No more hiding in the server room

Microsoft System Center Offerings

Having finally got sign off for company wide volume licensing I've started looking into how we're going to roll out Office 2010. Unfortunately for us our usual method of GPSI isn't a support route any more so something had to change. From what i can see this is either a step backwards to scripting / manual installs or implementing something such as SCE or SCCM.

I've spent a good part of today reviewing the marketing bumf that consists of the MS website and I'm no closer to a decision as to which version to pitch for. So does anyone currently use SCE or SCCM? If so, how do you find it? Do you remember a time before it? Has it proved worthwhile?

Many thanks :)

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Permalink Reply by Dan Taylor on August 5, 2010 at 6:48pm

We use SCCM, and yes it has proven very useful deploying software to our systems. Its not something I'd enjoy working without as the last twodays is testament too - I had to deploy software to 50 people without a remote deployment solution and boy was it hard work.

Having said that, you really ought to understand exactly what you're buying in to if you choose to go down the route of deploying SCCM. Its not a trivial system to keep running, sometimes you will find oddities that require some serious investigation to resolve and other times you'll just find the general maintenance a bit of a grind.

That said, I probably couldn't live without it now after a year of using it - its reaching the point where we're looking at using the other features it offers like patching and configuration management.

In summary.

SCCM is good, its a beast and you need to put in some serious time to managing it if you want it all running smoothly.

Dan