Planning for Hardware Configurations for Configuration Manager

 

Updated: May 28, 2015

Applies To: System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1, System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2, System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager, System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager SP1

This topic identifies recommended hardware configurations for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager site system servers, clients, and the Configuration Manager console. Use these recommendations as guidelines when you plan to scale your Configuration Manager environment to support more than a very basic deployment of sites, site systems, and clients.

Use the information in this topic as a guide for the hardware to use when you run Configuration Manager at scale. For information about supported configurations for Configuration Manager, see Supported Configurations for Configuration Manager.

These recommendations are not intended to cover each possible site and hierarchy configuration. Instead, use this information as a guide to help you plan for hardware that can meet the processing loads for clients and sites that use the available Configuration Manager features with the default configurations.

  • Configuration Manager Site Systems

    • Site Servers

    • Disk Space Configurations

    • Remote Site System Servers

Configuration Manager Site Systems

This section identifies recommended hardware configurations for Configuration Manager site systems. In general, the key factors that limit performance of the overall system include the following, in order:

  1. Disk I/O performance

  2. Available memory

  3. CPU

For best performance, use RAID 10 configurations for all data drives and 1Gbps Ethernet network connectivity between site system servers, including the database server.

Site Servers

Use the following recommendations for each Configuration Manager site server. For information about the disk space requirements, see Disk Space Configurations.

Site details

Suggested minimum configuration

Central administration site with the Standard edition of SQL Server

  • SQL Server is located on the site server computer.

  • This configuration supports a hierarchy with up to 50,000 clients

Note

Database replication represents the largest processing load on the central administration site.

  • 8 cores (Intel Xeon 5504 or comparable CPU)

  • 32 GB of RAM

  • 300 GB of disk space for the operating system, Configuration Manager, SQL Server, and all database files.

Central administration site with the Enterprise or Datacenter edition of SQL Server

  • SQL Server is located on the site server computer

  • This configuration supports a hierarchy with up to 400,000 clients

  • Beginning with System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager with cumulative update 3, this configuration supports 500,000 clients

Note

Database replication represents the largest processing load on the central administration site.

  • 16 cores (Intel Xeon L5520 or comparable CPU)

  • 64 GB of RAM

  • 1.5 TB of disk space for the operating system, Configuration Manager, SQL Server, and all database files.

Beginning with System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2:

Central administration site with the Enterprise or Datacenter edition of SQL Server

  • SQL Server is located on the site server computer

  • This configuration supports a hierarchy with up to 600,000 clients

  • 16 cores (Intel Xeon E5-2650 v2 or comparable CPU)

  • 128 GB of RAM

  • 2.5 TB of disk space for the operating system, Configuration Manager, SQL Server, and all database files.

Stand-alone primary site

  • Up to 100,000 clients

  • SQL Server is installed on the site server computer

  • 8 cores (Intel Xeon E5504 or comparable CPU)

  • 32 GB of RAM

  • 550 GB hard disk space for the operating system, SQL Server, and all database files

Beginning with System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2:

Stand-alone primary site

  • Up to 150,000 clients

  • SQL Server is installed on the site server computer

  • 16 cores (Intel Xeon E5-2650 v2 or comparable CPU)

  • 64 GB of RAM

  • 900 GB hard disk space for the operating system, SQL Server, and all database files

Primary site in a hierarchy

  • Up to 50,000 clients

  • SQL Server is installed on the site server computer

  • 4 cores (Intel Xeon 5140 or comparable CPU)

  • 16 GB of RAM

  • 300 GB of hard disk space for the operating system, Configuration Manager, SQL Server, and all database files.

Primary site in a hierarchy

  • Up to 100,000 clients

  • SQL Server is remote from the site server computer

Site Server:

  • 4 cores (Intel Xeon 5140 or comparable CPU)

  • 8GB of RAM

  • 200 GB of disk space for the operating system and Configuration Manager.

Remote SQL Server:

  • 8 cores (Intel Xeon E5504 or comparable CPU)

  • 32 GB of RAM

  • 550 GB of hard disk space for the operating system, SQL Server, and all database files.

Secondary site

  • Communications from up to 5,000 clients

  • SQL Server must be installed on the site server computer

  • 4 cores (Intel Xeon 5140 or comparable CPU)

  • 8 GB of RAM

  • 100 GB of hard disk space for the operating system, Configuration Manager, SQL Server, and all database files.

