0

I have 800 clients that I have enabled Branch Caching on, however when deploying a package, I do not see the Client Data Source report showing clients having used the Branch Cache.

I have waited 48 hours after deploying the package, but it still shows in the report that all of the content was served by the server.

What I have seen via Perfmon on the three clients:

Deployment to a single client

  • BITS: Bytes from Server and Retrieval: Bytes from Server is populated with the 20mb I expect from my package.

Deployment 30 mins later to two other clients on the same subnet

  • BITS: Bytes from Cache and Retrieval: Bytes from Cache are populated with the 20mb I expect from my package.
  • On the initial client, I also see Retrieval: Bytes Served at around 40mb, consistent in proving that it has sent cached content to the two other devices.

Client configuration:

  • BITS enabled
  • Client Cache Enabled with following settings
    • Configure BranchCache - Yes
    • Enable BranchCache - Yes
    • Maximum Cache Size - 10%

Package Configuration:

  • Allow clients to share content with other clients on the same subnet is checked.

This would indicate that the content is coming from the cache.

Rob Sked
  • 277
  • 1
  • 5
  • 15

1 Answers1

0

There are 3 things that need to be configured for branch in SCCM 1710. You need to enable branch cache on client, enable branch cache on server and enable branch cache on the deployment.

It sounds like you have it enabled on the client and the deployment, but what about the server side. The DP serving the client should have branch cache enabled. If the client is in boundary group for more than one DP, the DP it is trying to download from needs to have branch cache enabled.

Bruce Amsbaugh
  • 1
  • Hi Bruce - There is only one boundary group, and as you've said, BranchCache is set up in the client settings and on the deployments. And on the DP, the top option "Enable and configure BranchCache for this distribution point" is checked. – Rob Sked Mar 16 '18 at 09:40
  • Hi Rob, So the data for client download that goes in the report is sent to site via a state message from the client and stored in the database tables ClientDownloadHistory, ClientDownloadHistorySources and ClientDownloadHistoryBoundaryGroups. You can look in these table and see if the data is there, which it probably is not since you stated the report is empty. You can verify the message by enabling verbose logging on the client and look at log files StateMessage.log, ContentTransferManager.log and DataTransferService.log. This should tell you if the clients are sending the data to the site. – Bruce Amsbaugh Mar 19 '18 at 17:38
  • Thanks for the info Bruce. Having looked at the SQL tables, they are populated, however the ClientDownloadHistorySources is showing only a few entries for BRANCHCACHE - the others are all from my server - this would seem to indicate that BranchCache is not fully working on the client side, and needs looking into - I'll set up the verbose logging and see if it shows what's happening. – Rob Sked Mar 20 '18 at 09:47