System Center 2012 Requirements: how low can it go?

[Jollity]

What system resources (processor, RAM, disk space) does System Center Configuration Manager 2012 require if it is managing under 100 clients?

 

We are on the point of signing up to EES and I was hoping that we could replace our anti-virus with the System Center 2012 (formally Forefront) Endpoint Protection that is included. I was told that we needed SCCM to manage it, and I just got around to having a proper look into it. The hardware requirements listed made my jaw drop. They do seem reasonable for the tens of thousands of clients mentioned, but we only have about 70 clients in the whole site. The server we have available to run it has a Xeon E5520 (4 core) processor and 6GB of RAM - it is also the main file server, an AD server and DNS server. Is there a hope in hell of it running SCCM as well? I might be able to put in a substantial memory upgrade.

[SYNACK]

My experience of SCCM was that it was as heavy as a stellar core fragment and damn near bent light waves traveling near it. That was on an older system though, with a later version of CPU I'd give it at least two dedicated cores and a stack of RAM, 8GB maybe.

 

I have not dealt with it in larger deployments or even with more than about 15 clients so I could be completely off but it is a large part of the reason why we have not gone with Forefront here as managing it propperly needs SCCM.

[synaesthesia]

As much as I love SCCM (we're using it now) I would strongly suggest not using it for that small a site - it wouldn't be particularly efficient and it does use a lot of juice especially by the time you've added SQL into it.

For that size site you're far better off entirely vanilla with WDS/MDT and a workable image. You could even use Impero for client app installs etc.

You could still use Forefront without management - for that size site it's not going to be unworkable but probably still a lot more cost effective.

[plexer]

We use Forefront without sccm to manage it.

 

I looked at using the management system from truesec but that was approx £5 per client per version of fep.

 

Ben

[john]

You can get GPOs to manage ForeFront, if you look on the MS Site they are there and a tool to convert settings to GPOs etc... its not there favoured method but looks perfectly workable.

[Jollity]

Thanks for your thoughts, guys.

 

We use Forefront without sccm to manage it.

I was looking at that option, so I am very interested to hear your experiences. How do you monitor what the endpoint protection clients are up to? My concern would be about a client falling over or a nasty being found that it could not clean up.

 

You can get GPOs to manage ForeFront, if you look on the MS Site they are there and a tool to convert settings to GPOs etc... its not there favoured method but looks perfectly workable.

I was going to say that I could not find GPO templates for the latest version (System Center 2012 Endpoint Protection), but this blog post apparently describes how to use the FEP2010 GPO tools to manage SCEP2012.

 

I looked at using the management system from truesec but that was approx £5 per client per version of fep.

The truesec management system looks too expensive to me too. It seems to have gone up since you looked at it - £12 per license now for under 100 clients. This would take up most of the cost saving of going with the Microsoft anti-virus, and as it is third-party there is the risk of Microsoft making changes that make it inoperable somehow.