Client Management Suite

I'm looking for feedback (good or bad) on CMS 7.1 SP2 running on virtual server.  I know that Symantec supports this, but am looking for real-world experiences.

We have Client and Asset Management v7.1 SP2 on the same VM. Not sure if it's just the VMWare or what, but ours is really slow. Our SQL is on hardware with plenty of RAM, CPU, and most importantly, plenty of IOPS.

W3WP usually consumes around 750mb to 1gb memory. AeXSvc can use 50% CPU at times. All this and we barely use it.

We don't use Client Management because web-based Deployment Solution just isn't up to the task of replacing the Win32 Deployment Server console yet. Software Deployment has become way too complicated vs v6, so we no longer use it either.

The only thing we really use anymore is Asset Management, and that may end soon. Reporting has become a nightmare in v7.1 SP2.

We run about 2400 clients on a SMP Virtual Server 7.1 SP2 V4. CMS,AMS, SMS. The VM is configured with 2 Procs, and 8GB ram. Off box SQL. Runs fairly well and the screens are responsive. Biggest improvement was running the maintenance jobs on the SQL server. Rebuild and defrag the Indexes weekly.

Edit: have you changed your Resource update intervals to 30 mins?

Software deployment should be much easier; import msi, save, right click > Actions > Managed Software Delivery, pick your filter and time and job done.

I've been using a similar sized and specced system with no problems either.

Another thing that can be important is to make sure you've minimised errors in the Altiris log, they can really slow down processing.

Should be, but it isn't from what I've seen.

We have Asset Management, so you have to add the software to the Software Catalog, add licenses, create your filter (a pain in and of itself), create your SW Delivery Task, and then maybe you could do a delivery...

As far as Resource update intervals, if you're talking about the Resource and Data Class settings, or Resource Membership Update settings, those are set to hourly. If you're talking about agent updates or configuration requests, those are set to every 2 hours. Upload basic inventory is set to once a day.

My VM only has 4gb and 2 CPUs, so maybe that's why it so slow. I don't know how dedicated the memory is on the VM, but it never seems to run out. It always has free memory showing when I've looked.

Also, when I installed v7.1 SP2, I went through all settings to ensure any policy I wasn't using was turned off, so I shouldn't have any unnecessary policies running.

I get random errors in the logs for things that don't exist, or are for policies that are disabled, such as Inventory Agent install for Unix. It's for v7.1, so it wasn't anything I imported from v6.

Your update settings seem OK. Try upping the memory to 8GB if you can.

You will get an error from the Unix agent target filter and maybe one about Task Server not registered. Any other errors you don't understand should be investigated.