A proxy management point is a management point installed at a secondary site, which acts as a proxy for the default management point at the secondary site of the parent primary site. In general, proxy management points are used to avoid excessive bandwidth usage over slow network links between clients located in the boundaries of a secondary site and the default management point located at the parent primary site.
When the number of clients located in the boundaries of the secondary site increases, the amount of network bandwidth used by clients to communicate with the default management point of the primary site increases also. Depending on the network links in place, the traffic might become too much for a slow link to handle without installing a proxy management point at the secondary site.
When a proxy management point is installed at a secondary site, clients that are assigned to the primary site, but located in the boundaries of the secondary site, send information such as inventory data, discovery data, and status messages to the proxy management point. The proxy management point forwards the client information to the secondary site server, and the client data is compressed and sent to the primary site during site-to-site communication. When a proxy management point is not installed at a secondary site, all client information is sent uncompressed to the default management point at the primary site.
Proxy management points also respond to client policy requests and content location requests from clients that are assigned to the primary site and located in the boundaries of the secondary site. The proxy management point retrieves client policy from the site database in the primary site or from a site database replica, which is standard behavior for management points. However, when you use a proxy management point and the site database replica is located in the secondary site, network data associated with client policy is kept in the secondary site. For more information about using a site database replica, see How to Configure SQL Server Site Database Replication. Because all management points cache policy bodies, network traffic to the primary site is reduced by using a proxy management point, even when there is no site database replica in the secondary site. For more information about client policy bodies, see About Client Policy in Configuration Manager.
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| Even with a proxy management point and a site database replica, clients that are assigned to the primary site but located in the boundaries of the secondary site still must access the default management point in the primary site for site assignment. |
Proxy management points can also respond to content location requests from clients that are not assigned to the primary site but that have roamed into the boundaries of the secondary site. For more information about content location, see Configuration Manager and Content Location (Package Source Files).