SCCM 2012 - Advantages over Vanilla WDS/WSUS/MDT

[DrCheese]

Hi there,

 

As far as I can tell, we're licensed for SCCM 2012 - Are there any advantages to using this over the vanilla tools of WSUS, WDS/MDT & GPO for software deployment? I'm struggling to find the point in this product....

[sparkeh]

In a rush but here's a few off the top of my head:

 

1) Greater flexibility with app deployment. Eg you can perform background installs with users logged on. You can set dependencies, you can upgrade installed apps to newer versions easily. You can use a range of installers. All with lovely reports to tell you how it went.

 

2) SCEP, its included and easy to deploy/manage.

 

3) Greater flexibility in OSD, again with reporting.

 

4) Setting of config baselines

 

5) Alerting for, well so much stuff, AV, app deployment, OSD, config baselines etc

 

6) Software updates are dead easy to manage with zero touch autodeployments.

 

7) One of the handiest things is that you aren't restricted to your AD setup when it comes to arranging your machines. You can setup any groups you want, static or dynamic (or mixed). Its so useful to be able to name a machine and have it pop up in all the right groups, have software installed, av installed and configured, updates configured and installed and many other things.

 

I love SCCM and wouldn't go back to managing the network with the ordinary tools.