SCCM client failover to new priamry when connection is lost

We have a client who is interested in bringing SCCM 2012 on-board to replace Radia, there is one member of their team who is Anti-Microsoft.  So no matter what we say Radia can do better.  We’ve been able to sell them on almost all of SCCM – but their issue is what if connectivity is lost.  If the user is unable to receive advertisements from their assigned site (primary site goes down), what is needed to get the client to see another primary.  They want the client to be able to receive advertisements and updates during outages.  Radia claims theirs just switches over with no intervention.  Not knowing Radia can’t dispute whether this is true or not…anyone have the answer.  Can clients be switched over seemlessly to another primary?

If you've a central and site and both primaries are in the same hierarchy then site assignment with a GPO will do the trick for you- How to Assign Configuration Manager Clients to a Site article from technet I'm sure the link posted below will get removed as this site suspect me as a spy (till now) :-D

I'm assuming this is the Anoop was trying to show: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680370.aspx - the same ADM files referred to in that link exist in the CM12 setup files too.

Brian Mason
MCTS\MS MVP - ECM 
http://www.mnscug.org/

Microsoft has included a page in the SCCM 2012 TechNet documentation that addresses this pretty well. I have included the link below. According to this documentation, the best way to provide high availability is by creating additional site systems within each primary site. This isn't supported for every role, but management points and distribution points are each supported. If the clients cannot connect to their assigned management point, the clients will failover to the next available site system that is hosting the desired role.  
 
Planning for High Availability with Configuration Manager
_technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh846246.aspx


I haven't had the opportunity to verify this in my lab yet, so I would definitely suggest doing so before communicating anything to a customer. It should be simple to verify though. Build out an SCCM environment with two management points and two distribution points each on separate site system servers.  Use cmtrace.exe to monitor the LocationServices.log log file on the client. This will show which management point and distribution point the client uses. As your control, leave both MPs and DPs online, perform a machine policy refresh on the client and watch the LocationServices.log. And then for you test, disable the first MP and DP and do another machine policy refresh. The client should automatically find the other MP and DP. This test will definitely show you the MP failover but you may have to advertise a program that has some content to fully verify the DP failover.
 
 
 

Hi Benjamin McConnell...glad i came across your post. I have tried the exact thing you mentioned above (in SCCM 2012) without success. Not sure i am approaching the SQL portion correctly. ie For HA with the MP Role, does the SQL DB have to sit on a dedicated server or can you host it on the Primary SCCM Server and use SQL Replicas for the other Site Systems?
 
FYI: I have created numerous forum threads (which i can't paste here for some reason) without resolution unfortunately. I am keen to get this working so we provide our customers with this functionality. I'm very tempted to logging a Premier ticket with MS. Kinda disappointed they don't have anyone that can reply on their website.
 

dave23


FYI: I have created numerous forum threads (which i can't paste here for some reason) without resolution unfortunately.

 
New members can’t post URLs until they hit 10 posts (I think). This was done to help reduce spam.
 
The trick to get around this is to break up the URL 


New members can’t post URLs until they hit 10 posts (I think). This was done to help reduce spam.
 
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