Hierarchies and Site Servers

Let us start with a quick summary of the hierarchy of Configuration Manager sites. A multiple site hierarchy is now used less and less in implementations due to advancements in Configuration Manager 2012 and current branch versions. This is because site roles and components are becoming more highly available and can be designed in such a way that negates the requirement for multiple sites. The vast majority of sites that are installed now are a single primary site. However, we cannot ignore or exclude the multiple site hierarchies that will exist and how we can troubleshoot such hierarchies. We will not go into the details of why you should or should not have multiple sites—that debate is for another book.

There are three levels in a Configuration Manager hierarchy and in its simplest form it can consist of a Central Administration Site, a Primary Site, and a Secondary Site.

It is quite likely that if we use multiple sites in an organization, then we will have...