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| The Randomizer |
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By: Brian Mason
Posted On: 8/15/2007
As we started to scale up our SMS 2003 infrastructure a few years ago, we found that SMS kept great time. When we asked workstations to go install a file at 11:00 pm, they hit that DP at exactly 11:00 pm to the second. All 5,000 of them. Then the server melted down. It didn't matter that the servers had gigabit connections with 6 GB RAM. Microsoft told us that we were running out of paged pool memory. You can't just go order more of that. It's a hard limit baked into the OS.
What now? We needed to keep adding another 35K clients and buying a dozen more servers wasn't an option.
So I thought, what if I sent out a little job that would run for a random amount of time, then exit? If I sent that just ahead of any large distribution (like patches), machines wouldn't all hit the DP at the exact same second. Just something to send to prevent the next SMS ad from running (since only one can run at a time).
Luckily for me I work with one of the best teams in the business, including Rob Olson (the Dude from Dudeworks).
Rob scripted it out and after a couple tweaks, we were in business. 40K machines all getting patched from one DP. Now that's really pushing it, and when we replace our current servers with SCCM servers, we'll be sure to give ourselves some more breathing room. But this has been working great for a couple years now.
The zip comes with a chm help file to help you figure out the syntax if you want to run it outside the defaults.
Download: 11886SMSRandomizerForAll.zip
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