Layer 1 – Enterprise wide software.

What does everyone in the organization receive? This is your imaging process for new computers or a refresh of an existing computer. Identify the OS and apps that all machines would get no matter which department it eventually goes to. For example:

• Windows 7 Operating System with latest updates, configured for the organization

• Microsoft Office 2013 with latest updates and customized for the org

• SCCM Agent with Endpoint Protection (Antivirus)

• Adobe Acrobat Reader 10

• Java, Netflix, etc.

It is up to you if you use a thin, thick or hybrid image in your OSD Task Sequence, but I am a fan of a thin hybrid image with apps that do not change very often, such as a Windows 7 image with Office 2013 installed with the latest updates for both inserted into the WIM offline each month using SCCM. Install the other apps during the SCCM OSD Task Sequence.

Layer 2 – Department level applications.

What apps do each department require? And divisions within departments? For example, the Human Resources department might have a Recruitment division, a Benefits division, a Wellness division, all with separate applications, but still under the HR department. Identifying these will be a bit of a project, but well worth the effort in the end.

Create Active Directory Groups for the different departments and divisions. User accounts are placed in the appropriate groups according to job role and responsibilities. This should be a defined process when a new employee is coming on board or is changing departments.

In SCCM, create User Collections that automatically update from the AD Groups that represent the different departments. When a new employee is added to the AD groups, they will automatically be added to the proper Collection.

Deploy the appropriate applications to the corresponding Collections and the users’ primary computer will automatically receive the right app according to their AD Group and role. Notice this embraces the User Centric Model for application delivery, so you need to use User Device Affinity to associate a user with a device. This can be done during the task sequence or predefined in the console.

This also opens up the new Deployment Type model, so when you create an application you create an installer for a computer, installers for the various phones out there, an App-V version, etc. I'll have another blog about the application deployment type strategy. 

Layer 3 – Individual Applications

Publish apps to the Application Catalog that are needed by users across different departments and don’t fit neatly into the first 2 layers. Users can browse to the App Catalog and install or request apps as needed without phoning the helpdesk.

Summary

The first 2 layers should cover 95% of your companies applications and the remaining ones that don't fit nicely into specific departments are covered by layer 3 and the app catalog. This automates almost the entire process once a user is put into the appropriate AD Groups and empowers the user to install their own missing apps.

First, a quick review of a Distribution Point setup:

When setting up a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Distribution Point, we come across the Drive Settings page where we can specify the drive settings for the distribution point. You can configure up to two disk drives for the content library and two disk drives for the package share, although System Center 2012 Configuration Manager can use additional drives when the first two reach the configured drive space reserve. The Drive Settings page configures the priority for the disk drives and the amount of free disk space that remains on each disk drive.

Drive space reserve (MB): The value that you configure for this setting determines the amount of free space on a drive before System Center 2012 Configuration Manager chooses a different drive and continues the copy process to that drive. Content files can span multiple drives.

Content Locations: Specify the content locations for the content library and package share. System Center 2012 Configuration Manager copies content to the primary content location until the amount of free space reaches the value specified for Drive space reserve (MB). By default, the content locations are set to Automatic. The primary content location is set to the disk drive that has the most disk space at installation, and the secondary location is assigned to the disk drive that has the second most free disk space. When the primary and secondary drives reach the drive space reserve, Configuration Manager selects another available drive with the most free disk space and continues the copy process.

Of course you can still prevent Configuration Manager from installing on a specific drive; create an empty file named no_sms_on_drive.sms and copy it to the root folder of the drive before you install the distribution
point.

The content library is the main storage location for Configuration Manager. It stores all content files for software updates, applications, operating system deployment, and so on. The content library is located on the site server and on each distribution point, and it provides a single instance store for content files. Before Configuration Manager downloads content files to the site server and copies the files to distribution points, Configuration Manager verifies whether each content file is already in the content library. If the content file is available, Configuration Manager does not copy the file to the distribution point, but instead associates the existing content file with the application or package.

The package share is a legacy storage location from CM2007, but still supported in 2012. It keeps the same name (SMSPKGx$), but sits empty on site servers and distribution points until the deploy option to run programs from the DP is specified (instead of download and run locally) or you select the Package share settings to copy the content as shown below.

In the package properties, under the Data Access tab, there is an option to Copy the content in this package to a package share on distribution points.

This option is automatically selected if the Deploy option to Run program from the Distribution Point is selected.

It's also on OSD objects, such as OS Images & Boot Images:

So if you check the box to copy content to the package share (or run from DP), then storage could potentially increase because you will have both the package share files and the content library files! Note that this only applies to Application Packages & OSD items and not to new Applications or Software Updates.

This is why we have the ability to separate the content library drives and the package share drives when setting up a Distribution Point. Some companies might have a need for the legacy packages and run them from a DP or just want original source files available on the DP. Having the ability to determine location helps in planning for your storage allocation needs!