We have an existing SCCM deployment that is based in Australia. For urgent business requirements, there is a push for our North America presence to join that SCCM deployment. This is temporary and our presence in North America is quite large. We would like to eventually break away from Australia and have our own deployment. Is there a scenario in which we could keep what we do in this exercise with Australia to save work once we want to break away? Is there a way in which we can configure the site topology NOW that would allow us to move away later.

The best thing to do is plan for ConfigMgr 2012 and Role Based Administration (RBA) which obviates the need for having separate hierarchies for administrative purposes: http://blogs.technet.com/b/configmgrteam/archive/2011/09/23/introducing-role-based-administration-in-system-center-2012-configuration-manager.aspx .Jason | http://blog.configmgrftw.com | Twitter @JasonSandys

You can always make and break parent child relationships in CM07 --- That's the direct answer to your question. Now... Why in world would you want to do this? SCCM is meant to be used in a centralized top down fashion. It makes no sense to pay two seperate SCCM teams to manage seperate environments. Just a rough guess for a large company, I'd guess 2-3 admins for SCCM which would cost somewhere around $400,00-$600,000 per year. Why not just have 1 team and centralize? I can manage 50,000 machines and easy as I can manage 500 machines. To Jason's point CM12 does make it easier to keep 1 environment and multiple teams but I'm still against duplicating work. John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|

At some point our companies will split completely. My concern is that because of financial pressure to keep this first exercise (inventory) as inexpensive as possible, they will opt for a single primary model. Is it possible for us to move away if we don't have our own primary with it's own database?

it would be a lot easier if you had two sites. A site licenses is about 1500.00 retail.John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|

it would be a lot easier if you had two sites. A site licenses is about 1500.00 retail.John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|

I'd echo John's comment that a separate site would be easier. If you simply add boundaries to include the North American clients and push clients to them, that will achieve the short term goal of collecting inventory. One big question: You mentioned that the North American presence is quite large - Is the Australian infrastructure scaled to support the influx of clients? You can architect a solution that will enable the "Easy Separation" goal, but it will be more expensive - Create a new central site and move the Australian infrastructure in as a child. Stand up a new primary child site for North America. Now, the two geographical areas are covered in a single infrastructure and the Australian primary will not "know" anything about the North American clients and vice-versa. Separation is as easy as breaking the parent child relationship between the central and two child primaries. The single site solution will achieve the short term goal, but you'll need to evaluate the long term costs (financial and admin overhead) and see if building for the long term wouldn't be a better investment. BH

I'd echo John's comment that a separate site would be easier. If you simply add boundaries to include the North American clients and push clients to them, that will achieve the short term goal of collecting inventory. One big question: You mentioned that the North American presence is quite large - Is the Australian infrastructure scaled to support the influx of clients? You can architect a solution that will enable the "Easy Separation" goal, but it will be more expensive - Create a new central site and move the Australian infrastructure in as a child. Stand up a new primary child site for North America. Now, the two geographical areas are covered in a single infrastructure and the Australian primary will not "know" anything about the North American clients and vice-versa. Separation is as easy as breaking the parent child relationship between the central and two child primaries. The single site solution will achieve the short term goal, but you'll need to evaluate the long term costs (financial and admin overhead) and see if building for the long term wouldn't be a better investment. BH