Gordon McKenna - System Center Operations Manager MVP - Inframon Ltd

My shared experiences on the worlds greatest Systems Management Product

SCCM Planning for Dummys Part 1!

Well although I hate to admit it being an OpsMgr guy, I have actually been getting my head around deployment planning for SCCM as of late as part of my ever expanding System Center role (no sarcastic comments please boys).

And I have to admit I have been finding it very interesting, and as I am a relative dummy when it comes to SCCM I thought I would start blogging about the stuff I am finding out, so you other SCCM dummys out there may possibly pick ups some tips (you never know maybe one of SCCM colleagues on WMUG may start doing the same with OpsMgr).

First of all I have been directed to some very good resources, first one being this guide from the deployment guys on rough sizing guidlines:

http://blogs.technet.com/deploymentguys/archive/2008/05/20/sccm-for-deployment-rough-sizing-guidelines.aspx#comments

Really good read.

Next, unlike OpsMgr which has guides that come in both downloadable word format as well as the readable online format, it appears that most SCCM content is ONLY available online, so I started off (after reading through the fundamentals), with the Configuration Manager Planning and Deployment Overview here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/bb693806.aspx

I have to say mind that I was a bit dissapointed I couldnt just download this lock stock (somebody point me in the right direction if I am missing the guide in Word format), as I do like to print a copy off to peruse on the train on my way into London.

Point for Microsoft, If you want people to start treating the System Center like a suite then get some consistency on TechNet across the product sets.....

I then began wondering which version I should be focusing on and as R2 is almost upon us I thought that I would concentrate on this version, you can check out supported configurations here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/bb680717.aspx

And finally, I wanted to know whether "out-of-the-stable" R2 would be supporting SQL 2008, and to my dissapointment the answer is no, check out this newsgroup thread here:

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?siteid=17&PostID=3732354

I will let you no in my next SCCM post how I got on with the docs,

many thanks to Firdous for the tips

 

Published 28 August 2008 07:30 by GordoDaMom

Comments

# re: SCCM Planning for Dummys Part 1!@ 28 August 2008 22:48

Hi Gordon,

The online TechCenter is pretty much replicated in the CHM file that comes with the product.  Search for the “smsv4.chm” file on a console machine.  We publish updates to that offline file from time-to-time but if you grab one from an R2 system you will have the latest.

Of course at any one time the online TechCenter is going to be the latest version of the information so there is merit in using that one.  Thing is searching it can be a chore but I can highly recommend adding a new search provider to IE 7.0 as per the ConfigMgr writers’ blog here:

blogs.technet.com/.../how-to-more-easily-search-the-configuration-manager-documentation-library-online.aspx

One thing there is no good fix for right now is printing.  You can print individual topics from the CHM file fairly easily but if you try to print the whole thing it generates a million billion trillion pages (approximately).

Cheers,

Ellis

by Ellis