Branch DP connections limitation

There are a lot of ppl questioning, what is the actual limit for SCCM branch distribution point? how should i design it to fit into my customer environment?

For your information, if you run Branch DP on Windows XP or Windows Vista client, you will only have concurrent limit of 10 users. But if you run Branch DP on Windows Server, you will not have the limitation for 10 users and the server's license model will apply on it, such as CALs, Per Server, Per Seat etc.

Hope the above information can give you some hints on SCCM design.

SMSMap & SCCM 2007 Capacity Planner

Recently I've found one interesting website called SMSMap. This website basically provide tools called SMSMap and SCCM 2007 Capacity Planner.

SMSMap is a tool similar like Active Directory Topology Diagrammer, it allows you to simplified the process of drawing the Visio diagram for your SCCM structure. Whereas SCCM 2007 Capacity Planner is a tool for you to plan out your SCCM structure for your organization (This tool is very useful, so far there is no official release from Microsoft regarding capacity planning for SCCM).

Below is the link for the website I mentioned above:
http://www.tondtware.com/downloads.html

Lastly, many thanks to Jeff Tondt for giving me permission to allow me to post his site link in my blog. Currently, Jeff Tondt is a Senior Consultant II for Microsoft Consulting Services. He focused on the System Management solution and he is SMS & SCCM expert.

SMS 2003 & SCCM 2007 Security Mode

Everyone know there is 2 security modes in SMS 2003, which is Standard Security mode and Advanced Security mode. But what is the different between this 2 security mode? Let us share on this.

Standard security uses user accounts to run services, configure computers, and connect between computers. Advanced security make use of Active Directory. It uses the Local System Account (which is computer account) to run services, configure computers, and connect between computers. It is more secure, but it requires Active Directory and it does not require the schema to be extended.

You can switch from standard security mode to advanced security mode, but it cannot change back to standard security mode once the security mode is switch over to advanced security mode.

How about SCCM 2007, what is the different between SCCM 2007 and SMS 2003 on security mode? well, SCCM 2007 also provided 2 types of security modes, which is SMS 2003 compatibility security mode (Mixed Mode) and another is SCCM 2007 security mode (Native Mode).

Native mode is a higher level of security mode by integrating with a public key infrastructure (PKI) to help protect client-to-server communication. With this security mode enable, you are able to manage Internet-based client, which the client computer connect to your site server through public WAN connection. Thus, extra security is needed in order to implement this and you need to get a valid Certificate from certificate authority in order to accomplish this task.

Mixed mode provides backwards compatibility for hierarchies that have both SMS 2003 sites and Configuration Manager 2007 sites. With this security mode, you are unable to manage Internet-based client. You are allow to switch from Mixed mode to Native mode once all your site servers is migrated to SCCM 2007 and it is also possible to revert back to Mixed mode from Native mode. This is really a good fall back feature if you would like to perform a migration for your SMS 2003 to SCCM 2007.