Client Management Suite

I know it works since I've done it in dev, we are now moving to prod and had some questions We will have a main parent NS (no clients) as a management NS and then child NS with clients. The child NS will have site servers; however, due to costs I'd like to not have to purchase another server for the management ns. In order to set up hierarcy as you know I need the package service somewhere for both NS. Is there a disadvantage to having it on the NS itself, and if so why? Is it not recommended and if so why?

1) Package Service is not needed explicitly on the NS, it's kind of taken for granted that it can serve out packages.

2) The issue with the site server for a hierarchy, which is required for each NS, is primarily the task server role. The NS can only act as a task server for ~500 systems (probably more, but why overload it), so the additional site server is used to field the task requests, in addition as acting in the package services role.

Most importantly, you can not proceed with the hierarchy creation wizard without another site server within the wizard.

So basically if I have a heiarcy where

TOP PARENT (No Clients)
|
CHILD 1 (Clients and site servers)   CHILD 2 (Clients and Site Servers)

I am ok without having an individual site server at the top level and having the needed services for the hierarchy on the PARENT NS?

You cannot create a hiearchy at all if each Notification Server participating in the hierarchy doesn't have a site server within it's site boundries (not including itself). The wizard will not allow you to proceed. For what you need to proceed, you could simply build a VM or a workstation class system to meet the need of the site server for the NS.

Right now in our dev environment due to limited servers I installed the package service on the NS and it let me continue to set up hieararchy.  I just did this a few months back, did something change?

I grabbed screencaps from both sites and hiearcy in the console (kinda overlayed thats why it looks strange) to show how I have it in our dev.

On the same topic of site servers, We do have a few of them in our main location where the new NS will reside.  Currently as NS6 package servers as well as DS 6.9 Servers.  If I were to upgrade the NS Agent from 6 to 7 on one of them would that impact the current DS 6.9 Install on that server?  We don't plan on replacing our DS infrastructure til near the end of the NS project which wont be for a little while, so we have to have the 6.9 running until then.

While the Hierarchy Wizard will let you continue with the Package Service on the NS itself, this is not the recommended configuration for a Production environment. This configuration is more suited to a small-scale demo environment. Leaving the Package Service on the NS itself will increase the load on the NS when packages need to be replicated down the hierarchy.

If you will not be deploying much software in your environment and are willing to live with additional load on the NS & some potential delay in software deployment, you could give it a try.

One other thing to note: If you have issues and call into support it is likely that they will recommend moving the package service off-box.

Please let me know if you have any questions.