SCCM - Physical Server Disk Config

[StephenPink]

Hey all,

 

Hopefully this is the right forum, wasn't 100% sure where would be best.

 

Okay so for various reasons (long back story that I cba to go into!) I'm looking to build a physical SCCM server. Now I haven't built an actual physical server for donkeys years, so used to everything virtual - and am racking my brain trying to remember physical disk and RAID config for SCCM.

 

Microsoft best practice (Site size and performance FAQ - Configuration Manager | Microsoft Learn) is stating that the SCCM database/files should be separate to the SQL database/log files - fine (well should be more split than that, but with the scales I operate at I've never needed to). BUT the physical disk I have available are:

- 10x 600GB SAS

 

So for performance and reliability I would go RAID10 - but then I'm unclear as because we're talking physical disks I should be doing:

- 1x RAID10 for SCCM database/files

- 1x RAID10 for SQL database/logs

 

OR can I

- 1x RAID10 for the whole lot

- 2x virtual disks on top

 

OR

- 1x RAID10 for the whole lot

- 1x virtual disks for the whole lot

- 2x Windows partitions to split

 

OR

- am I overthinking, and really with <10,000 clients none of it really matters??

 

 

Hopefully that makes sense! My brain hurts, and it's a Friday - and I need to have this built prior to Summer, yay!

 

Thanks

[Steve21]

For smaller sites we don't worry about the disk setups as much, as it's normally virtualised anyway, it's more splitting down to individual AVHDXs/VirtualDisks for the different areas to format kb sizes etc and also to ensure storage isn't an issue if one bit fills up

 

How many clients are you talking when you say <10k? Is that 10 or 9999? (Also curious on the back story! Physical?!?! )

 

Steve

Edited July 5, 2024 by Steve21

[CrootUK]

Id personally virtualise sccm on this physical host you are building so it can easily be moved in future.

 

Raid 10 x 8 disks, use 2 for hot spare.

1 virtual disk

as many volumes as you wish, doesn’t really matter.

[Primus]

Id personally virtualise sccm on this physical host you are building so it can easily be moved in future.

 

This is the way.

[StephenPink]

For smaller sites we don't worry about the disk setups as much, as it's normally virtualised anyway, it's more splitting down to individual AVHDXs/VirtualDisks for the different areas to format kb sizes etc and also to ensure storage isn't an issue if one bit fills up

 

How many clients are you talking when you say <10k? Is that 10 or 9999? (Also curious on the back story! Physical?!?! )

 

Steve

 

Yes exactly that, virtualised is easy!

 

Haha so its approximately 2000 clients, not large at all in SCCM terms. The back story.... I've inherited a lot of legacy setup shall we say? With no documentation?

 

Id personally virtualise sccm on this physical host you are building so it can easily be moved in future.

 

Raid 10 x 8 disks, use 2 for hot spare.

1 virtual disk

as many volumes as you wish, doesn’t really matter.

 

This is the way.

 

 

Oh yeah.... I blame it being a Friday, but I didn't even think of that... yes you're definitely right, that makes the most sense, thank you both. Just standalone Hyper-V host I guess in that case?

[Primus]

Yeah just install the Hyper-V role.

[Aprice]

+1 for virtualised, just makes everything easier. Migration, Backup & Restore e.t.c.

[Jcx500]

Any reason for physical? I’m running a 30k+ site virtually and the performance is second to none

[PotNoodleTech]

Physical? Ewwww.

 

There's nothing that doesn't get virtualised here there's plenty of performance comparisons out there that prove that virtualised is almost (as in high 90something percent) as fast as physical yet the upsides on ease of use/set up / moving things around / backup and restore / data protection / disaster recovery are endless.

[StephenPink]

Any reason for physical? I’m running a 30k+ site virtually and the performance is second to none

 

Oh only because I don't currently have the necessary virtual infrastructure in place (yet) - but that's a story for another day!

[PotNoodleTech]

Oh only because I don't currently have the necessary virtual infrastructure in place (yet) - but that's a story for another day!

 

The server you are going to use - put Hyper V on it and then install SCCM as a VM then when you come to upgrade the rest of your servers to virtual you can literally right click copy and paste the SCCM VM onto your new servers. Bit more setting up now, but will make the future much easier.

[StephenPink]

The server you are going to use - put Hyper V on it and then install SCCM as a VM then when you come to upgrade the rest of your servers to virtual you can literally right click copy and paste the SCCM VM onto your new servers. Bit more setting up now, but will make the future much easier.

 

Yes that's now the plan - the guys above suggested that, my brain wasn't in gear at the time apparently haha. I genuinely can't remember the last actual physical server I built that wasn't a host...