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The following information is for example purposes only. Do not rely on this information for a production deployment. These are meant to show the areas you should test for when evaluating ConfigMgr client activity impact on your network before going into production. The results are specific to the below ConfigMgr configuration and may vary from environment to environment.
This blog is an update of my System Center Configuration Manager 2007 blog post (available here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/manageabilityguys/archive/2009/11/19/client-network-traffic-tests.aspx) to System Center 2012. This post will be provide the results, the other two posts will provide how to do this manually using Excel with more context and the other post will provide an example PowerShell script that helps (let me know via the comments which of the two you'd prefer and I'll use that to prioritise things J). In a change from the 2007 blog post, I've gone to using IIS logs instead of NetMon. While this does mean that there is a small amount of traffic lost (IP headers, TCP headers) the benefit is that the data can be easily reviewed in Excel if you know what you're looking for or parsed with PowerShell (or whatever programming language you prefer).
To perform this sort of testing you need to enable a few things in IIS logging. Basically, the process is:
- Change IIS log settings to include sc-bytes and cs-bytes (server to client and client to server bytes respectively)
- Perform Activity using the client control panel applet, making note of the timings
- To reset the Windows Update Agent repository and force a re-download of metadata, stop the Windows Update/Automatic Update service and rename C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\DataStore.edb
- To reset the state message store, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc146437.aspx (this is a 2007 article, still works for 2012 though)
- To reset the hardware inventory history and force a re-sync, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc144592.aspx (again, a 2007 article but works for 2012)
- Review the log files
Here are the results from the testing:
Activity | Type | Average Total Bytes | HTTP Requests Counted | Average Client to Server Bytes | Average Server to Client Bytes |
Policy Polling Request (Note: 1 HTTP request/client poll) | MP | 5,217 | 25 | 242 | 4,975 |
Software Update Scan (Regular/On-going) | MP | Varies based on WU/MU/WSUS update metadata | |||
Software Update Scan (Regular/On-going) | SUP | ||||
Software Update Scan (Fresh AU DB)
(Note: single client refresh, including re-sync of state messages) | MP | 11,626 | 5 | 9,977 | 1,649 |
Software Update Scan (Fresh AU DB) (Note: single client refresh) | SUP | 8,941,583 | 45 | 356,298 | 8,585,285 |
Hardware Inventory (Delta)
(Note: This is heavily variable. In this example, the delta was run immediately following the re-sync.) | MP | 6,274 | 3 | 2,561 | 672 |
Hardware Inventory (Re-sync) | MP | 60,814 | 7 | 59,334 | 1480 |
Hardware Inventory (Full) | MP | 61,007 | 3 | 60,334 | 673 |
Software Inventory (Full) (Note: Single client tested, with*.dll & *.exe rules, including the Windows directory) | MP | 1,332,003 | 4 | 1,331,125 | 878 |
Software Inventory (Delta)
(Note: heavily variable. In this example, the delta was run immediately following the re-sync) | MP | 6,072 | 3 | 5,399 | 673 |
Software Distribution Policy Poll (Advert Download)
(Note: not tested for 2012, for reference) | MP | 14,452 | 1 | 6,161 | 8,291 |
Application Management Policy Retrieval
(Note: Single Client Requesting Single Application) | MP | 50,000 | 66 | 16,109 | 33,897 |
BGB (1 HTTP request/client/5 minutes)
(Note: only applies when BGB TCP port is not available) | MP | 1,424 | 570 | 1,105 | 319 |
Notes on Test Configuration that may impact results
- Application Management test software:
- App-V 5.0 install
- Single DT, script/setup.exe type
- No dependencies
- Software Inventory Configuration:
- Inventory Rules: *.exe, *.dll (Exclude Windows directory was disabled, therefore the Windows directory was included)
- Hardware Inventory Configuration:
- Standard SMS_DEF.MOF --> All AI configurations turned on
- Software Updates Configuration:
- Last Synched: 22/04/2013, 00:20 (GMT/UTC+1)
- Products
- All Developer Tools, Runtimes, and Redistributables
- Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 (Note: for SCEP definitions)
- Office 2010
- CAPICOM
- Silverlight
- Skype for Windows
- Microsoft SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2
- System Center 2012 products (not SP1)
- Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012,
- Classifications
- Critical Updates
- Definition Updates
- Security Updates
- Service Packs
- Update Rollups
- Client Configuration:
- Windows 8
- Office 2013 Professional (not that this product was not configured in SUP/WSUS at the time of testing)
- Programs Registered in Add/Remove Programs: 11
- Updates Registered in Add/Remove Programs: 6
Hopefully this post helps you get your Configuration Manager rollout moving. The other posts in this series should be coming along in the next couple of weeks (but I do have a day job and customers to keep happyJ).
Saud
This post was contributed by Saud Al-Mishari, a Premier Field Engineer with Microsoft Premier Field Engineering, UK.