We have 3 sites in the USA. US1, US2 & US3. We turned on AD User Discovery on each site and pointed each site to the exact same AD OU. So now we seem to have the same information in the "All Users" collection on each site. If site US1 is our central site do we only need to turn on AD User Discovery on that site? We want to avoid having duplicate or triplicate data in the DB. mqh7

I'd activate discovery only on the primaries; discovery data will be replicated up so that the information will also be present on the central site. Try avoiding to discover the same object more than once.Torsten Meringer | http://www.mssccmfaq.de

OK, if I turn it on for sites US2 and US3 and point them both to the exact same AD OU won't that duplicate data? Shouldn't I only enable it on the Central Site (US1)? It is a bit confusing so I want to make sure we only capture the data once. Thank you. mqh7 I just checked and all 3 sites have the exact same data and the exact same number of records in the All Users collection. So it seems like we only need this turned on at the central site, US1. Let me know if that is in error. Thank you.

any specific reason you have that many sites?Kent Agerlund | My blogs: blog.coretech.dk/kea and SCUG.dk/ | Twitter: @Agerlund | Linkedin: Kent Agerlund

US1 is our central site server with no clients reporting to it. US2 covers half of North America with about 8,000 client computers pointing to it US3 covers the other half of North America with about 7,600 client computes pointing to it. Our Microsoft SCCM consultant suggested this setup. So do I need to turn on AD User Discovery only on US1? Or do I need to turn it on for each site? mqh7

I only do user discovery at my central site but I don't care about having user discovery data at my child sites. John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|

US1 is our central site server with no clients reporting to it. US2 covers half of North America with about 8,000 client computers pointing to it US3 covers the other half of North America with about 7,600 client computes pointing to it. Our Microsoft SCCM consultant suggested this setup. So do I need to turn on AD User Discovery only on US1? Or do I need to turn it on for each site? mqh7 I assume he was getting paid by the hour? :-) John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|

I only do user discovery at my central site but I don't care about having user discovery data at my child sites. That's fine if you don't care about that information being available at the child sites. Downside: you can't deploy software to users at child sites because (user based) collections won't have any members then.Torsten Meringer | http://www.mssccmfaq.de

John, I was told it was around $300 per hour :-( Torsten and all: If we do turn on User Discovery on each Primary and point all 3 primaries to the exact same AD OU will that create triplicate data in the DB? Or is SCCM smart enough to know user US\JoeSmith that shows up from 3 different sites is really 1 record? Thanks. mqh7

John, I was told it was around $300 per hour :-( Torsten and all: If we do turn on User Discovery on each Primary and point all 3 primaries to the exact same AD OU will that create triplicate data in the DB? Or is SCCM smart enough to know user US\JoeSmith that shows up from 3 different sites is really 1 record? Thanks. mqh7 It will not create triple the data. I'll come redesign your sites correctly for half that. :-) John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|

Just try it yourself .. create an OU that contains a single user and enable discovery on all sites (pointing to this OU). I *guess* that it will result in having one record on the central site (and the properties will show that it was discovered 3 times by the same agent, but different sites). Discovery data is replicated up so that you won't have to enable it on the central.Torsten Meringer | http://www.mssccmfaq.de

I'll come redesign your sites correctly for half that. :-) that was funny ;-) I'd love to have you do that but our CIO would drive you to the brink of suicide !!!mqh7

I'll come redesign your sites correctly for half that. :-) that was funny ;-) I'd love to have you do that but our CIO would drive you to the brink of suicide !!! mqh7 I work in Healthcare... it wouldn't be a long drive. LOL John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|

Best practice is to have discovery at only 1 site if it's querying the same ad. You normally want the central site doing this.