Topic last updated—November 2007
When you protect a Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 site system, only clients in that boundary can access the distribution point or state migration point role on that site system. You protect these site roles to help control network utilization.
However, before protecting any distribution points, you should consider the effect on software distribution. Careful configuration of protected distribution will preserve network bandwidth, but haphazard configuration of protected distribution points might prevent clients from accessing crucial content, including software updates and operating system deployment packages.
Before deciding to protect any distribution points, you need to know the following information:
- The location of all distribution points in
the site
- The location of all distribution points in
the hierarchy if you support roaming
- The location and available bandwidth of any
slow network links
- The largest package sizes you tend to
distribute
You should consider protecting a distribution point if any of the following are true:
- The distribution point is across a slow
network link from other clients in the site
- The distribution point is a branch
distribution point
- You frequently distribute large packages and
want only clients closest to the distribution point to download
content from it
You should be careful about protecting all distribution points in the site for the following reasons:
- If all distribution points in the site are
protected but not all boundaries are assigned to protected
distribution points, a client belonging to an unassigned boundary
will be unable to access any distribution points and the package
will fail.
- If a client roams to a new site and the
package is not available in the resident site, the client will
attempt to fall back to the assigned site but will fail if all of
the distribution points in the assigned site are protected. For
more information about roaming scenarios involving protected
distribution points, see Example Roaming
Scenarios for Configuration Manager: Complex.
If you protect your distribution points, for each advertisement or software update deployment that you create, you must consider whether to allow clients to fall back to unprotected distribution points when the content is not available on the protected distribution point. Before making the decision, consider the following factors:
- If the package is very large and would
consume too much bandwidth, you can prevent fallback to unprotected
distribution points, understanding that the clients might not
receive the content at all.
- If the package is small or if the content is
critical, you can allow fallback to unprotected distribution
points.