Tuesday, July 17, 2012

SCCM 2012 with smart “content library"

In SCCM 2012 we have “content library” which stores all content files for software updates, applications, Packages, operating system deployment files, etc.
content library” ensure single instance store for content files on the CAS and distribution points”
As we know in SCCM 2007 package source content files will be stored multiple times on the site server and on distribution point’s .If we have 2 package which have some common files in the both package then SCCM 2012 will ensure it won’t get stored twice in the distribution point.
Let’s try it practically and see how content library works.
We will do a test. We have 2 packages P1 and P2 and both the packages contain same content File “x.txt” .As we know in SCCM 2007 when we replicate both this package it will store the file x.txt twice in distribution point even though this file is common in both package but SCCM 2012 won’t do like that…J..

As show below we have 2 packages named P1 and P2







As shown below both the package P1 and P2 source content contain same file x.txt and value in that is 1

                                                                                                                                      
SCCMContentLib contains 3 folders   1. PkgLib  2. DataLib  3. FileLib

 


Folder “PkgLib” contains “ini” files for the package we create. In our example you can see ini files for both the package P1 (99900007) and P2 (99900008).Each PackageID.ini file contain details for the Data library content.


When we open this ini file it will tell the version of the package in the library. I re-distributed the package 5 times and as see below you can find version as 5

In the data library (DataLib) we can find a PackageID.ver.ini file for each package and a PackageID.ver folder as seen below. The PackageID.ver folder gives the folder structure of the package but doesn’t contain real file and PackageID.ver.ini file contain hash value of each file.

As seen below lets open both folders 99900008. 1 and 99900007.5 to see the folder structure of the package and we can see only one file since our package had only one file. This file is a reference to the original file x.txt which will be stored in FileLib. As seen below 2 screenshot both the ini files contain same first 4 letters of hash value “6B86” and it points to FileLib.The first four digits of hash is the key to locate the actual file in the package source file.









The first 4 letter of the hash value pointed us to FileLib where original file in package is stored.
As seen below within FileLib we can find folder “6B86” which contain the real file. File with extension ‘FILE’ is the actual content. In our case it should be ” x.txt” file which is our source package content.

To confirm that file is really “x.txt” Lets change the file extension to txt and you can see it contain value 1 as seen below. So from this we can conclude that both the package is referring to same file and ensures single instance of Package content files.


Whenever SCCM client asks for the package to download then server will re-build the package and provide to client
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7 comments:

  1. Great !!! Good Start Vimal !!!
    All the very Best

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just want you to know that your post has been of tremendous assistance helping me with understanding the DP structure differences between SCCM 2007 and 2012. Thank you for your contribution.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi, I got 4 files in File lib folder without any folder strucure each 30 gb. Is there a way to find out which package it belongs to?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi, I got 4 files in File lib folder without any folder strucure each 30 gb. Is there a way to find out which package it belongs to?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi, I got 4 files in File lib folder without any folder strucure each 30 gb. Is there a way to find out which package it belongs to?

    ReplyDelete