Windows SCCM 2012 SP1 Simplified? I think not, now that's not to say that MS SCCM 2012 SP1 doesn't have many useful new features however quick ROI is not what Microsoft has in mind here.

SCCM 2012 SP1 Primary Site Hardware Requirements:

• 4 Cores
• 16 Gb RAM
• 300 Gb of HD Space

Primary Site Infrastructure Requirements for 2k or under node count:

• SCCM 2012 SP1
• MS SQL DB
• All Roles

Primary Site Infrastructure Requirements for 20k or under node count:

• SCCM 2012 SP1
• MS SQL DB
• SMS Provider
• Endpoint Protection

Standard SCCM 2012 SP1 Disk Configuration:

• C: OS
• D: Programs
• E: Content Library
• F: DB Files (100 GB)
• G: Temp DB (50 GB)
• H: DB Logs (50 GB)

For reasonable performance F, G, and H all should reside on their own sperate volume. Even with that in mind, you can expect poor performance if you are getting a ratings of around 300 iops which is what you are expected to receive with high end SANS. Now if you have the resources available to get this far don't get to excited you still have a little more work to do if you are interested in using Windows tools kits to build images like, MDT and OSD.

Now it might seem like I am dogging SCCM 2012 SP1 and to be honest that far from the case, if you are looking for a LE tool that is capable of handling 20k node count and higher then you can't expect to be up and running in a matter of hours or days, and to me this is the sweet sport for SCCM 2012 SP1 especially with the recent demise of Altiris. Some of my favorite feature of SCCM 2012 SP1 are thing like the ability to replicate from distribution site to other distribution site, as well as the ability to now PXE boot from distribution points as long as they are run PXE services. Also the new feature which allows you to do Windows Update slipstreaming into WIM images server side is sweet. Another awesome feature not specific to 2012 SCCM SP1 but related has to do with MDT 2012 which, allows for deployment simulation which basically in a nutshell allows for you to run a deployment against a machines and see what is missing or would change if you were to deploy said image.

So to overview, if you are a customer looking for the ability to manage under 20k nodes, I honestly can't see any product on the market that provides a higher ROI then the K-Appliances however, if you are a "Large Enterprise" that needs to manage more than 20k nodes I think SCCM 2012 SP1 is the way to go.

A few resource that I would suggest checking out if interested in SCCM 2012 SP1:

• http://www.deploymentresearch.com/
• http://deploymentbunny.com/
• http://www.coretech.us/