Chapter 1, Planning for High Availability with Configuration Manager, covers what you need to plan for when you want to set up High Availability for your site. For instance, it shows how to plan a layout for SQL server, what kind of networking technology to use, and so on.

Chapter 2, Configuring Roles for High Availability, covers how you can deploy the different Configuration Manager roles that are highly available. For instance, it shows how we can deploy the application catalog service redundantly and the different forms of distribution points, and how they can affect the performance on our site.

Chapter 3, Deploy Highly Available Backend Services, covers how you can deploy backend services, such as DNS and AD that are highly available and how they operate together. It will also cover services such as SQL and using a redundant PKI solution.

Chapter 4, Backup and Recovery, covers what you need to take into account and how you can back up and restore a Configuration Manager environment. It also covers how the content store is built up and what we can use to back it up.

Chapter 5, Performance Tuning, covers various performance tuning tips such as OS deployment, virtualized environments, and SQL deployments. This chapter will also go into different OS tuning tips such as identifying bottlenecks using different tools.

In order to try out the subjects covered in this book, it is recommended to download an evaluation version of Configuration Manager VHD from Microsoft, which can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36428 contains a preconfigured Configuration Manager site with SQL and AD. It is also recommended to use a virtualized environment when evaluating technologies such as Hyper-V, VMware workstation, or Virtual box in a local environment.

This book is for IT professionals who are or have been working with Configuration Manager and those wish to learn more about deploying a redundant and scalable solution. This book is also suitable for people that wish to learn more about Configuration Manager outside its basic functions.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking on the Next button moves you to the next screen".

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