How to Deploy SCCM in your Lab setup

In this post we will see how to deploy SCCM in your lab setup. If you are planning to install SCCM in your lab, this post will help you. Configuration Manager allows administrators to manage the deployment and security of devices and applications across an enterprise. There are many other useful things the SCCM can do.

Should I call it SCCM or Configuration Manager ?. The answer is Configuration Manager. Over the years people started using SCCM a lot than Configuration Manager. For most of us, it is the same but for Microsoft it is Configuration Manager. So in my future posts I will be calling it as SCCM or Configuration Manager but both means the same.

SCCM Configuration Manager Features

Before you deploy SCCM in your lab setup, it is good to know the SCCM features. There are lot of features packed with Configuration Manager, I am listing some of the important features.

• Windows 10 management
• In-console updates
• Application delivery
• Device management
• Virtual desktop management
• Endpoint Protection
• Compliance and settings management
• Software update management
• Power management
• Operating system deployment
• Client health and monitoring
• Asset intelligence
• Inventory
• Reporting

Configuration Manager provides more effective IT services by enabling secure and scalable software deployment, compliance settings management, and comprehensive asset management of servers, desktops, laptops, and mobile devices.

Therefore, you can simplify numerous tasks using SCCM. Such as deploying operating systems, managing software updates, software metering etc.

How to Deploy SCCM Lab setup

The best part is you can test how SCCM works in your lab setup. You can choose any test domain name, for example, the domain name for this lab is PRAJWAL.LOCAL. You can use either Vmware or Hyper-V to create virtual machines.

Most of all if you are setting up a lab, decide your own domain name. I prefer to install DNS on the domain controller itself. The SQL server and WSUS will be installed on SCCM machine. Note that you can also install WSUS on a separate machine.

You can also install SQL server and WSUS on different machine, however to keep it simple I will be installing SQL and WSUS both on the same machine. We are going to create a standalone Primary site in this lab.

Softwares Required – SCCM Lab Setup

During the deployment of SCCM we require few softwares which must be downloaded. Here’s the list of the softwares.

• .NET Framework 4.0
• SQL Server 2008 SP2
• WSUS SP2
• SQL Server 2008 STD
• SQL CU9 for SQL SP2
• SCCM 2012 R2

SCCM User Accounts

Since I am installing SCCM in my lab setup, I choose to use a single account. Hence I have created an user account named “sccmadmin”. This user account is the member of domain admins group. This account will be used to install and configure SCCM throughout the lab. To login to each client machine, I have created some test user accounts.