQL Server, and all database files.
Primary site in a hierarchy
  • Up to 100,000 clients
  • SQL Server is remote from the site server computer
Site Server:
  • 4 cores (Intel Xeon 5140 or comparable CPU)
  • 8GB of RAM
  • 200 GB of disk space for the operating system and Configuration Manager.
Remote SQL Server:
  • 8 cores (Intel Xeon E5504 or comparable CPU)
  • 32 GB of RAM
  • 550 GB of hard disk space for the operating system, SQL Server, and all database files.
Secondary site
  • Communications from up to 5,000 clients
  • SQL Server must be installed on the site server computer
  • 4 cores (Intel Xeon 5140 or comparable CPU)
  • 8 GB of RAM
  • 100 GB of hard disk space for the operating system, Configuration Manager, SQL Server, and all database files.
Beginning with System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2:
Secondary site
  • Communications from up to 10,000 clients
  • SQL Server must be installed on the site server computer
  • 4 cores (Intel Xeon E5504 or comparable CPU)
  • 16 GB of RAM
  • 127 GB of hard disk space for the operating system, Configuration Manager, SQL Server, and all database files.


After you have reviewed what you are going to need you can start the install process for SCCM and its prerequisites.

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