Policy Bandwidth

In large Configuration Management (ConfigMgr) environments, Management Points (MP) are located in datacenters. Remote clients connect to the MPs over the WAN to request policy every 60 minutes.

When Policy Bandwidth Management is enabled, it will reduce WAN bandwidth utilization but will also reduce the number of concurrent connections to the management point by load-leveling the policy traffic to the MP. This allows you to have fewer management points.

This feature allows administrators to:

• Increase their policy polling interval to the maximum value which is 24 hours.

  If there are no applicable policy changes for a given client within the 24 hours interval, the client will not attempt to check.

• Receive applicable policy changes sooner than the default Machine Policy Retrieval and Evaluation Cycle (60 minutes).

• Immediately detect policy changes for a given client when they are made.

Enabling Policy Bandwidth Management

1. Click Settings > Policy Bandwidth Management.

   
2. Toggle ON Enable Policy Bandwidth Management.

Load Level Settings

By default, when a policy change is detected by the Adaptiva Server, it will immediately send a notification to applicable clients to check for policy. When enabled, Load Level Settings allow you to control load levelling of policy updates to targeted clients over a given duration.

For example, if the Adaptiva Server needs to send a notification to 100 machines for a policy check, and the policy load level duration is set to 10 minutes, 10 machines will check for policy every minute until the 10 minutes has passed.

Load leveling settings are arranged in decreasing order of priority. In case a client is present in multiple collections then highest priority load leveling settings will apply.

1. Click Add Load Level Setting.

2. Modify the duration in minutes for each of the policy intervals.

   • SCCM Machine Policy Polling Load Level Duration (Minutes).

   • SCCM User/Usergroup Policy Polling Load Level Duration (Minutes).

     
3. Click Browse to select the Collection/Group that the Load Leveling settings will be applied to. Check the box next to each group to be targeted.

4. Click OK.

5. Click Add.

6. Click Save.

Modifying ConfigMgr Client Policy Retrieval Settings

After you have enabled Policy Bandwidth Management, you can update Client Settings for how often ConfigMgr clients check for policy.

In ConfigMgr, client settings can be modified to apply to all clients assigned to the site, or a custom Client Device Settings policy can be created with a higher priority than the default and targeted to a collection. This might be desired in a test scenario.

1. In the ConfigMgr console, open the Administration workspace and select Client Settings.

2. Select Default Client Settings to target all ConfigMgr clients or select Create Custom Client Device Settings to target a specific collection(s).

3. To modify the policy retrieval settings, right-click the setting and select Properties.

4. In the left pane, select Client Policy and in the right-pane, modify the Client policy polling interval (minutes) setting to the maximum value, which is 1440 minutes (24 hours).

5. Click OK.

Now clients will no longer rely on frequent polling. Instead, they retrieve policy only when the Adaptiva Server detects an applicable change, with a 24-hour policy interval acting as a fallback.