Back to Basics – ConfigMgr Distribution Points and Boundaries

Per request from a fellow tweep, here is crash course in ConfigMgr Distribution Points, Boundaries, and Boundary Groups.

Distribution Points

In ConfigMgr environments, the Distribution Points, or DPs, are simply there to store packages that client connects to for downloading software like applications, software updates, and OS deployment images etc.. To make sure clients are connected to the best DP, the one closest to the clients, boundaries are boundary groups are used.

Boundaries and Boundary Groups

Boundary Groups are a way to assign resources to clients, for example which DP, or Management Point (MP), or Software Update Point (SUP) to use. Boundary Groups can also be used to assign a client to the correct ConfigMgr site, even though most environments should only have a single primary site.

Anyway, ConfigMgr supports a variety of ways to put clients in a boundary, where the by far best method is to use IP ranges. Other methods (that I don't recommend) are IP subnets, and Active Directory sites. For example, if you have a subnet in New York, that is a 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, I recommend that you create an IP range boundary of 192.168.1.1 – 192.1698.1.254, assign it to a boundary group named New York, and configure it use a DP in New York.

Avoid Overlapping Boundaries

One of the most common reason for "weird things happening" in ConfigMgr is when there are overlapping boundaries, or when clients are members of multiple boundary groups, so just simply avoid that. My old football coach used to say KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid, and that goes a long way for ConfigMgr boundaries as well.

Reducing the number of Distribution Points

These days you want to try to reduce the number of DPs and use more peer to peer instead (DO, Peer Cache, and BranchCache). It's simply more efficient using hardware that is already out there, instead of managing yet another server.

Verifying Boundaries

A quick way to verify if clients are using the right Boundary Group, is to enable hardware inventory for the Boundary Group Cache (\\Computername\Root\CCM\LocationServices), and take a look every now and then in the v_GS_BOUNDARYGROUPCACHE view in SQL using the below query:

Select sys.Name0, gs.BoundaryGroupIDs0, ws.LastHWScan from v_GS_BOUNDARYGROUPCACHE as gs
Inner Join v_R_System as sys ON gs.ResourceID = sys.ResourceID
Inner join v_GS_WORKSTATION_STATUS as ws on ws.ResourceID=sys.ResourceID

Another option is to simply ask the client directly using the below PowerShell code, and then collect the result on the server side as described in the A Holistic Approach to ConfigMgr Client Health blog post.

(Get-WmiObject -NameSpace Root\CCM\locationservices -Class boundarygroupcache).BoundaryGroupIDs

Verifying Distribution Points

A quick way to figure out which DP a client has been using is to parse the ContentTransferManager.log on the client with a bit of PowerShell, and then upload that info to a summary report. For example, I recently used this for a customer to figure out that clients in Argentina, was using a DP in Europe due to incorrect boundaries.

# Get Last Used DP
$searchtext = " successfully processed download completion."
$file = "c:\Windows\CCM\Logs\ContentTransferManager.log"
if (Test-Path $file){
    if (Get-Content $file | Select-String -Pattern $searchtext -Quiet){
        $StrResult = (Get-Content $file | Select-String -Pattern $searchtext | Select-Object -Last 1).ToString()
        if($StrResult){
            $LastCTMid = $StrResult.SubString(1,$StrResult.IndexOf('}')) | ForEach-Object{$_.Replace($_.SubString(0,$_.IndexOf('{')),'')}
        }
            
        $searchtext2 = "CTM job $LastCTMid switched to location "
        $StrResult2 = ""
        $StrResult2 = (Get-Content $file | Select-String -Pattern $searchtext2 -SimpleMatch | Select-Object -Last 1)
                     
        If($StrResult2){
            $StrResult2 = $StrResult2.ToString()
            $LastDP = $StrResult2.Split('/')[2]}
        Else{
                
            $searchtext3 = "CTM job $LastCTMid (corresponding DTS job {"
            $StrResult3 = ""
            $StrResult3 = (Get-Content $file | Select-String -Pattern $searchtext3 -SimpleMatch | Select-Object -Last 1)
            If($StrResult3){
                $StrResult3 = $StrResult3.ToString()
                $LastDP = $StrResult3.Split('/')[2]
            }
        }
    }
    }
$LastDP