Beginning with System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2:

Secondary site

  • Communications from up to 10,000 clients

  • SQL Server must be installed on the site server computer

  • 4 cores (Intel Xeon E5504 or comparable CPU)

  • 16 GB of RAM

  • 127 GB of hard disk space for the operating system, Configuration Manager, SQL Server, and all database files.

Disk Space Configurations

Because disk allocation and configuration contributes to the performance of System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, disk space requirements can be greater than for previous product versions. Use the following information as guidelines when you determine the amount of disk space Configuration Manager requires. Because each Configuration Manager environment is different, these values can vary from the following guidance.

For the best performance, place each object on a separate, dedicated RAID volume. For all data volumes (Configuration Manager and its database files), use RAID 10 for the best performance.

Data usage

Minimum disk space

25,000 clients

50,000 clients

100,000 clients

150,000 clients

600,000 clients (Central administration site)

Operating system

See guidance for the operating system.

See guidance for the operating system.

See guidance for the operating system.

See guidance for the operating system.

See guidance for the operating system.

See guidance for the operating system.

Configuration Manager Application and Log Files

25 GB

50 GB

100 GB

200 GB

300 GB

200 GB

Site database .mdf file

75 GB for every 25,000 clients

75 GB

150 GB

300 GB

500 GB

2 TB

Site database .ldf file

25 GB for every 25,000 clients

25 GB

50 GB

100 GB

50 GB

100 GB

Temp database files (.mdf and .ldf)

As needed

As needed

As needed

As needed

As needed

As needed

Content (distribution point shares)

As needed1

As needed1

As needed1

As needed1

As needed1

As needed1

1 The disk space guidance does not include the space required for content that is located in the content library on the site server or distribution points. For information about planning for the content library, see the Plan for Content Libraries section in the Planning for Content Management in Configuration Manager topic.

In addition to the preceding guidance, consider the following general guidelines when you plan for disk space requirements:

  • Prior to System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2, each client requires approximately 3 MB of space in the database

    Beginning with System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2, each client requires approximately 5 MB of space.

  • When planning for the size of the Temp database for a primary site, plan for a combined size that is 25% to 30% of the site database .mdf file. The actual size can be significantly smaller, or larger, and depends on the performance of the site server and the volume of incoming data over both short and long periods of time.

    Note

    When you have 50,000 or more clients at a site, plan to use 4 or more Temp database .mdf files.

  • The Temp database size for a central administration site is typically much smaller than that for a primary site.

  • The secondary site database is limited in size to the following:

    • SQL Server 2008 Express: 4 GB

    • SQL Server 2008 R2 Express: 10 GB

Remote Site System Servers

Use the following as recommended hardware configurations for computers that run the following site system roles. These recommendations are for computers that hold a single site system role and you should make adjustments when you install multiple site system roles on the same computer. For more information about the disk space requirements, see Disk Space Configurations in this topic.

Site system role

Suggested minimum configuration

Management point

  • 4 cores (Intel Xeon 5140 or comparable CPU)

  • 8 GB of RAM

  • 50 GB of disk space for the operating system and Configuration Manager.

Note

Management point performance relies most on memory and processor capacity.

Distribution point

  • 2 cores (Intel Xeon 5140 or comparable CPU)

  • 8 GB of RAM

  • Disk space as required for the operating system and content you deploy to the distribution point.

Note

Distribution point performance relies most on network I/O and disk I/O.

Application Catalog, with the web service and website on the site system computer

  • 4 cores (Intel Xeon 5140 or comparable CPU)

  • 16 GB of RAM

  • 50 GB of disk space for the operating system and Configuration Manager.

Software update point

Prior to System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2:

  • 4 cores (Intel Xeon 5140 or comparable CPU)

  • 8 GB of RAM

Beginning with System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP2, use the following recommendations to support the increase of supported clients:

  • 8 cores (Intel Xeon E5504 or comparable CPU)

  • 16 GB of RAM

  • For IIS Application Pools, increase the WsusPool Queue Length to 2000

  • For IIS Application Pools, increase the WsusPool Private Memory limit x4 times, or set to 0 (unlimited).

All other site system roles

  • 4 cores (Intel Xeon 5140 or comparable CPU)

  • 8 GB of RAM

  • 50 GB of disk space for the operating system and Configuration Manager.