wizard210 Posted February 12, 2015 Posted February 12, 2015 I just go into an EES agreement that allows me to use SCCM. I'm wondering if SCCM is overkill for a small school district that has roughly 600 computers. Currently We use WDS to create an image and deploy. The base image has all the software on it that we need.
nickbro Posted February 12, 2015 Posted February 12, 2015 I use it for my local primary schools, which total around the same. It saves me a lot of time travelling to remote into their pcs, or even silently deploy software in the background. Rebuilds are as easy as WDS (in fact easier as you can task schedule it with an embedded password).
wizard210 Posted February 12, 2015 Author Posted February 12, 2015 I use it for my local primary schools, which total around the same. It saves me a lot of time travelling to remote into their pcs, or even silently deploy software in the background. Rebuilds are as easy as WDS (in fact easier as you can task schedule it with an embedded password). Nick what kind of server to you deploy SCCM on? Do I need a work horse for it or will a simple server with 500gb hdd with 10gb ram do?
nickbro Posted February 12, 2015 Posted February 12, 2015 (edited) It's installed locally at each primary school (4) with a central vm at the high school with it on. They run off 4gb servers if memory serves me correctly. Sits there quite happily. They use the high school's WSUS server for WSUS so the local servers don't waste space with WSUS updates. Edited February 12, 2015 by nickbro
wizard210 Posted February 12, 2015 Author Posted February 12, 2015 Thanks Nick. I'll have to take a look at it and see if I really need it in my environment. Are you able to keep flash, java,etc updated using it? 1
nickbro Posted February 12, 2015 Posted February 12, 2015 Flash I use SCUP and publish them to WSUS, java is a different thing, only staff who need it have it installed, and in those cases I give them local admin rights, removes the headache.
Arthur Posted February 12, 2015 Posted February 12, 2015 Java is a different thing, only staff who need it have it installed, and in those cases I give them local admin rights Java + local admin rights. You're brave!
nickbro Posted February 12, 2015 Posted February 12, 2015 It's only on staff who manage the heating controls, so 1 pc per primary school
bossman Posted February 12, 2015 Posted February 12, 2015 @wizard210 We use WDS along with WSUS and I too have wondered about SCCM being overkill, I am at the moment trialing PDQ deploy enterprise for all our runtime and third party apps, it does look good for the annual cost. Will better know tomorrow when a full roll out of Adobe shockwave latest version to all our workstations along with all the other Adobe runtime engines and Java. I know SCCM is more or less free with an EES agreement but you still pay for the cals if my memory serves but for third party runtime engines and apps PDQ looks like a winner for us. Deploy Software with PDQ Deploy
Arthur Posted February 12, 2015 Posted February 12, 2015 It's only on staff who manage the heating controls, so 1 pc per primary school That's not too bad then. Our heating control system (Trend 963) also requires Java too. It's a really shoddy piece of software.
free780 Posted February 13, 2015 Posted February 13, 2015 We have trend. I think if you spend more you can just have a server people connect to via we browser. Depends on how your boiler is connected to the PC/network. We use sccm but we have about a 1000 PCs. Most rooms use a thin image as software differs from room to room. The remote viewer is good for staff, especially at other sites. If you do the testing right its fairly easy to implement.
nickbro Posted February 13, 2015 Posted February 13, 2015 That's not too bad then. Our heating control system (Trend 963) also requires Java too. It's a really shoddy piece of software. Ours are Schneider xenta555's. I don't even use ours for our main boiler house at the high school since it doesn't have 1/4 of the settings the panel in the plant room has, so I go there if it needs an adjustment (very rare)
localzuk Posted February 13, 2015 Posted February 13, 2015 We only have about 200-250 PCs here and we use SCCM. Sure, the setup is a massive PITA, but once its up and running it makes the management of clients so easy. The imaging part is not really much different to WDS or MDT, but the most useful part is application management. Deploying things is a doddle. With GPO you spend half your life repackaging things to msi, with SCCM you don't need to - you can specify a script or just the .exe installer with its silent install switches if you want. Combine that with easy remote control of clients for quickly helping people, easy management of Windows Updates, built in anti-virus, and its imaging and its an ideal "all in one" management tool.
hardtailstar Posted February 13, 2015 Posted February 13, 2015 We have SCCM and we have about 200 computers/laptops As others have set PITA to set up but once it is set up it makes things easy.
synaesthesia Posted February 13, 2015 Posted February 13, 2015 If it's for a district, I'd say SCCM will be a godsend for you. Yes it can be seen as overkill, however it scales well from 10 pcs up to many thousands. If you have a central location with a decent connection, I'd go for a single server setup there. If all sites have decent connections then just the one will work fine (primary server), if the connections are not so great and you have the scope to do so, set up a single central administration site and have smaller servers at each school which act as software distribution & WSUS points to save on bandwidth.
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